Game Update: New Horizon

New Horizon - New Map

Our aim is to elevate the playfield Mercenaries by introducing a brand new map!

In the war's opening hours, the Exo Terran Fleet attempted to seize control of the vital Southeast Asian Space Elevator (SASE). Connecting low orbit research stations to a tropical archipelago, SASE provides essential satellite access to a local military airbase.

The elevator is also open to vacationers, tens of thousands making the journey up and down the lift every year.

With the outbreak of war, the elevator has become a strategic location that both sides deem critical to victory.

We’re running Horizon on PVP servers, you will now find it in our map rotation, it will soon make its way over to PVE in the near future.

Special Ops: Bronze, Silver and Gold

Special Operations just got a little more spicy! We've made some changes to how the AI will react in-game; be prepared for these troops to be on your trail. Even when trapped in a jam, they're smart enough to escape.

As a result, our Bronze, Silver, and Gold modes will be a bit harder than before. Prepare yourself, Mercenaries!

Improved Magnetism System

The magnetism system has been updated to work simultaneously with the spread system to increase readability when firing off your weapons. Previously, both systems competed with one another, making weapons feel unreliable outside the magnetism area.

Weapons and Abilities

• Improved gamepad aim assist functionality

• Increased minimum damage floor to roughly 60% for most weapons

• Plasma Cannon rate of fire 0.6->0.7

• Recharge Station hitpoints 400->250, healing per second 35->25, radius of effect 1500->2000

• Deadeye projectile speed 165k->175k

• Scout LRR ADS spread 0.2->0.15

• Odinspear-RL ADS spread 0.75->0.1, projectile damage falloff profile 2->1.5

• Sidewinder Pistol ADS spread 0.75->0.65

• Phoenix ADS spread 0.75->0.7

• PSF Stinger ADS spread 0.75->0.65

• T32 Flak Cannon projectile count 9->7, new spread pattern, main spread 6->3,

• T32 Flak Cannon projectile falloff curve tweak, reload time 3->2, projectile size 50->25

• Reconstructor Beam enemy maintain range 100->85

• Predator SMG max spread 4.5->3.5

• Overkiller uses a new flak spread pattern for better consistency

Maps

• Many improvements to special operations AI pathing and reliability

• Fix for deep water section of Mirage

• Fixed scenario description for Haze special operations

• Fix for pathing issues in Redrock

• Larger objective captures for some special operations phases, slower progress decay

Programming

• New magnetism system. The Magnetism system was entirely revamped so that it can work side by side with spread. Previously both systems fought each other, making weapons would feel too unreliable when not within magnetism range.

• In-Game settings are now auto-applied

• Fixed several navigation issues that could prevent controllers from properly interacting with game UI, as well as some screens, breaking entirely due to a mismatch in their state and their UI representation

• More performance optimization when loading meshes

• Memory usage optimization across the entire game

• A few performances passes on critical situations, such as killing a cluster of enemies and throttling physics simulations.

• Fixed several crashes

• Fixed several hitches throughout the entire game

• Added a better performing bloom variation for lower graphics settings

• Better gamepad standard keybindings, with an added quick radial menu for secondary options

• Fixed challenges being able to be redeemed in areas where they shouldn’t, which could lead to having their UI in a broken state.

• Hookshots now have a better logic for their engagement distances. Previously it was possible to get stuck using the hookshot even when the player was within the automatic disengagement distance

• Several fixes to achievement unlocking logic

• Muting players’ audio is now persisted so that muted players remain muted unless the player reverts that

• Fixed a few issues with ADS and Reloading which would leave weapons not being able to ADS unless switched

• Fixed an issue where cloaked players would still be tracked by aim assist for controllers

• Deploy screen now have tooltips for the current game mode being played

• Fixed a few issues with the tutorial where parts of it could be skipped when the player did actions out of order

• Fixed issues with AIs getting stuck and not refreshing their locations to an unstuck location, if AI remains stuck for too long, they will suicide so players can still progress.

• Fixed collision issues with the Recharge Station

• Added console-specific configurations for several systems

• Fixed an issue with the out-of-bounds logic, where players could exploit multiple boundary volumes to deactivate the logic, thus allowing them to remain out of bounds without punishment.

• Several fixes to matchmaking and session loops

• Fixed several issues with input handling, such as the scoreboard stopping you from moving when displayed

• Map rotation has been implemented

Misc

• Improved armory audio queueing

• Reorder graffiti in armory

• Reduce damage on bronze AI explosives

• Improvement to special operations AI spawning

• Several localization improvements

• Reduced aimpunch across the board in 50%

For anyone who would like to join our Discord, I've added a link below for you to join. We're encouraging people who would like to interact with fellow Mercenaries to jump in, the dev team is also in the Discord and can help provide feedback and support. Anyone looking to seed servers or would like to find people to jump into matches with we have a section on the Discord for that. It's not a permanent solution, but as we work to grow the game and push towards bigger and better updates these are ways we can help LEAP grow!