Changelog

Changelogs

Patch 93315 (August 10, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

If you’ve read our previous Big Picture blog post - and if not, go do that now- you know that we have some MAJOR features in the works that we won’t be ready to release just yet, but are excited for nonetheless.

Yet, we couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t continue to update. To beat the summer heat, we’ve been devoting a lot of attention to bugs and game balance, and we are already finishing up a new patch. Highlighted by a complete rebalancing of The Culling’s arsenal, the new patch will have a significant impact to the current state of the game. 

So let’s get this out here right away:

This update will arrive on Wednesday, August 10th. Servers will be down starting at 8AM Eastern for up to 4 hours.

Our goal is to become even more transparent with our updates and their schedules. We want to continue to do Early Access right, and that means shining some light into the present and the future of The Culling.

While our Big Picture post was a good start, it doesn’t necessarily reflect everything in the pipeline and you can expect to hear more news, regularly, here on The Culling.com very soon!

See you on the island!

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Balance and Gameplay

• Lightning Rounds are being retired temporarily
  • Dev comments: Lightning Rounds proved to be immensely popular. We’re taking them offline for maintenance, but we expect they will be back eventually with some new twists.
• Longshot Perk now grants bonus damage to targets beyond 35 meters (previously set to 30 meters, despite UI text stating 40 meters)
  • Dev comments: Longshot has been set to 30 meters since prior to Early Access launch, but we failed to realize that until it was pointed out by the community after the last patch. This would ordinarily call for a simple fix to the text, but Longshot has gained enough popularity since the last patch that we chose to extend its range to 35 meters (and update the text to reflect that).
• Mangler and Submission reduced to 80% bonus Stamina damage (from 100%)
  • Dev comments: Mangler and Submission skyrocketed in popularity after the last update, so a small adjustment is in order.
• Crafted Hatchet Expose and Crafted Cudgel Cripple wound intensity reduced by one
  • Dev comments: A previous effort to improve the popularity of Axes and Bludgeons included a step up to tier 2 wound intensity for the crafted versions. Cripple and Expose are now powerful enough that the base level wounds are appropriate for the crafted weapons.
• Regenerator Perk increased to 1 hit point per 4 seconds (from 1 per 5 seconds)
  • Dev comments: Regenerator is one of our least-utilized Perks. We are hesitant to give it a major boost, but we hope a moderate buff will make it appealing, at least to certain play styles.
• Bow ammo capacity is now 18 arrows (from 24 arrows)
  • Dev comments: We’ve heard several calls from the community that arrows are in too much supply, especially at the end of matches, so we’ve reduced max ammo that can be carried - which should allow for more wrinkles in ranged play.
• Dig Deep now restores 20 health when taking fatal damage (from 25)
  • Dev comments: The buff Dig Deep received with the last patch skyrocketed it in popularity to the top of the Perk list, so we’re bringing it down...a notch.
• Mantracker can be used while moving without requiring the Mantracker Perk
  • Dev comments: Feedback from users is that the Mantracker is unintuitive to use when it requires the user to be stationary, so we’ve removed that requirement.

• Weapon Damage Rebalance Pass
  • Dev comments: We have long wrestled with the challenge of how to provide significant variety across melee weapon types (and individual weapons) and still achieve a state of overall balance. What we’ve learned through multiple iterations and experiments is that pure DPS is king when it comes to players’ weapon choice. Even the mighty cripple wound on a Bludgeon cannot compete with the raw damage dealt by its Axe counterpart. As such, we’ve adjusted damage and wound intensity for a large number of melee weapons in order to achieve nearly equal DPS (our calculations take bonus damage from bleed and expose into account) output. We believe that this will free players to choose the weapon they feel offers the best synergy between play style, Perks, and Airdrop, or go for a generalist build that allows them to play effectively with whatever they happen to come across in a match. The list below includes all the parameters that were changed. You may notice that in order to achieve the desired balance, we’ve broken the long-standing rule that fully charged attacks deal exactly 3X jab damage. We don’t expect this pass to be the final word in balance, but we do hope that it will provide a solid baseline that we can use to make smaller corrective changes and quickly arrive in a happy place. Changes (only values that have changed are represented here):
    • Crafted Hatchet: 6-16 Damage, Expose Tier 1
    • Crafted Cudgel: Cripple Tier 1
    • Crafted Knife: 6-17 Damage
    • Crafted Spear: 6-18 Damage
    • Ice Axe: 7-20 Damage, Expose Tier 1
    • Cleaver: 7-19 Damage, Expose Tier 2
    • Machete: 7-22 Damage, Bleed Tier 2
    • Tanto Knife: 6-19 Damage, Bleed Tier 2
    • Javelin: 7-22 Damage
    • Tomahawk: 7-21 Damage, Expose Tier 2
    • Bowie Knife: 7-23 Damage
    • Kukri: 8-24 Damage
    • Sabre: 7-23 Damage
    • Tactical Machete: 8-24 Damage
    • Survival Spear: 9-27 Damage
    • Fireman’s Axe: 9-25 Damage
    • Katana: 9-26 Damage
    • Trident: 10-30 Damage

