After a few weeks rest, the Dirty Bomb servers are now live for key holders.
Anyone who took part in the previous closed beta weekends can now jump back into the Dirty Bomb action from today. The servers are now live and this time there are no planned wipes which make it more worthwhile checking out at this stage.
Players who took part in the February and March beta weekends are also being thrown some extras, a Limited Edition Obsidian Load-Out Card. There’s a whole bunch of additions with the game now back online including loadout card improvements, balance changes, ui updates, and bug fixes.
With the servers now staying up permanently and new content likely to be added in the weeks ahead, this is a good time to ascertain whether you want to actually stick with the game long-term. It’s not perfect by any means but we’ll be taking another look at what’s changed in the days ahead.
Here’s the important update notes:
Full Changelog
Ability Balance
Proxy
- Increased Proximity Mine cooldown to 30s (from 25s)
- This increases the cooldown to the same as Fragger’s grenades and should marginally reduce her killing potential which is shown as being too high in the Echo data
Fragger
- Reduced Frag Grenade damage to 150 (from 160)
- Careless Frag grenades will still kill Fragger but this should reduce the number of multi-kills seen in game, and bring him a little closer to the other Mercs in terms of stopping power
Arty
- Artillery targeted at a wall will now land in front of that wall, rather than on top
- This should make the ability much easier to use and more effective in a large number of situations
Skyhammer
- Reduced Airstrike cooldown to 70s (from 90s)
- This should make the ability a little more effective and fun to use, based on user feedback and XP/minute data
Weapon Balance
Hollunds 880 Shotgun
- Increased shotgun pellet spread by ~10%
- This is to reduce the effectiveness of the Shotguns at range (a common complaint seen during the tests) without impacting their close-range power
Remburg 7 Shotgun
- Increased shotgun pellet spread by ~10%
- This is to reduce the effectiveness of the Shotguns at range (a common complaint seen during the tests) without impacting their close-range power
BR-16 Rifle
- Reduced bullet damage to 15 (from 16)
- Burst-fire rifles are currently slightly too effective compared to their counterparts and this should reduce their damage output without severely impacting their killing potential
Stark Rifle
- Reduced bullet damage to 15 (from 16)
- Burst-fire rifles are currently slightly too effective compared to their counterparts and this should reduce their damage output without severely impacting their killing potential
Dreiss AR Rifle
- Increased bullet damage to 25 (from 24) and Reduced Fire Rate to 300rpm (from 360)
- This should increase the one-shot effectiveness of the single-shot rifle as it will now deals 50 damage per headshot. The reduced the fire-rate to put more emphasis on well placed single-shots over spam
Gameplay
- Updated the amount of XP required to reach each account level
- Ranked matchmaking is now unlocked at level 7
- Default mouse sensitivity changed to 10 based on player data, as it was the most common non-default value used during the two matchmaking weekends
- Reloading now correctly cancels the iron-sighting of a weapon
- Updated several Support actions to award Support XP rather than Combat XP
- Removed automatic player idle-kick based on XP
- Healing effects are now more visible in first person
- Added gas damage and death events
- Changed Tier 1 Merc price to 30,000 credits
User Interface
- Added a Store tab to the main menu for buying additional Equipment Cases
- Muting and Vote-kicking players can now be performed on the scoreboard
- Vote kick now displays success or failure message after vote completes
- Added option for custom key-bindings for Merc switching when incapacitated
- Matchmaking region selection is now saved
- Added Australia region to matchmaking options
- V-sync is now forced ON in the front-end
- Removed 640 x 480 resolution option
- Tweaked FE background to improve foreground element visibility
- Several End Game Review screen improvements
Maps
- Underground:
- Replaced first capture objective with a destroy objective, also replaced secondary doors with generator powered gates
- All Maps:
- Fixed numerous collision & lighting issues
- Fixed numerous cut-scene issues
- Fixed objective logic when handling things like client reconnects
- Secondary objective doors will now kill players caught in them while closing
Art
- Loadout Cards:
- Updated all Loadout Card Merc poses, skins and lighting
- Updated weapon skins to reflect Loadout Card rarity
- Updated Merc skins for the new Loadout Card rarity system
- Increased the size of the green-dot on the Stark AR scope
- Updated various shop signs and posters throughout the levels
Audio
- Updated main menu music
- Added new music based on objective and match status
- Added several new short stings based on objective state changes
- Added audio for the different levels of badge awards
- Made the commander speech duck music and SFX
- Made in-game barks duck music and SFX more aggressively
- Added audio to end game review screens
Animation
- Improvements to the Basic Training intro cameras and character animations
- Fixed numerous animation issues including reloads not always playing in 3rd person
- Improved several first person animations
Notable Bug Fixes
- Fixed server-browser ‘Has Players’ filter so it functions correctly
- Nitros augment now correctly speeds up Minigun spin-up time, rather than slowing it down
- Fix issue where players were seeing double the number of badges than which they actually earned
- Removed player collision from discarded sleeping bags
- Fixed the killer’s load-out card not always rendering in-game
- Fixed issue where game review does not show XP/Progression on stopwatch matches
- Fix for defib sound continuing after death
- Fixed win bonus for credits to use correct values
- Fixed issues with explosives not damaging Healing Stations
- Fixed Auto-join feature so it actually retries connection to server
- Fixed issues caused by continuous sprint and reload key spam
- Fixed for Mid-air badge being awarded for killing grounded players
- Fixed issue with contracts not getting full XP updates on stopwatch
- Fixed bugs with teams not being correctly sorted by skill-rating in Matchmaking
- Fixed issue where player with highest rating would be put on the same team every time
- Fixed bug with Grenade Juggler augment allowing the player to throw infinite grenades
- Fixed numerous audio bugs including several ability explosions not playing at all times
- Spectators no longer get their contracts updated at the end of match
- Using a mounted gun while holding a laser painter no longer causes all kinds of terrible things to happen
- Fix for spamming F breaking C4 plants
- Fix for MG nests not overheating when first mounting
- Fixed a bug where people can shoot through the container on the last delivery objective on Bridge