Update 1.2 Test Server

## Highlights

### Random Teams of Three

* Players can now also form and play with random teams of three instead of only being able to play in teams of three with their Steam friends.
* This change opens up 3-player teams to a wider audience, allowing many new ways of playing Bounty Hunt.
* When opting-in to find a random partner in the Lobby, players can now choose between either searching for two player or three player teams.
* Unlike playing in duos with a single partner, teams of three require more discipline and coordination by all members of the team to succeed. Are you up to the challenge?

### Improved Onboarding

* When players start the game for the first time, they are now presented with the option to choose their initial Hunter and enter Training mode.
* This initial offline Training now offers three different levels of difficulty for players to choose from:
	+ Basic (easy difficulty)
	+ Advanced (normal difficulty)
	+ Professional (hard difficulty)

* This allows players to focus on learning different aspects of the game, such as controls, mission flow, combat or fighting the bosses based on their abilities.
* When a player dies during Training, they have the ability to respawn nearby and continue playing without having to restart the mission.
* Completing each difficulty level rewards the player with some Blood Bonds they can use for cosmetic Legendary Hunters and gear, as well as a number of other convenience features.
* Players are now able to go back to Training mode at any point by selecting 'Training' from the Lobby sub-tab in the main menu.0
	+ Replaying the Training allows players to complete previously skipped difficulty settings, claim their reward of Blood Bonds, and maybe even learn a thing or two.
	+ Players will always replay the Training with the Hunter they currently have selected from their Roster.
	+ Hunters taken into Training mode will not be lost after dying, allowing players to experiment with newly unlocked equipment in a safe environment.

### New Melee Equipment

#### Heavy Knife

* Larger and more intimidating version of the regular Knife tool, the Heavy Knife is the missing link between the Knife and the Machete.
* Useful for taking Grunts out with a single slash of its heavy blade and able to hit multiple enemies at once.
* It uses a tool slot and comes close to the Machete's damage, but as it is harder to wield it costs more stamina per attack.
* The Heavy Knife can be unlocked from the Knife category within the Book of Weapons.

#### Knuckle Knife

* The 'bastard child' of the Knife and Duster tools, the Knuckle Knife is a flexible tool that allows for both Blunt and Piercing melee attacks.
* Its regular melee attack does Blunt damage with the same stamina efficiency as the Duster's regular attack, that can be used to kill several Immolators in a row without running out.
* However, its heavy attack causes slightly weaker Piercing damage compared to the Knife, but is still strong enough to kill Grunts with a single stab.
* The Knuckle Knife can be unlocked from the Dusters category within the Book of Weapons.

#### Pitchfork

* Among the selection of fearsome farming tools found by Hunters scattered around the Bayou, the Pitchfork excels at stabbing enemies to death.
* Where the Hammer causes Blunt damage and the Wooden Axes is all about Rending damage, the new Pitchfork causes Piercing damage with its heavy melee attack, similar to bayonets and the Cavalry Saber.
* However, the regular melee attack is much weaker and is performed by smacking enemies with the wooden hilt, similar to push attacks with a rifle.

#### Shovel

* Another new farming tool found scattered through the swamps, the Shovel can be used as a weapon and should not to be underestimated by Hunters.
* The sharpened edge of the shovel blade can be used for regular melee attacks, causing Rending damage that can bring down a Grunt in a single strike.
* The heavy melee attack on the other hand is performed with the broad side of the Shovel, smacking a careless Hunter square on the head with a humiliating \*thud\* sound.

## General Updates

### AI

* AI that is inside a building will now be less likely to react to stimuli from outside.
* Improvements made to the behavior of the Meathead in instances where no leeches have spawned to ensure consistent reactions to players.
* Collisions between Hunters and AI have been improved; AI will no longer block players that run straight at them.
* Improvements made to the Leeches' perception of players in instances where a Hunter is unreachable.
* Improvements made to the way the Armored deals with Iron and sliding doors.

### Gunplay

#### Talon Changes (All Variants)

* Damage of the Talon's heavy melee attacks increased to match the damage of the Machete's heavy melee attack (to 135 from 120).
* Decreased stamina cost of the Talon's heavy melee attacks to match the Machete's heavy melee attack cost.

#### Romero 77 Hatchet Changes

* Damage of its regular melee attack increased to match the damage of the Machete' regular melee attack (to 90 from 60).
* Damage of its heavy melee attack increased to match the damage of the Machete' heavy attack (to 135 from 120).

