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!