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where .357 Magnum and SMG would play their SFX/VFX twice with each shot
• Fixed a text bug where Basher Perk erroneously stated it reduced melee charge time by -20% (actual reduction is -30%)
• Fixed a text bug where Disability insurance said it applies to Gas Grenades (it doesn’t apply to Gas Grenades)
• Fixed a bug where Trapper Perk wasn’t properly reducing trap placement times
• Removed Golden Crowbar from the map (this was an unintentional preview of a prototype match event)
• Removed Taunt prototype (whoops, you weren’t supposed to see that yet!)

Patch 92896 (July 27, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We’re dropping a big update today. In additional to the usual boatload of balance changes, we’re adding an all new game mode. Lightning Rounds pit 8 contestants against one another. Everyone has the same perks and Airdrop, and that airdrop is available from the start of the match (there is a landing pad at each start location). This is the most fast-paced, aggressive version of The Culling you’ve ever seen! Lightning Rounds are also a great way to unlock Airdrops you may not have already, including the new Hawks Eye, which provides a faster way to guarantee yourself a Compound Bow.

Servers will be down starting at 10AM Eastern for up to 4 hours.

New Features

• Lightning Round game mode
  • 8 players
  • Played on a subset of the normal map
  • Shorter match length
  • Fast, free Airdrop at start of match (all contestants receive the same randomized Airdrop)
    • Known Issue: Game menu does not properly reflect the designated Airdrop
  • Preset perks (Cannibal, Mantracker, Backpacker)
• Hawk’s Eye Airdrop
  • Compound Bow
  • Smoke Grenade
  • Gas Grenade
  • Cost: 175 FUNC

Balance and Gameplay

• Stun Gun has been refactored
  • Holds 1 charge
  • Must be charged up briefly before it can discharge
  • Will not discharge unless it hits a contestant
  • Disarmable
  • Range reduced
• Firearms
  • Headshot bonus set to 50% (from 100%)
  • Increased cost of all Airdrops with guns by +75 FUNC
  • Max ammunition limited to one full magazine (previously 2 magazines)
• Alarm Gun
  • Deals 10 Damage
  • Max ammo of 1
  • Reload cost increased to 10
  • Barrels required for reload
  • Reduced alarm wound duration to 60 seconds (from 120 seconds)
  • Reduced drop rate in buildings
• Cripple Wound
  • Damage no longer removes cripple wound
  • Cripple * = 95% of max movement speed for 10 seconds
  • Cripple ** = 90% of max movement speed for 7.5 seconds
  • Cripple *** = 80% of max movement speed for 5 seconds
  • Cripple **** (falling and explosives) = Max 70% movement speed for 5 seconds
  • Note: All cripple wounds clear movement speed buffs
• Cudgel and Hatchet can now be crafted into bows
• Blades: Minor reduction in base damage of all blades to better account for benefits of bleed wound
• Chopper and Basher Perks now have -30% reduced charge time (previously -20%)
• Pierce characteristic of Spears no longer bypasses armor, but instead provides significant bonus damage against armor
• Angry Octopus cooldown reduced to 60 seconds (from 120 seconds)
• Blowgun deals 6 damage (from 5)
• Blowhard perk now adds +100% damage
• When killing another contestant, players now receive +15 HP and +50 Stamina by default without requiring the Cannibal perk
• Cannibal perk now provides an additional +15 HP and +50 Stamina
• Submission and Mangler Perks now deal 100% of damage to Stamina (from +50%)
• Longshot perk bonus now deals +60% bonus damage at long range (from +40%)
• Bomb Suit perk now reduces damage from Firearms and Explosives by -30% (from -50%)
• Master Crafter damage now offers +10% damage bonus (from +20%)
• Added Holo Spawner to Sat Com building
• Added a recycler to lower level of Sat Com building
• Impact Grenade now deals 50 damage (from 65)
• All crafted traps are now destructible (via melee or explosives)
• All steel traps are now destructible (via explosives)
• The Chokening match event now triggers with less warning to other players
• Cameras no longer track players using Inhuman perk
• Grab My Package match event is back by popular demand!

