Hey everyone, Chis here. We have another large update to talk about this week. We are nearing the end of the kinds of large scale changes that you have seen recently, and will be turning our attention towards stability, bugs, and performance for a little while.

Game Performance
We are still looking into frame rate, and what has caused some of the loss of performance over the last couple of updates. We have a number of things active on this all at the same time. These include your general run-of-the-mill optimizations that making the game run faster. We have had a number of these in progress for some time, and are getting into the testing phases for some of them right now. Finally, we are taking a look at our default settings and configurations to make sure that they are as optimized as possible for different systems.

Combat
Watching the combat update in the wild, we will have a few changes coming to further address some feedback. Some of those fixes are bugs involving collisions, cameras, and reticles.

We think we went a little too far on nerfing jump shooting, so we will be bringing ADS back to jump shots, but it will be tuned to be very inaccurate. What we didn’t like was that it breaks your habit in an unnatural way; it is not a behavior that you would expect.

There are still a few bugs where hit reacts still play when they are not supposed to, so we are tracking those down and getting rid of them as intended.

We found a small bug where strafing while ADS was causing some errant shots to occur and we have fixed that up as well.

Other than that, we are really happy with the way the combat update is performing and the positive impact that it has had on the game experience.

Battle Royale
Now for the meaty part of this letter. Our next update to the game, coming in early August, will be some changes to Battle Royale focusing on two things: making the mid-game a bit speedier and more engaging, and putting in a system to address gas camping.

The biggest change that we are making to the mid-game is dynamically changing the size of the safe zone based on the number of players left. The fewer players there are left, the smaller the safe zone. This is going to force people together a bit quicker and cause more conflict. It will also add some tension to how long you can scavenge and craft as you prepare for the end game.

For gas camping, and this will also affect mid-game a bit, we are adding a new system called Toxicity. Toxicity is a new resource pool that fills over time when a player is in the gas (currently takes 3 minutes to fill). Once a player reaches max Toxicity they take increased damage from the gas. The main goals of the system are to prevent long term gas camping by making it harder to stay in the gas for long periods of time in the early game, and impossible in the mid-late game, without making the toxic gas more punishing for players that get stuck in it for a short period of time.

The parachute sequence was smoothed out a bit. Some new animations have been added for overall polish. The biggest change that you will see that is good to mention is the actual landing sequence is smoothed out. Instead of plowing straight into the ground and then magically appearing on the ground, your character will level out and make a smoother landing on the ground before detaching from the parachute. Your first thought might be that it puts you at a disadvantage, but it does the same exact thing for every single player, so it is an even playing field. This was all about smoothing out the landing and fixing some bugs associated with landing, like taking small amounts of damage when you landed.

Air drops were polished up a bit. If you look at the plane, it should be obvious if it has dropped its payload or not. After dropping the payload, the plane will bank upwards for visual clarity. We also tuned the whistle sound effect on the bombs to have a larger radius to give you a bit more warning when they are incoming.

We did not want to mess with the core BR formula too much as that it is so enjoyed in the game, so outside of the very specific items mentioned above, the rest of the changes were small polish items and bug fixes.

The final change coming with this update is that we will be removing the Battle Royale: Zombies mode due to low player population. There are some people that really enjoy it, but the population is so low I would prefer to roll them into the general BR population for better matchmaking. We will retain the ruleset and use it for skirmishes in the future for some fun, but as a regular mode it will no longer be available.

Vehicles
The other large system that underwent a lot of tuning and polish was the vehicle physics. We have put off tuning this for a long time as we focused on other things, but its turn came up to get some attention.

This includes the key and hotwire changes that were discussed some time back. If you missed out on that, instead of needing batteries and spark plugs to run a vehicle, you now just need a key. Keys will be in most cars already making them easy to utilize and take. Players can take keys with them and not leave them in a car. So there is also a new hotwiring mechanic. Hotwiring a car will take some time leaving you vulnerable to someone to come along and find you, but will give you access to cars without having to worry about having batteries or keys.

Physics for all car types have been tuned and adjusted to be unique to each car. The police cruiser is faster than the truck, but the truck has better suspension for off-roading, etc. All of the tuning included adjusting top speed, acceleration, suspension, and handling. You will need to practice a bit to get used to the new feel, but in the long run it is going to drive a lot more predictably for you (less bouncy and squirrely).

Part of the physics was addressing what happens when your car flips. It should no longer slide along the ground as if there was no friction. It will come to a stop (or sometimes roll depending on the terrain). You will have to break the habit of flipping and then thrusting to cause the car to flip upright again. Flipping now comes with a little penalty; you will need to exit the car and manually flip it over (just an interaction with the vehicle itself). This is also a handy addition to times when you inadvertently flip your vehicle cruising around the map.

We changed up the seating positions for the truck a little, particularly with team games in mind. Passengers in the bed now have the ability to utilize a wide field of fire around the entire vehicle by being able to be in a standing position directly behind the cab. The penalty to this is that those players will be more exposed to incoming fire.


Collisions were improved: vehicles to players, and vehicles to terrain. The whole system was cleaned up and improved.

