Hunters,

During the event, we received reports that some users were not rewarded event points correctly in certain circumstances. We were able to identify and resolve this issue with a hotfix during the event but had to dig further into the logs to accurately track the points that had been lost.

We want to grant these points to those affected by the earlier issues, but to do so, we need to perform maintenance on the servers (both PC and console) while the event is live.

With this in mind, we have decided to extend the duration of the event by 24 hours. This will allow us to perform the required maintenance while ensuring the downtime does not prevent the rest of you from missing out on further event progression. The event will now end on April 22nd at 16:00 CEST.

The scheduled maintenance will be set for 09:00 CEST for PC, and 12:00 CEST for consoles on Thursday, April 22nd. Once complete, those affected will automatically receive the points that were lost earlier in the event.

Once again, we would like to thank the community for making this event our biggest one to date. Thank you for being there with us and see you in the Bayou!

~The Hunt Team.

Hunters,

Quickplay is back!!

Thank you all for your patience while the game mode was disabled.

New players - not familiar with Quickplay? Check out this quick video from one of our partners - Ascendance 4FS for a rundown of what to expect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laW-OC2WKdw

For our new German players, check out the Quickplay guide from one of our partners - Siegismund: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRvCiCD9OtA

~The Hunt Team.

An encounter with a resurgent outbreak turned the Plague Doctor to arcane methods of fighting pestilence. Convinced that New Orleans represents its evolution, he arrived to treat it with fire, lead, and his own array of ministrations.

Get the wallpaper of the Plague Doctor now!👇

4k - {LINK REMOVED}tinyurl.com/PlagueDoctor4K
Ultrawide - {LINK REMOVED}tinyurl.com/PlageDoctorUW

~The Hunt Team.

18/04/2021 11:06 CEST Update

Hunters,

The PC servers are back online.

~Thank you for your patience, and Happy Hunting!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PC Hunters,

We will be bringing down PC Live servers in ~1 Hour for scheduled maintenance at 10:00 CEST.

Make sure to extract from your match to save your Hunter and match progression.

We will update this posting once the servers are back online.

~Thanks!

As we launched one of our biggest in-game event yet, and reached an all-time high in concurrent players, our team has been working around the clock to resolve our (unfortunately) frequent server issues.

When we launched the event, we had increased our server capacity, but we were blown away by the actual number of players who joined the game. As servers have been under heavy load, we want to take some time to talk about what happened, what we’re doing now and the next steps towards healthier servers.

Multiple different issues were tackled, and some are still being investigated. Issues mostly came from the backend and game servers. To give players an idea, backend hold your authentication/log-in, player inventory and unlocks, the in-game store to buy items and hunters, as well as matchmaking. Game servers on the other hand is where your mission takes place, from spawn to extraction (or death!). As we aim to be as transparent as possible, the following info will be tech-heavy.

We experienced various type of issues in the last 30 days, mostly since the start of the event on March 24th.

Here are the different issues we faced, and what our progression is regarding those:

• We had about three occurence of a bottleneck that was building in the backend, causing it to grind to a halt after about three days. We were able to submit a hotfix for this issue on April 8th, and it has not been observed since.
  
  
• Then, we had the issues that would happen at the same time every day for three days in a row. Initially, we thought we were investigating network connection issues, as the symptoms are very similar. Turned out some internal processes were stalling the backend exactly 00:00 UTC. They were triggering a high disk usage on the physical machine which was not leaving enough resources for the backend processes to run. We have made some reconfiguration to prevent that from happening. For now, it appears to be solved, but we are keeping an eye on it for the next couple of weeks as only time will tell.
  
  
• Afterwards, we had some network interruption in the datacenter we use for the backend. It was either causing permanent issues which resulted in a full restart or temporary issues in one specific region. We do not have control over these, as they are caused by real world issues.
  
  
• And finally, we had an occurence that seems to be a human error, triggering a process that it was not needed or not yet needed. This was our mistake, but it has been identified and resolved.

