Update 2.6.0

MID-SEASON EVENT: TERMINAL ATTACK

Welcome to the mode:

Terminal Attack is a new 5v5, single-life, attack-and-defend game mode in which contestants take turns delivering the decryption key to the terminal and the best of seven rounds wins. Attackers are tasked with completing the upload, while defenders must prevent it by any means necessary.

No healing. No revive. One life.
Players can regenerate health up to 100 hp, and gadgets do not regenerate at all, so engage with caution and go in with a plan. You can play Terminal Attack in the SYSHorizon, Monaco, and Las Vegas arenas, and be warned, the destruction you cause will carry over through all seven rounds.

Throughout the event, cash in contracts to earn event cosmetics to show your support for CNS, a rogue hacking collective, and VAIIYA, a cyber-security firm. Which side are you on?

Get in there, contestants!

This week, we have a special article from our Design Director, Matt Lowe, who explains League ranks, the journey THE FINALS has taken, changes in this update, and the potential future of ranked play. Please give it a read here[reachthefinals.com].

This update has plenty more to offer, all outlined in the bullet points below. The highlights include a change to Private matches that allows matches to start with as few as 2 players and the addition of Power Shift! Let the 1:1 battles commence!

We’ve added two bonus Battlepass pages with rewards for the grinders out there. Make sure to check out the new drip!

Power Shift has a new arena in rotation! Now you can ride the platform through Seoul.

Finally, for the first time ever, the new Outfit added to the store will allow you to purchase individual items from the bundle as well as the entire bundle all at once. We also added a way to equip your new item to the contestant of choice at the time of purchase, but this feature has a bug that displays the wrong image and fails to equip. We have a fix already, but it will come in the next update. Check the bundle out right here!

The current state of cheating is one we are acutely aware of and actively combating. We have a team of skilled engineers, data analysts, security experts, and machine learning experts whose full-time jobs are centered around anti-cheat. Talking too much about anti-cheat can provide too much info to those who build, sell, or use cheats. And yet, if we say nothing, many will feel we aren’t doing enough.

Easy-Anti Cheat is our base software. It acts as the first line of defense and a catch-all for blatant, non-careful cheating. After that, we have added additional layers of prevention methods and anti-cheat tools and software that obfuscate, check telemetry, hardware behavior and more. With each passing week, we add more rules based on our own data and adjust the old ones. This is because anti-cheat is a game of cat and mouse. With every change we make, the cheat makers respond, and we switch tactics and they follow suit.

When we catch cheaters, depending on the level of offense, we may provide a 7 day ban or a permanent ban. If the offender is cheating for a second time, the ban will become permanent.

We have also introduced a video report program on Discord[discord.gg], where you can capture cheating when you see it and provide the video as evidence. This is to catch cheaters who evade our current anti-cheat preventions and to provide our community of players with a place to report hard evidence. From these reports, we will be able to better understand the types of cheats that evade our current systems.

Please know that we are developing several new technologies and techniques that we will test and deploy as soon as they are ready. We will never back down from this challenge.

Now, let’s look at the mid-season update in detail:

Gadgets

Barricade

• Increased the size of the Barricade by 20%

Glitch Grenade

• Update glitch effect so that it will now pass through Mesh Shields and Dome Shields

Stun Gun

• Increased the Stun Gun projectile’s maximum travel distance from 12m to 16m
• Players who are stunned can now use their Specializations and Gadgets while stunned
• Players who are stunned can now aim down sights while stunned
• Players who are stunned can now crouch

Dev note: We felt that the Stun Gun was a little too dominant as a Gadget and led to many slow, inevitable deaths. The stun effect now mostly lowers the target’s movement speed, blocks them from jumping, mantling, or vaulting over obstacles, and interrupts interactions. This makes stunned players vulnerable but gives them a fighting chance.