Finally on vehicles, we did a full audio pass on everything to do with the vehicles. New engines, balance pass, skidding sounds to let you know when you are losing control, horns - it is all there.

Z2
Z2 is continuing to make progress. We are just wrapping up all of the world building, ensuring all of the objects are in there correct locations, collision all works, etc. And we are now heading into the polish and optimization phase, which is the last phase prior to being ready to launch it live to replace Z1.

We are not planning on putting it up on Test for this weekend. We have some fun activities planned next week on the Test servers with Z2 so we are going to focus getting it ready for that, and from there our sights will be set on launching it.

July Skirmish
Weekends throughout July will continue the double health skirmish. We are playtesting some fun ideas for August. More on that when we get into August!

Hey everyone, Chis here. We have another large update to talk about this week. We are nearing the end of the kinds of large scale changes that you have seen recently, and will be turning our attention towards stability, bugs, and performance for a little while.

Game Performance
We are still looking into frame rate, and what has caused some of the loss of performance over the last couple of updates. We have a number of things active on this all at the same time. These include your general run-of-the-mill optimizations that making the game run faster. We have had a number of these in progress for some time, and are getting into the testing phases for some of them right now. Finally, we are taking a look at our default settings and configurations to make sure that they are as optimized as possible for different systems.

Combat
Watching the combat update in the wild, we will have a few changes coming to further address some feedback. Some of those fixes are bugs involving collisions, cameras, and reticles.

We think we went a little too far on nerfing jump shooting, so we will be bringing ADS back to jump shots, but it will be tuned to be very inaccurate. What we didn’t like was that it breaks your habit in an unnatural way; it is not a behavior that you would expect.

There are still a few bugs where hit reacts still play when they are not supposed to, so we are tracking those down and getting rid of them as intended.

We found a small bug where strafing while ADS was causing some errant shots to occur and we have fixed that up as well.

Other than that, we are really happy with the way the combat update is performing and the positive impact that it has had on the game experience.

Battle Royale
Now for the meaty part of this letter. Our next update to the game, coming in early August, will be some changes to Battle Royale focusing on two things: making the mid-game a bit speedier and more engaging, and putting in a system to address gas camping.

The biggest change that we are making to the mid-game is dynamically changing the size of the safe zone based on the number of players left. The fewer players there are left, the smaller the safe zone. This is going to force people together a bit quicker and cause more conflict. It will also add some tension to how long you can scavenge and craft as you prepare for the end game.

For gas camping, and this will also affect mid-game a bit, we are adding a new system called Toxicity. Toxicity is a new resource pool that fills over time when a player is in the gas (currently takes 3 minutes to fill). Once a player reaches max Toxicity they take increased damage from the gas. The main goals of the system are to prevent long term gas camping by making it harder to stay in the gas for long periods of time in the early game, and impossible in the mid-late game, without making the toxic gas more punishing for players that get stuck in it for a short period of time.

The parachute sequence was smoothed out a bit. Some new animations have been added for overall polish. The biggest change that you will see that is good to mention is the actual landing sequence is smoothed out. Instead of plowing straight into the ground and then magically appearing on the ground, your character will level out and make a smoother landing on the ground before detaching from the parachute. Your first thought might be that it puts you at a disadvantage, but it does the same exact thing for every single player, so it is an even playing field. This was all about smoothing out the landing and fixing some bugs associated with landing, like taking small amounts of damage when you landed.

Air drops were polished up a bit. If you look at the plane, it should be obvious if it has dropped its payload or not. After dropping the payload, the plane will bank upwards for visual clarity. We also tuned the whistle sound effect on the bombs to have a larger radius to give you a bit more warning when they are incoming.

We did not want to mess with the core BR formula too much as that it is so enjoyed in the game, so outside of the very specific items mentioned above, the rest of the changes were small polish items and bug fixes.

The final change coming with this update is that we will be removing the Battle Royale: Zombies mode due to low player population. There are some people that really enjoy it, but the population is so low I would prefer to roll them into the general BR population for better matchmaking. We will retain the ruleset and use it for skirmishes in the future for some fun, but as a regular mode it will no longer be available.

Vehicles
The other large system that underwent a lot of tuning and polish was the vehicle physics. We have put off tuning this for a long time as we focused on other things, but its turn came up to get some attention.

This includes the key and hotwire changes that were discussed some time back. If you missed out on that, instead of needing batteries and spark plugs to run a vehicle, you now just need a key. Keys will be in most cars already making them easy to utilize and take. Players can take keys with them and not leave them in a car. So there is also a new hotwiring mechanic. Hotwiring a car will take some time leaving you vulnerable to someone to come along and find you, but will give you access to cars without having to worry about having batteries or keys.

Physics for all car types have been tuned and adjusted to be unique to each car. The police cruiser is faster than the truck, but the truck has better suspension for off-roading, etc. All of the tuning included adjusting top speed, acceleration, suspension, and handling. You will need to practice a bit to get used to the new feel, but in the long run it is going to drive a lot more predictably for you (less bouncy and squirrely).

