Hello all,
The first part of the 6th Anniversary Update was huge and introduced many radical changes in the game. Some of the changes greatly improved the game while others did not work so well on release. This part of the update aims to tweak and polish the new features and changes introduced in the last update, while also introducing its own quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.
The resource pack update is being delayed until after Minecraft 1.17’s release on June 8th, so we can make sure that it works on the new version.
WEAPON RECOIL CHANGES
In the last update, we reduced the base recoil of weapons in exchange for decreasing the recoil recovery percentage when the player is firing full auto.
While well-intentioned, the change made the first few shots have too little recoil on some weapons. Since the first few shots are the most predictable, we wanted to revert the base recoil in order to increase the skill required to land them, in exchange for increasing the recoil recovery again to make later shots climb less than before.
What remains unchanged from the last update is that semi-auto and burst modes, as well as firing your weapon in controlled bursts, will still make your recoil recover almost completely to the starting point.
Non-recovering recoil percentage when firing full auto: 30% -> 22.5%
Non-recovering recoil percentage when spamming in semi/burst: 12% -> 10%
Base vertical recoil of most automatic weapons: increased by ~15%
BALANCE CHANGES
- AUG: bullet velocity slightly increased, vertical recoil greatly increased (in addition to the increase above)
As a bullpup weapon, the AUG it should have a higher muzzle climb than other rifles, but higher bullet velocity as well. This change makes the AUG more realistic while also being an overall nerf to improve it balance-wise.
- Shotguns: increased damage dropoff by 10% (partially reverts previous buff); added minimum damage at 40 percent
This nerf decreases the power of shotguns in mid range while adding a minimum damage limit at long ranges that should not matter much in gameplay, but carries across their true damage dropoff better in the “/loadout stats” GUI, as the damage dropoff curve in GunColony has always been logarithmic and previously led to strange results being displayed in this GUI. The KS-23 with Slug Rounds is not affected by this nerf.
GRENADE CHANGES
After the last update, we got a lot of complaints about grenade spam which was driven by an increase in the accessibility of grenades in the last update. Players would use grenades to spawn kill with no way for enemies to counter them. This prompted both a direct nerf to grenades, as well as a change to the throwing mechanic to make them harder to spam. As a side effect of these changes, grenades in Mob-Arena and Competitive have been greatly improved as well!
Grenade mechanic changes:
- When throwing a grenade, your own horizontal (x,z) velocity is now added to the grenade velocity
- Y-velocity isn’t added to the grenade, because it is very unpredictable in Minecraft and works weirdly due to ping. No jump throws, sorry
- Throwing grenades around corners quickly will now require more thought than before
- Grenade velocity reduced from 30 m/s to 25 m/s
- This is the same speed that the Stick Grenade used to have in Mob-Arena
- You now need to be moving forwards to throw the grenade as far as before
- You can now left click to short throw a grenade!
- The short throw has a velocity of 15 m/s
Grenade nerfs:
- HE Grenade supply cost: 3 -> 4
- Frag Grenade supply cost: 4 -> 5, price in shop $600 -> $800, damage increased by 4% (since longer fuse isn’t ideal for close range, it’s the hardest affected by the throwing distance changes, so we wanted to give something back)
- Incendiary supply cost: 4 -> 7 (we want to make sure that you can’t use two incendiary grenades without massive sacrifices in the rest of the loadout, because they are too effective at trapping people in spawn)
- Molotov supply cost: 5 -> 8
- HK69A1 supply cost: 8 -> 9
- RPG7 (and M202): aim down sights speed greatly decreased
- Molotov ($800) in shop replaced by Incendiary ($1000)
Other grenade changes:
- TAG removed from the shop because it made armor stands in the maps glow as well. Replaced by HE Grenade ($600)
- Mob-Arena grenades throwing speed increased from 15 m/s to 25 m/s (now matches PVP)
- Mob-Arena Stick Grenade damage increased, as its throwing distance is no longer better than regular grenades
- Bandage added to PVP at 6 supply cost to provide a powerful alternative to grenades; also available in Mob-Arena
MOB-ARENA CHANGES
We have received a lot of feedback that ammo was so plentiful in Mob-Arena that it often still felt infinite. We believe that having plenty of ammo is a good feature in Normal mode but that the ammo drop rate should be reduced for Expert mode.
- The probability of a normal mob dropping ammo is reduced from 9% in all difficulties to 9% in Normal, 7% in Hard, and 5% in Expert difficulty
- Endless counts as Normal mode plus a greater amount of kills is coming from explosives, so you should still have plenty of ammo
- The amount of ammo dropped by bosses and mini-bosses has been reduced, especially in Endless
In addition, we wanted to increase the cost of Bonus Loadouts to make them less abusable to get items at a discount.
