We’ve obviously been working on this update for a while and only started communicating in earnest about it more recently. In all that time, we’ve never really sat down and fully explained what exactly the update is all about and some of the major changes coming with it.
Two big parts of our intentions with Overhaul are to improve gameplay and visual quality. In this specific post, we will be explaining some of the gameplay changes (all subject to change in upcoming playtesting) as well as showing off updated art on weapons, attachments and vehicles. We’ll cover some of the other things in the update in later dev blogs.
Gameplay
Class weapon pools
We believe a large-scale military class based shooter like ours is best balanced and most fun when weapon availability reflects class role. We saw a lot of the feedback Battlefield 6 received regarding open weapons on all classes, and we wondered if we couldn’t improve on our own weapon availability ourselves. The current version feels a little arbitrary, so we are refining it in Operation Overhaul.
Movement rework
- Drop-shotting nerf
- When players attempt to drop shot, their recoil will now be affected making it harder to maintain their target
- Standing, crouch and prone now have new animations involving you reaching down with your hand and vice versa.
- When a player is prone, there is now a limit to how fast you can swivel around. Once a player reaches that threshold, their turn speed is significantly reduced.
- Air strafe reduction
- When attempting to immediately turn around, your character will encounter a slight pause rather than an instant shift in momentum.
- New sprint feature
- An increase in speed will engage after a few seconds of sprinting in a straight line and continue until stopping sprinting or turning too much.
- Previously players would vault OVER objects, reducing their speed and evasion in fights. Now players will mantle on top of objects rather over objects, which has also been sped up.
- We also implemented a fix for player snapping and sliding when wiggling their mouse
Attachment rebalancing
All attachments have been fully rebalanced to allow players to refine each weapon’s combat role to their liking.
Sniper bolt rebalance
- Bolt A – increased bolt speed
- Bolt B – increased weapon sway, bolt while ADS
- Bolt C – increased velocity, slower bolt time, cannot bolt while ADS
- Bolt D – slower bolt speed, faster ADS, auto bolt cycling
- Bolt E – fastest bolt speed, cannot bolt while ADS, slower ADS time, reduced velocity
Grips
- Vertical grips will focus more on vertical recoil and first shot kick
- Angled grips will reduce more horizontal recoil
- Hybrid grips will focus on multiple areas of the weapon
- Handling grips will focus on reload speed, ADS time, and draw speed
Barrels
- Unlike the current version of BattleBit, range is now something you will gain with Barrel attachments. Now, some barrels will now give a better drop off. Example: pairing a carbine with a Long Barrel will increase its range and velocity, but with a penalty to weapon handling such as slower ADS speed and draw speed.
- Added more suppressor options.
Weapon rebalancing
We have also introduced some new gunplay mechanics that were not present in the previous playtest nor the public version.
- Recoil recovery
- Helps make tap firing more viable and helped us trade visual recoil for real recoil
- Gives a more natural feel to shooting and is the standard in most FPS games
- Any movement you make to compensate the recoil gets subtracted off the recovery so you never double recover. If you drag your mouse down, the system wont over-drag you, and it will maintain your position.
- Recoil smoothing
- Recoil previously ramped up immediately in a single frame, now it’s spread out over a short span of time
- This is one the main way we fixed our visual recoil. Not only with the hipfire, but the 4x scopes as well
- Magazine packing has been reworked. Previously you would take the two least-filled partial mags and combine them Now it take the fullest incomplete mag, and tops it off using the most empty mags available.
- One full target mag = 1 packing operation / animation, even when it takes multiple source mags to fill it up. This makes it easy to understand that pressing the pack mags button will give you one full mag as result, if possible.
Weapon identity
Weapons are better distinguished from each other with more distinct stats and serve clearer gameplay roles.