Bugs and Polish

Swamp building full art pass

• Level lighting polish passes
• Fix for exploit allowing stagger to be canceled
• Fix for exploit allowing Punji Sticks to be stacked
• Fix for some collision issues in Sat Com building
• Fix for a hitch in disarm animation
• Fixed some bugs with Holo Spawner behavior
• Fixed some issues with rifle aiming animations
• Fixed collision issue with front window of Culpepper Outfitters
• Fixed a bug where moving door physics could result in unusable items
• AI behavior improvements for tutorials
• Art pass on air conditioners
• Fixed exploit that allowed players to avoid falling damage under certain conditions
• Removed Independence Day cosmetic items, they were ridiculous while they lasted
• Art pass on console to initiate The Chokening match event
• Updated explosion VFX
• Bot optimizations
• Fix for bug with thrown weapon physics
• Fix for bug that allowed physics objects to fall through the world in some cases
• Made it slightly easier to quickly pick up items
• Polished spear attack animations
• Several bug fixes for tutorials

We'll see you on the island!

Hotfix 92449 (June 30, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We’re rolling out a new hotfix that addresses a handful of issues. Servers will be down for up to 4 hours as we roll out the update.

Hotfix Changes

• Fixed bug that prevented players from using the in-game text chat feature
• Fixed an exploit related to Stun Gun ammo
• Fixed issues related to the mouse cursor losing focus under certain conditions
• Modified action queuing behavior to be less intrusive
• Implemented a “convenience tax” on Holo Spawners. Items in Holo Spawners now cost 150 FUNC (instead of 100). This is intended to delay the appearance of higher tier weapons in the match

We’ll see you on the island!

Hotfix 92358 (June 27, 2016)

Hotfix Changes

• Rebalanced spears to have lower base damage, axes to have higher base damage
• Fix for issue where shove/block would behave unreliably under certain circumstances
• Fix for issue where mouse would lose focus, forcing user to exit application
• Provide error message when unable to connect Steam during game startup
• Fix for issue where Stun Gun sometimes spent both charges at once
• Fix for inaccurate bow bleed wound intensity HUD tooltip text
• Fix for Stun gun interaction with Woundless perk
• Fix for some cases where Stamina would fail to regenerate
• Fix for undroppable disposables (Snares, Stun Gun)
• Fix for collision issue in center arenas

Patch 92253 (June 22, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

Just in time for Summer we have a refreshing new patch that new and old players are sure to love. Major optimizations, new features, balancing, seasonal hats, and bug fixes make this the best patch yet. So shake the salt off, grab your swim trunks, and come meet us on the island!

Servers will be down at 8AM (EDT) for up to four hours.

New Features

• Significantly optimized netcode
• Improved framerate performance for many users
• Matchmaking system that pits players of similar skill level against one another
• New Auto Bow weapon. Quickly fire a magazine of three bolts before a lengthy reload. Bolts deal less damage than arrows
• New craftable Gas Grenade weapon. On impact creates a large cloud of poisonous gas. Crafted using a Smoke Bomb + Poison Gas Vent
• 2 new layouts added to the Culmination. A layout is chosen randomly by the server at match start to add variety to the central arena
• New Airdrop: Demon Hunter: Auto Bow, Smoke Bomb, Crafted Caltrops, Crafted Caltrops Cost: 175 FUNC
• New Airdrop: The Imp: Auto Bow, Crafted Armor, Tomahawk Cost: 225 FUNC
• New Airdrop: Viking: Tomahawk, Crafted Armor, Muscle Man Milk Cost: 125 FUNC
• New FUNC Survival Bonus. The player is now awarded 25 FUNC after 3 minutes alive, 25 FUNC after seven minutes alive, and 50 FUNC after eleven minutes alive. The current Airdrop economy is doing its intended job of relegating high-tier weapons to the later stages of the match, but many players find the costs to be intimidating. This change will put high-value Airdrops within reach, but prevent them from appearing too early
• Blue Crates have been retired and replaced with Holo Spawners. Holo Spawners contain the same loot list as the Blue Crates (Tier 3 Melee Weapons, Orange Juice,Dynamite, Impact Grenade, Compound Bow, Auto Bow), but provide a preview of the item you will receive
• Suiciding into the poison gas will now award the kill credit and FUNC to the person that most recently dealt damage to you in the vicinity of your death, with some restrictions
• Added limited-time 4th of July (American Independence Day) hats! These are available to all players for a limited time