We still observe slow performance degradation, which may cause backend servers to go down in a similar fashion as the bottleneck issues. Very often, those problems do not manifest during internal testing, as they are not under the same extreme load. We are currently looking into ways to investigate them directly on the live environment, without causing any interruption. Once we understand what is causing the memory consumption, we will be able to resolve the issue. At the moment we are only able to perform regular full restart to recover enough memory for the backend to run.

We are currently working on a more sophisticated stress test system that will allow us to reproduce the behavior of thousands of players in our testing environment. It will allow us to catch issues before hitting live servers. Our current target for this system is June of 2021.

The latest release and the event were a great success for Hunt as we doubled our number of concurrent players. We underestimated the community engagement. To ensure best possible performance, we are running our servers on physical machines. This prove effective but challenging to scale rapidly. as we depend on the datacenter capacity. We will be looking to have support for rapidly scaling game servers (cloud), but we have faced challenges, as we want to ensure good playing conditions on weaker machines. Integration for this hybrid environment proves challenging, due to the environments being in two separate datacenters but the latest success showed us that scalability becomes one of the top priorities.

We understand that server downtimes during peak hours, combined with the live event, can be very disappointing. We have decided to extend the duration of the in-game event by two days. The event will end on April 21st at 16:00 CEST.

We would like to thank the community for making this event the biggest one to date. Thank you for being there with us, and see you in the Bayou!

- The Hunt Team

Hunters,

Update 1.5.1 is now live on the PC Test Servers including our matchmaking changes!

Make sure to join this testing phase now!

Read our blog HERE regarding the matchmaking changes.
https://www.huntshowdown.com/news/matchmaking-improvements-are-coming-to-hunt

Read the update notes for Update 1.5.1 HERE.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/770720/view/4707926354161250206


~The Hunt Team

Hunters, we are making some changes to the matchmaking system, coming to the game in update 1.5.1. We know that matchmaking has been a hot topic in the community for some time, so this new update is primarily focused on improving the current matchmaking setup and making a better experience for everyone. At the top level, we aim to improve balancing in matches and give you more control and flexibility about who you are matched with. But first, let's talk about the existing matchmaking system.

Currently, Hunt uses an ELO-like system where players are split into different brackets based on their PvP rating. Each region has several different brackets (ranging from 1 to 6), which are regularly updated to reflect the current player population.

When you start the queue for a match, the system will try to fill the match from other players in the same bracket. If it is unable to fill the match with players with a similar PvP rating, it will expand the search to other brackets until it fills as much of the lobby as possible.

In some cases, due to the current setup, players will find themselves encountering other players with a significantly higher or lower PvP rating, which has been, understandably, a point of frustration for some of you. So, let's get into the finer details of what will be introduced in Update 1.5.1 and how they will improve the matchmaking system:


The first and most impactful addition is a new UI check box called “Skill Based" in the lobby screen. This button will allow you to tailor the matchmaking experience to suit your needs.

When enabled, this option will match you exclusively with players in your assigned skill bracket. KDA ratio, Prestige, and rank are not factored into the PvP rating calculation, which is based only on performance against other players.

Please be aware that selecting this option can result in fewer players in your match.

When this option is disabled, we will try to match you with players in your assigned skill bracket first. If no such match is available, we will then look for a match with as many players as possible based on those that have also disabled the “Skill Based" option.

So, whether you want to play it safe or would prefer to tough it out with the best of what the Bayou has to offer, we have you covered!



Trainee mode will default to “Skill-based" matchmaking.

Previously, we introduced a “forced lower rating" to ensure that new and inexperienced players have a better chance of becoming more familiar with the game and its mechanics before being pitted against more experienced players. This, along with the addition of skill-based matchmaking, will further ensure that newer players are less likely to encounter those with a much higher level of experience. However, this may not apply when grouping, as the PvP rating tied to other members of your team may affect the overall group rating used in the matchmaking process.

Once you have completed Trainee mode, you will be given an artificial PvP rating, slightly lower than initially calculated, to avoid a player being placed in a higher bracket than intended. Over the next ten matches, your actual PvP rating will be calculated based on your PvP performance*, determining the bracket to which you are assigned. After this, your rating will be calculated on a “per game" basis, meaning your PvP rating is an ever-changing number and is no longer calculated over a series of games.



