Deceive Inc.: Back To School Update Is Now Live!

Back To School Update
Agents,

While summer is nearing its end and the summer splash event is riding off into the sunset, we have a new update dropping to keep the good times rolling. We are putting a major focus on the suspicion system, but we are also rolling many more changes to a wide selection of game systems and adding some new cosmetic items to sweeten the deal.

Let’s dive into it!

General
Suspicion Continued
A major point of focus for us has been pouring over feedback around suspicion and charting a course for where we want to take the feature. We’ve got some major leaps forward in this update that will truly help reach the intent we have for suspicion, not as a substitute for a stamina bar, but as a unique mechanic based around stealth and how you behave around people.

Feel Seen
Suspicion no longer rises if there is nobody around to find you suspicious. You will see a new “Suspicious Eye” feedback near the player portrait telling you you are currently within a character’s line of sight and will generate suspicion if you run or jump.

Jumping
Jump now gives suspicion at a rate of 20% of your bar. This ties into the previous point where it only contributes to suspicion if someone sees you doing it.

Additionally, suspicion will no longer build continuously when jumping from a running start. The suspicion bar will simply stay at its current level without decreasing instead of rising the entire time.

Playing the part
We have added a feedback on the player portrait telling you if your npc is scared or aggro-ed with the help of a little “emoji”. When in this state, suspicion gain is stopped, allowing you to run away (or into) a fight without any build up. We want to encourage bold plays using the cover system and we think this is a great step in this direction.

NPC behavior adjustment
We have added a new NPC behavior based on the time it takes for suspicion to fill up where they will stop running to walk and fake a player recovering from high suspicion. This behavior is assigned to npcs based on their internal suspicion factor making them more or less likely to behave like a player.

Vault Terminal Delay
We are adding something new to give back some of the advantage to players disabling a vault terminal. When you disable a terminal, you will still get XP and your field upgrade immediately, but a 15 seconds timer will start before the terminal is entirely unlocked. This is not known to anyone in the match until the timer is complete, giving a window of time where you are the only player in the match having this information.

With this information, we hope to give players that move the gameflow forward the initiative.

Guards Changes
We have big changes to guard this update. Melee only behavior is no more, guards will now be back to having ranged behavior even at heat 0. To compensate for this, we reduced their accuracy at lower heat levels and made it scale more heavily until it reached the same level it was before at heat level 3. We have also tweaked their range at lower heat level and added danger occlusion to doors, limiting the amount of guards summoned in adjacent rooms through gunshot sounds.

Finally, we have reduced guard and elite guards' base weapon damage to reflect the reality that they will now shoot more early in a fight.

All this together should hopefully make them much more tolerable and make the overall game experience far more pleasant when they get involved.

Network Performance Update
We have continued performance overhauls to how we handle items on the server, lowering potential stutters and overly high server use for smoother matches.

Retinal Scanner
We are making some adjustments around the retinal scanner based on the feedback we’ve received since their rollout.

• Retinal scanners do not share their intel cost with the entire match anymore, only you and your team. Getting your hard work stolen has come across as a bit too punishing for using them.
• Retinal scanners no longer cause a danger event when activated that would alert guards to the position.

Another aspect we’ll be watching closely from this patch on is how well scanners fare outside of the summer splash event when less VIPS are roaming around.

Controller Aim-Assist Upgrade
The new Aim Assist system ditches the physics-based approach and returns to character data selecting relevant bones to produce a simplified skeleton of the target using line segments.

Segments have a priority value and the Aim Assist tries to guide the player’s input to steer towards higher priority segments while allowing free movement along the segments of same or higher value

New Store Items
We have a new selection of “back to school” themed items dropping into the store including skins, intro poses and inks!

Sound Eclipse Vault Update
The deeper part of Eclipse's vault is getting a touch up with this update. Our goals with theses changes are numerous:

• Create a more distinct identity to the purple room deeper in the vault, making them more interesting to navigate and easier to recognize.
• Make the central part of the “engineering” area more interesting to fight and hide in with plenty more social interactions and more visual cover.
• Reduce the labyrinthic feeling with paths that are more straightforward and less winding staircases leading to the objective room.

With all these changes, we think Sound Eclipse’s deeper vault is a more interesting area to play in with more opportunities to experience what makes Deceive Inc. fun. We hope you like it!

