Star Citizen Makes Players A Lot More Survivable
We have a ton of Star Citizen News, updates and AC schedules along with some deeper FPS Weapon balancing info from a dev response.
There is a new 3.22 EPTU patch with some fixes and much need performance improvements to settlements. Expect them to make their way to the Live build as a hotfix/minipatch soon. Looks like CIG want to get the live build in the best possible state before going on their holidays.
Alpha 3.22: Wrecks to Riches went live on the PU servers last week, bringing with it Structural Salvage, new character hairstyles, personal cargo containers to put your bits and bobs in, another massive update to Arena Commander (including new maps, modes, match types, and multi-crew spawning), all-new Derelict Settlements to explore, and more just in time for the holidays!
On the subject of holidays, the Luminalia festivities are in full swing! Luminalia is an annual holiday celebrated by the Banu and Humanity alike on December 22, and we’re counting down the days with gifts in the ‘verse and two contests with chances for you to win some treats!
Claim your daily goodies from the Luminalia Calendar (we’ve got cookies!), showcase your creativity and spread some holiday fear cheer in our action-packed greeting card contest, or die hard in Arena Commander. Go up against other Citizens and CIG staff to claim your spot in the top three on the winning side and an Origin X1 Force if you’re successful! Also, if you’re in the mood for a seasonal slay ride, you can look forward to some holiday hijinks with the Jumptown global event kicking off on December 22.
And, as celebrations are always better when shared with your close ones, there’s a referral bonus activated from now through January 8 so that you and the players you refer can greet the challenges in the new year appropriately suited up!
Lastly, thanks to everyone who stopped by the Intel x Star Citizen booth at Dreamhack Atlanta! We had a blast getting to chat with you all over the weekend.
Tuesday brings about the latest monthly Galactapedia update from the Narrative team.
Inside Star Citizen and Star Citizen Live are officially on holiday hiatus. But fret not, we’ll be back in the new year with the usual in-depth content you love!
On Friday, the Jumptown global event returns deadlier than ever, with a brand-new location and updates to some favorites! RSI Subscribers can look forward to the December issue of Jump Point magazine.
Saturday, ANZIA Racing are poised to deliver some high-octane fun with their Ignition Expo event. Catch it live on the anziaracing Twitch channel; the starting pistol will go off at 15:00 UTC!
Arena Commander Experimental Mode Schedule
Gun Rush is enabled indefinitely as are various Master Mode Tests.
The Luminalia Team Elimination mode is available through January 8.
Now Until December 24 ► Battle Royale
December 24 – December 31 ► Team Tank Battle
December 31 – January 7 ► Master Modes: Duel
January 7 – January 14 ► Single Weapon Elimination (A03 Sniper Rifle) & Tank Royale
Remember MultiCrew is available in AC as well now affecting things like Team Tank Battle too.
We know a ton of FPS Updates and improvements are coming in SC over the next few months, CIG have been doing various balance updates even in the latest 3.22 patch and there was a FPS Balance & TTK question on spectrum:
Is there any chance we could get a write up of what the current intentions are with the FPS rebalancing going on? Some of it just seems weird and I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the reasons for it outside of wanting to push the TTK up. Like it seems that every gun has the same kills per mag but when some guns have a 30 round mag and some have a 100 round mag it makes anything with lots of shots just seem like a pee shooter. Like the Demaco feels like a heavy SMG and not a light machine gun. With some context maybe the end goal would seem clearer.
Zpreece CIG Ground combat system designer at CIG responded:
As the designer who did them, these words aren’t holy and subject to change based upon feedback / iterations / direction changes, etc etc
The general reason we did the TTK increase was;
- Make medical gameplay (Injuries, etc) be more prominent and important as well as providing some interesting design space in the future
- Improve PVE by making you be able to take more shots (which is needed when the AI is working in the PU,
- Improve PVP by allowing people whom are being ganked have more of a chance to respond and fight back, mainly due to the time investment players have to get out into the world and the costly association with death, then looking even further into death of a space man
- Allows for a lot of design space in weapons and amour, IE;
- Helps create a wider range of weapon types (Like the volt rifle we showed at citcon, to make it competitive it would have to fire very little bullets before going into the beam)
The reduction in force reactions was in response to community feedback
The moving of the body multipliers was to create a more consistent experience when fighting (head going from 2 – 1.5x, arms going from 0.275 to 0.8), as with longer TTK you want more consistent fights
Removal of spreads to make weapons more consistent
Use the new procedural recoil tool to give weapons a more 2023 feel as well as moving away from inconsistent values that cause problems when applying %’s on weapon recoil
In general there are some issues making the current TTK feel far too long
- Equipment blocking bullets
- Strafe speeds being far too high
- desync
- Barrel offset from recoil (tuned down on some guns since early PTU, more coming)
- Barrel offset reset bug (effects the P4 the worst, it’s a default gun to a lot which is causing a lot of people to think it’s far longer)
- ADS spread is present on some weapons when it shouldn’t be
The TKK in general could still be too long (want to play with fixes on the above before coming to that conclusion), some of the above are easy to fix on design side, some need some engineering support
In general the reason why mag sizes weren’t increased is because changing too many things are once in design you won’t know what the problems/issues/feel ends up being with a lot of gameplay, a more careful approach of going to far in terms of health whilst keeping some things the same is better.
A lot of the guns in gun rush as the worst offenders for this balance pass which is unfortunate (Railgun, Shotguns, GL) and are missing a lot of the guns that feel good so I think this has amplified the confusion of it all.
Overall, it’s the first step in many tweaks / passes coming until we land where we are happy, it’s an ongoing process we’d rather have the community involved in then doing a bunch of stuff internally and putting it out only for you lot to hate it.