Knights and mercs - another weekend update is landing hot in the NBZ. With Update #90, we've delivered some major performance gains across the game and some very commonly used visualsystems (outline sight lines) and specific maps (Skyrise). We've also fixed the issue preventing Zasha's revenge storyline from continuing, completed a pass of weapon rebalance (Shotguns, Revolvers), tweaked Gunslinger's Gun Kata, added a new Sniper Rifle, revealed objectives in assassination missions earlier and fixed a host of other bugs and F10 reports from players! Not bad for a Friday!
If you are enjoying the constant pace of updates and expansions, and all the community-driven fixes, QoL and improvements, please give us a moment of your life and leave a review! ːsteamhappyː
Since you'll always be seeing a lot of updates around here, we want to reiterate our saved game policy so everyone understands our commitment to your games. No saved game will ever be invalidated by an update. All new content and features will be added immediately to all saved games (with the reasonable exception of New Game options). You never have to restart if you don't want to. This is a studio commitment that we have made and kept for many years and games. We stand by it. So do not stress about the deluge of updates that is coming your way - heist on my good heisters.
With Update #90, we have completed some major performance rewrites. The game has never been particularly performance demanding, but there are some levels (looking at you Skyrise) that were worse than others and some onscreen effects (Outline and sight cones) that could add up.
Skyrise Levels have the troublesome props within them improved to be more FPS friendly. These should run more smoothly on all quality settings.
We have rewritten the outline component to be less CPU intensive. While it is a small boost, we've seen multiple FPS increase when playing with Outlines on, especially on larger levels.
Enemy Sight cones were pretty heavy to render if you had them all toggled on. It was never that bad with just one. We have rewritten the shaders and masking system to be more performant. It should have significantly less of a drag on your CPU and FPS when they are all enabled.
We've made some adjustments to the Zasha storyline with Update #90. First, we've made it required to bring Zasha along on the FULL KITCHEN SUNDAY job, which can be challenge as she made be injured from neuro rot treatments. Second, we've fixed the story match issue that was preventing her revenge arc from starting, so now you can chase that side of the storyline to completion as well.
We also fixed a bug at the end of the Ward War, where if you sided with Brave Star, one of the two Los Zagales gang bosses might survive mysteriously. This is now resolved for future playthroughs, though there is nothing we could do about it if you've already passed through this point.
With Update #90, we've made some balance changes to Shotguns (better) and Revolvers (reduced to be more in line).
Shotgun Armor Shred has increased, jumping up by +15% at the starting weapon to a baseline of and rising more rapidly to 80% before going all the way to 90% in high Power Levels. This helps early game shotguns be far more reliably in shredding than they were before.
All Shotguns have gained the Heavy Hit Rule with a +100% Crit Dmg bonus opposed to the default +50% Crit Dmg bonus they had before. This helps shotguns further benefit from Critical Hits and make their Ballistic Dmg punch even more powerful.
All Revolvers have had their baseline for Heavy Hit reduced from 150% Crit Dmg to 100% Crit Dmg. So, in practice, all Revolvers lost +50% Crit Dmg out of the box.
For Heavy Hit, this delivers 2 category of hitters - Shotguns are not as strong but still qualify, and then Sniper Rifles and Revolvers are matched as the heaviest of hitters.
For the Gunslinger's Gun Kata Talent, we have rebalanced the upgrade nodes in the second row to completely remove the (major) Critical % bonus that Gun Kata was adding. You will have to find your easy crits elsewhere. With this tweak, we've changed these values over to Ballistic Damage, adding +10% Ballistic at each step. This pushes Gun Kata's upgrades to be more pistol focused, where Crit % covered both Pure Damage (from Revolvers) and Ballistic Damage (from any type of Pistol).
With Update #90, we've added a new sniper rifle for sale in the basic kit at Power Level 2. This sniper rifle is the Downwind XT. It has a more straightforward setup than the only other Power Level 2 Sniper Rifle for sale which is the Rare, Longsight Red, which has significantly higher noise valuea nd range. The new Downwind XT allows for a smoother progression from your early-game PL1 Sniper Rifle to PL 3 without having to accept a massive spike in noise. Enjoy!
We have completed the work to reveal all assassination mission extractions in advance of killing the target. This lets you pre-plan your path and exit more effectively and brings us to the completion of this arc of work to improve extract point visibility.
We have resolved the issues purchasing anything with Favors that could result in (1) no money being charged or (2) inability to purchase with the Favor discount if you could not afford the full price.
- Big performance improvement package for Skyrise levels - smoother play, better FPS
- Big performance improvement for sightlines rendering - smoother, better when "show all" is enabled
- Big performance improvement for outlines - clean lines, better FPS
- Fixed story matching issue preventing Zasha's revenge storyline from appearing
- Fixed story issue where Zasha was not required to go on the FULL KITCHEN SUNDAY job
- Fixed story issue in Brave Star end of Ward War where second gang boss might not actually end up dead
- Rebalanced all Revolvers to use +100% Crit Dmg as baseline for "Heavy Hit" rule instead of +150%
- Upgraded Shotguns base Armor Shred % from 50% to 65%, quicker climb to 80%
- All Shotguns upgraded to +100% Crit Dmg from +50% and gain "Heavy Hit" special rule
- Added new Downwind XT Common Power Level 2 Sniper Rifle for sale that does not have extra range/noise of the Longsight Red
- Rebalanced Gunslinger's Gun Kata +50% Crit at fully upgraded to +30% Ballistic Dmg at maximum level (more Pistol focus)
- Adjusted all Assassinate VIP proc-gen missions to have pre-revealed exits
- Fixed bugs when purchasing with Favors (sometimes free, sometimes could not buy)
- Improved balance of starting Tally / Turn on Assassinate VIP missions (on average, 1 less Tally/Turn)
- Improved access to the Assassin's Deed Achievement in more storylines (killing Octane, etc)
- Fixed bug allowing player to remove all programs (but not one at a time) when deck is damaged
- Fixed some cases where retirement story could appear early
- Rebaked lights in some levels where lightmaps had gotten chunked