Balance Changes

• Increased FUNC cost for Carjacker, Guerilla, Pothead, and Trapper airdrops
• Reduced Bleed wound applied by Bows (including the new Auto Bow) to Tier 1 (6 damage over 10 seconds)
• Reduced crafting time of Hatchet, Spear, and Cudgel
• Showdown behavior modified to account for end-of-match scenarios
• Rebalanced roughly half of the melee weapons to more accurately account for tier, speed, and wound. Weapons should now match well against their tier-mates and we should no longer see weapons from a lower tier that are effectively stronger than those in a tier above. This was generally accomplished through bumping the base damage values up or down by a single point
• Backstab damage has been reduced to 50% for all weapons. Sneaky Poker and Brutus have been increased to 50%. A backstab will still set the tone for a fight, but will no longer be as lethal, especially with lower-tier weapons
• Throw Damage values have been adjusted slightly. Throw damage was reaching above where we intended, even without Golden Arm
• Golden Arm changed to +25% velocity, +100% damage for thrown weapons (+50% for crafted). Golden Arm will still be a valid build, but you will no longer be able to deal devastating damage with crafted weapons
• Jab-Back (the phenomenon where after staggering and attacking your opponent, they were consistently able to land an invisible jab against you as they exited the stagger state) has been mitigated through a few changes. We fixed the bug that would prevent you from seeing a jab-back attack animation under some conditions. We have reduced the charge time required for a charged attack and increased the duration of the stagger. This gives ample time to land an attack against a staggered opponent and subsequently defend yourself. If your timing is too slow, you may still experience a retaliatory attack, which is by design

Bug Fixes

• Fix for bug where Shove would sometimes fail from certain angles
• Fix for right click interrupting Stun Gun / Pepper Spray attack
• Fix for bug that allowed players to break out of stuns
• Fix for bug where stamina would fail to regenerate if a player dropped a weapon while blocking
• Fix for bug where some items’ physics behaved badly when dropped
• Fix for late item spawn bug (related to netcode optimization)
• Fix for bug that allowed faster reloads when switching weapons
• Fix for picking up materials instead of crafting with a resource that was just spawned and while equipping a weapon
• Aiming sensitivity with ranged weapons is now adjusted properly when zooming

Other Changes

• Users selecting North America West as their preferred server region are being redirected to the North America East servers for the time being to improve queue times
• Weather and Observation building has had a full art pass
• Improved start of match spawn box behavior
• Tutorial polish pass

Hotfix 91794 (June 3, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

After digesting the feedback you delivered during the final Test Server and into the early hours of our latest update, we’ll be bringing down the servers shortly for a brief downtime (roughly two hours) in order to hotfix a few issues with the latest patch.

Hotfix Changes

• Trapper perk now applies Expose wound only to Crafted Snares and Steel Snares, not Caltrops or Punji Sticks
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to equip legacy perks and use them in online matches
• Trapper preset now includes Brutus instead of Faster Trapper
• Fixed a server crash bug
• Fixed several (but not all) game text issues with perk and weapon descriptions not matching functionality
• Fixed a bug where players could get stuck in a blocking animation
• Fixed a bug where charging a bow shot would affect mouse sensitivity
• Fixed a bug where users in North America could not connect to the server if their region was set to auto detect
• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to stack multiple Punji Sticks on top of one another

Patch 91706 (June 2, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

It’s time for a fresh new update, and this is another big one! The brand-new Showdown feature is a fun and exciting way to keep teaming issues in check - forcing players players who work together in Free For All to duke it out for the right to remain on the island. We’ve also done a major balance pass on perks that might make you think twice before equipping Big Boned or Dig Deep. Additionally, melee combat has received some fine tuning to improve the overall experience. Plus there’s the usual grab bag of polish, bug fixes, and even a few new buildings in the map for you to explore. Though, we apologize in advance that Frank isn’t around to give you a tour - he’s a little… tied up at the moment.