Fragrant Shore B Terminal Upgrade
The B terminal purple room has received a major visual upgrade as well as an all-new shortcut giving more options on how players want to leave the area or take fights in it.

Our next focus for Fragrant will be an update to terminal C location, to make it more interesting, but we need a bit more time to get this right, so stay tuned!

Balance
Agent

Ace
For Ace, we are enforcing the precision identity of the king a bit more strongly than before. With this change a charged body shot on an in-cover spy followed by a body shot will no longer be a kill.

Weapon 3: King of Diamond

• Body shot damage 45 => 40
• Body shot damage with charged passive 57 => 50

Larcin
Silence is a bit too versatile right now and we want to make its identity as a reliable close range weapon more defined.
Weapon
Weapon 1: Silence

• Fire rate 5.25 => 5
• Damage falloff starts at 15m => 10m

Madame Xiu
We are making some further changes on how Mamba’s Hunch functions to better fit with the new delay on vault terminals.
Passive
Passive 3: Mamba’s Hunch

• If Xiu or her team disables a Vault Terminal, she gets the ping on other players' location immediately. Rivals are not notified when this use case happens.
• If a rival disables the vault terminal, it will give the ping once the rest of the match gets the notification (15 seconds after the disabling.).

Octo
Nautilo has been very "do or die" being extremely lacking if caught off guard without a charged shot. We are making a couple of changes to make the hipfire mode feel more reliable and reduce the time it takes to build up to a comfortable pace.
Weapon
Weapon 2: Nautilo

• Starting Fire Rate: 2 => 3
• Increaser Per shot: 3% => .55%
• Constant Shots before Overheat: 34=> 40
• Time to reach max curve: 2.5s=> 2.25s
• Max Rate of Fire: x5 (10) => x4 (12)
• Overheat Duration 4s => 3.1s

Sasori
With the coated weaponry, Yuki & Hikari has become a sight to behold. The major crux of the issue was that Sasori was accumulating more max damage than originally intended. We planned to have Sasori max out at 3 status effects, but he was able to augment his damage with a 4th effect, making him extremely strong in team scenarios that would play around this.

This nerf aims to keep this weapon very potent with status effects, but cap out the max damage to a more acceptable level that limits instant melts.

Weapon
Weapon 3: Yuki & Hikari

• Projectile damage 7 => 6
• Maximum Status effects stack 4x Damage (28 Per shot) => 3x Damage (18 per shot)

Gadgets
Umbrella Shield

• Added a visual distinction between allied and enemy shields to help clarify in team fights.

Bug Fixes
General

• Fixed an issue where your weapon/arm could disappear after using a healing vial.
• Plugged in some never before used Voice lines on some agents, notably on Larcin’s passive uses.
• Extraction confusion achievement now works correctly with the spyglass.
• Fixed an issue where the ping voice line would not play on single pings.
• You can now move while navigating the ping wheel.
• Extraction music now plays a different version correctly for the carrier and their team.
• Fixed an issue where guards could still enter toilet stalls in sound eclipse when aggroed.
• Fixed an issue where spectating a player using the drone would break the information shown on screen.
• Fixed an issue where navmode would cancel some unintended expertises.

Maps
Hard Sell

• Lasers in the objective room no longer block projectiles and are destroyed properly when the extraction phase starts.

Fragrant Shore

• Fixed a player spawn point inside some stairs.

Agents
Ace

• Fixed an issue where Ace’s expertise activation timer was not visible.

Hans

• Tone down the visual intensity of multiple visual FX.
• Hans passives can no longer blow cover through walls.

Larcin

• Throwing your weapon now has appropriate vibrations on the controller.

Octo

• Fixed an issue where Nautilos charged shot could damage players through walls with the AOE.
• Auto-Fire hold settings now work correctly with Pulpo’s ads shots.

Red

• Fixed a bug where her expertise 2 would sometimes heal allies for much HP than intended.

Yu-Mi

• Fixed an issue where Yu-Mi’s expertise status effects could stay stuck on victims.

Gadgets

• Fixed an issue where the umbrella shield would not play its destruction visual effect when broken.

Known Issues

• When using the "retinal scanner" in teams, your team will see the needed intel amount visually (and visually only) drop incorrectly by 20, instead of the correct amount of 10 as terminals are de-activated. This will correct itself as the scanner is interacted with.