[2019] Community Transmission - Cooperation Update & Release Notes

Community Transmission - Cooperation Update & Release Notes

INCOMING TRANSMISSION!
Coming this month are two brand new ways to play, Co-Op and Instant Action. A brand new planet, Felucia and the Clone Commando also joins the conflict as a new reinforcement. It all arrives on September 25, let’s take a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tnGE9R-ZQg

EXPANDING AI

With the release of Capital Supremacy earlier this year we brought with it our brand new AI system. If you’ve played Capital Supremacy then you will have noticed these AI running around, on your side and as opponents.

With this new AI system we’ve always had one eye on the future and how they could be further integrated into various areas of Star Wars Battlefront II. The inclusion of our two new ways to play, Co-Op and Instant Action has given us a perfect opportunity to not only bring the new AI system to additional experiences but to develop them further.

One of the big changes is that for the first time in Star Wars Battlefront II the AI will take control of heroes. Whereas previously you would only come up against a regular AI Trooper you will now find yourself going toe to toe with the likes of General Grievous, Yoda, Maul and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Expanding the characters AI can play as also includes reinforcements, meaning you’ll also find yourself up against the likes of BX Commando Droids and ARC Troopers.

It’s been these advances to our AI system that has been pivotal in allowing us to bring these new experiences to life, but a challenge we’ve met head on.

We’re incredibly excited to be bringing this new content to the game and we can’t wait to see how our PvE community interacts with both new game experiences.

Co-Op

Squad up with 3 friends, or friends you haven’t met yet for a large scale PvE adventure against a team of AI controlled opponents.

Participate in massive battles across all of the Clone Wars planets that feature in Star Wars Battlefront II, including the upcoming Felucia.

Each planet has its own experience and this will see either the Separatist or Republic attacking.

• Kamino: Separatist Attack
• Geonosis: Republic Attack
• Naboo: Separatist Attack
• Kashyyyk: Separatist Attack
• Felucia: Republic Attack

In Co-op, all Troopers, Reinforcements, Vehicles, Heroes and Villains will be available to play. Much like game modes such as Galactic Assault or Capital Supremacy you’ll gain Battle Points as you progress which will allow you to choose the character you play as.

This means that while you will be in a squad made up of 3 other human players, you will also be joined by a number of AI who will also be in on your team.

Your opponents will be made up entirely of AI, and you can expect the same mixture between regular Troopers, Reinforcements and Heroes. As we move into October we’ll be expanding Co-Op to allow you to place as the defending forces, more on that next month.

Instant Action

We’re happy to announce that Instant Action is making its return to the Battlefront franchise, and we think it’s something that a number of you are really going to like. Solo players do matter and we’re incredibly excited for its imminent arrival.

In this mode, both teams are fighting over 5 Command Posts (similar to Capital Supremacy). Hold a majority of them until your team score reaches 100% to win the game. At release, you will have access to all the maps that are currently available within Capital Supremacy; Naboo, Kamino, Kashyyyk, Geonosis and Felucia.

Key info

• Single player large scale combat experience
• Fight to control Command Posts
• You fight alongside AI
• You fight against a team of AI
• The enemy team will be made up of regular Troopers, Reinforcements, and Heroes.
• You can spawn on Command Posts using the Contextual Spawn system
• Control a majority of the Command Posts until your team score reaches 100%
• Able to choose to play as either light side or dark side
• Can be played offline, without the need for an internet connection

Within Instant Action there will also be a selection of in-game options which will allow you to customise your experience. As we move forward we’ll be looking to further expand this list, so be sure to let us know what you’d like to see.

• Location – Select the planet you wish to play on
• AI Difficulty – Change the difficulty setting, selecting from rookie, normal and expert
• Round Length – Select between a short, medium or long round
• Battle Points – Choose to have a slow Battle Point gain, default or fast
• Enemy Heroes – Enable enemy AI for your opponents

Felucia

As beautiful as Felucia is, the environment can also be hostile to those that traverse its lush and vibrant landscape. Mushrooms can explode and certain plants can leave behind a hazardous spores that will harm anyone that gets caught within it.

While the planet surface is more than enough to keep your attention, you may want to glance upwards on occasion as you’ll sometimes see both the Felucian Ripper and Birds flying through the skies.

You can read more on Felucia in this Community Transmission.

Clone Commando

The Clone Commando is a resilient fighter who is built for survivability, even against the toughest foes. With the ability to reconfigure his blaster into a grenade launcher he comes well equipped to handle any situation that he’s dealt with.
Should he find himself cornered or in need of making some space he can use his Repulsor Blast to knock enemies away.