Part of the physics was addressing what happens when your car flips. It should no longer slide along the ground as if there was no friction. It will come to a stop (or sometimes roll depending on the terrain). You will have to break the habit of flipping and then thrusting to cause the car to flip upright again. Flipping now comes with a little penalty; you will need to exit the car and manually flip it over (just an interaction with the vehicle itself). This is also a handy addition to times when you inadvertently flip your vehicle cruising around the map.

We changed up the seating positions for the truck a little, particularly with team games in mind. Passengers in the bed now have the ability to utilize a wide field of fire around the entire vehicle by being able to be in a standing position directly behind the cab. The penalty to this is that those players will be more exposed to incoming fire.


Collisions were improved: vehicles to players, and vehicles to terrain. The whole system was cleaned up and improved.

Finally on vehicles, we did a full audio pass on everything to do with the vehicles. New engines, balance pass, skidding sounds to let you know when you are losing control, horns - it is all there.

Z2
Z2 is continuing to make progress. We are just wrapping up all of the world building, ensuring all of the objects are in there correct locations, collision all works, etc. And we are now heading into the polish and optimization phase, which is the last phase prior to being ready to launch it live to replace Z1.

We are not planning on putting it up on Test for this weekend. We have some fun activities planned next week on the Test servers with Z2 so we are going to focus getting it ready for that, and from there our sights will be set on launching it.

July Skirmish
Weekends throughout July will continue the double health skirmish. We are playtesting some fun ideas for August. More on that when we get into August!

All King of the Kill servers will come down at 1:00 AM PT (8 AM GMT) for a maintenance to address a few outstanding issues. The update will mainly address performance and a camera issue. Details regarding these issues can be found here.

All King of the Kill servers will come down at 1:00 AM PT (8 AM GMT) for a maintenance to address a few outstanding issues. The update will mainly address performance and a camera issue. Details regarding these issues can be found here.

Servers will be coming down tomorrow morning at 1AM PST 7/6 for an estimated 4 hours.

Combat Update Notes:

For those that don’t know me, my name is bronstahd (Garrett Fern), and I’m a combat and gameplay designer working on H1Z1: King of the Kill. Tomorrow we are releasing an update we’ve internally termed “the combat update” which is the result of a focused push toward improving combat and related gameplay systems. I wanted to spend some time talking about several of these changes in greater detail to give some insight into what’s changed and why we’re excited about this update’s release.

Shotgun:

We’ve continued working to improve the consistency of the shotgun. Our goal is that the shotgun should be a powerful, up close threat. This update further tightens the shotgun’s spread of fire, making it more powerful up close. In addition, the shotgun’s damage will fall off over distance, so it isn’t too powerful at range. The feedback we’ve seen has been positive so far, so we’re really looking forward to seeing these changes on the live servers.

Cone of Fire:

Recently, we added Cone of Fire adjustments based on your character's movement state. We did this because, put simply, guns were performing far too accurately when running and jumping. Philosophically, our belief has always been that aiming down sight should be the most accurate method of aiming; this change made sure that's the case.

However, it was also possible to aim down sight while jumping, which also allowed for tremendous accuracy in a way that didn't make sense. This update addresses that issue by preventing ADS while jumping or falling. This has also allowed us to ease up on some previous combat restrictions around movement and it will now be possible to shoot and ADS directly from sprint. You'll no longer have to wait for your character to slow down and suffer a delay when trying to shoot.

General Weapon Polish:

This update also contains a lot of general weapon polish. In no particular order, here's what you should expect to see:

• Historically, melee weapons have been underwhelming and of little use. As a first step toward addressing this, we've increased melee weapon damage across the board. This won't entirely fix melee weapons, but it should be a noticeable improvement:

- Fists: 4.5 damage -> 9 damage
- Combat Knife: 10 damage -> 21 damage
- Machete: 12 damage -> 25 damage
- Wood Axe: 16.5 damage -> 34 damage

• Since our last change to the AK-47 we've been listening to the community and the feedback has been pretty clear: it's not powerful enough when compared to the AR15.

We've been internally testing a faster fire rate for the AK-47 which we'll be rolling out with this update. Here's what you should expect to see:

- The AK-47 should be faster than AR15 in full auto fire, but more difficult to control.
- The AK-47 should be closer in speed to the AR15 when tapping.
- Specifically, the delay between shots has been reduced from 160 ms -> 145 ms.

We think this change will create nice some trade-offs between the weapons and make the AK-47 a compelling choice once again.

• Increased the damage of the R380 from 15 -> 17 to reduce the number of shots required to kill with it by one.

• Decreased the damage of the M9 from 19 -> 18 to allow time to apply healing after taking five shots. Previously it wasn't possible to apply any type of healing before bleeding to death.

• We've made some adjustments to the M47 Gas Grenade that should make them far more viable as a thrown weapon option:

- Damage increased from 1/tick-> 3/tick.
- Duration reduced from 60 seconds -> 20 seconds.

• Depending on the weapon, it used to take anywhere between 0.5 seconds to 1 second to change from one weapon to another. This time has been reduced to 0.15 seconds for all weapons.

• Weapon slots will always be assigned the same number, regardless of whether or not there are weapons in other slots.