Random groups will follow the standard “Skill-based" matchmaking rules with some slight modifications to how the “Group PvP rating" is calculated.

To make the matchmaking process as fair as possible, we have added additional factors to calculate the group rating. Each of the five group types(Solo, Random Duo, Random Trio, Invite Duo, Invite Trio) will factor the average rating of all members, as well as some additional multipliers. For example, a solo player will not have the same PvP rating as a team of three players, where each member of the team has a similar PvP rating to the solo player.


The matchmaking changes in the new update will have no impact on the Quickplay experience. Currently, there are no brackets in Quickplay, meaning it is a free-for-all, and this will remain unchanged with Update 1.5.1.

By default, “skill-based" matchmaking will be disabled, and the option to change this will be greyed out. Due to the population size of Quickplay, adding brackets or an extensive matchmaking system would only result in a lot of empty matches. Getting out with that Soul Survivor should feel like a real accomplishment, and we think that this is the best way to ensure that it will continue to be the case.

Finally, we will fine-tune the existing brackets across all regions to further aid these additions. On top of this, we will also be applying a PvP rating decay to players that have been inactive for extended periods of time. Once these changes have been implemented, more information will become available to you by hovering over the check box or by pressing the '?' in the top right corner of the screen.

Matchmaking systems are highly complex and can never really be 100% perfect. The changes we are making should go a long way to improving the matchmaking process, but it is important to keep in mind that other factors can influence systems like these. For example, population size and peak/off-peak times are two of the most significant factors. With this in mind, we will keep a close eye on the impact of these changes and implement further changes if needed.

The new update will be on the Test servers later this week, and we are excited to hear your feedback, good and bad. It's a big change, and as with anything in Hunt: Showdown, your input is incredibly valuable and will shape the future of the feature. Keep your feedback coming!

See you in the Bayou,

Your Hunt Team.

++

Don't own Hunt yet? Get your copy for PC on Steam or from the Crytek shop. For Xbox, head to the MicrosoftStore, and for PS4, find Hunt on the PlayStationStore.

Got queries or questions? Stop by our social media channels and let us know:

Discord + XboxClub + Facebook + Twitter + Instagram + Xbox + Steam

15/04/2021 10:43 CEST Update

Hunters,

The PC servers are back online.

~Thank you for your patience, and Happy Hunting!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PC Hunters,

We will be bringing down PC Live servers in ~1 Hour for scheduled maintenance at 10:00 CEST.

Make sure to extract from your match to save your Hunter and match progression.

We will update this posting once the servers are back online.

~Thanks!

Hunters,

Below are the update notes for Hotfix 1.5.0.5:




We have implemented some new features which we hope will help with the backend issues that have been impacting Hunt over the last few weeks (unplanned server down time issues). We will continue to monitor the situation and will apply further updates/fixes if required.

• Reduced the impact damage of the Hand Crossbow poison bolt from 127 to 107. This will mean it is far less likely for players to die too quickly and will give them a chance to escape the poison cloud.

• Fixed an issue where single-shot weapons were displaying the incorrect amount of ammo for the second ammo slot.

• Fixed an issue where FMJ ammo for some weapons would incorrectly display a change in effective range.

• Fixed an issue where the headshot sound would play unintentionally when a player has been hit by an explosion.

• Fixed an issue where spare ammo was duplicating itself in some cases when carrying two of the same ammo types.
  
• Loaded ammo (bullet in the chamber) will now be returned to the ammo pool correctly when the weapon is inactive (I.e., dropped on the ground).

• Fixed several potential crashes that could occur for players.

• Fixed a rare issue that could result in Scrapbeak not being one of the available Boss targets. (Scrapbeak is supposed to be in all missions so we have corrected this issue).
  
• Fixed an issue where players that took too long to load into a match might not earn event points as intended.
  
• Fixed an issue that resulted in the mission summary not automatically displaying after reconnecting to the backend (rare occurrences).

~The Hunt Team.

Hunters,

The PC live servers will be taken offline for maintenance (and to deploy a hotfix) at 14:00 CEST today. Please make sure to extract before this time to avoid losing your hunter.

Thanks.