Hey there Prospectors!
If you've been wondering if today is a patch day or if this week is patch week, the answer is yes! Patch 3.3.0 is coming in hot and in typical fashion, we're going to dive into the details of what awaits us in this new patch as well as tackle a few Known Issues that we're still currently working on. Did I mention the word patch yet?
Let's talk about a big topic - AI Creatures. You've sent us videos, screenshots, we've talked about it directly with players, we've collected feedback on it, it looks like a lot of our Fortuna fauna have been fighting back and in a lot of strange ways. While we may poke fun about a potential Strider uprising happening, they're not working as intended and we would like to start by apologizing for any situations with this topic that have caused you trouble. We've been working quite a bit on peeling back the internal workings of them so that we can figure out what happened and make a sizeable dent in what has become a fairly complex bug. Additionally, you'll find our usual list of bugfixes that we've scooped up along the way, some impactful, some minor, all bugs that need squashed! With that out of the way, let's settle down the surface so that if I want to crawl on all fours like a new creature roaming the surface, I can do so with the confidence that the Striders will think I'm one of them. Onto the notes!
Changes
AI Creatures
We should start by saying that a lot of our changes have gone into the senses of our not-so-friendly friends. They react to a variety of actions, such as sight, proximity, and sound. Some creatures even have what we call "Shared Senses", which means if you alert one of them, they can attract other nearby enemies and point their attention towards whatever they may be alerted by. In this case that would be you, the player! One important change we've made is that creatures will no longer be triggered by sound created while crouching. While you can technically be crouching and be spotted or crouch walk into their proximity range, their ability to detect you won't be caused by sounds made from crouch walking, this should allow you folks that have tried sneaking past an enemy as carefully as possible only to be targeted anyway to feel a much greater reward in approaching these situations cautiously. We've also added more on our end internally so that we can tune the proximity ranges of every creature and their variants individually with ease. These proximity changes have been tuned for all creatures except for the Howler, as we would like to avoid the Howler triggering purely because it flew too close to you while you were safely hidden. On the topic of shared senses, we've made some adjustments here and there to prevent an unending chain of monster aggro. Here's the short version:
- If a creature is alerted by a player, its Shared Senses will trigger and alert another creature nearby.
- A creature activated by another creature's Shared Senses won't trigger its own Shared Senses and won't activate another nearby creature.
- A third creature can be alerted by the fighting caused by the player, which will in turn activate another creature through Shared Senses.
- As a note, Striders always have Shared Senses active. They work together in groups, through thick and thin! If you're trying to sneak past Striders, alerting one of them can still alert the rest of the group if within Shared Senses range.
The goal here is to improve your interactions with the creatures so that you feel less punishment for trying to get by through situations that on paper sound totally doable by improving a few areas and tackling situations where chain-sense-reactions occur. It is important to note that we are still very much invested in this topic and monitoring lots of encounters with the E in PvE. Will this change create more fairness around the topic of AI Creatures? Have you found that this change has made it easier to use stealth to get past enemies undetected, or have you noticed any other effects of this change on gameplay? Give it a try, continue to share with us any strange encounters that you see so that we can all stay synced on the state of AI Creatures, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.
Stash Size and Player Quarter Upgrades
You don't have room for your belongings, we don't have room for ours, we hear you loud and clear. Something that we've noticed is that players need more stash space during the early game and less stash space during the end game, this is due to the early game being very hoarder-heavy, collecting things that you know you will need for upgrades while also cramming anything into your backpack that you might need later down the line. While we know there is lots of room for improvement and features we'd love to add, something we wanted to do was adjust and revaluate how our Stash Space Upgrades are distributed within our Player Quarters. We've reshuffled these values and while the beginning and ending stash sizes remain unchanged, upgrades that will increase your stash size more significantly will now happen much earlier in Upgrade tree. Here's a detailed table with all of the values that have changed:
Quarter Upgrade Level
Previous Stash Increase
Previous Stash Total
3.3.0 Stash Increase
3.3.0 Stash Total
Change of Stash Size
Base
0
90
0
90
0
1-1
10
100
15
105
+5
1-2
10
110
15
120
+10
1-3
10
120
15
135
+15
2-1
10
130
15
150
+20
2-2
10
140
15
165
+25
2-3
10
150
15
180
+30
3-1
10
160
15
195
+35
3-2
10
170
15
210
+40
3-3
10
180
15
225
+45
4-1
15
195
10
235
+40
4-2
15
210
10
245
+35
4-3
15
225
10
255
+30
5-1
20
245
10
265
+20
5-2
20
265
10
275
+10
5-3
20
285
10
285
0
Twitch Drops Compensation
Oh, for the love of Drops! We've run a handful of Drops Campaigns from launch until now, and while they have for the most part gone smoothly, we do know that there are some edge cases with players out there who have Drops that were permanently unclaimable. While we will continue working with all parties involved to resolve these issues, we have additionally created what we're calling a Drops Compensation Crate. This is a crate that will be manually delivered by our Community and Player Support teams while we work to improve our campaigns so that these errors occur less. Here's what you can get if you're one of those impacted players:
- 20 ICA Scrips
- 20 Korolev Scrips
- 20 Osiris Scrips
- 10,000 K-Marks
- 1x Blue Shield
- 1x AR-55 MKII
- 1x Scarab MKII
- 10x Blue Stims
Our goal here is to cover a fair portion of the lost "randomized' drops, while also being mindful of our economy and the factor that not all players are missing the same drops. So, we carefully calculated the worth of what could be missing and what you can get for the trouble. To claim yours, please have all proof of Twitch/Game Account and Drop ownership ready and send it to our Community Team or our Player Support (https://thecycle.game/support-station) and we can compensate you once we have verified that you have unclaimed drops in your account. Additionally, we will be keeping a close eye out for false claims and taking action in that event, so no funny business! Please only reach out if you have unclaimed Drops in your Twitch Inventory. For any Drops that contained in-game cosmetic items, please reach out to either of the roles mentioned so that we can continue to address this topic and make sure that everyone who put time into earning those Drops does receive the item they were meant to have. Thanks and our apologies for the technical difficulties.
