[2019] Community Transmission - The Rise of Skywalker Update & Release Notes

Community Transmission - The Rise of Skywalker Update & Release Notes

INCOMING TRANSMISSION

It’s an exciting time to be a STAR WARS™ fan, and it doesn’t get much better than this week. Not only do we have a new film and the conclusion to the epic Skywalker saga fast approaching, but we also have a brand-new update for Star Wars™ Battlefront™ II.

We’ve got some great content inspired by Star Wars™: The Rise of Skywalker™ on the way, but before we dive into the details, here’s a quick look at some of the things you can expect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbVsjbBllKQ

New Planet

While we don’t want to spoil anything and name this planet, you might have caught glimpses of this new location in some of the trailers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and it’s a planet we’re incredibly excited to be bringing to Star Wars Battlefront II. Bringing a brand new planet to the game is always a great feeling, but the addition of one that gets its debut within Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is even better.

You’ll have plenty of cover in the form of thick vegetation, while caves offer the opportunity for some great close combat gameplay.

This jungle planet will arrive in Co-Op and Heroes Vs Villains in this update and will join, alongside other New Trilogy planets, both Instant Action and Capital Supremacy in January 2020. While the update will arrive tomorrow (Dec 17), our new planet won’t join our map rotations until a few days later on Dec 20.

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New Reinforcement - Sith Trooper

This merciless trooper excels in speed and advanced weaponry to hunt down and destroy anyone that stands in their way. Activating the Combat Rush ability will boost the sprint speed of the Sith Trooper. Defeat enemies while it’s enabled to trigger health regeneration and extend the time of Combat Rush.

Seeker Tactics will allow the Sith Trooper to scan the nearby area to reveal the 4 closest enemies, defeating enemies will reveal more.

The third ability in the Sith Trooper’s arsenal is the Oppression Grenade. This is a grenade that damages any nearby enemies, as well as blocking their ability to recover health for a short period of time.

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New Reinforcement - Ovissian Gunner

Compassionate and strong willed, the Ovissian Gunner uses the might of both her strength and her modified rotary cannon to combat enemies threatening her Resistance allies.

A fearsome sight in combat, and even more so when she activates her Charge ability, as she charges forth and slams into her enemies to knock them down. When she’s not on the offensive she has the ability to activate Defensive Stance, which instantly cools her Modified Z-6B Rotary Cannon and any damage dealt replenishes health for both herself and any nearby allies.

For her third ability she switches her Modified Z-6B Rotary Cannon into Anti-Armor Mode, gaining increased efficiency against both shields and vehicles.

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New Reinforcement - First Order Jet Trooper

This agile airborne trooper comes equipped with custom armor and an integrated jet pack for swift traversal. Their fast movement and aerial capabilities, combined with their G125 Projectile Launcher make them an ideal choice for carrying out surprise attacks against Resistance forces.

Their Jetpack ability enables flight while spending fuel, while the advanced nature of it allows for hover mode, which can be activated by aiming down the sights of their weapon while in the air. Activating Tri-barrel launcher will reconfigure the blaster to fire from the tri-barreled projectile launcher at the expense of increased heat buildup. Making it a daunting weapon to come across but timing is everything.

Their third and final ability is Jet Tackle, which sees the First Order Jet Trooper charge forth along the ground and slam into opponents, knocking them off their feet.

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New Reinforcement - Caphex Spy

The Caphex Spy operates fearlessly behind enemy lines. Armed with his modified GLIE-44, he specializes in hand-to-hand combat and a cunning use of gadgetry.

Close proximity to an enemy will prove to be the opportune time to activate the Truncheon Attack ability. Doing so will hit the enemy with a series of blunt force melee strikes with his truncheon. These strikes can also be chained into a powerful third strike which will knock the enemy to the ground.

Scanner Beacon will allow the Caphex Spy to deploy a decoy that relays enemy locations and disrupts their scanner to display a false enemy. If deployed outdoors, it can be used to call in a remote bombardment.

While a specialist in hand to hand combat, the Rapid Fire ability gives the Caphex Spy the option to overload his blaster to rapidly fire it with maximum damage output.

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Hero Appearances

Also coming this update will be three new appearances, one each for Finn, Rey and Kylo Ren.

Kylo Ren - Supreme Leader
As he ultimately took the place of his master, Kylo Ren reclaimed his identity and repaired the once shattered mask – with intimidating fractures that mark the reign of a new Supreme Leader.

Finn - Resistance Hero
In the desperate war against the First Order, Finn became an inspiring leader of the Resistance. With the help of friends like Poe Dameron, he spearheaded a courageous few in a bold plan to bring the tyranny down.

Rey - Jedi
In search for her true self, Rey found the way of the Jedi. To honor her roots, she wore garments inspired by her past on Jakku.

All three appearances will be classified as Epic and will be available for 40,000 Credits or 1,000 Crystals. For players who own the Celebration Edition, all three appearances will be unlocked automatically.

https://i.redd.it/j7mbxwpay0541.gif

Co-Op New Trilogy

We’ve been really pleased with how Co-Op has gone since its addition in September and reading your feedback it’s been clear that you want more of it, or more specifically, more eras. So we’re doing just that.

