Greetings Contenders!

The full launch of Hyper Scape’s first season across all platforms has brought new important feedback from our existing community, and from an entirely new audience of console players. Your comments are extremely important to us, and we’re starting to address them in the patch 1.1, the first major update since the launch of Season One.

Thanks to the arrival of console we have received a lot of comments on the game experience with a Controller, much more than we heard during our Open Beta. Players particularly reported issues related to the aiming sensitivity of the game, and the comfort of Controller sticks in general. As such, we are adding new Controller settings to disable Aim Acceleration and choose a Linear Response Curve. Making sure you have a good experience on console is key for us so we will continue monitoring your feedback on this topic closely.

We also heard from our community that winning with the Crown during the Showdown phase was too easy, and that chasing the Crown Bearer was frustrating for players. We’ve made important balancing changes to this phase of the match which, along with the improved aiming comfort on console, should make for a much better overall experience.

Regarding weapons, the patch 1.1 is addressing several important balancing issues you reported, both on PC & Console – namely around Hexfire and Mammoth being too dominant. We’ve also started to introduce Damage Falloff into the game, beginning with the Protocol V sniper rifle, to reduce the chance of getting 1-shot killed by a player extremely far from the action. At very long distance its damage will start decreasing progressively. This has been a frequent request from our community since July’s test phases and we’re happy to hear your feedback on the results. We are also introducing a new Lens Flare effect on the Protocol only, to help players spot snipers aiming at them more easily.

As we’ve said before, this will be an ongoing relationship with you, our players, viewers, streamers. When you highlight issues in the game, we commit to hearing that feedback, cross-checking it with our data to more deeply understand it, and act to fix problems as soon as we can.

New evolutions are already planned, so you won’t have long to wait until more improvements come to Hyper Scape!

KEY NEW FEATURES in Hyper Scape

CONTROLLER RESPONSE CURVE SETTINGS

2 new settings have been added for Controller aiming:

• Aim Response Curve: Classic Curve / Linear Curve Toggle (Classic by default)
• Aim Acceleration: ON/OFF Toggle (ON by default)

Developer Notes: Many of you, especially those playing on Console, asked for improvements on the aiming experience on Controller. We’re adding these new settings for all platforms to let you to better control the level of precision & inertia when aiming with the sticks. Choosing the Linear Curve will create a direct link between input and aim speed. Disabling Aim Acceleration will remove the inertia from your aim movement and create a more predictable aim.

If you felt uncomfortable with the Controller aiming so far, we recommend you try different settings to see which one works the best for you, starting by testing disabling the Aim Acceleration. Keep also in mind that your current Aiming sensitivity values can have very different impact depending on the curve you select.

Note: We’ve made additional improvements on aiming/sensitivity options, which you’ll find below in the Game Modes & Systems section below.

PLAYER PROFILE & STATS

You can now access your Player Profile & several lifetime stats from the Hall of Champions portal in the Hyper Scape HUB, in the Profile tab.

This is only the first step; we plan to expand this feature in the future.

PLAYER REPORTING FROM THE ELIMINATION SCREEN

You can now Report players from the Elimination screen.

Developer Notes: This is an improvement from the existing Player Reporting functionality which was previously limited only to Squad members. Now you are able to report players who have eliminated you, if you have reason to believe they have been using cheats or acting disruptively in breach of the Contender’s Code.

WEAPONS

HEXFIRE

• Clip size Across Fusion: 100/120/140/160/180 (previously 150/180/210/240/270)
• Reduced overall Aim-assist

Developer Notes: The Hexfire was too present in the current Console meta. Reducing its clip size and level of aim assist should remove some pressure from opponents and make it a less obvious choice vs. other full-auto weapons. We will monitor closely if these changes are enough to improve the weapon balance and re-adjust if necessary.

MAMMOTH

• Damage Across Fusion: 4/4/4/4/5 (previously 5/5/5/5/7)
• Clip size Across Fusion: 6/7/8/9/10 (previously 5/6/7/8/9)

Developer Notes: The Mammoth was too efficient in term of kills & damage, especially on PC. We chose to adjust its damage but gave it a bit more clip size to compensate. This change should rebalance its impact vs. other close-range weapons like the Harpy and make it less of an all-purpose weapon. We will monitor closely the impact of this change on the weapon balance and re-adjust if necessary.

PROTOCOL V

• Damage Falloff: 150m+
• We’ve added a Lens Flare when aiming at Contenders

Developer Notes: The Protocol’s damage will now decrease after 150m to prevent getting 1-shot killed by players located extremely far from the action. We’ve also added a Lens Flare when players are aiming with the rifle, to give warning to their potential victims. Both these changes should give more opportunities to escape or counterattack against snipers.

