Hey all,

Welcome to the Closed Beta Large-Scale Tech Test! As a reminder, the NDA is now lifted, so you are able to livestream, make videos, and share your impressions outside of the forums. Woot! Now, a few things to cover:

New players: If this is your first Closed Beta test event, you will start with Closed Beta with Ranger available & 10,000 Favor (in-game currency that can be used to unlock 2 additional Champions for 24 hours). This will enable you to play Duel mode right from the start. You’ll be able to unlock additional Champions as you play.

Returning players: Here is what we’ve saved and wiped from your game progress prior to this test event:

Saved: Nickname, Skill Rating, Contacts (Friends/Followers), All Champions are still unlocked Wiped: Items, Currencies, Profile progression, Challenge history, Loadout preferences, and User Stats As always, please continue to provide your feedback. It’s been crucial in helping us to make adjustments with each test event. Here are the patch notes for this test event.

Patch notes:

NEW GAME MODE

Sacrifice mode now available! Steal the soul as it spawns, deliver it to an obelisk, and defend it to score. Stand near the obelisk to steal the soul, then run it back to your base, or pass it to a teammate. Score 3 points to win the round, win 2 rounds to win the match.

Game

• Heavy Machinegun damage is now set to 10 while zoomed in
• Railgun damage is now set to 90 while zoomed in
• Fixed an issue where a player could be stuck zoomed in if he was zoomed in at the end of the warmup
• Lightning Gun beam distance adjusted from 960u to 768u
• Clutch Barrier cooldown reduced from 40 to 30 seconds.
• Clutch Barrier activation lifetime reduced from 10 to 5 seconds
• Fixed an issue when Nyx could kill while in active ability
• Fixed an unintended issue where Anarki’s ability effects could carry over from warmup to the match in Duel
• Anarki’s Adrenaline health gains are now reset in-between rounds
• Fixed an issue where armor shards could appear at zero-coordinates in Blood Covenant
• Improved shader patterns for all champions
• Various changes in rewards for daily challenges and scoring events
• Armor shaders no longer drop from Reliquaries
• Ruins of Sarnath added to Duel mode rotation (we’d love your feedback on this!)
• Temporarily removed cinematic map overview sequences to reduce pregame time.

UI

• Improved health and armor status visibility while taking damage, moved the red flash effect layer behind the numerical values
• Improved scroll and input throughout all UI screens
• UI improved to match window resize and various aspect ratios
• Ready state no longer shows 10 squares in all game modes
• Duel battle report adjusted
• Skull Shotgun preview is no longer misaligned
• Purchase confirmation pop-up no longer has an extra button
• Item hunting art added, showing how many items player unlocked for the current champion
• Fixed overlapping icons in the Customization screen
• Fixed chat auto-scrolling with every incoming message
• Added ability to choose active display in Options screen for players with two monitors
• Fixed issue where medal icons could be cut off in the Medals page of Player Profile
• Champion animations improved in main menu

Audio

• All legacy guns now have unique sounds
• Overall sound occlusion decreased
• Ambient sounds in Blood Covenant are now quieter
• All 2D gunshots are now louder
• Guns that fire in a player’s direction now sound louder and more clear
• 3D step sounds have increased distance
• 3D step sounds of enemies are now louder than allies
• The Rocket Launcher’s rocket blast sounds have increased distance
• Added wall jump sound for Nyx
• Fixed footstep sound when Nyx is using her active ability
• Nyx will no longer have fall sounds when using her active ability
• Changed 2D sound and the reload sound of the Railgun
• Nailgun projectile hit sounds have been updated

Stability

• Fixed a crash when a player pastes a large message into a bug report

Known Issues

• Lightning Gun beam may disappear when your target is not in range
• MOTD screen can rarely appear in the play menu
• Sacrifice scoreboard is sorted by deaths
• Sacrifice soul will continue to lie in kill domain for 15 seconds
• Players can form a party of 5 players
• VSYNC & Target display are available even when not in full screen
• Sometimes door textures on Blood Covenant and Cthulhu statue on Ruins of Sarnath may appear black in TDM and DM
• All shader icons are mismatched for all Champions

Important Edit:

The team is currently working on improving the lag on the Rocket Launcher, as some of the current issues relate to ongoing server-authoritative-projectile work, which is intended to reduce cheating and to create a better overall experience for players. We'll continue to keep you posted with any updates we have on this.

And another one, from Discord:

[2:29 PM] sponge: @ciwolsey there was major networking stuff w/ hitscan this patch that wasn't quite mentioned.