Coming this month Co-Op will be added to the New Trilogy, starting with Jakku, Takodana, Starkiller Base and our New Planet. These four planets will join the existing planetary rotation and we’ll be making sure to prioritise New Trilogy maps, allowing you to play on them more frequently.

Play Now

With this update we’ll be updating some of our menus to give you more control over which faction you want to play as. To begin with, this will focus around Co-Op. Heading into the Co-Op menu you’ll now have the ability to select from:

• Play Any
• Galactic Republic
• Separatist Alliance
• Resistance
• First Order

We’ll be updating more game modes with a similar menu structure in the coming months, including Capital Supremacy.

MARK OBJECTIVES
We’re introducing a new feature that will allow you to mark objectives. This will allow anyone who is playing as a Trooper, Reinforcement or Hero to press an assigned button when aiming at an in-world objective, in both Co-Op and Capital Supremacy.

We all know the troubles we face with getting your squad to play the objective, and while we cannot guarantee the new mark objective feature will fix that, it will at least help you coordinate with your squad a bit more.

Once an objective has been marked, this will signal to your squad that it should be a focus of their attention. Should more than one person mark the same objective, a number will be displayed to indicate how many marks it has.

• An objective that is not marked is displayed with a gray hexagon with no outline.
• An objective that is friendly owned and marked by yourself will be displayed by a blue hexagon with a yellow outline. A number in a small call out will be displayed indicating how many of your squad have marked the objective.
• An objective that is enemy owned and marked will be displayed by a red hexagon with a yellow outline. A number in a small yellow call out will be displayed indicating how many of your squad have marked the objective.
• An objective which is friendly owned but about to be lost to an enemy is displayed by a blinking hexagon. The number of contesting friendly players is indicated in a blue circle to the bottom right hand corner of the hexagon.
• The objective which has been marked by a squad member will be displayed next to their name in the squadlist.

MESSAGING UPDATES
Healing Blocked Messaging

When affected by the Sith Trooper´s Oppression Grenade, you are blocked from healing in any way for a period of time. During this time, your health bar will get a diagonal striped treatment to signal that it is in this blocked state.

Dimming of Weapons Crosshairs

• We went through most weapons and made sure that their crosshairs are properly dimmed while you deploy them, or they are otherwise blocked from firing.
• Typical cases include: Going from Wheel to Destroyer Form with Droideka, going from Barrage back to primary on the Heavy, going from Stinger Pistol back to primary on the Specialist, going into Predator Instincts with Bossk, going into Leia ́s Rapid Fire Ability, deploying Mines with Bossk, etc.
• This should hopefully make it easier to understand what your current weapon status is.

Animation Tweak of Damage Reduction icon

The Damage Reduction icon animation now plays faster when evading (since evades have such a short duration).

BOBA FETT TWEAKS
With the release of the new First Order Jet Trooper, we are tweaking Boba Fett to closer resemble some of the new mechanics introduced:

Continued momentum when out of fuel

• Boba Fett used to fall straight down even if he had forward momentum when running out of fuel.
• He now continues the arc through the air, like the First Order Jet Trooper.

Show jetpack fuel bars near crosshair

• This makes it easy to always see this critical piece of information.
• As a side effect, we moved the position of the camera a bit further out to the side to not overlap Boba with the fuel bar UI (this is the same camera placement that we use for the First Order Jet Trooper).

Able to fly when pressing the jump button

• Boba Fett (like the First Order Jet Trooper) can now also fly by holding the jump button
• Tapping jump will still perform a normal jump.

Blocked accidentally landing straight into crouch

• It was easy to accidentally hold crouch for too long when performing air dodges.
• This would lead to landing directly into crouch, which could be confusing.
• This has now been blocked, so it should not happen accidentally anymore (you can still crouch as normal while on the ground).

Can now regen fuel while doing normal jumps

• This was previously blocked unintentionally.

Various visual and audio tweaks

• When idle, jetpack shows a small flame.
• When landing, jetpack plays a burst of flame to show that it is braking your landing.
• When falling through the air, the sound of dangerously falling is replaced by an engine idle sound from the jetpack (to signal that you will not take any fall damage).

BOSSK TWEAKS
Fire Input Tweaks

• Tweaked the fire input block durations while activating Bossk´s abilities.
• He will now have a short fire input block while throwing Dioxis Grenade and while deploying Proximity Mines. This is to ensure he cannot fire while deploying these, similar to how other characters behave while deploying and throwing gadgets.
• The duration of the fire block while activating Predator Instincts has been increased to match the animation. He can no longer fire the first shot before he holds his rifle in both hands again.

SQUAD SPAWN TWEAKS
We’re tweaking how Squad Spawning works in Blast, Strike and Extraction. Our goal here is to help increase how quickly you can get back into the action with your squad and to reduce the amount of time you have to spend running from the default spawn location.