- Weapons now have “engagement ranges” in which they deal their maximum damage
- SMG’s and PDW’s for close ranges (0-35m)
- Carbines and ARs for medium ranges (35-70m)
- BRs for medium/long ranges (70-100m)
- DMR/Snipers for longer ranges (100-300m+)
- The FAMAS will now be burst only rather than full auto and semi, but with a great fire rate and better damage
- The M249 now has better recoil control the longer you fire it, and also has a higher rate of fire
- The Vector is now unique ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
- DMRs ramp up the recoil the faster you shoot, so slower shots will be more precise
- Sniper rifles have been adjusted: you either have a great handling sniper rifle, with lower damages or higher damage and lower handling
- TTK As we have previously mentioned, we want people to have a reasonable amount of time to react to being shot at without shooting itself feeling sluggish or like you’re slinging foam darts at your target. We tried a new TTK that addresses this problem in our November playtest. However, with that TTK we did not take into account the average player accuracy and the average engagement distance. Now we have accounted for that, and the threshold is reached faster than the previous iteration. This TTK sits in-between the old playtest and the current version of BattleBit, creating what we feel is a good middle ground.
Remember: These are an active WIP and will require player feedback in the next OPEN playtest
Class changes
Each class will now have unique perks to better fit their role as well as reworked health pools. Reworked health pools help with better class balancing and role refinement. A support player is more likely to be on the frontline laying down heavy fire while a recon stays back and stays more discreet.
- Assault (100hp)
- Faster reload
- Faster ADS
- Enter increased sprint speed state faster
- Medic (100hp)
- Faster bandaging
- Drag downed players faster
- Allies are revived with more health
- Support (125hp)
- Placements are placed at full health
- Build and unbuild placements faster
- Increased maximum health
- Engineer (100hp)
- Nearby enemy gadgets are highlighted through walls
- Explosive indicators are visible at longer ranges
- Enter vehicles and switch seats faster
- Recon (90hp)
- Increased spotting duration
- Switch between weapons faster
- Enemies you spot are outlined briefly
Preset Loadouts
Added 3 preset loadout options (can be renamed to your liking)
Spawning
- You can spawn on teammates that are within objectives that are contested
- We originally had spawning on contested objectives very early (pre early access release, maybe even like 2020), but people would get spawn camped so it was removed. In Overhaul there will be a better spawn system where you spawn on teammates and you can’t be spawn camped at a point
Changing Squad points into Field Points
In our previous playtest people were confused about field points and how they even worked. Field points are a replacement for squad points. The problem with squad points was the dependency on other people and was a shared pool of points. This is an active WIP that we are still iterating on but here is a run down of what we would like to see from this system:
- Field points are a reward for teamplay
- Field points are team focused not squad focused. You are able to help your entire team and earn field points
- Field points are YOUR own personal points. They not shared by your squad
- Field points have been rebalanced and scale better for items like placements
- When spawning on a teammate that is on a contested point, it will not cost any field points (it did in the playtest, but that was a bug)
- Spawning on a squad mate outside of an objective WILL cost field points
Weapons
Weapons have seen huge changes, not only in terms of gameplay balancing but also audio improvements, proper shell ejection and higher model quality with little to no impact on performance.
Vehicles
With the vehicle rework, the goalpost for us on the art side was to further develop our entire style away from the “toycar-like” appearance. We wanted to fully utilize the benefit of custom textures while still keeping triangle counts in a low ballpark to not impact performance. The model should, like the sound does now, clearly visually indicate an interactable feature and present itself as an active threat on the battlefield.
The updated models are work in progress. Please note that the camouflage you see is not necessarily our final choice for a pattern or coloring for the vehicle, just something we’re using for now as part of the texturing process.
Speaking of vehicles: we’re still working on vehicle physics since our last dev blog. We’re trying a wider turning radius that matches better to the current version and giving vehicles a little more weight.
Conclusion
In later dev blogs, we will be discussing more of what is coming in Operation Overhaul such as maps, UI and audio. The team has been busy working on getting things ready for the next playtest including fixing bugs, improving vehicle physics, tweaking weapons, and continuing to stress test audio systems. We don’t have any updates yet on exactly when the performance test will be, but we’ve been making great progress and will let you know as soon as we’re ready to share. If you haven’t already make sure to join the Discord and select the “Performance Tester” role under “Channels and Roles” section to be notified about the test.