Damage Log

We believe that when a player dies it should be very clear to them what killed them. That’s not always the case currently. As a first step towards remedying this, we’ve added a damage log to the death screen that will display how much damage the attack that killed you did and whether or not it was a headshot. Moving forward, the plan is to re-work the death screen so we can display even more information about cause of death.

Body Armor:

We've also made some changes to the way Armor works that should improve the reliability of body armor:

- The upper body (including arms) is protected by body armor.
- Legs take reduced damage, but are not protected by body armor.
- Helmets still protect the head.

Hit Reactions:

Hit reaction animations would cause the other character's head moved, often preventing a quick follow-up shot from registering as a headshot when it should. Other characters will no longer flinch out of the way when shot.

Camera & Reticle Improvements:

We've made a couple of improvements to the reticle.

• We’ve added a new element to the reticle that increases in size to display Cone of Fire information based on player movement.

• Improved color saturation and added clearer outline which should make seeing the reticle, even small reticles, much easier.

• In most cases, projectiles now originate from the camera rather than the weapon model. This change significantly reduces projectile collisions with medium-height cover like fences, rocks, cars, and similar objects and also improves projectile performance when fighting uphill or against players on top of buildings.

In some cases, it was possible for one player to have clear line of sight on another player, due to the camera being offset above their head, while actually being obscured from the other player’s view. We felt this would be unfair, and in these cases (generally, when your character is very close to medium-height cover) projectiles will still originate from the weapon model. We’ve added feedback to the reticle to make it clear when this is happening.

General Gameplay:

KotK Crafting:

In this update we're also adding some new crafting recipes to King of the Kill.

Makeshift Armor:

We're pretty happy with the current scarcity of Body Armor, and like that finding it feels special. However, the changes to Body Armor outlined above meant that players without Body Armor would be at an even bigger disadvantage than before when fighting against an armored player. For that reason, we've added a new crafted armor, Makeshift Armor, which will block one shot and can be worn as a fall-back to Body Armor.

- Components: 1 Duct Tape, 1 Tan Military Backpack.

Procoagulant:

- Procoagulant is a quick-use item that can be used to quickly stop bleeding without any additional healing effects.

- Components: 10 Bandages, 1 Tactical First Aid Kit.

5x Explosive Tipped Arrow:

- Obviously, explosive arrows are very powerful, so we'll be keeping a close eye on feedback for this recipe and monitoring its impact on game balance.

- Components: 5 M67 Frag Grenades, 5 Wooden Arrows, 1 Duct Tape, 5 12 Gauge Buckshot Shells.

• There are some small item spawn changes that support the additions to crafting:

•Duct Tape now spawns on the map for use in some of the new crafting recipes.

•Explosive Tipped and Flaming Arrows no longer spawn on the map.

Footwear Changes:

With these changes we wanted to create some more interesting choice when selecting footwear. To accomplish this, we're introducing a new type of footwear and making some tweaks to the existing options.

Stealthy Shoes (New!) :

- Replaces boots as new starting shoes.
- Similar in volume to bare feet.
- 2% faster than bare feet.
- Reduce falling damage by 5%.

Heavy Shoes (boots & variants) :

- Loudest shoes.
- 7% faster than bare feet.
- Reduce falling damage by 40%

Speedy Shoes (conveys & variants) :

- Louder than stealthy shoes, quieter than heavy shoes.
- 16% faster than bare feet.
- Reduce falling damage by 15%.

Interaction Responsiveness:

We’ve long had problems with delays in picking up items. It isn’t really a combat related thing, but it was a big enough deal that we wanted to pursue a fix for this update. The time it takes to pick up items, open doors, and perform other interactions has been greatly improved and is now nearly instantaneous.

Additional Patch Notes: :

• Items should be more consistently highlighted during looting
  
• Removed dynamic weapon slot numbers from the UI
  
• The team auto-fill button is back and should behave correctly
  
• Fixed a bug where hit-markers would occasionally get stuck on
  
• Fixed a bug where players could not melee others on ATVs
  
• Fixed a bug where explosions could damage players through structures
  
• Fixed a bug where the Molotov’s fire effect would sometimes be invisible
  
• Corrected Molotov behavior so that they damage vehicles but do not cause them to burn
  
• Fixed an issue where players would render incorrectly if they exit a vehicle at certain distances
  
• Fixed a bug where thrown grenades could go through players
  
• Fixed a bug where equipping a weapon while inventory is full could cause the player to lose the weapon
  
• Fixed an exploit where swapping backpacks a specific way could create infinite bag space
  
• Fixed a bug where the UI would make it appear that multiple hits were registering at once
  
• Fixed a bug where character would appear to be falling when strafing against concrete barriers
  
• Fixed a bug where the reloading the AK-47 while firing could prevent the reload animation from playing
  

Servers will be coming down tomorrow morning at 1AM PST 7/6 for an estimated 4 hours.

Combat Update Notes:

For those that don’t know me, my name is bronstahd (Garrett Fern), and I’m a combat and gameplay designer working on H1Z1: King of the Kill. Tomorrow we are releasing an update we’ve internally termed “the combat update” which is the result of a focused push toward improving combat and related gameplay systems. I wanted to spend some time talking about several of these changes in greater detail to give some insight into what’s changed and why we’re excited about this update’s release.