As a leader on the battlefront he can strengthen himself and his allies by granting a damage protection buff, using Battle Focus.

You can read more about the Clone Commando in this Community Transmission.

Luke Skywalker

As far as characters go, there are few that are as iconic as Luke Skywalker. Throughout the Star Wars saga he’s had many looks, and we felt it was time to bring one of these iconic appearances into Star Wars Battlefront II.

We head back to Star Wars: A New Hope, to where it all began for the young farmhand on Tatooine.

As part of a special community quest, coming in October you’ll be able to earn the Luke Skywalker “Farmboy” appearance.

KENOBI!

As far as community requests go we feel that we have our finger on the pulse with what it is you want. However, we might have underestimated your burning desire to scream KENOBI at the top of Dathomirian lungs.

We’re pleased to confirm that coming in October will be a community quest which will enable you to unlock the Darth Maul “Kenobi” emote.

Damage Reduction Messaging

We have added new UI and audio elements to let you know when you are dealing damage to an enemy that has a damage reduction applied. This is done because we want to help all players understand the game and its abilities better.

Damage reduction can come from a number of different sources, most notably the Clone Commando´s Battle Focus ability, and Hero effects like Grievous´ Star Card Flesh is Weak or Anakin´s Retribution ability.

Here is a summary of the new elements added:

• Attacker: You will hear a new audio effect to denote that you are dealing less than normal damage
• Attacker: You will see a new icon appear on the enemy in question with each hit that you do
• Attacker: The enemy in question will display a miniature version of that icon to the left of their name for as long as they have damage reduction
• Defender: You will see the same icon as above beneath your health number for as long as you have damage reduction
• Defender: Each time that you take damage, your damage reduction icon will animate to bring attention to the fact that it has taken effect

Release Notes

FEATURES

• Felucia has been added as a playable map on Capital Supremacy.
• CO-OP, a 4-player online experience against an enemy team of AI opponents is now available. CO-OP is playable on Geonosis, Kashyyyk, Kamino, Naboo and Felucia.
• Instant Action, a single-player experience with epic battles against AI opponents offline is now available. Instant Action is playable on Geonosis, Kashyyyk, Kamino, Naboo and Felucia.
• The Clone Commando has been added as a new Reinforcement for the Galactic Republic.
• A new emote for Darth Maul has been added and will become available to unlock through a special challenge.
• A new appearance for Luke Skywalker, Farmboy, has been added and will become available to unlock through a special challenge.

QUALITY OF LIFE
Added Damage Reduction messaging. New UI and audio elements have been added to let the player know when damage is dealt to an enemy that has a damage reduction effect applied.

Here is a summary of the new elements added:

• Attacker: You will hear a new audio effect to denote that you are dealing less than normal damage
• Attacker: You will see a new icon appear on the enemy in question with each hit that you do
• Attacker: The enemy in question will display a miniature version of that icon to the left of their name for as long as they have damage reduction
• Defender: You will see the same icon as above beneath your health number for as long as you have damage reduction
• Defender: Each time that you take damage, your damage reduction icon will animate to bring attention to the fact that it has taken effect
• Daily Crates have been removed. In order to offer the same Credit payout on a daily basis, we will be expanding Daily Quests from 3 to 4 in a future update.

HERO CHANGES

• Hero abilities will have no cooldown and will be instantly refunded, when they are interrupted. For example if Luke Skywalker tries to use his Repulse ability but is pulled by Kylo Ren before the Repulse effect happens, Luke will be pushed but his Repulse ability will instantly be available again. If Luke managed to activate the Repulse effect, the ability will enter cooldown as usual. We have been working on diminishing the frustration of abilities getting interrupted. This is still an ongoing task we will try to improve further in future patches.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the area of effect of an ability to show before the effect actually takes place. This change should provide more clarity on whether an ability has actually hit an enemy or not.
• A "RESISTANT" tag will now show over the head of Heroes who cannot be affected by pushing or pulling abilities, for example Darth Vader during his Force Choke ability.

The health bonus from the Officer's Battle command, Yoda's Presence and Finn's Big Deal should not stack anymore.