#### Explosive Blast Changes

* Improved detection of explosions; it is now less likely for (partially) obscured explosives to apply full damage.

**Developer Note:**
*It is still possible that a well placed grenade or dynamite can severely damage or kill a player if it finds gaps in nearby walls or obstacles, or if the shrapnel ricochets a bit around corners. However, now this should happen far less often, making explosives overall much more predictable.*

#### Winfield M1873 Aperture Changes

* The peep sight on the Winfield M1873 Aperture variant can now be toggled on and off using the weapon function key (default: X).
	+ Camera Sensitivity will change accordingly as well - with the aperture sight on, it will use the 'Aperture' setting and without it, it will use 'Aim Down Sights' setting.
	+ This turns the Aperture sight into a proper flip-side, allowing players to be more precise at medium to long distance on demand, but otherwise retains the situational awareness of basic iron sights.

* With the introduction of the weapon function toggling to the Winfield Aperture we also want to improve the feeling for the Lemat and other future weapons

* Holding down ADS during the weapon function animation will now transition back into ADS at the end of the animation.

#### World

* Burn duration of oil pools has been increased from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

**Developer Note:**
*Oil pools always had untapped potential for deliberate defensive strategies that we could not utilize until now. However, with the Choke Bomb now available, players have a hard counter in their inventory which allows us to have persistent fire shape the battlefield in a more drastic way.*

## Bounty Hunt

#### Boss Whisper Changes

* Removed the inner and outer warning ranges and consolidated it into a single 50m radius.
* While in range and in Dark Sight, players will receive the following warning feedback:
	+ Normal whisper sounds and a continuous white UI flashing on the top-left target icon if no enemy players are within the 50m radius.
	+ Aggressive whisper sounds and a continuous red UI flashing on the top-left target icon while enemy players are within the 50m radius

* There are no more one-off UI notifications and audio stingers when entering the radius.
* The whisper mechanic works similarly to the "Red Clue" mechanic, but is exclusive to Dark Sight only.
* Added tutorial pop-up hints and loading screen hints to further explain the whisper mechanic to players.

**Developer Note:**
*The introduction of the boss whisper mechanic with update 1.1.3. was intended to reduce camping of dead bosses and camping close to the boss arena when the boss is still alive, which turned out to become more and more of a problem after our 1.0 release. In addition, it was meant to give new players more information to work with when approaching compounds and get drawn to the bosses more easily. The idea was simple: The boss makes additional noise (the whispering) that can be heard by players which then draws them in. If any Hunter gets close enough to the boss, the whisper becomes more agitated and aggressive, which can then be heard by other players further out, warning them of the imminent danger of an ambush.*

While on the test server we found that the idea of introducing additional sounds was perceived as being too intrusive by players, we moved the whisper mechanic into Dark Sight only as a last-minute change. We quickly introduced one-off red/white flashing UI stingers to notify players outside of Dark Sight before the update had to go live. Iterating further on this would have meant the risk of not releasing any update in 2019 at all, as the Holidays were approaching fast. Therefore, we decided to get the patch out to the community, confident it was only one minor point of a much bigger update that had a lot of other highly expected new fixes and content, and that we could improve it later on. However, by no longer having the whispers become audible as you approach the boss lair, players having to rely on Dark Sight, and the unclear UI stingers, the mechanic became too confusing to understand for many players in its current state, as the provided information could often result in false-positives. We also lacked the time to finish the tutorial part, which further complicated things for players, as they were never really told how the mechanic works exactly in-game.

With the changes above, we are now moving the whisper mechanic to be more in-line with the already known and proven "Red Clue" warning mechanic, giving all players in range the same consistent warning. We also wanted to strengthen the importance of Dark Sight in general, so players now have to actively pull that information by going to Dark Sight, which comes at the cost of situational awareness, making it into something you do not want to use all the time. There are also no more UI notifications to further reinforce the use of Dark Sight. However, when in Dark Sight we now show a constant white or red effect on the respective Boss UI element in the top-left corner to provide both visual and audible feedback.

We hope that the mechanic will be more effective this way and will help in reducing certain types of disruptive boss camping scenarios as well as becoming easier to understand and use to your advantage.

As always, thank you for all the constructive feedback and participating in our survey to help us better understand your concerns and ideas for this feature!