Shotgun:

We’ve continued working to improve the consistency of the shotgun. Our goal is that the shotgun should be a powerful, up close threat. This update further tightens the shotgun’s spread of fire, making it more powerful up close. In addition, the shotgun’s damage will fall off over distance, so it isn’t too powerful at range. The feedback we’ve seen has been positive so far, so we’re really looking forward to seeing these changes on the live servers.

Cone of Fire:

Recently, we added Cone of Fire adjustments based on your character's movement state. We did this because, put simply, guns were performing far too accurately when running and jumping. Philosophically, our belief has always been that aiming down sight should be the most accurate method of aiming; this change made sure that's the case.

However, it was also possible to aim down sight while jumping, which also allowed for tremendous accuracy in a way that didn't make sense. This update addresses that issue by preventing ADS while jumping or falling. This has also allowed us to ease up on some previous combat restrictions around movement and it will now be possible to shoot and ADS directly from sprint. You'll no longer have to wait for your character to slow down and suffer a delay when trying to shoot.

General Weapon Polish:

This update also contains a lot of general weapon polish. In no particular order, here's what you should expect to see:

• Historically, melee weapons have been underwhelming and of little use. As a first step toward addressing this, we've increased melee weapon damage across the board. This won't entirely fix melee weapons, but it should be a noticeable improvement:

- Fists: 4.5 damage -> 9 damage
- Combat Knife: 10 damage -> 21 damage
- Machete: 12 damage -> 25 damage
- Wood Axe: 16.5 damage -> 34 damage

• Since our last change to the AK-47 we've been listening to the community and the feedback has been pretty clear: it's not powerful enough when compared to the AR15.

We've been internally testing a faster fire rate for the AK-47 which we'll be rolling out with this update. Here's what you should expect to see:

- The AK-47 should be faster than AR15 in full auto fire, but more difficult to control.
- The AK-47 should be closer in speed to the AR15 when tapping.
- Specifically, the delay between shots has been reduced from 160 ms -> 145 ms.

We think this change will create nice some trade-offs between the weapons and make the AK-47 a compelling choice once again.

• Increased the damage of the R380 from 15 -> 17 to reduce the number of shots required to kill with it by one.

• Decreased the damage of the M9 from 19 -> 18 to allow time to apply healing after taking five shots. Previously it wasn't possible to apply any type of healing before bleeding to death.

• We've made some adjustments to the M47 Gas Grenade that should make them far more viable as a thrown weapon option:

- Damage increased from 1/tick-> 3/tick.
- Duration reduced from 60 seconds -> 20 seconds.

• Depending on the weapon, it used to take anywhere between 0.5 seconds to 1 second to change from one weapon to another. This time has been reduced to 0.15 seconds for all weapons.

• Weapon slots will always be assigned the same number, regardless of whether or not there are weapons in other slots.

Damage Log

We believe that when a player dies it should be very clear to them what killed them. That’s not always the case currently. As a first step towards remedying this, we’ve added a damage log to the death screen that will display how much damage the attack that killed you did and whether or not it was a headshot. Moving forward, the plan is to re-work the death screen so we can display even more information about cause of death.

Body Armor:

We've also made some changes to the way Armor works that should improve the reliability of body armor:

- The upper body (including arms) is protected by body armor.
- Legs take reduced damage, but are not protected by body armor.
- Helmets still protect the head.

Hit Reactions:

Hit reaction animations would cause the other character's head moved, often preventing a quick follow-up shot from registering as a headshot when it should. Other characters will no longer flinch out of the way when shot.

Camera & Reticle Improvements:

We've made a couple of improvements to the reticle.

• We’ve added a new element to the reticle that increases in size to display Cone of Fire information based on player movement.

• Improved color saturation and added clearer outline which should make seeing the reticle, even small reticles, much easier.

• In most cases, projectiles now originate from the camera rather than the weapon model. This change significantly reduces projectile collisions with medium-height cover like fences, rocks, cars, and similar objects and also improves projectile performance when fighting uphill or against players on top of buildings.

In some cases, it was possible for one player to have clear line of sight on another player, due to the camera being offset above their head, while actually being obscured from the other player’s view. We felt this would be unfair, and in these cases (generally, when your character is very close to medium-height cover) projectiles will still originate from the weapon model. We’ve added feedback to the reticle to make it clear when this is happening.

General Gameplay:

KotK Crafting:

In this update we're also adding some new crafting recipes to King of the Kill.

Makeshift Armor:

We're pretty happy with the current scarcity of Body Armor, and like that finding it feels special. However, the changes to Body Armor outlined above meant that players without Body Armor would be at an even bigger disadvantage than before when fighting against an armored player. For that reason, we've added a new crafted armor, Makeshift Armor, which will block one shot and can be worn as a fall-back to Body Armor.

- Components: 1 Duct Tape, 1 Tan Military Backpack.

Procoagulant:

- Procoagulant is a quick-use item that can be used to quickly stop bleeding without any additional healing effects.

- Components: 10 Bandages, 1 Tactical First Aid Kit.

