Welcome to the new What’s Up, our weekly blog where we’ll recap everything that’s happened in the past week and talk a little about future developments. In What’s Up this week:

Title Update 4.1.1 Released

Free Boost Weekend

Escape Double Character XP Weekend

Escape Earnable Content Change

Arcade Blitz Double Trouble + Second Chance to Earn Punt Execution

TU 4.1.1

As we mentioned on Monday, Title Update 4.1.1 has been moving through Certification towards a hopeful release this week. We’re happy to confirm it made it through nice and timely, so we’re deploying another hotfix right this second!

Here’s the full update notes for our mini-hotfix TU 4.1.1 released as of 10am PT today:

Gameplay

Additional fixes for AI enemies finishing downed players too quickly

Fixed an issue that could cause the Flashbang effect to remain on screen if a player died while the filter effect still occurred. (We will be monitoring player reports to determine if this repro is a full fix for the issue)

Horde: Resource Tap claim time set to 5s (was 10s)

Map Builder: Fixed an issue causing a user to get an error messaging after returning to the editor from the Escape Pause Menu

PC

Mouse: Fixed an issue that caused Gnasher shots to sometimes hit slightly to the left after a weapon switch on PC following the release of TU 4.1

Multiple crash fixes

We have another TU coming, targeted for mid March, delivering further improvements and a juicy surprise for Horde fans. Teases!

Free Boost and 2x Character XP Weekend

In case you missed the news, we’re dropping a Free Boost Weekend again beginning this Friday along with Double Character XP in Escape!

If you aren’t usually rolling with Boost, this means you’ll earn 4x the usual rate of Character XP. Pick your favorite character and bathe in faster levelling until Monday.

Escape Earnable Content Change

With today’s Title Update, we’ve made an additional change to the format of our Escape Leaderboards.

If you didn’t already know, Escape Leaderboards provide a variety of cosmetic rewards based on your placement. The pinnacle cosmetic rewards for Escape Hives require you to place in the Top 1% and hold it until the next rewards rotation.

Previously, the Top 1% banding represented an achievable goal for top end players. As time has gone on, more players have become masters of the Escape Meta with max level Characters equipped with high level skills, resulting in the Top 1% shifting from the top end of players to the super elite teams of players only.

We know earnable content is important to players, as is having content that showcases a higher level of skill. Beating a Hive on the top difficulties in it’s first few weeks of release is a massive achievement, and we want more players to feel rewarded for their efforts.

As such, we are increasing the top-end Hive leaderboard rewards from 1% to 5% in a live update beginning today at 1pm PT.

We believe this change will retain the value of pinnacle Hive rewards, while offering high-end teams a better chance at obtaining the best rewards. We are looking at what else we can do for Escape Leaderboards, including the potential of non-cosmetic high end rewards for the top percentiles, for future updates.

We’ve also heard loud and clear that you want the opportunity to have another shot at past Escape Leaderboard rewards. Beginning on Tuesday, we’ll be bringing back The Gauntlet, followed two weeks later by The Descent, into matchmaking along with their leaderboard rewards.

These Hives represent two of the least completed Hives on Master due to their major difficulty spikes. Not only do these make for great candidates for re-runs at past rewards because of this, but with TU4.2, we’ll be updating both Hives to balance out some of the issues that made them unfairly tough at times.

*Note: With TU4.2 tracking for mid-March, The Gauntlet will be as it was when it first released for at least the first week of it’s appearance. Stay tuned for final details on the TU4.2 date soon.

This Week In Gears

We mistakenly called out the Punt Execution being earnable through the Big Game Medal in our This Week in Gears post – it’s actually the Spike Execution. Sorry about that.

Our mistake is your gain though, as we’re adding the Punt Execution as a login reward during our Free Boost Weekend! Just fire up Gears 5 and head to the main menu to pick it up if you missed out last time. You’ll still be able to go and earn the Spike Execution through the Big Game Medal

For full information on all things Gears 5 this week, you can read the full article here.

Signing Off

It’s short and sweet this week as we continue work on polishing up Operation 3 and delivering future improvements.

Next week, we’re aiming to have news on TU 4.2 as well as that little Horde teaser we dropped earlier. Until then.

TC, out.