#### Solo Play Rewards

To make it more interesting for players to accept the challenge and go for the bounty, we increased the Underdog Bonus:

* Solos fighting against duos now get +250 Bounty for every token they can extract (was +100 before).
* Solos fighting against trios now get +500 Bounty for every token they can extract (was +200 before).
* Duos fighting against trios now get +125 Bounty for every token they can extract (was +75 before).

## Store

* New tool added: Heavy Knife: $30 (Knife variant unlock).
* New tool added: Knuckle Knife: $45 (Dusters variant unlock).

UI
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* Players will now receive an in-game warning when maintenance is due to occur.
* Banned players will be hidden/removed from the leaderboards automatically.
* Communication list in game allowing to mute or unmute players that are speaking in your area. Only applies for the current game (not persistent across games).

## Controller

#### Auto-Move

* Added a time buffer to prevent the accidental cancellation of Auto-Move just after triggering it.
* Added small stick dead zone to prevent accidental cancellation of Auto-Move when doing small stick movements.
* Now can be triggered more consistently during movement.
* Now automatically transitions intro sprinting when already moving forward while triggering.

## Performance

#### Client

* Optimized a background thread. (this is especially relevant for machines with low CPU core count (Intel® Core™ i5 Processors family or similar))
* Improved responsiveness when opening and closing the map in-game.
* General optimization of the scripting virtual machine.
* Optimized specific features that rely on visual scripting:
	+ Clues
	+ Compass
	+ In-game item selection
	+ Despawning of entities

* Reduced the number of animations getting processed every frame for entities that didn't require such frequent updates.
* Improved synchronization of animation jobs.
* Reduced the number of dynamically loaded libraries.

#### Server

* Rubberbanding:
	+ Improved the cost of processing client disconnections in order to reduce rubberbanding cases.
	+ Optimized network system update costs on the server.

* General CPU optimization.
* General AI related performance improvements to consume less CPU.

#### Other

* Game updates should now complete much faster in Steam (less disk verification required) especially on slower hard drives.

## BUG FIXES

#### General

* Fixed a bug that caused Tier 2 hunters to be available in place of Tier 3 Hunters in instances where only Tier 3 hunters should be available.
* Fixed a bug that resulted in the Chaos Bomb audio persisting after being defused with the Dauntless trait.
* Fixed a bug that resulted in not being able to retrieve Crossbow bolts and Throwing Knives when thrown/shot at certain objects. (e.g Flares, etc)
* In instances where a player becomes stuck in the “searching for servers” state, the client will now cancel the matchmaking request instead of sticking indefinitely.

#### AI

* Fixed a bug that caused AI to not correctly respond to stimuli produced at long range.
* Fixed an issue that caused AI to become stuck when walking close to certain objects (Barrels, generators).
* Fixed an issue that caused AI to become stuck when they were disrupted from their normal navigation paths.
* Fixed a bug that caused Grunts to teleport to feeding positions upon spawning.
* Fixed a bug that would cause the Meathead to become stuck and flicker in instances where they have fallen from a bridge (and other similar areas).
* Fixed a bug that caused the Meathead to become stuck if he performed a charged attack that took them outside of their normal navigation paths.
* Fixed an issue with the animation that occurs when leeches are spawned.
* Fixed a bug that could result in a crash when the Immolator or Armored were trying to navigate through doors.
* Fixed a bug that resulted in the Armored not attacking when very close to a player.
* Fixed a bug that caused AI near active generators to ignore the player and face all in one direction.

#### Gameplay

* Fixed wrong aim sensitivity settings for scoped Springfield and Marksman variants.
* Item Box: Fixed a bug that could result in 3 received consumables with one interaction.
* Item Box: Fixed a bug that could result in receiving a consumable without the UI notification.
* Item Box: Fixed a bug that could remove the consumable Ammo Box when interacting with the Item Box.
* Item Box: Fixed an edge case where the Packmule trait would only provide 1 replenishment even when 2 are possible.
* Looted consumables are now correctly listed as contraband items.
* Choke Bomb: Players did not receive the correct camera aim punch while coughing

#### Animation

* Fixed a broken Hunter animation when entering the ladder climbing animation in specific circumstances.
* Fixed some animation issues when reloading the Bornheim.
* Fixed an issue where the camera snapped to a different direction after reviving a Hunter.

#### Audio

* Tentative fix for a bug that caused stuck breathing audio in specific circumstances.