Vanishing bomb

• Decreased the impact of the cloaking effect on the Vanishing Bomb, so affected players are slightly easier to see when moving

Maps

Monaco: Power Shift

• Tweaked the traversal options between Villas and Park for easier access to rooftops
• Minor adjustments to the spawn points around the Forest and Royal Plaza areas to provide a clearer frontline during the final stretch
• Slightly adjusted the path of the platform to fix some clipping issues and make it more accessible on the road between Shopping District and Forest

Specializations

Cloaking Device

• Decreased the impact of the cloaking effect so that cloaked players are slightly easier to see when they are moving

Weapons

FCAR

• Decreased damage from 25 to 22
• Increased magazine size from 20 to 25
• Increased the fall-off damage multiplier at max range from 50% to 55%, meaning the weapon does slightly more damage at range

Dev Note: Our data shows us that the FCAR is very strong in the hands of good players but harder to use for newer players. These changes hopefully rein in the weapon’s power at higher skill levels, while making it slightly more forgiving to use for newer players

Animation

• New intro and idle animation added for Dagger and Sword
• Swapping items when quick meleeing will now instantly cancel the quick melee animation
• Fixing an issue preventing hand gestures from playing for dual-wield items
  

Audio

• Increased priority of enemy footsteps, and tweaked attenuation and occlusion to make them easier to hear.
• Tweaked loudness of dematerialize and rematerialize sounds
  

Battlepass

• Added two bonus pages of rewards to the end of the Battlepass – good luck contestants!
  

Characters

• Fixed an issue where the fur on the bunny outfit was flickering when viewed at close distances
• Fixed an issue where players did not get the default outfit when creating a new contestant
  

Controller Gyro Aiming

Important!

There is currently a serialization issue with some of the new gyro settings in this patch, which causes players to initially get the wrong defaults. We therefore recommend that you restore defaults in the Gyro tab before enabling and trying out the new settings.

• Moved gyro aiming options to a separate tab in the settings menu.
• Made general improvements to the responsiveness and precision of gyro aiming controls.
• The "gyro orientation" setting now has three modes:
  • World (New) - Rotation is based on the controller's rotational movement in the world
  • Local - Rotation is locally read from the controller's point of view
  • Player (Previously World) - Rotation is based on the controller's rotational movement from a player perspective
• Vertical gyro sensitivity is now an absolute value, rather than based on a ratio of the horizontal sensitivity
• Added a new setting that enables focal length scaling for gyro aiming, which scales sensitivity based on changes in FOV, making scoped weapons more precise
• Added options for inverting each gyro axis individually
• Added new settings for gyro acceleration, which increases sensitivity the faster the controller rotates, allowing for sharp turns while maintaining precision for small and steady adjustments
• Add a new ‘flick stick’ mechanic that can be enabled with gyro, which changes the functionality of the look stick so that you can quickly snap to face any direction
• Added the following optional controller binds:
  • Reset vertical rotation (necessary when playing with flick stick)
  • Toggle gyro aiming (On/Off)
  • Disable gyro aiming (Hold)

Gadgets

• Flashbang
  • Fixed an issue where weak flashes could overwrite strong flashes
• Fixed an issue where Grenades, Mines, and C4s with default customization sometimes got a random customization applied
• Fixed an issue where spectators could trigger mines
• Fixed several issues where it looked like the player could place an object but no object appeared
• Fixed an issue where the preview arc showed the in-air detonation effect on grenades that don't actually detonate on a timer

Game Modes

• Power Shift
  • Added Seoul to the map pool

Graphics

• Reduced graphical Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) artifacts on consoles

Maps

• General
  • Adjusted collision on some bushes to improve interactions with placeable jump-pads
  • Fixed an issue where Zipline Cables did not break correctly when intersecting certain objects
• SYS$HORIZON
  • Reduced the intensity of some of the interior colors

Dev note: Monitor and graphic settings that boost saturation make the colors more intense. Adjusting these settings can help to further reduce the intensity.

