R65 Release Notes - Early Access (September 8, 2022)
Greetings, Shellguard!
While you were playing on our playtests and waiting for Early Access, we were preparing a new game release for you.
So here is the list of key changes.
Game Store
The Game Store is now open for customers. For the Early Access launch, the variety of items is not staggering, but the items in the Store are worth checking out nonetheless:
- A Founder's Pack featuring 4 exclusive full-body suits for operatives, 4 exclusive skins and trinkets for weapons, and a nameplate with the Season Alpha theme. And a special Early Access price to boot.
- The Frag Lab trinket and the Shatterline rail cover. Buy them to support us.
Season Pass
A new Season Pass with Free and Premium ladders. Season Alpha will last for 12 weeks.
Balance and progression changes
- The number of experience points to level-up operatives was reduced for the playtests, so now we have increased them.
- The number of experience points to unlock new weapons and attachments also changed, as did the cost of unlocks.
- The number of experience points for weapon progression received in the Expedition mode was lowered.
- The order of weapon attachment progression was slightly changed.
- Crystalline Slide perk mechanics in Expedition were reworked, but the perk does feel the same.
- We increased the cost of crafting with Blueprints from 10 to 450. But don't be alerted by this as we also significantly increased the inflow of Blueprints in the game. The Blueprints can be obtained not only in Expedition, but also from Daily and Weekly Tasks as well as First win of the Day tasks in the Expedition mode, in Versus, and in Weekly Events. Furthermore, the number of Blueprints from completed tasks has increased considerably.
- The conditions of a plethora of tasks changed.
- The way how weekly tasks work also changed. Now seven weekly tasks are allocated each week during the Season. These tasks will stay for the whole season, allowing you to complete them at a later time throughout the Season (which will last, as mentioned earlier, for 12 weeks).
Weapons rebalance:
- Bolt-action sniper rifles will not deliver a one-shot kill in the upper extremities anymore.
- G7 Springer pistol: the rate of fire decreased from 400 to 375 rounds per minute; reload speed increased by 0.1 seconds; and magazine capacity decreased by 1 bullet, so the magazine has 15 bullets now.
- R21 Brute shotgun: the recoil pattern changed; the effective fire distance increased by 1 meter.
- Dragonfly sniper rifle's magazine capacity increased from 10 to 14 rounds, while the extended magazine capacity of its modification also increased from 15 to 20 rounds.
- A lot of weapon attachments were rebalanced.
Weapons
- Some weapons now feature unique crosshairs.
- The list of weapon modifications available in the crafting machine was tweaked for Season Alpha.
- The kill counter can now be used on any weapon.
Some modifications available on the playtest were removed while new ones were added:
- Svarog Cossack. For a short time after weapon selection, the first bullet fired deals double damage.
- Legatus Bloodstream offers a 10% increase in aiming speed.
- Centurion Biplane offers a 10% increase in effective range.
- Springer Neon offers a 10% increase in hip fire accuracy when walking.
- Pacifier Neon offers a 12% increase in accuracy.
- Reaper Mural offers a 10% improvement in sway stability when aiming.
Expedition
- Here we do not have a lot of changes for you, but our best experts worked well on the visuals of the Expedition map. Apart from cosmetic improvements, we added some new points of interest you may want to check. And of course, some nasty bugs were fixed.
- The perks and contamination list has moved from the ESC-button screen to the TAB one.
User Interface
- The weapon modification screen has received a facelift and looks in line with other screens.
Animation and visual effects
- Improved character movement animations on slopes (in third-person view).
- New Chaser AI animation in the Expedition mode.
- Tweaked Impala sniper rifle's position on the screen in the first-person view.
- Improved first-person animation for the Impala sniper rifle, the Earl sidearm, and the TAC Spiderweb shotgun.
- Improved Ram's dash ultimate ability trail visual effects as well as the Crystalline Slide perk effects in the Expedition mode.
Other changes
- Enemy outlines won't be displayed in the kill cam. On the other hand, fallen friendlies will display an outline.
- Destructible doors physics improvement.
- Improved in-game camera movement when the player interacts with a usable object.
- Three different graphics options for shaders were merged into one - the Shading Quality.
- The pinging system was also improved: If a ping is made at a space in close proximity to the target, it is treated as a target ping. The pinging action is triggered when pressing the mouse button, not at release as it used to be.
- Our August playtest participants will receive a unique weapon trinket to distinguish their early interest in Shatterline.
Is that all?
No, this list of key changes is far from comprehensive. Our sound team will probably feel offended if we fail to mention that they did an excellent job fixing different sound issues and adding new cool sound effects.
Known Issues
- Bolt action rifles perform one-shot kills to any body part in the Shooting Range.
- Player hands may hang in the air during pistol reload animation.
- Weapon trinkets may shake unnaturally during side and backward movement, and at the beginning of a forward movement.
- The game client may freeze at the Play-of-the-Game replay.
- In the Intro mission, the play can get into a non-playable location and fall into the water (area after the zip line).
- The U22 SVAROG weapon progression level resets after every match in Expedition.
- A player can get an occasional "Connection 01-00 error".
- ARMALIBS RDS-4 scope for the Firespray smg may cause a freeze before shooting after zooming out.