[2020] Release notes: August 12, 2020

: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page [url=https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/1057240/announcements/detail/2737579224664098460]here[/url].

Spotlight • The Lurker has been updated with territorial behaviors to create a more threatening and engaging encounter:
o Movement: Forward movement is faster. Movement and turning is locked during attack.
o Attack: When in range, the lurker telegraphs their next attack by shooting a targeting beam at the player.
 The beam has a max range of 20m, increased from the previous attack max range of 15m.
 The lurker is locked into place during their attack animation, allowing players to take partial or no damage at all if they move to avoid the attack.
 After attacking, the lurker resets before attacking the player again.
o Chase & Retreat: Lurkers will wander nearby their original spawn points.
 They will chase the player 50-55m away from their spawn point and retreat when they are no longer threatened with damage.
o Target Sense & Alert: Lurker's Perfect Sense (or the range in which the Lurker will always see the player) has been increased from 7m to 10m.
 Max Sight Range (the range in which the creature can see the player) has been decreased from 25m to 20m.
 The Lurker’s field of view, or Sight Angle, has been increased from 115 degrees to 300 degrees.
 Far Radius Alert (the range at which a Lurker will alert another Lurker) has been increased from 15m to 35m.
• The spectating experience while respawning has been improved:
o Spectators now see the health, heads-up display (HUD), and visible targets (such as creature and enemy fly-outs) of the player they are spectating.
o Spectators can now see Quick Comms visible to the player they are spectating.
o Interaction UI is now visible to spectators.
o If no teammates are available to spectate, the spectator camera now defaults to viewing a pretty waterfall.

Hunters & Gameplay General Changes:
• Added camera shake on quick melee attacks [V] and hits.
• Updated stun animations on all hunters to better communicate when a player is stunned.
• Added a new automatic voice line when a hunter takes damage from an enemy player after being out of combat for a while.
Bug fixes:
• Improved distant audio reverberation to better differentiate important audio closer to the player.
• Fixed several bugs related to Quick Comms voice lines.

Ajonah Developer’s note: We feel that Ajonah is currently has a few too many advantages against other hunters. We like her having a strong escape, so rather than changing her Grapple, we’ve decided to shave her offense.
Changes:
• Grapple [Shift]: Updated the range finder to not block the reticle. The range finder is now displayed as an icon below the reticle which shows cooldown, range, and number of charges.
• Aim Down Sights [Right Mouse Button]: Max damage decreased from 60 to 55.
• Aim Down Sights: Animation set to be more stable, which will allow gun trajectory accuracy to be more consistent.
• Aim Down Sights: Updated the Aim Down Sights reticle to be a single dot to represent her improved accuracy.
• Squid Mine: Reduced Squid Mine damage from 30 direct damage and 90 damag-over-time to 20 direct damage and 60 damage-over-time.
Bug fixes:
• Updated Ajonah's reticle to remove the bullet drop indicator, as she has no bullet drop.

Bugg Bug fixes:
• Shield Burst [Q]: Fixed a bug that made Shield Burst cancel an active Crop Dust [E].
• Sprayer [Left Mouse Button]: Fixed a bug that caused holding down the Left Mouse Button and rapidly clicking it to have different rates of fire. The rate of fire is now standard between the two.

Drakahl Bug fixes:
• Incoming [level 3 upgrade]: Fixed a bug that allowed Incoming! to persist and destroy projectiles permanently.

Earl Developer’s note: Earl's ability to trade damage against characters (such as Ajonah and Captain Mendoza) at range was too strong. We wanted to make a change to reduce the long-range power of Earl's gun, while making sure we didn't impact his farming rate or effectiveness at close or medium range combat. To do this, we decided to cause his damage to falloff sooner. This change will also be something that will have less of an impact on newer players.
Changes:
• Damage falloff now starts at 35m instead of 45m.
• The range of Earl’s minimum damage (i.e., his maximum damage falloff) now starts at 90m instead of 112.5m.

Rahi & Brother Developer’s note:
Rahi & Brother do really well in public games, because public teams are normally less coordinated with their focus fire. However, organized teams in tournaments excel at this, and this is a large part of why he has a harder time in competitive environments. The change to Brother's cooldown will help Rahi to engage/disengage against organized teams, and the range increase on his primary attack will help him to pressure key enemy targets.
Changes:
• Laz Beam [Left Mouse Button]: Range increased from 17m to 20m.
• Scouting Ahead [Shift]: Cooldown decreased from 15s to 12s.

Summer Bug fixes:
• Goes to Eleven [tier 5 upgrade]: Fixed a bug that caused the heat warning threshold on Summer’s reticle to perform improperly with this upgrade active.

Tosca Developer’s note:
Tosca's ability to pressure large targets at range (such as Earl, Rahi, and Drakahl) has been stronger than we'd like. We like it when Tosca uses her toolkit to get in close in order to inflict damage. By causing her main attack to have falloff sooner, it will mean she'll have to get a little closer to inflict massive damage, rather than firing from medium to long range.
Changes:
• Damage falloff now starts at 15m instead of 18.75m.
• The range of Tosca’s minimum damage (i.e., her maximum damage falloff) now starts at 40m instead 50m.
• Updated Tosca’s recoil and reload animations to be easier to understand.
Bug fixes:
• Blink [Shift]: Fixed a bug that caused Tosca to sometimes get caught under the map when using Blink.

Map & Matches General Changes:
• The med stations around harvesters will now always spawn at the same location instead of being spawned randomly in each match.
• Hive visual effects (VFX) have been updated.
• Hives now trigger a camera shake effect when they spawn.
Bug fixes:
• Fixed a bug that caused hunter hitboxes to remain in the world after the hunter was killed.
• Fixed a bug that caused idle conversations for Rahi & Brother, Mendoza, and Ajonah to play in the wrong location.

Technology Changes:
• Reduced peak memory usage by roughly 1.1GB. This may help with long load times and framerate spikes on some machines with 8GB of ram.

User Interface & Usability Changes:
• The Quick Comms wheel can now be viewed while the full-sized map is open.
• Mini-map event icons no longer show distance or countdown timers, due to small scale.
• Changed the way we draw distance and countdown timer information on nameplates and event icons to increase performance.
Bug fixes:
• The count of Essence Canisters turned in during a match will now properly display on the post-match scoreboard.
• Fixed a bug that caused outgoing damage indicators to not display for very low damage values.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the HUD progression component from showing until experience was earned.
• Fixed some display issues with critical notification banners, like those alerting players of Hive heart spawns.
• Fixed a bug that caused some party state changes to not be handled correctly.
• Fixed a bug that caused harvesters to sometimes appear as gray squares on the mini-map.
• Fixed Lurker edge-of-screen detection so they react more sensibly.
• Fixed a graphical corruption bug affecting Earl's Afterburner [Shift] icon.
• Fixed a bug that caused graphical corruption on healthbars.
• Fixed a variety of ultra-wide layout bugs on the main menu.
• Fixed an issue that caused finished animations to hurt UI performance.
• Fixed a bug related to tracking invisible objects while not in Detect mode [CTRL]. This may improve performance for some players.
• Fixed a bug with the mini-map not using color blind palette settings.
• The mode unlock reward screen after completing or skipping the tutorial now only displays Heart of the Hives.


Update notes: August 13

• Fixed a bug that caused an unintentional increase in internet bandwidth usage.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused one of Earl's tier 3 upgrades, Scatterblast Shot, to deal damage to himself.

Update notes: August 17

• Fixed a bug that prevented players from redeeming Founder's Pack codes.