Private Matches

• Lowered the requirement to start private matches to 2 players
• The private match lobby creator now has the option to opt out of participating in the match
• The private match lobby creator can now kick players from the lobby
• Minor UI improvements to the private matches screen
• Power Shift is now available in private matches

Ranked Tournaments

• Reduced Ranked Tournaments size from 48 to 24 players

Dev Note: This change should make matchmaking faster, make tournaments available to more players in different regions, and help improve the quality of skill-based matchmaking leading to closer games

• Reduced Ranked Tournament duration from four rounds to three, to account for the change in the number of players
• Increased the speed at which visible league rankings synchronize with SBMM ratings
• Improved matchmaking to closer matchmake player within their league rank
• Added an indicator in the league overview screen to show your change in rank progression from the last tournament you participated in

Dev Note: This is the same arrow indicator that you get after a ranked tournament has completed so that if you missed it, you can review it on the league overview page.

Settings

• Add a link to the Embark Portal in the system menu

Specializations

• Fixed an issue where turrets lost targeting on players with riot shield
• Fixed an issue where turrets would fall through buildings and not rotate when landing

Stability

• Fixed three of the most common crashes
• Fix for being able to close the "Compiling shaders" screen resulting in a softlock

Store

• Players can now purchase single items within a Bundle
• There’s now an equip button in the store rewards screen

UI

• We have added a score log to display more scoring events in all different game-modes
• Various playertag marker changes
  • Playertags now show distance to you
  • Playertags in-game are now uppercase
  • There’s now an effect on in-game healthbars to indicate healing
• Fixed an issue in Game Summary where you could see duplicate stats for the same player
• Fixed an issue where the 'Contracts' tab could faultily be accessed from the Battle Pass screen
• Fixed an issue where the camera could be misplaced after inspecting rewards in the circuit screen
• Polished and refined how pings are visualized in-game
  • Ping-icons are now smaller and will scale depending on their screen-centeredness
  • Pings, team health bars and objective icons now fade out when they come closer to the center of the screen
  • Off-screen enemy pings now behave like other off-screen icons and hug the screen edge closest to the pinged location. (Was previously not visible when off-screen)
  • Fixing bug where spectating players wouldn’t fade icons when the spectated player enters aim-down-sights
• Voice lines for the default ping (when you ping a random location with no object attached to it) have been updated to be more consistent. Previously it would use “I will…” and “We should…” intermittently
  • In general, pinging something will now ask your allies to engage with that object, while pinging the ground will announce your own intention to move there
• Updated options in the Contextual Ping menu
  • “Huddle here” changed to “Group up,” with all new voice lines
  • “Moving here” changed to “Go here,” using more consistent voice lines
• Fixed an issue where you didn’t go to the correct page in the Battlepass from the outfit screen
• Fix rare instances where first-person animations such as, reloads, inspects, and deploys could not be changed through customization
• Added the ability to track contracts with a right click on the circuits screen
• Fix for showing a single item rarity in the UI when previewing out of a bundle instead of the bundle rarity
• Hit-indicator now differentiates damage from these types of attack
  • Long range damage
  • Short range damage
  • Melee damage

VFX

• Polished the grappling hook wire animation.

Weapons

• Improved melee aim assistance so that it not only looks for targets when the attack is initiated by the player, but also validates that they are still correct at the time aim correction is applied. This should reduce the number of occasions where melee attacks could pull the player away from a target

Security and Anti-Cheat

• Added a requirement to have Secure Boot enabled for suspicious players
• Several new suspension rules based on anomaly detection
• Added suspension rule for using Aimbot
• Tweaks to current anomaly detection
• Hardened the suspension progression system

This week, we have no update, just a small patch to live the new Store content and provide a fix for the server crashes that have been happening lately.

Check out the store video here:
We also added improvements and adjustments to security and anti-cheat.

Next week, we’ll be back with a more substantial update.

See you then!