Our servers will be down tomorrow (Thursday, June 2nd) for up to four hours starting at 8AM EDT as we roll out the patch.

In the meantime, we’ve put this build up on the Test Servers for you to preview. The Test Servers will be live from now until Midnight EDT.

We’ll see you on the island!

If you joined us on the test servers last Friday, you’ll see that we’ve made a handful of changes to that build:

Changes since the May 27th Test Server Build

• Added a brief visual intro and outro to the block animation that indicate your client is responding to input before the server has acknowledged you’ve entered or exited your block state. This does not affect block timing or gameplay functionality but should make the controls feel more responsive
• Removed test server experimental feature that allowed players to be staggered if they were struck while shoving. We feel that the stamina cost is enough to curtail excessive shoving
• Reduced stamina cost of shove from 10 to 8
• Taking damage no longer breaks a player out of a stagger. This was allowing the staggered player to reliably counter-attack after the stagger was broken
• Taking melee damage while charging a melee attack no longer causes a stagger, but instead cancels the charged attack and plays a hit reaction. Charging attacks risked being punished with two attacks, which overly discouraged players from attempting charged attacks during combat except against a staggered opponent
• Expose wound applied by traps when using Trapper perk set to 30% bonus damage instead of 50%
• Players now receive an error message when a friend invite fails (i.e. the friend is connected in a different region)
• Revised Tutorial lighting and visuals
• Fixed an issue where some weapons had inconsistent attack and shove ranges
• Fixed a bug where player would not spawn with Alarm Gun when using the Red Gunner perk
• Fixed a bug where Master Crafter was not reducing crafting times for some items
• Fixed a bug where Armorer perk was not applying the Crafted Armor automatically
• Fixed a bug where Trapper perk arming and disarming times were not reduced consistently
• Fixed a bug where Trapper perk did not consistently apply Expose wound to trap victims
• Reduced 1st-person volume for Alarm Gun audio (3rd-person volume not changed)
• Fixed a bug where AI bots were not behaving properly in the tutorial, which prevented sometutorial lessons from being finished
• Fixed an issue where Mandroid bots in the tutorial were wearing clothing
• Fixed several text issues with perk descriptions

For those of you who missed the last Test Server build, here’s a breakdown of the rest of the changes we’ve made since our last update to the live game:

Showdown! Allegiances on the Island are about to get more interesting, and bloody.

• Teamwork is good, except when it’s bad. The top cause of angst in the community lately has been the rising prevalence of teaming (both ad hoc and premeditated) in Solo and Trials matches. After much deliberation between Chas and Frank, we’ve decided to add a new match event to Solo and Trials matches: Showdown.
• Rather than trying to prevent teaming completely, we’ve decided to try a method that keeps it from being a winning strategy. When you’ve been flagged as colluding with a teammate, attacking another player will spawn a Showdown arena. If you are tagged in a Showdown, you must quickly enter the arena (if you’re not there already) and fight your former ally until one of you is left alive. If either player attempts to escape the arena, they will be executed. When one of you dies, the Showdown ends and the remaining player is free to proceed in the match. If neither player dies before the timer runs out, both of you will be killed.
• While we’re not going to delve into the specifics about how the system works, we have taken pains to ensure that non-teaming behavior will not be misconstrued as teaming (i.e. chases, stalking, temporary truces). If you do find cases where the system fails to catch teamers or misidentifies teaming activity, please let us know!

