New System: Weapon Cards

Weapon Cards are a brand new system in Dirty Bomb, allowing you to change the weapon skin on your favourite Loadout Cards. There are three skin sets in this first iteration for purchase, but also some festive skins that you will unlock just through playing in the event. You can read a full breakdown of the Weapon Card system in this news post.

New System: Merc Decks

Merc Decks are another new system in Dirty Bomb, allowing far more customisation for your favourite Mercs than ever before. You select your Merc, apply your Loadout Card and then equip a brand new Weapon Skin. You can also equip a Trinket per Merc, meaning that each of the three Mercs you take into battle will be fully customised.

MVP Balance Changes

The MVP screen was one of our main additions in the Javelin update and we haven’t stopped working on it since its introduction. We feel that it is important that our players get their time in the spotlight, no matter how they contributed to the success of the team. We’ve changed how the MVP awards are calculated to ensure that the award distribution is fair and more reliable. However, this is just the first step. We will be constantly monitoring and adjusting the MVP system to provide a good user experience. Below are some of the bug fixes we have applied in this update.

MVP award for Most Accurate changed from “Shots Landed” to “Overall Accuracy %”

Fixed bug where Best Merc award sometimes displayed the incorrect Merc

Fixed bug where Most Kills award also counted Friendly kills

Merc Balance Overview

Guardian

Guardian is currently not where we want her to be, and we are looking to improve her over the next couple of updates. It is important to make her Bionic Pulse more reliable and her Sky Shield more attack focused. To do that we are planning on increasing the range of her passive ability and applying some fixes for her Bionic Pulse. Both changes should impact her status/quality massivly. However, in this update we want to apply some smaller balance changes that allow players to keep the shield up longer at the cost of the device’s health. We want to make sure that players don`t have to focus her Sky Shield for too long and can instead focus on general combat.

Sky Shield lifespan increased from 10 to 12 seconds

Sky Shield health reduced from 90 to 60

Javelin

Javelin is still one of our main focuses for balancing to ensure she is ready for the next ranked season, but we felt we went slightly too far with the acceleration changes in the last update. Therefore we decided to take a step back and give her a bit more power again by speeding up the rocket’s acceleration. This change still ensures that players have more time to find cover or shoot down the rocket without making it too frustrating.

Rocket acceleration time reduced from 2 to 1.25 seconds

Rocket base speed changed from 40% to 30% of maximum speed

Proxy

Every player has their own opinion of Proxy. Proxy players love her and her playstyle while others can get frustrated playing against her. With this change we have tried to satisfy the players that play against a Proxy without impacting her in the hands of skilled players.

Damage Radius reduced from 240 to 208

Inner Damage Radius increased from 16 to 32

Rhino

Rhino was weakened by some of the changes in the last update and we wanted to re-address his position in the game. This change focuses on keeping players shooting for longer.

Minigun energy cost reduced by ~ 25%

Minigun max spread reduced by ~ 10%

Sparks

We wanted to limit Sparks slightly in her damage output. This may look like a small change as it still allows her still to one-shot 120HP Mercs, but the difference is that she now has to fully charge her Revivr to do so.

Revivr damage reduced from 65 to 60

Experience Points

Our goal is that all players have an equal chance of collecting enough XP no matter which Merc they play. Therefore we have decided to make some additional Experience Points changes after reviewing the current state of the game. On average Medics are collecting the most XP while Covert Ops and Soldiers are on the lower end. Guardian is an exception in this case because she still suffers from the low Experience Points gain that she has since her release. These changes should bring all of the Mercs closer together, but we will continue monitoring the changes.

Aimee – “Spotting an Enemy with Third Eye” XP from 60 to 80 per enemy

Phantom – “Disabling a deployable” XP from 80 to 85 per deployable

Rhino – “Suppressing Fire” XP from 20 to 30

Guardian – “Projectile destroyed” XP from 50 to 60

Thunder – “Concussing an enemy” XP from 30 to 40

Weapon Balance Overview

Shotguns

We have tried to trim down the reload times on shotguns as much as we can, due to the amount of “down time” players have between shooting and reloading. To do this best, we have sped up the pump animation, which is the pump that takes place after loading to full capacity. This will cut off a significant amount of time when reloading to full capacity.

Hollunds 880

Reload pump time reduced by ~20%

Total reload time decreased to 2.45 seconds was 2.55 seconds

Remburg 7

Reload pump time reduced by ~20%

Total reload time decreased to 2.3 seconds from 2.4 seconds

Ahnuhld-12

The Ahnuhld after its recent changes suffers from running low on ammunition relatively fast, compared to other shoguns, due to its faster fire-rate. More shots are required for a kill as well, because of its considerably lower damage overall. It has had its starting capacity increased slightly to give it a little more sustain-power.

Increased starting magazines to 3.5 was 3

Reload pump time reduced by ~20%

Total reload time decreased to 2.7 seconds was 2.85 seconds

Bolt-Action Sniper Rifles

FEL-IX

Across the board players have reported that the FEL-IX felt worse to use following the balancing changes. We want to give this more time so that players learn to use newly balanced sniper rifles, before making further drastic changes. However, there are a few quality-of-life improvements to the FEL-IX, such as a slightly bigger magazine size and balanced fire-rate and reload timings. The timing of fire-interval and cocking the rifle has also been adjusted, to make timing the next shot feel more accurate and responsive.

Increased magazine capacity from 5 to 6

Reduced starting magazines to 3.5 from 4

RPM increased to 34 from 32

Adjustments to fire-interval and cocking animation timings

Grandeur SR

Horizontal recoil decreased by ~30%

Other Changes and Fixes

Added 28 new Steam Achievements

Fixed bug where some commander dialog was missing from Vault

Fixed grammar for Proxy daily play mission

Fixed bug where Assault Course trinkets were not being granted. If this affected you, please contact customer support.

Fixed bug where it was impossible to earn ‘Best Javelin’ MVP

Fixed bug where Vault subtitles were inconsistent with commander dialog

Fixed bug where ‘Most Accurate’ MVP award could be awarded incorrectly

Fixed bug where players who had damaged the EV would sometimes get a random additional 1 XP

Added a new UI notification from the main menu showing when you have unopened cases in your inventory

Known Issues

We are aware of an issue with the Jackal Lantern audio not playing

Some of the UI tooltips around equipping Weapon Cards to multiple decks are unclear

Hotfix – 7.12.2017

Enabled functionality to schedule in-game promotional tools