Miscellaneous
- Further adjustments and additions to our anti-cheat detections and preventions
- Added UI element to Jobs & Mission tab to indicate when rewards can be claimed
- Implemented reward animation for items claimed from Delivery Station
- Howlerbusters Top 10 leaderboard has been added to Prospect Station
- Revamped some tooltip descriptions for items to give better hints towards how to find certain items like Howler syrinxes, resin guns, shock absorbers, shard slicers, sample containers, etc.
- Added UI indicator in the inventory screen for armor that has passed a certain durability threshold to better remind players to repair shields and/or helmets before deploying
- Added popup indicator will display if setting changes require a game restart to take effect
- Added some missing localizations for a few of our UI elements
Bugfixes
- Fixed an issue causing some players to receive Error Code ## when dropping to Fortuna
- Fixed a bug that caused some items from the "Fortuna Veteran" DLC pack to not properly appear
- Fixed a bug with the howler's animations when transitioning from it's sleeping state to its combat state
- Fixed some buggy map geometry near Osiris HQ on Prospect Station
- Fixed some heads from the Grim Hunter skinset having misaligned meshes
- Fixed an issue that caused a sound effect to be spammed too often when repeatedly inspecting the "Tempest's Blade" melee weapon
- Improved contrast on the description text for Spray cosmetics so that the names are easier to read
- Fixed some lighting issues in the Storm Pillar area on Tharis Island
- Fixed some faulty collisions on the stairs in Osiris Labs
- Fixed an exploit that allowed players to get into the Fortuna's Favored Bar without unlocking it first
- Fixed an issue causing items to occasionally be unstackable in the forge if all 5 slots were occupied
- Fixed a small bug that caused the lamp posts in Korolev Quarry that caused them to look too bright
- Fixed an issue with the safe pocket UI sometimes getting slightly cut off
- Fixed an issue where the localization would not properly update for one of our graphics settings
- Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause the head on the "Cave Explorer" Prospector to clip through their helmet
- Fixed a spot in Jungle where players could sometimes fall through the map
- Improved some visual issues with the fences on Prospect Station
- Item meshes will no longer disappear when switching between consumables and weapons. Finger guns are fun but not practical for prospecting
- Fixed issue with missing gun and melee weapon meshes.
- Landscapers have made a round with grass glue to fix floating plant textures and filled a few holes in maps
- Kawaii weapon vanity will now display properly in match on Mk II and Prototype weapons
- Fixed an issue with unpurchaseable attachments disappearing when purchasing and equipping a Loadout Preset
- Fixed an issue that caused Scrips to disappear from Stash when equipping a Loadout Presets that contains a higher amount than available
- Monarch player archetype will now be equip able from the player customization menu
- Fixed issues with the Monarch player archetype and Cave Explorer basesuit items
- Stuck spot behind the drop pod near deploy terminal on the station has been removed
- Fixed several stuck spots, out of bounds areas, and spots not intended to be accessible
- Lightning will only strike the surface of Tharis Island and will no longer strike inside of caves
- Vadim Tanayev visited an oral surgeon to have his tongue properly relocated inside his mouth
- In the unlikely event that a player falls down through the map, they will be teleported back to the surface thanks to the power of science, magic, friendship, or whatever deus ex machina device of your choice.
- Players will no longer spawn within aggro range of creature pathing.
- Fixed shader glitch when using epic settings with DirectX12 enabled
- Fixed VFX on Gorgon holographic if player is idle during a match
- Fixed issue with Howler loot disappearing before its intended timer ends
- Howler will now drop items when killed as intended
- Free Loadout gear can now be equipped when un-equipping "Your Loadout" reaches exact item capacity in the stash
- Red kill markers will only display when Elite Strider's health is fully depleted
- A tailor visited Badum to help his clothes fit a little better
- Added missing timer bar for Player Quarter upgrades
- HexCage vanity skin will display properly when dropping the C-32 Bolt Action from loadout
- Fixed an issue causing failure to load player into station and be stuck in loading screen when launching the game on Steam
- Updated animation when unequipping scanner to better match correct unequip speed
- Fixed faulty textures when viewing trees near Jungle Thermal Ponds when observing from a distance
- Prospector model will now hold the Party Blade melee properly when viewing in the character preview screen
Known Issues & Things We Are Working On™
While some of these issues might take a bit longer, we are still investigating and aim to find fixes and address these as soon as we can.
- We are aware of your feedback that you want to see a default weapon skin setting.
- We are investigating changes to the process of selling items smoother.
- We hear your feedback about matchmaking and your experience with other players that you're encountering and are investigating all instances surrounding the topic.
- Deysnc Issues - we are cautiously keeping an eye on this topic and working with players where possible to investigate these instances.
- Getting kicked back to the lobby is currently under investigation.
- We received a bunch of reports that performance has taken a hit in Season 3 and are investigating.
- Our Welcome Packs descriptions need to be reworded to reflect the disappearance of mandatory wipes.
- Streaming tools can lead to crashes for some players.
- CPU usage spikes seem to be back for some players.
- Some keybinds can be unbindable on AZERTY keyboards
As usual, don't forget to join us on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/thecycle) and our Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCycleFrontier/) and make sure to follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheCycleGame)
Don't forget: Fortuna Favors the Bold!