SALVO

• Reduced Grenades rebound by 20% to make them more predictable
• Proximity Detonation Radius: 0.7R (previously 0.65R)

Developer Notes: The Salvo is by far the least used weapon currently and we feel it has a lot to do with its unpredictability. While we do not intend to make it too powerful and spammy indoors, those changes should make it easier to use and less random when shooting in the direction of an enemy.

RIOT ONE

• Damage Across Fusion: 25/27/29/32/36 (previously 26/28/31/34/38)

Developer Notes: We have marginally reduced the damage of the Riot One, as it was starting to dominate a bit too much with a high level of efficiency as both an opening and closing weapon. The damage reduction is only 4-5% across all fusion levels with the goal to lower the overall damage output rather than changing the weapon behavior.

GAME MODES & SYSTEMS

CROWN & SHOWDOWN

• Crown Bearer Cooldown Penalty: 300% (previously 150%)
• Crown Victory Timer: 60s (previously 45s)
• Crown Bearer’s outline is now yellow (previously red)

Developer Notes: We received a lot of feedback from the community telling us the Crown bearer was too hard to beat, especially on Console. We confirmed there were indeed too many Crown victories in the game currently. The Crown is intended to be a tiebreaker during Showdown, not the main way to win a Crown Rush mode.

In patch 1.1 we have strongly increased the pressure on the Crown bearer in term of Hack cooldowns penalty and increased the victory timer. We are planning more improvements in the future to make sure the Crown does not get too easy to win while staying fun for all players.

AIM ASSIST

• Controller Aim Assist setting is now a slider (0-100) and not just an ON/OFF option.
• Aim Assist for PC Controller has been reduced.

Developer Notes: The role of Aim Assist is to help provide a good experience to all players, not to make a specific controller type superior to another. Our data showed that on PC the weapon efficiency of Controller was a bit higher than Keyboard & Mouse, so its level of Aim Assist has been reduced. This is for PC controller only.

We know the topic of Aim Assist is important to many players and can be polarizing; we have always kept an eye on this mechanic and will continue to heavily monitor it in the future to insure the game stays fun for all our community.

The slider setting will also allow players to reduce the level of Aim Assist to the level they like instead of simply being able to turn it off.

DECIMAL MOUSE SETTINGS

• Settings for mouse sensitivity are now offering decimals values on the sliders.

Developer Notes: Answering a big request from our PC players since Tech Test, this will allow Mouse & Keyboard players to tweak their sensitivity more precisely.

SENSITIVITY SETTINGS

• Default Controller Sensitivity values have been changed (existing settings won’t be affected; this applies only to new players):
  • Vertical sensitivity: 15 (previously 20)
  • Horizontal sensitivity: 15 (previously 20)
  • ADS low Zoom sensitivity: 40 (previously 70)
  • ADS high Zoom sensitivity: 40 (previously 70)

Developer Notes: In investigating the overall aiming difficulty for Controller players, we found that the default sensitivity values were a bit too high. New players will now start with default values closer from the ones we see our community use & recommend. Existing settings will be unaffected.

TWITCH CROWNCAST EXTENSION

KUDOS

• Kudos are now bigger and displayed for a longer time (7s)
• More Kudos are displayed on screen for each activation by viewers (a minimum amount of 3 will be displayed)

Developer Notes: Our streamers and viewers on Twitch told us the Kudos were not visible enough and were often missed. We’ve strongly reinforced their presence on screen to make sure viewers will feel their support does not go unnoticed, and to make streamers feel more awesome.

As before, the Kudos can be enabled/disabled by the streamers in their Extension options.

GAME EVENTS

• Game Event Rotation: 3 Events (previously 2)

Developer Notes: Once triggered in a match a Game Event won’t have a chance to trigger again until 3 other Events have occurred (rotation was previously 2). Seeing twice the same Event in a single match will now be rare. This should create more diversity for viewers and players and reduce such a feeling of repetition with the Events in matches.

BUG FIXES

ONLINE

• Fixed an issue where players from other regions than the Americas would get matchmaking errors when not able to ping any datacenter.
• Fixed an issue where long matchmaking times would occur during high loads if you were part of the last players to join in the queue.

HACKS

• Fixed an issue where Challenges requiring eliminations or assists would not progress or complete when using the Mine Hack.

GAMEPLAY

• Fixed an issue where picking up weapons from the ground would sometimes cause them to disappear.
• Fixed an issue where Contenders would sometimes get stuck under the map before the Eliminated screen appeared at the end of a match.

UI

• Fixed an issue where the incorrect month was displayed during incoming maintenance messages.
• Fixed an issue where thumbnails for bundles were incorrectly resized when focused on in the Weekly Shop.
• Fixed an issue where the “STRING” text was present during the Crowning Ceremony screen at the end of a match.

GENERAL

• Fixed multiple crashes and improved the general stability of the game.