5x Explosive Tipped Arrow:

- Obviously, explosive arrows are very powerful, so we'll be keeping a close eye on feedback for this recipe and monitoring its impact on game balance.

- Components: 5 M67 Frag Grenades, 5 Wooden Arrows, 1 Duct Tape, 5 12 Gauge Buckshot Shells.

• There are some small item spawn changes that support the additions to crafting:

•Duct Tape now spawns on the map for use in some of the new crafting recipes.

•Explosive Tipped and Flaming Arrows no longer spawn on the map.

Footwear Changes:

With these changes we wanted to create some more interesting choice when selecting footwear. To accomplish this, we're introducing a new type of footwear and making some tweaks to the existing options.

Stealthy Shoes (New!) :

- Replaces boots as new starting shoes.
- Similar in volume to bare feet.
- 2% faster than bare feet.
- Reduce falling damage by 5%.

Heavy Shoes (boots & variants) :

- Loudest shoes.
- 7% faster than bare feet.
- Reduce falling damage by 40%

Speedy Shoes (conveys & variants) :

- Louder than stealthy shoes, quieter than heavy shoes.
- 16% faster than bare feet.
- Reduce falling damage by 15%.

Interaction Responsiveness:

We’ve long had problems with delays in picking up items. It isn’t really a combat related thing, but it was a big enough deal that we wanted to pursue a fix for this update. The time it takes to pick up items, open doors, and perform other interactions has been greatly improved and is now nearly instantaneous.

Additional Patch Notes: :

• Items should be more consistently highlighted during looting
  
• Removed dynamic weapon slot numbers from the UI
  
• The team auto-fill button is back and should behave correctly
  
• Fixed a bug where hit-markers would occasionally get stuck on
  
• Fixed a bug where players could not melee others on ATVs
  
• Fixed a bug where explosions could damage players through structures
  
• Fixed a bug where the Molotov’s fire effect would sometimes be invisible
  
• Corrected Molotov behavior so that they damage vehicles but do not cause them to burn
  
• Fixed an issue where players would render incorrectly if they exit a vehicle at certain distances
  
• Fixed a bug where thrown grenades could go through players
  
• Fixed a bug where equipping a weapon while inventory is full could cause the player to lose the weapon
  
• Fixed an exploit where swapping backpacks a specific way could create infinite bag space
  
• Fixed a bug where the UI would make it appear that multiple hits were registering at once
  
• Fixed a bug where character would appear to be falling when strafing against concrete barriers
  
• Fixed a bug where the reloading the AK-47 while firing could prevent the reload animation from playing
  

Servers will be coming offline at 3AM Pacific for apporximately 2 hours. This a performance and stability update; no patch notes required.

Servers will be coming offline at 3AM Pacific for apporximately 2 hours. This a performance and stability update; no patch notes required.

It has been a few weeks since our last update on what is happening in King of the Kill, which means there is an awful lot to talk about. 

 

Combat Patch

First up, our next planned update is another big one.  We are working on a very large combat patch to go out the week after next.  Our plan is to push it all to the Test servers next week, leave it there to find any issues or problems, get it fixed up, and go to Live the week after.  Our Combat Designer, Garrett Fern, will be writing up a more detailed explanation of all the things that changed in the gunplay, so I will cover some of them at a high level for everyone to read about now.  This patch is pretty expansive; everything was done under the goal of ensuring that combat is consistent and predictable.

We will be continuing our playtests, but will move them to Test all week next week.  If you join into some solo BR matches on Test in the afternoon (Pacific time), you may end up in a game with a bunch of the dev team as we continue to look and tune these changes before they go Live.

Dealing Damage

Every single weapon has been looked at and tuned against one another, and based on your feedback,  the shotgun received the most attention out of the group.  It is much more consistent to how you would expect a shotgun to work with regards to it’s range, cone of fire, damage, etc.  There was also more tuning around hip firing and jump shooting.

Cameras were also tuned to optimize around combat engagements, item interaction, and overall visibility.  Hit react animations on other players were removed because the animation that jerked your opponent outside of your aim was frustrating and made it difficult to stay on target.  Again, looking to be more consistent and predictable, this change makes it more so.  NPC’s will still play hit react animations.

Finally, the change we talked about before where scoped weapons will force you into first person mode when you aim is now working as intended and will be part of this patch.  Again, we feel like it is important to have a tradeoff to contend with when you get the advantage of a scoped view.  That tradeoff is reduced peripheral awareness.

Receiving Damage

Hit registration was extensively tuned to be more predictable.  The chat window will now also display damage received information.  You will be able to see where the damage that you took came from.  We are also adding information to the death screen as to how you died, who inflicted the damage, how much, and whether there was a head shot or not.  This will help a lot in understanding why a death happened.  It will also help us in looking at cases that people post that didn’t make sense to them, we will be able to see what the game believed happened and verify as to whether or not there is a real problem or not.  Finally if and when you die, we tuned the ragdoll physics on the death animation to be a bit more grounded and not so “floppy”.

We decided to make body armor protect your entire body.  There was just too many situations where you are armored up and then get killed because someone who worked around your armor.  If you get armor, you should get a benefit there, so this change makes sense in the context of expectations and consistency.

