Combat Update Notes

For those that don’t know me, my name is bronstahd (Garrett Fern), and I’m a combat and gameplay designer working on H1Z1: King of the Kill. Tomorrow we are releasing an update we’ve internally termed “the combat update” which is the result of a focused push toward improving combat and related gameplay systems. I wanted to spend some time talking about several of these changes in greater detail to give some insight into what’s changed and why we’re excited about this update’s release.

Shotgun

We’ve continued working to improve the consistency of the shotgun. Our goal is that the shotgun should be a powerful, up close threat. This update further tightens the shotgun’s spread of fire, making it more powerful up close. In addition, the shotgun’s damage will fall off over distance, so it isn’t too powerful at range. The feedback we’ve seen has been positive so far, so we’re really looking forward to seeing these changes on the live servers.

Cone of Fire

Recently, we added Cone of Fire adjustments based on your character's movement state. We did this because, put simply, guns were performing far too accurately when running and jumping. Philosophically, our belief has always been that aiming down sight should be the most accurate method of aiming; this change made sure that's the case.

However, it was also possible to aim down sight while jumping, which also allowed for tremendous accuracy in a way that didn't make sense. This update addresses that issue by preventing ADS while jumping or falling. This has also allowed us to ease up on some previous combat restrictions around movement and it will now be possible to shoot and ADS directly from sprint. You'll no longer have to wait for your character to slow down and suffer a delay when trying to shoot.

General Weapon Polish

This update also contains a lot of general weapon polish. In no particular order, here's what you should expect to see:

• Historically, melee weapons have been underwhelming and of little use. As a first step toward addressing this, we've increased melee weapon damage across the board. This won't entirely fix melee weapons, but it should be a noticeable improvement:
  • Fists: 4.5 damage -> 9 damage
  • Combat Knife: 10 damage -> 21 damage
  • Machete: 12 damage -> 25 damage
  • Wood Axe: 16.5 damage -> 34 damage
• Since our last change to the AK-47 we've been listening to the community and the feedback has been pretty clear: it's not powerful enough when compared to the AR15.

We've been internally testing a faster fire rate for the AK-47 which we'll be rolling out with this update. Here's what you should expect to see:

• The AK-47 should be faster than AR15 in full auto fire, but more difficult to control.
• The AK-47 should be closer in speed to the AR15 when tapping.
• Specifically, the delay between shots has been reduced from 160 ms -> 145 ms.

We think this change will create nice some trade-offs between the weapons and make the AK-47 a compelling choice once again.

• Increased the damage of the R380 from 15 -> 17 to reduce the number of shots required to kill with it by one.
• Decreased the damage of the M9 from 19 -> 18 to allow time to apply healing after taking five shots. Previously it wasn't possible to apply any type of healing before bleeding to death.
• We've made some adjustments to the M47 Gas Grenade that should make them far more viable as a thrown weapon option:
  • Damage increased from 1/tick-> 3/tick.
  • Duration reduced from 60 seconds -> 20 seconds.

• Depending on the weapon, it used to take anywhere between 0.5 seconds to 1 second to change from one weapon to another. This time has been reduced to 0.15 seconds for all weapons.
• Weapon slots will always be assigned the same number, regardless of whether or not there are weapons in other slots.

Damage Log

We believe that when a player dies it should be very clear to them what killed them. That’s not always the case currently. As a first step towards remedying this, we’ve added a damage log to the death screen that will display how much damage the attack that killed you did and whether or not it was a headshot. Moving forward, the plan is to re-work the death screen so we can display even more information about cause of death.

Body Armor

We've also made some changes to the way Armor works that should improve the reliability of body armor:

• The entire body (chest, arms, and legs) is protected by Body Armor.
• Helmets still protect the head.

Hit Reactions

Hit reaction animations would cause the other character's head moved, often preventing a quick follow-up shot from registering as a headshot when it should. Other characters will no longer flinch out of the way when shot.

Camera & Reticle Improvements

• We've made a couple of improvements to the reticle.
• We’ve added a new element to the reticle that increases in size to display Cone of Fire information based on player movement.
• Improved color saturation and added clearer outline which should make seeing the reticle, even small reticles, much easier.
• In most cases, projectiles now originate from the camera rather than the weapon model. This change significantly reduces projectile collisions with medium-height cover like fences, rocks, cars, and similar objects and also improves projectile performance when fighting uphill or against players on top of buildings.

In some cases, it was possible for one player to have clear line of sight on another player, due to the camera being offset above their head, while actually being obscured from the other player’s view. We felt this would be unfair, and in these cases (generally, when your character is very close to medium-height cover) projectiles will still originate from the weapon model. We’ve added feedback to the reticle to make it clear when this is happening.

Respawn

Select a respawn region upon death: Now upon death, you'll be presented with a spawn selection interface. From this interface you'll choose a grid square to respawn within. Your actual location will be random within chosen grid.

Vehicle Anti-Hoarding measures:

In an effort to combat vehicle hoarding and to give more players an opportunity to obtain a vehicle we’ve made the following changes.  The changes are intended to make vehicles a little more transitional so that you can find one, use it up, and then more easily find another one.

• Vehicles now decay their condition slowly over time.  They will fully decay in a little over two days.
• Wrenches spawn in the world but are much rarer.  They will always spawn with full durability.
• Wrenches will lose 100 durability per swing on a vehicle.  Wrenches have 2500, so when repairing a vehicle they can only hit 25 times.  Each hit will repair 2% of the vehicle’s maximum condition.
• Wrenches can no longer be crafted.
• 25% more vehicles concurrently spawn in the world.
• Vehicles now spawn procedurally in random locations around major points of interest.

That’s our first pass at the solution.  We will now observe and make adjustments as necessary.

Nomad server

This is a new ruleset in which you cannot build bases in the world. We will be standing up two US worlds and two EU worlds initially.

Interaction Responsiveness

We’ve long had problems with delays in picking up items. It isn’t really a combat related thing, but it was a big enough deal that we wanted to pursue a fix for this update. The time it takes to pick up items, open doors, and perform other interactions has been greatly improved and is now nearly instantaneous.

Additional Patch Notes:

• Bullet conversion is being removed from the game
• The in-game map now shows your current world position. If you're in a group, you'll also see indicators for each group member
• Limited base building ruleset is now be instituted across all worlds
• Zombies are now be more abundant. We fixed a lot of issues with the zombie/wildlife spawning system which was degrading the experience over time.
• Characters are now equipped with a skinning knife. This knife is necessary to harvest wildlife and zombies. You can now target the dead NPC and press “E” to harvest. This replaces the old method of attacking a dead corpse with a hunting knife. 
• Items should be more consistently highlighted during looting
• Removed dynamic weapon slot numbers from the UI
• Fixed a bug where hit-markers would occasionally get stuck on
• Fixed a bug where players could not melee others on ATVs
• Fixed a bug where explosions could damage players through structures
• Fixed a bug where the Molotov’s fire effect would sometimes be invisible
• Corrected Molotov behavior so that they damage vehicles but do not cause them to burn
• Fixed an issue where players would render incorrectly if they exit a vehicle at certain distances
• Fixed a bug where thrown grenades could go through players
• Fixed a bug where equipping a weapon while inventory is full could cause the player to lose the weapon
• Fixed an exploit where swapping backpacks a specific way could create infinite bag space
• Fixed a bug where the UI would make it appear that multiple hits were registering at once
• Fixed a bug where character would appear to be falling when strafing against concrete barriers
• Fixed a bug where the reloading the AK-47 while firing could prevent the reload animation from playing

Source: h1z1.com