• Reduced minimum distance from enemy with line of sight from 25 to 13 metres
• Reduced minimum distance from enemy without line of sight from 10 to 8 metres
• Increased minimum distance from grenade from 8 to 9 metres
• Reduced minimum out of combat time from 4 to 2 seconds

Release Notes

FEATURES

• Four new Reinforcements are now available. The Ovissian Gunner and the Caphex Spy fight for the Resistance, while the Sith Trooper and the First Order Jet Trooper join the dark side.
• New appearances for Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren are now available to unlock through either Credits or Crystals.
• Co-op now available on new Planets (Takodana, Jakku, Starkiller Base).
• A new playable map will become available on Co-Op and Heroes Vs. Villains from December 20th, 2019.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added a system on Co-Op and Capital Supremacy that allows squad mates to signal in UI which capture point they are intending to go to.
• Added faction and era selection to Co-op, including the option for matchmaking into any game.
• The player Health Bar has been updated to showcase when a player's health is being blocked from healing or health regeneration.
• Polished the timings of the Damage Reduction Messaging animations when evading.
• Weapon crosshairs are now dimmed when the player cannot fire (such as when deploying a weapon).

HERO CHANGES
The following abilities now show the amount of players targeted:

• Luke Skywalker's Push and Repulse
• Emperor Palpatine's Dark Aura and Electrocute
• Anakin Skywalker's Heroic Impact and Pull Dominance
• Chewbacca's Charge Slam
• Count Dooku's Lightning Stun
• Kylo Ren's Pull and Freeze
• Darth Maul's Choke Throw
• Obi-Wan's Restrictive Mind Trick
• Rey's Mind Trick
• Yoda's Unleash

BLASTER HEROES

• Fixed an issue which caused Blaster heroes to walk faster than intended in the crouch position.

BOBA FETT

• Improvements to Boba Fett's jetpack including:
• Continued momentum when out of fuel
• Fuel bars are shown near the crosshair
• Boba can no longer crouch while in the air which avoids accidentally landing directly into a crouch
• Fuel now regenerates while jumping
• Boba can now fly by holding Jump as well as by holding the Zoom input.

DARTH VADER

• Darth Vader can now use his Choke ability even if there's no target.

OBI-WAN KENOBI

• Obi-Wan no longer prevents dodges with his Restrictive Mind Trick ability.

ANAKIN SKYWALKER

• Fixed an issue which caused Anakin's footsteps to be missing sound effect.

BOSSK
Fire Input Tweaks

• Tweaked the fire input block durations while activating his abilities. Bossk will now have a short fire input block while throwing Dioxis Grenade and while deploying Proximity Mines. This is to ensure he cannot fire while deploying these, similar to how other characters behave while deploying and throwing gadgets.
• The duration of the fire block while activating Predator Instincts has been increased to match the animation. He can no longer fire the first shot before he holds his rifle in both hands again.

GAME MODE AND MAP CHANGES

CAPITAL SUPREMACY

• Fixed an issue that prevented players on the Separatists side spawning on point E, when point C had not been captured.

GALACTIC ASSAULT

• Fixed an issue where the objective messaging overlapped with in world marker animation in Galactic Assault.

CO-OP

• Fixed an audio issue in Co-op in which the music would not restart when turned off and on again.

ARCADE

• Fixed an issue in which characters arms could collide with the environment when changing weapons near a wall.

KAMINO - CO-OP

• Fixed an issue where one of the objective letters would be misplaced on the radar.

YAVIN 4

• Fixed some issues with lighting and textures on foliage on Yavin 4.
• Fixed an issue with the map on Yavin 4 that allowed players to get stuck in a corner while playing Heroes vs Villains.

CHANGES TO CLASSES AND SPECIAL UNITS

• Fixed an issue that would cause the weapon held by a Trooper to be misaligned with the position of the Trooper's hands, when dying and respawning in first-person mode.

SPECIALIST

• Polished the area of effect for the Specialist's Shock Grenade and made it more visible.

DROIDEKA

• Fixed an issue where there were irregularities in the destroyed model of the Droideka Training Skin.

CLONE TROOPERS

• We fixed a visual issue where certain Clone Trooper appearances could be seen glowing brightly under certain lighting conditions.

ARC TROOPER

• Fixed an issue where the ARC Trooper's left pistol was floating after the ARC Trooper was hit by an explosion.
• Fixed an issue with missing audio during the animation of the ARC Trooper in the Spawn Screen.

VEHICLE CHANGES

• Fixed an issue that caused the AT-AT's Orbital Strike ability UI to not appear for the affected player.
• Fixed an issue where two AT-ATs could not deploy the Orbital Strike ability at the same time.

GENERAL CHANGES/MISC

• Fixed an issue where the sound effects would not always match the animations seen in the Appearances screen.
• Fixed an issue where raindrops would appear on the camera while flying in first person perspective.

KNOWN ISSUES

• When selecting a specific faction in Co-Op, the Searching prompt shows up on all tiles.
• AI players can be noticed in the background during Co-Op outros.

PUNCH IT

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