#### World

* Fixed a bug that would cause the clones of the Assassin to become stuck in a side room inside Fort Carmick.
* Fixed an issue that caused the Assassin to die in spots that were inaccessible to players.

#### UI

* Fixed a bug that caused the Underdog bonus to be incorrectly displayed in the match summary screen.
* Fixed a bug that caused the Boss’ health bar to appear full briefly after the boss has been killed.
* Fixed a bug that resulted in the Steam overlay not appearing when trying to purchase the “Last Gust” DLC legendary weapon.
* Fixed a bug that caused Bloodline rewards and challenges to not be displayed.
* Fixed a number of bugs that occurred when using the weapon sorting filters.
* Fixed a number of minor issues with the Equipment screen.
* Fixed a bug that caused dirty weapons to not be cleanable sometimes while equipped on a Hunter.
* Fixed a bug that resulted in the banishment counter showing 100% for some players, regardless of the percentage that has been completed.
* Fixed a bug that would cause the inspection screen to persist while inspecting someone that leaves the party.
* Fixed a bug that caused tools and consumable to be incorrectly sorted in the equipment selection screen in the Roster tab.
* Fixed an issue that caused traits to be displayed bigger than the black background when a hunter has less than 6 traits assigned to them.
* Fixed a number of bugs relating to the 3D weapon viewer.
* Fixed a bug that could cause a player to be kicked from the legendary tab with certain interactions.
* Fixed a bug that caused the “Your body is burning” message to flicker when the player is fully dead and is then burned.
* Fixed a bug that showed the incorrect loadouts for other team members while in a team of 3.
* Fixed a bug that resulted in deaths from an oil pool not displaying the correct information on the death screen.
* Fixed an issue where dying to an enemy that is no longer in the game would show an incorrect death screen.
* Fixed an issue where dying to an explosive barrel would result in being killed by the Spider on the death screen.
* Fixed a rare bug that allowed the kill view option to be available after being killed by an AI.
* Fixed a rare bug that allowed a player to press the spectate button even though there were no available targets to spectate.
* Fixed a bug that caused the tutorial hints to continue to be displayed while waiting for the mission to fully load.

## KNOWN ISSUES

#### Performance & Stability

* Clients can experience performance drops during navigation inside of compounds.
* Clients might crash when using bomb lance.
* Players sometimes experience desyncs / rubberbanding during gameplay.

#### UI & Meta

* Players might receive more Blood Bonds after a mission than what is displayed in the summary screen.
* Contract Status accolade doesn't appear at all in summary screen if no token was extracted.
* Muted players get "visually" unmuted when new player enters the communication range. They are still muted though.
* Allow Teams of Three Button not clickable after going to another UI tab or leaving group if random partner search was set to teams of three before.
* Hunt dollars and XP icon on the summary screen is missing textures.
* Book of Weapons item unlock popup repeats after every Training session if an item was unlocked in the last normal mission before playing the tutorial.
* Summary screen can show XP initially before displaying the correct value after a mission.
* Equipment and Upgrades might show a plus symbol even though nothing is new on a new game start (disappears after playing a match).
* Persistent grouping doesn't work sometimes when returning from a match.
* After restarting the client, last partner(s) in last match screen will be displayed with "Invalid username".

#### Gameplay

* Tutorial: Bleeding audio does not stop after respawning in the tutorial if player was also poisoned at the time of death.
* Quickplay: swapping other tools for Knuckle/Heavy knife is not always possible.
* Quickplay: Weapon might not be lootable from killed player.
* ItemBox: Does not always show an UI notification when receiving a new consumable.
* Stamina consumption for two consecutive heavy melee attacks with the Sparks might be incorrect.
* Reloading the sparks right after a shot before cocking the hammer, cocks the hammer twice and delays the reload.
* Player can't interact with special ammo packs while reloading.
* Pitchfork can be stuck vertically in the ground.

#### AI

* Spider might walk backwards when switching targets during its frenzy mode.
* Spider can jump the player multiple times in a row.
* Spider can get stuck sometimes.

#### Visuals & Audio

* Banishment progress resets for players activating spectator mode and/or getting revived while a banishment is ongoing.
* In rare cases, players might experience a permanent ghosting effect during gameplay.
* Texture stream can be slower compared to live version.
* Building at Lawson Station might not be visible from greater distance.
* Winfield Aperture sight switching has some animation & interrupt issues.
* Distances for boss whispering are slightly off for bosses that are beneath ground level.
* Sometimes tools or consumables can float in the world.