Combat and Netcode

• Our approach to combat netcode relies heavily on client prediction to allow for the smoothest, most responsive experience possible. When you press a button, your client expects those things to happen when those inputs reach the server, and will start playing animations in anticipation. The reason actions have some windup time (in addition to looking better) is to allow some wiggle room to allow for players of differing pings to both participate in the “shared illusion of playing a fun game together.” Most of the time this works flawlessly and neither player knows the difference. Unfortunately, this prediction can break down in some situations, such as when both players are simultaneously sending block and attack commands which are going to pass each other in flight to the opposing player. Those situations end up with results that can feel arbitrary at best, or infuriatingly buggy at worst (“HOW DID HE PUNCH ME THROUGH MY BLOCK?! *ragequit*”). It isn’t an easy problem. For those of you who are so inclined, here are a couple of overviews that begin to scratch the surface of the forces at work and the wide variety of issues that present themselves in the process of solving these issues:[[1]] [[2]]
• The underlying netcode has been modified to favor accuracy over input responsiveness (subject to further iteration, of course). Most players should hopefully not notice a huge impact on their play, but blocking may end up feeling more sluggish for players with higher pings. We await your feedback before we invest more time in polishing the presentation of this approach.
• When equipping a bow, you now need to nock an arrow before firing.
• Reduced stamina cost of shove from 10 to 8
• Taking damage no longer breaks a player out of a stagger. This was allowing the staggered player to reliably counter-attack after the stagger was broken
• Taking melee damage while charging a melee attack no longer causes a stagger, but instead cancels the charged attack and plays a hit reaction. Charging attacks risked being punished with two attacks, which overly discouraged players from attempting charged attacks during combat except against a staggered opponent

Perk Changes

• Defensive perks are firmly in our crosshairs and all of them have been rebalanced. Because they were so powerful, the majority of players have been taking at least one of them. As a result, they extend the length of most fights, which upsets the general balance of the game. Our approach to the rebalancing is that perks that are completely passive (require no player skill) and are useful in all situations have been set to a new baseline value. The bonuses applied by the perks improve as they become more situational or skill-based. While many perks have been hit hard, we believe that they are all still viable.
• Big Boned now expands your health pool by 10 hit points (previously 25)
• Tough Mother damage mitigation reduced to 10% (previously 15%)
• Thick Skin damage mitigation reduced to 30% (previously 50%)
• Thick Skin no longer defends against firearms damage
• Bomb Suit now defends against firearms damage in addition to explosives damage (remains at 50%)
• Trapper no longer increases damage of traps, but instead applies a 30% Expose wound to a target that has triggered your traps.
• Faster Trapper has been removed and Trapper now also includes faster trap placement and disarming

• Cannibal now restores 25 hit points and completely fills your stamina (previously 35 hit points and 35 stamina)
• Maniac has been removed
• Leather Hide has been removed
• Blowhard redesigned to increase the sickness applied by the blowgun to allow for two vomits
• Man Tracker perk now allows you to move while man tracking in addition to spawning with a Man Tracker
• Dig Deep now restores 15 hit points (previously 30 hit points)
• Dig Deep now triggers when the player reaches 1 hit point and clears bleed wounds when it triggers
• Angry Octopus cooldown increased to 120 seconds (previously 30 seconds)
• Renamed Thicker Clotting perk to Wound Less to better reflect its general nature
• Armorer now spawns you with Crafted Armor instead of Body armor
• Red Gunner now adds *Bleed, *Expose, and *Cripple to your shots
• Alarm Gun ammo can now be crafted using rocks instead of explosive barrels
• Stealthy now allows players to craft quietly
• Master Crafter now allows you to craft 50% faster in addition to dealing bonus damage with crafted weapons, traps, and explosives
• Faster Crafter has been removed
• Longshot now makes a distinct sound when you hit a target at greater than 40 meters, so you know it’s working and when

Other Changes

• Culpepper Outfitters has had a full art pass
• Fix for point of aim not matching point of impact with bows
• Replaced Gold Crates with Holo-Spawners. These appear as the match nears completion and preview the item you can purchase for 100 FUNC
• Overhauled drainage tunnel under the mountain to include more gameplay elements
• Reduced interaction time with FUNC barrels and FUNC piles
• Increased Medkit application time to 4 seconds from 2.5
• Fix for bug where control sensitivity did not reset when being disarmed while aiming a ranged weapon
• Improved visuals for being struck while initiating a block to communicate better
• Increased Stun Gun recycle value to 20
• Reduced Recurve Bow recycle value to 20
• Fix for axe weapons applying the wrong wounds when thrown
• Fix for the crafted knife and crafted snare so they can now be picked up with the number keys
• Fix for disarmed snares leaving a trigger volume behind in some situations
• Lowered audio volume in lobby
• Lowered volume of first-person movement sounds while Stealthy (does not affect how audible you are to other players)
• New locations in Southeast and Southwest corners of the map
• Removed “Grab My Package” match event for now (very similar to “Loot Express” but was failing to drive players to contest the Airdrop)
• Ware are updating our teaming policy to reflect design changes. You can expect the new policy to be rolled out with the patch tomorrow

Patch 91351 (May 19, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We know It’s been a while since our last update and that’s because we’ve been trying out LOTS of changes on our Test Servers. The Test Server program has allowed us to experiment with new features and changes to the game, but most of all it allows us to pull in incredible amounts of feedback from within the community before bringing updates live.