• If the player has health bonus active from the Officer and Finn or Yoda's is applied, the Officer's health bonus will be removed.
• If the player has Finn or Yoda's health bonus active and the Officer's health bonus is applied, the Officer's health bonus will be ignored.
• If the player has Finn or Yoda's health bonus active and Finn or Yoda's health bonus is applied, the new health bonus will be applied and the old one removed.
• If Yoda has his Presence health bonus active and Finn applies his Big Deal health bonus to Yoda, Finn's health bonus will be ignored.
• If Finn has his Big Deal health bonus active and Yoda applies his Presence health bonus to Finn, Yoda's health bonus will be ignored.
• If Finn has Yoda's Presence health bonus active and activates Big Deal, Yoda's Presence health bonus will be removed and Big Deal will be applied.
• If Yoda has Finn's Big Deal health bonus active and activates Presence, Finn's Big Deal health bonus will be removed and Presence will be applied. This was a huge balance feedback and frustration especially in big game modes. it should lower the impact of bonus health when both heroes are present.
• Intro VO lines for Heroes are now triggering in Multiplayer as well (used to be only in Arcade).

LIGHTSABER HEROES

• Fixed an issue that could cause the deflect animation to not show locally, even though the player is deflecting.
• Made changes to reduce the risk of rubberbanding when deflecting a lightsaber attack.
• Updated staggers to give more control to the player being attacked.
• Adjusted all Lightsaber Heroes' dodge timings in order to let them move after the dodge animation earlier.
• Fixed an issue where Lightsaber Heroes would deflect the wrong Blaster bolt color.

BOBA FETT

• Boba Fett's jetpack fuel now displays the amount of fuel constantly when dodging or replenishing. Previously this was updating only every second and leading to misunderstanding about the amount consumed.
• Fixed an issue where the Death from above star card effect would happen without having to activate the Rocket Barrage ability.

DARTH VADER

• Fixed an issue that would block players from dodging out of Darth Vader's Force Choke area of impact.
• Fixed a text issue with Darth Vader's Punishing Grip Star Card. The effect description "TIGHTER GRIP" is now replaced by "INCREASED ACTIVE TIME".

EMPEROR PALPATINE

• Reduced the camera shake caused by Emperor Palpatine's lighting attacks on his target.

KYLO REN

• Fixed an issue where Lightsaber deflect VFX would not always appear when using Frenzy on a Lightsaber-carrying Hero who is deflecting.

DARTH MAUL

• Fixed an issue that would cause the Spin Attack ability animation to break when using the ability form a higher ground.

GENERAL GRIEVOUS

• Fixed an issue where Lightsaber deflect VFX would not always appear when using Unrelenting Advance on a Lightsaber-carrying Hero who is deflecting.

CAPTAIN PHASMA

• Captain Phasma can now pick up the Sentry Droid. This should help Phasma relocate as it was currently very frustrating to be locked in place or have to lose your turret for the duration of the cooldown.
• Captain Phasma's Sentry Droid now is destroyed when she is defeated.

CHEWBACCA

• Fixed an issue with Chewbacca's Impervious Star Card not stating that the ability resets after the Hero is defeated in a game.

REY

• Fixed an issue that would cause Rey's Dash Strike to completely deplete the stamina bar of a Lightsaber Hero when blocking.

YODA

• Reduced Yoda's health bonus from the Presence ability
• Base health bonus on troopers reduced from 100 to 70 points
• Base health bonus on Heroes and Yoda reduced from 200 to 150 points
• Reduced the delay until health starts depleting from 10 to 8 seconds. Yoda's Presence was the strongest bonus health in the game by far. We're trying to reduce its impact on big game modes.
• Yoda's Dash Attack damage has been reduced from 130 to 85 points. The dash attack while breaking block also dealt a lot of damage. We're adjusting it to have a damage level that takes the block breaking into account.
• Fixed a visual issue where Yoda blocking incoming blaster fire would inaccurately produce deflect sparks visible for the other player.
• Fixed an issue where Yoda's camera would be lowered when pressing the crouch button.

OBI-WAN KENOBI

• The animation of Obi-Wan's Defensive Rush ability has been improved for speed and accuracy.
• Fix Obi-Wan's Defensive Rush end attack causing all enemy stamina to drain.

ANAKIN SKYWALKER

• Fixed an issue that would cause Anakin's Passionate Strike to keep doing damage, even when Anakin is defeated.
• Fixed an issue with Anakin's Steamroll Star Card not stating that the ability resets after the Hero is defeated in a game.

IDEN

• Increased Iden's Alt fire recharge time from 2 to 2.3 seconds.

GAME MODE AND MAP CHANGES

• The Extraction map rotation is now combined with the Strike rotation.