Our bleeding states are also becoming more specific.  Currently there are 5 levels of severity of bleeding when you are wounded.  They are grouped into 3 labels, which can cause some confusion when you are severely bleeding, apply a bandage and are still severely bleeding.  We are simply renaming the bleeding states to five specific names so you always know your exact level of wound.

Changes to the Reticle

There is an addition to the reticle to give you an idea on how accurate your weapon is in your current condition.  Running and sprinting will result in a larger cone of fire than crouched or prone.  This has always been the case, but now we have something to communicate it to you.  Internally, we refer to this as the recoil reticle.

For the update to test next week, we made a change to the main reticle where it will move it’s position if your bullet is going to hit an object between you and your intended target.  We will likely change the way we communicate this by the time it goes to Live, but if you play on Test then you may notice it.

Expanded Crafting

Crafting in King of the Kill is being expanded.  The first new recipe is the ability to craft blood coagulant.  Blood coagulant will stop all bleeding immediately.  It can be applied quickly, just 1 second on the timer, so it is an option while you are in the middle of a firefight to just get your bleeding stopped.  Crafting this recipe will require 1 medkit and 10 bandages to create.

The second new recipe is the ability to craft some light body armor.  The recipe requires 1 duct tape (duct tape is a new loot item in the world), 1 tan military backpack, and 1 blue tactical helmet.  It will absorb one shot, but that just may be enough to give you an edge over your opponent.

The final crafting change is that explosive arrows will be removed as loot and are now craftable.  To create them, you will need 1 duct tape, 5 frag grenades, 5 shells, and 5 arrows.  These will be crafted in a bundle of 5.  It is important to note that exploding arrows and flaming arrows will no longer be found as loot in the world.  Exploding arrows will need to be crafted while flaming arrows are being removed for now.

Next Patch

As we wrap up this update, we have begun work on the next one.  That will be focused on tuning and polishing the core Battle Royale experience as well as a polish pass on our vehicles.  No ETA just yet as to when we will release that one, but expect something similar to these last few in terms of the amount of change. 

I want to get some feedback on a change to vehicles that we are experimenting with right now.  We want to make it harder for players to disable vehicles, i.e. not just simply removing spark plugs or battery.  The first step we are taking is adding a significant time delay to removing either of those parts from a vehicle.  What you want to find now is a vehicle with a key.  If you find a key, which is removable and universal, it can be used to start any drivable vehicle in the game.  If you do not find a key, you will be able to hotwire vehicles.  The downside is that there will be a timer on the hotwire action (time TBD), and the car will make a lot of whirring and other sounds to alert the owner or nearby players that someone is attempting to steal the car.  The downside to hotwiring, besides the timer, is that each time you get out of the vehicle it will turn off and you will need to hotwire it again when you get back into it.

We feel that this will help balance out scenarios where you really need a vehicle but end up out of luck because someone yanked out the parts that are necessary to make it drivable.  Let me know your reactions and thoughts.

Skirmishes

The Snipers and Shotguns Skirmish seems like it is doing really well and people are enjoying it.  Please continue to suggest other ideas for future skirmishes.

Predator Crate

Looks like you all are really enjoying the items in the Predator crate.  In a similar vein as the skirmishes, please feel free to suggest ideas that you may have for future crate items.  We will certainly read all of the feedback and discuss it internally as we structure the crate contents.

Recent Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the hit marker would remain on screen.
• Fixed a bug where players would sometimes randomly die while in a car.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes players would look like they are skating around the terrain driving an invisible car.
• The ambient twig snap sound was removed.  It kept making everyone think someone was sneaking up on them.
• The auto-fill UI button is now going in.  This will allow a team that is less than 5 to go into a 5 man BR as is without a full team.
• Interacting with, and picking up loot was made much more responsive and snappy.  Does not require you to spam the ‘E’ key anymore.
• Grenades and molotovs should no longer inflict damage through walls.
• Vehicle player collisions were tuned to more appropriately apply damage to the player.

It has been a few weeks since our last update on what is happening in King of the Kill, which means there is an awful lot to talk about. 

 

Combat Patch

First up, our next planned update is another big one.  We are working on a very large combat patch to go out the week after next.  Our plan is to push it all to the Test servers next week, leave it there to find any issues or problems, get it fixed up, and go to Live the week after.  Our Combat Designer, Garrett Fern, will be writing up a more detailed explanation of all the things that changed in the gunplay, so I will cover some of them at a high level for everyone to read about now.  This patch is pretty expansive; everything was done under the goal of ensuring that combat is consistent and predictable.

We will be continuing our playtests, but will move them to Test all week next week.  If you join into some solo BR matches on Test in the afternoon (Pacific time), you may end up in a game with a bunch of the dev team as we continue to look and tune these changes before they go Live.

Dealing Damage

Every single weapon has been looked at and tuned against one another, and based on your feedback,  the shotgun received the most attention out of the group.  It is much more consistent to how you would expect a shotgun to work with regards to it’s range, cone of fire, damage, etc.  There was also more tuning around hip firing and jump shooting.