The dust has finally settled and we’re ready to roll out the changes. If you joined us on the Test Servers last night, you’ll recognize this update, but with a couple of tweaks:

Changes since the 5/18 Test Server Build

• West Coast North America servers are live!
• Shove stamina cost set to 10
• Blocking no longer drains stamina (but you don’t regenerate while blocking)
• FUNC reward for killing another player increased to 40 (the +15 bounty per kill remains)
• Fixed a bug where controls could become unresponsive when player was in low-stamina state

For the rest of you, here’s a breakdown of all the changes you’ll see since our last hotfix to the live game:

Melee Combat Mechanics

• All weapon attack animations and timings normalized to match the *** speed weapons. Weapon speed rating applies only to charge time. The goal with weapon speeds is to provide consistent attack control feel for all melee weapons (equivalent to the Early Access launch build) while requiring greater skill to maximize charged attack damage against a staggered opponent using slower weapons
• Shoving now costs 10 stamina (instead of 3). This is intended to make players more judicious with the shove, as it is the only combat action that doesn’t have a staggering counter-action
• Shoving an opponent who is not blocking will no longer visually appear to damage the receiving player (we think this was confusing some shoved players into believing they had been attacked, which naturally led to blocking, which encouraged spamming of shove)
• Fixed an issue where charging an attack did not yield a consistent, linear increase in damage. Damage scaling now matches the charge level shown on the HUD charge indicator
• Correctly matched some weapon-specific animation timings for combat interrupts that showed you returning to idle before your stagger was complete, giving the false impression that you could take action while you were still stunned
• Reduced the window where players were vulnerable to shove after dropping their block
• Damage will now interrupt the stagger state, preventing players from landing multiple consecutive jabs on a staggered opponent (you must now charge your follow-up attack to maximize damage)
• Slightly increased the period of time after launching an attack where the game checks to see if the attack is striking a target, making it easier to land attacks in some situations
• Reduced and standardized the time after completing a combat action (attack, shove, or jab) before another action could be taken
• Removed the ability to instantly transition to a shove when cancelling a charged attack via blocking. Shove cancelling is still possible, but there is a brief transition
• Added a brief minimum block time when executing a block to increase the risk of tapping and releasing block to bait a shove from the other player

FUNConomics

• We want to slow down the weapon progression in matches. The current 50 FUNC cost to open a Blue Crate is trivial and has a decent chance of equipping you with a Tier 4 weapon within the first few minutes of the match. Our goal is for each tier of weapon to have its place within the match progression, with Tier 4 melee weapons and guns appearing closer to the finale. We’ve made several changes to nudge things in that direction. Tier 1 and 2 weapons are obtainable early and should be valuable during the first half of the match. Tier 3 weapons are harder to reach because the FUNC cost of Blue Crates has increased. Tier 4 melee weapons and guns are only available through Airdrops and Match Events, and the costs of those Airdrops are significantly higher
• FUNC Bounty on death. The base reward for killing another player is now 40 FUNC, but a player’s value increases by 15 FUNC for each kill they’ve gotten during a match (i.e. a player with 2 kills is worth 70 FUNC). Keep an eye on the scoreboard to see who the juiciest targets are
• We’ve done a full pass on the Air Drop values, with Tier 3 weapons generally requiring 100 FUNC and Tier 4 weapons generally requiring 200 FUNC.
• Blue Crates now cost 100 FUNC to open (previously 50)
• Blue Crates no longer have a small chance to spawn a Tier 4 melee weapon or a gun
• Gold Crates have replaced the blue crates near the central arena. They cost 200 FUNC and contain items that might give you an edge if you have FUNC to spare going into the final stages of the match: Body Armor, Orange Juice, Dynamite, Med Kit, X-plosive Runs, Stamina Boost, MuscleMan Milk, Iron-4-Skin (all with an equal chance to drop)
• Ammo reload for guns now costs 100 FUNC (previously 75)
• Increased cost of crafted knife to 7 FUNC, reduced crafting cost of spear, hatchet, and cudgel to 0 FUNC
• FUNC recycle value for all crafted melee weapons has been normalized to 4
• Destroying a red barrel awards 5 FUNC
• Crafted Explosives now require 30 FUNC to craft. Damage has been increased to 35 (from 20) and radius has been increased to 6 meters (from 4 meters) - This increases the time required to open a Red Crate at the start of the match
• “Loot Pinata” event now spawns one crate instead of two
• Stun Guns now spawn in Green Crates and no longer spawn in Blue or Red Crates