- Increased the price of Bonus Loadouts in Mob-Arena from $2000 to $5000 (+ weapon prices)
- Note that if you were already going to buy a Bonus Loadout, then it is still worth it to add explosive items to get a discount. For example, the Bandage adds $400 to the cost of a loadout, which is a 20% discount compared to buying it directly in the shop. It is simply no longer a good idea to buy loadouts just for the discounted explosives.
WEAPON MECHANICS CHANGES
In addition to tweaking grenades directly, we also want to address other mechanics that players have been able to abuse to engage enemies while giving them next to no chance to fight back. In addition to grenades, this could be done by peeking a corner at a rapid rate, firing a short burst at enemies, and then quickly hiding behind cover again. Due to Minecraft’s inherent rendering delay, this caused the enemy to be unable to react in time. Thus, we have added some penalties to try and disincentivize this behavior.
- While sprint jumping and you have not landed yet, your progress towards full ADS is slowed down as if the aim down sights time is increased by 300 ms on Pistols, 500 ms on SMGs, and 700 ms on all other weapons. The ADS speed immediately returns to normal as soon as you land
This penalty is modifiable by attachments and will now be part of the effect of the “Sprint-out Speed” stat on the Stippled Grip Tape. (The existing effect on movement inaccuracy recovery speed is kept, but the effect that allows you to sprint again sooner after firing is removed – it’s “sprint-out speed” and not “sprint-in speed” after all.) The new barrel modifications planned for the next update will also affect Sprint-out Speed.
- Receiving hit stun in mid air will now mark you as no longer sprint jumping
This change is complementary to the above change. Since hit stun tends to lock you in the air, the above sprint jump penalty would apply for longer if you were hit while midair, rendering the player helpless. To prevent this from happening, the penalty is removed as soon as you receive stun.
- Exploitative use of cover may now result in a brief deceleration effect similar to hit stun
This effect is triggered in very specific circumstances: moving at full speed in one direction, aiming down sights for less than 1.5 seconds, then unscoping and immediately attempting to move full speed in the opposite direction. This should never be triggered during normal movement for the vast majority of players.
WEAPON ZOOM CHANGES
The scope zoom mechanic in the game has been re-coded, and all zoom values have been revisited. This resulted in the following improvements:
- While scoping in, the zoom now increases gradually over the course of the ADS animation
- For weapons with very long ADS times, the scope will now have a slight but visible delay before raising up on screen during the ADS animation
- The amount of zoom on the weapons is now more accurate and matches the weapon description better
- The default zoom level of weapons has been improved:
- SMGs, Pistols, Shotguns: 1.35X
- Deagle/Revolvers, Assault Rifles, LMGs: 1.45X
- Sniper Rifles with iron sights & SR-25: 1.6X
- Red dot optics now have 3 tiers of zoom instead of 2
- The FOV shrinking effect when firing now has a consistent magnitude for weapons of different zoom amounts
- All scopes now have an actual zoom amount much closer to the advertised zoom amount, both for weapon default scopes and modification scopes
- Certain sniper scope zoom levels were changed
- Added a workaround to fix a vanilla/Bukkit bug that made FOV changes when scoping in/out more sudden than intended when using weapons with high ADS Movement Speed
- This workaround is far from perfect, but much better than nothing
OTHER CHANGES
- Fixed a years-old bug where left clicking to switch fire mode, suppressor, etc. would not be detected if there is a block in front of you
- Changed the name of the weapon sorting rule “PVP Price” to “PVP Supply Cost”
- A-10 Airstrike price: $3000 -> $2500 (lack of area denial means it doesn’t deserve a higher price than Cluster Strike)
- Drone Strike price: $1500 -> $3000 (we simply don’t want people to use it as often, as it tends to cause lag and is unrealistic due to using a recon drone model. Drone Strike will be completely removed from PVP as soon a new airstrike option is introduced.)
- Added a system to clear PVP loadouts which are too expensive so that we can adjust the prices of weapons
- HK69A1 now correctly has increased damage in Mob-Arena
- HK69A1 now has one more ammo in Mob-Arena to better balance it with the RPG-7
- HK69A1 no longer uses the “Frag Grenade” icon in the kill feed
- Significantly decreased damage absorption in Mob-Arena making bosses faster to kill and use up less of your ammo
- Increased boss health scaling in Endless to make bosses take similar time to kill in Endless
- You can no longer trigger the “100 million seconds reload animation” on rocket launchers in Mob-Arena
- Slightly raised the height of the Horse head hitbox to make it more accurate
