Soldiers!

The next game update will focus on balance and the tactical aspects of PvP game modes, flashbang mechanics and overhauled revival effects.

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Switching sides in PvP matches

As you know, teams change sides in various PvP game modes (“Plant the Bomb”, “Capture” and alike) every 5 rounds. That makes competitive gameplay far too repetitive and side-dependent, as ‘rolling’ a wrong side can often result in a near-certain loss, more so when deprived of the opportunity to turn the tables around.

In the current state, if a team starts on the side that has the upper hand and carries out the same — superior — strategy 5 consecutive rounds, it’ll be enough for them to just play defensive for a single round afterwards to win the match. Meanwhile, their opponent will be denied the chance to retaliate in full.

In the coming update, we’ll address this by making team sides more dynamic, as they will now be based on the total rounds required to win the match.

Let’s say a team needs to win 6 rounds to win the match — that means the sides will be switched after three rounds are played. If that number is odd, it’ll be rounded to the nearest lowest. For example, if a team needs to win 11 rounds to win, it’ll be rounded down to 10 and the teams will switch sides after 5 rounds.

Rounds needed to win the match	6	11
Sides switching in… (before the update)	5	5
Sides switching in… (after the update)	3	5

This will allow us to spice up the PvP gameplay and make it more balanced altogether, addressing the issue with either team winning through a direct successful tactic in short matches. The updated system will also bring out the best in both teams, challenging their skills in both attack and defense alike.

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Flashbang mechanics

Let’s take a moment to go over the current flashbang mechanics. As of now, when a flash grenade goes off, it stuns and blinds any players in its immediate vicinity. The flash itself deals no damage, and blinding doesn’t stop the player from performing any actions.

However, in its current state, there are some aspects that needed to be addressed.

1. When a nade goes off, we send a tracer beam to the player’s “camera” that actually blinds the player if it reaches them. However, if there is any obstacle in this beam’s way, such as a fence or even a bit of grass, no path will be established to the player’s camera and thus, the player won’t be blinded.
2. If there are no obstacles in the way of the beam, the player will be blinded regardless of the head position (facing or away) towards the explosion.

In this update, we’ll be overhauling some of the flashbang mechanics to resolve these issues.

To do that, we’ll first add more tracer beams. That means if the original tracer beam strikes an obstacle and doesn’t reach the player’s camera, the player can still get flashed if three more tracer beams (sent to the sides and up when the nade goes off, see screenshot for reference) make it to the player’s cam — these can also ricochet off hard surfaces. This has also allowed us to resolve the issue with insignificant obstacles described above.

• The strongest blinding effect will be delivered by the main (original) tracer beam just as before.
• Average blinding effect will be applied when the main beam fails to reach the target due to an obstacle, but additional reflected beams were successfully reflected off the walls to the player’s camera.
• Weakest blinding effects will be applied when only some of the additional beams reflected off the surfaces reach the player’s camera.

Second, we’ll reduce the actual flashbang explosion radius, making it more chambered as a whole. That means a player will only be flashed if they are extremely close to the explosion.

And lastly, camera position will also play a crucial part in the strength of the flashbang effect (see screenshot below). 

• If the grenade goes off right before the player (in the red zone), the flashbang effect will be the strongest.
• If the player turns their head a little to the sides (depicted by the yellow cones), the effect will have an average strength and duration.
• If the player turns their head away considerably further (as depicted by the green zone), the effect will be minimal.

As a result, the players will be able to react to flashbangs and reduce their stunning effect by turning away from the explosion or positioning themselves properly. The reworked mechanics make the flashbangs highly efficient in close quarters, and nearly pointless at long ranges and in open spaces. Altogether, the new mechanics will simulate the real life flashbang effects, making their use also more authentic.

These mechanic changes required us to change several Helmets’ bonuses that grant flashbang effect reduction. Due to the outdated flashbang mechanics, some of the low-level helmets provided little to no protection from flashes, while the more advanced ones proved a bit too efficient instead. In order to close this gap and get some visible results, we’ve tweaked the values a little bit. Keep in mind that these specifications are preliminary and may change per testing results.

This complex overhaul will provide a better tactical experience and make flashbangs an interesting tool in their niche situations.

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Visual effects of revival

Player reviving — whether through an allied Medic or Resurrection Coins — has always been a fundamental gameplay feature in Warface. However, there have been some issues with the clarity of this mechanic as well, causing players to believe that instead of being resurrected, they were watching other players’ in first-person mode. As a result, we’ve decided to spice the reviving up with some custom visual and sound effects, thus making it a more clear and understandable process, and letting the revived player get back to the game faster.

Please keep in mind that these specifications are preliminary and may change per testing results.

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