Cameras were also tuned to optimize around combat engagements, item interaction, and overall visibility.  Hit react animations on other players were removed because the animation that jerked your opponent outside of your aim was frustrating and made it difficult to stay on target.  Again, looking to be more consistent and predictable, this change makes it more so.  NPC’s will still play hit react animations.

Finally, the change we talked about before where scoped weapons will force you into first person mode when you aim is now working as intended and will be part of this patch.  Again, we feel like it is important to have a tradeoff to contend with when you get the advantage of a scoped view.  That tradeoff is reduced peripheral awareness.

Receiving Damage

Hit registration was extensively tuned to be more predictable.  The chat window will now also display damage received information.  You will be able to see where the damage that you took came from.  We are also adding information to the death screen as to how you died, who inflicted the damage, how much, and whether there was a head shot or not.  This will help a lot in understanding why a death happened.  It will also help us in looking at cases that people post that didn’t make sense to them, we will be able to see what the game believed happened and verify as to whether or not there is a real problem or not.  Finally if and when you die, we tuned the ragdoll physics on the death animation to be a bit more grounded and not so “floppy”.

We decided to make body armor protect your entire body.  There was just too many situations where you are armored up and then get killed because someone who worked around your armor.  If you get armor, you should get a benefit there, so this change makes sense in the context of expectations and consistency.

Our bleeding states are also becoming more specific.  Currently there are 5 levels of severity of bleeding when you are wounded.  They are grouped into 3 labels, which can cause some confusion when you are severely bleeding, apply a bandage and are still severely bleeding.  We are simply renaming the bleeding states to five specific names so you always know your exact level of wound.

Changes to the Reticle

There is an addition to the reticle to give you an idea on how accurate your weapon is in your current condition.  Running and sprinting will result in a larger cone of fire than crouched or prone.  This has always been the case, but now we have something to communicate it to you.  Internally, we refer to this as the recoil reticle.

For the update to test next week, we made a change to the main reticle where it will move it’s position if your bullet is going to hit an object between you and your intended target.  We will likely change the way we communicate this by the time it goes to Live, but if you play on Test then you may notice it.

Expanded Crafting

Crafting in King of the Kill is being expanded.  The first new recipe is the ability to craft blood coagulant.  Blood coagulant will stop all bleeding immediately.  It can be applied quickly, just 1 second on the timer, so it is an option while you are in the middle of a firefight to just get your bleeding stopped.  Crafting this recipe will require 1 medkit and 10 bandages to create.

The second new recipe is the ability to craft some light body armor.  The recipe requires 1 duct tape (duct tape is a new loot item in the world), 1 tan military backpack, and 1 blue tactical helmet.  It will absorb one shot, but that just may be enough to give you an edge over your opponent.

The final crafting change is that explosive arrows will be removed as loot and are now craftable.  To create them, you will need 1 duct tape, 5 frag grenades, 5 shells, and 5 arrows.  These will be crafted in a bundle of 5.  It is important to note that exploding arrows and flaming arrows will no longer be found as loot in the world.  Exploding arrows will need to be crafted while flaming arrows are being removed for now.

Next Patch

As we wrap up this update, we have begun work on the next one.  That will be focused on tuning and polishing the core Battle Royale experience as well as a polish pass on our vehicles.  No ETA just yet as to when we will release that one, but expect something similar to these last few in terms of the amount of change. 

I want to get some feedback on a change to vehicles that we are experimenting with right now.  We want to make it harder for players to disable vehicles, i.e. not just simply removing spark plugs or battery.  The first step we are taking is adding a significant time delay to removing either of those parts from a vehicle.  What you want to find now is a vehicle with a key.  If you find a key, which is removable and universal, it can be used to start any drivable vehicle in the game.  If you do not find a key, you will be able to hotwire vehicles.  The downside is that there will be a timer on the hotwire action (time TBD), and the car will make a lot of whirring and other sounds to alert the owner or nearby players that someone is attempting to steal the car.  The downside to hotwiring, besides the timer, is that each time you get out of the vehicle it will turn off and you will need to hotwire it again when you get back into it.

We feel that this will help balance out scenarios where you really need a vehicle but end up out of luck because someone yanked out the parts that are necessary to make it drivable.  Let me know your reactions and thoughts.

Skirmishes

The Snipers and Shotguns Skirmish seems like it is doing really well and people are enjoying it.  Please continue to suggest other ideas for future skirmishes.

Predator Crate

Looks like you all are really enjoying the items in the Predator crate.  In a similar vein as the skirmishes, please feel free to suggest ideas that you may have for future crate items.  We will certainly read all of the feedback and discuss it internally as we structure the crate contents.

Recent Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the hit marker would remain on screen.
• Fixed a bug where players would sometimes randomly die while in a car.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes players would look like they are skating around the terrain driving an invisible car.
• The ambient twig snap sound was removed.  It kept making everyone think someone was sneaking up on them.
• The auto-fill UI button is now going in.  This will allow a team that is less than 5 to go into a 5 man BR as is without a full team.
• Interacting with, and picking up loot was made much more responsive and snappy.  Does not require you to spam the ‘E’ key anymore.
• Grenades and molotovs should no longer inflict damage through walls.
• Vehicle player collisions were tuned to more appropriately apply damage to the player.