Balance

• Reduced Crafted Blowgun max ammo to 6 (from 9)
• Reduced Crafted Blowgun sickness duration to 10 seconds (from 15 seconds) and allow a single vomit per sickness (instead of 2)
• Increased Chainsaw damage
• Reduced duration of Stamina Stim to 30 seconds (from 2 minutes)
• Stamina regenerates faster in most situations
• Golden Arm bonus damage now scales with charge percentage (no bonus damage is applied if the throw is not charged at all), Golden Arm previously applied its full bonus regardless of charge level
• Cyclops Air Drop now includes Steel Snare instead of Orange Juice
• Trident damage reduced to 9-27 (previously 10-30)
• Axes felt weak compared to spears, so the Expose was wound increased to 10%, 15%, 20% (previously 5%, 10%, 15%)
• Blades felt weak compared to spears, so Bleed wound damage was increased to 6, 10, 14 over 10 seconds (previously 4, 8, 12 over 12 seconds)
• Damage to Stamina caused by Mangler and Submission perks reduced to 50% of weapon damage (previously 135%)
• Removed the interrupt stagger when being struck while holding a ranged weapon (you will still be disarmed)

Other Changes

• Max FPS is unlocked by default
• Shadow Quality at Low now has even greater performance optimizations by reducing shadow resolution and accuracy. Shadow Quality at High now includes greater accuracy in shadows and will incur additional performance cost
• New announcer VO for Med Stations
• Removed Cheapskate perk
• Revised scoreboard visuals
• Improved shove animations
• Bridges now have Airdrop landing pads with shorter flight paths (but more exposed to other players)
• Fix for a bug where invisible player collision would remain after death
• Polished spear attack animations
• Fix for bug that allowed players to interact with Airdrop landing pads through barriers
• Fix for bug where starting with Mantracker or Alarm Gun in practice mode positioned the item incorrectly in the player’s hand
• Fix for a bug where you could stack Punji Sticks in certain situations
• Fixed a bug where perks and customizations would not always load in offline mode
• Removed the player highlight that was indicating a player had Dig Deep perk equipped (looked too much like Iron-4-Skin highlight, we’ll implement something custom later if the UI icon is insufficient)
• Med Kit now fully heals players with Big Boned perk
• Fix for floating lily pads and detritus allowing traps to be placed on top of them
• Fix for bug where disarming a player who was charging a throw was not always working properly
• Changed default video settings, added option to auto-detect video settings (from front end menu)
• Improved several hit reaction animations and reduced the distance players move when taking the hit

Once again we appreciate your patience and support as we continue our mission to do Early Access right.

We’ll see you on the island!

Hotfix 90926 (May 6, 2016)

Greetings Contestants!

We’ve released a hotfix today that makes the following changes:

• Framerate improvements
• Reduced load times
• Fix for issue where some users could not progress past a black screen when launching the game or loading into a match
• Fix for issue where some users were missing perks and/or clothing upon loading into a match

Hotfixes represent a platform for us to deliver small changes ahead of our update schedule. If you continue to have issues, please report them at help.theculling.com. You can read all about the Trials of the Isle update here.

Though combat and balance changes are not being introduced in this hotfix, we have listened to your feedback and more changes are on their way! Our process for combat iteration moving forward looks like this:

• Work with the community to compile a definitive list of issues (i.e. bugs, design/balance, network performance)
• Assemble a plan of attack (and tell you about it)
• Roll out a preview build on a test server (that all players can access should they choose)
• Iterate as necessary
• Release a comprehensive combat update to the live game

We have completed step 1 and we’re nearly finished with step 2. Our current goal is to announce our planned changes and launch the test server next week in lieu of the regularly scheduled patch.

Additionally, we here at Xaviant want to thank you for your overwhelming support and patience as we continue to evolve The Culling. Your feedback is not only welcome, but necessary as we continue our mission to do Early Access right.

We’ll see you on the island!