CAPITAL SUPREMACY

• Fixed an issue where players would occasionally spawn in Out-Of-Bounds areas when going to Phase 4 of the Republic Attack Cruiser for a second time.
• Fixed an issue with the in-game UI widgets occasionally not showing for players joining an ongoing match in Capital Supremacy.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Overtime UI bar to not get depleted when the Capture Points on Capital Ships would stop being contested.
• Added additional VO lines for Capital Supremacy.

HEROES VS. VILLAINS

• Fixed an issue where the wrong timer would show up in the Star Card selection screen, if the player selected a Hero and entered the Star Card selection screen before the next spawn timer had ended.
• Fixed an issue that would occasionally allow Heroes of opposing teams to spawn next to each other on Republic Attack Cruiser - Heroes Vs. Villains.

ARCADE

• Increased the Credits payout between 200 and 250 Credits per round. The maximum payout per day has been increased from 1500 to 3000 Credits.
• Removed the Intensity option for Custom Arcade's Starfighter Onslaught mode, due to issues with its functionality.

MAP CHANGES

• Added back previously removed atmospheric battle elements on Kashyyyk - Capital Supremacy.
• Fixed an issue that would allow players to kill AI opponents from their spawn location on Kamino - Capital Supremacy.
• Fixed an issue where shooting at the red droid in the platforms on Kessel would cause performance drops.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the TX-130 to spawn under the AT-TE spawn location on Geonosis - Galactic Assault.
• Fixed a visual issue with the shadow of the HMP Gunship Droid during the Boarding cinematics on Geonosis - Capital Supremacy, when the PC Graphic settings were set to Medium or Low.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the player to fall under the map in case a destroyed Hardcell Transport objective falls on them, during Geonosis - Galactic Assault.
• Fixed an issue where the camera would have no collision with the roof in the barracks room on Kamino.
• Various visual and collision improvements on Naboo - Capital Supremacy, Geonosis - Capital Supremacy, Republic Attack Cruiser and Separatist Dreadnought.
• Fixed an issue where environmental fire on Naboo - Capital Supremacy would not cause damage to the player.
• Fixed a visual issue with the color of the B1 Droids remains across maps.
• Fixed an issue where the Gonk droid on the Republic Attack Cruiser would occasionally stop moving when hit by explosions.

CHANGES TO CLASSES AND SPECIAL UNITS

• Fixed an issue that would cause the Resourceful Star Card to not grant the proper recharge speed on any rarity above Common.
• Fixed an issue where using a locked weapon in Arcade would cause an unavailable weapon to be selected during the Weapon equip menu in the Spawn screen.

DROIDEKA

• Fixed an issue that would occasionally cause the Droideka to shake uncontrollably when affected by Anakin's Retribution ability.
• Fixed an issue where Droideka would occasionally get stuck in Overheated animation when using the Overload ability.

ASSAULT

• Fixed an issue where respawning or dying would incorrectly count as a kill for the purposes of the "Assault Vanguard" Milestone.

SPECIALIST

• Removed game hint that would state that the Specialist has less health than other Trooper classes.
• Fixed issue where the Resistance Specialist Mirialan had the incorrect face rig.

INFILTRATOR

• Fixed an issue where the scaling for the Stalker Star Card incorrectly mentioned Stamina instead of Health.

B2-RP

• Fixed an issue that would cause the camera to not correctly show the opponent, when a player is killed by the B2-RP's Wrist Rocket ability.

TX-130

• Made a new crosshair for the TX-130's Charge Mode to more accurately display the charging level when using the ability.
• Fixed an issue where the Milestones related to the TX-130 would not count towards the completion of the "A Tremendous Service" Multiplayer Milestone.

VEHICLE CHANGES

• Tweaked the damage values for Speeders, so that they are prevented from potentially killing Heroes in one shot. Speeders affected are: BARC, STAP, LIUV (Starkiller Base), X-34 Landspeeder (Tatooine), 74-Z Speeder Bike (Laser Barrage only)
• Fixed a visual issue where the destroyed versions of the AAT and STAP vehicles with the blue livery, would be replaced with their default livery.
• Fixed an issue where you would still occupy a vehicle slot after leaving the TX-130, AAT, STAP, or BARC in some instances.
• Fixed an issue where you would incorrectly level up as a Trooper, instead of Armor, when playing as the AAT with the blue livery.

GENERAL CHANGES/MISC

• Fixed a text issue with the description of the 501st Legion appearances bundle.
• Fixed an issue with the description of the "These are your First Steps" Milestone, to more accurately describe the Heroes needed to be defeated to progress on the Milestone.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Visual issue with the default appearance of AI Clone Troopers on CO-OP and Instant Action being Phase 1 by default.

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