Deployed as infantry units in militaries across the globe, the SI is one of Horzine’s most in-demand bioweapons solutions. Our most recent model comes to market with a variety of new features—including a biological projectile that can cause temporary blindness. Affordable and adaptable, this next-generation fighter delivers the tactical edge necessary for battlefield dominance.

April Update Preview
Agents, before we head into the weekend and close out the month, we wanted to give you a little sneak peek into upcoming changes that will drop with our next update in April. We’ll dive into two subjects that are pretty massive in how they affect the game: Sound Occlusion and NPC Behavior.

Sound Occlusion Rework
A massive rework of how we handle audio is dropping with the april update, enabling occlusion on a wide array of gameplay affecting sounds.

This affects everything from field upgrade chests being open to weapons being fired or gadgets being placed to differing degrees. For instance, you can expect to hear weapons better through walls than a chest being opened.

From a developer perspective, we now have full control on what we want to flag as “occluding” and what should not be, meaning a table in the center of the room won’t occlude a gunshot for instance, but a structural wall will.

This is something we’ll keep a close eye (and ear) on through the patch cycle to gather feedback and see how we iterate on it moving forward, but we are excited to roll this change and see how it affects your experience.

NPC behavior overhaul

There is quite a bit of new on how NPC operate this update, so let’s go through the new systems:

Item Awareness
You probably had a moment in the past where a NPC would stop near an intel and looked very suspicious. Are they hacking? Is it a player? These moments are fun, but they used to happen purely by random chance, a NPC deciding to walk there with no rhyme or reason.

This is no longer the case. NPC can now know where they spawn items and NPC with a high internal “Suspicious” rating will hang around them within interacting distance to better approximate a player’s behavior and blur the line further between players and NPC.

Running Ratio based on gameflow
How much NPC run overall will now be affected by the current state of the game. Running will be more rare in the early game and much more present in the extract for example, scaling as the action ramps up to fit the pace of the game.

Reaction to danger zones
The fear effect on NPC is dictated by what we call danger zones. A danger zone is generated around the shooter and where the shot lands. In the past, these zones were both the same side and would not account for occlusion by walls or floors. This could lead to afraid npc giving away a fight from very far, causing more third parties.

Now, we support different danger zone sizes and we can occlude the danger using the same flag we use for sound occlusion, making the aggro of npc more predictable and closer to what you can hear. This should limit weird situations where NPCs two floors above a fight are afraid if a bullet lands near the top of a wall below for instance.

We will be unveiling more changes and additions you can expect in April very soon, including more map changes, gameplay tweaks, bug fixes and a few other surprises.

This is my preferred character. I played the game today and found I was no longer Oisten Jägerhorn, moreover, he is not available as an option in the character list.

Operation Overhaul Live Balance Update
Agents, we are dropping our first live balance update for Operation Overhaul effective immediately. This requires no download from your part and will automatically take effect in-game.

Our current mindset with this update is to keep the most oppressive and unpleasant elements targeted by feedback in check while we continue parsing through feedback for larger overarching changes in the future.

With all this said, let’s have a look:

Damage Falloff
Damage Falloff is one of the biggest changes to DI’s sandbox this update and as such, we are monitoring feedback, analyzing numbers and taking a deeper look at where it should go next. While we are having a larger look at the mechanic, we still wanted to make full-auto weapons more lenient in the meantime as this was highlighted by the community as the most difficult aspect of this new reality.

• Changed start distance on falloff for full-auto weapons 10m => 15m

Guards Behavior
We are aware of player’s frustration around the amount of guards that can quickly crowd around a duel when guards are in melee only mode. We are reducing the amount of guards actively attacking you when you have no heat to one. This should help reduce the chaos when you add this up to all participants in a fight by cutting the aggro-ed guards by half.

• Max amount of actively aggro-ed guard without a heat level 2 => 1

Agents
Ace
Ace received a slew of changes around her passive and we noted a large amount of feedback that the charge now feels clunky because of when it starts when shooting your weapon. We’ll be looking at this in a more in-depth manner in the near future, but we wanted to give Ace players a bit more charge speed to offset this in the short term.

Weapon
Queen of Diamond

• Charge time shortened 1s => .65s

Jack of Diamond

• Charge time shortened .45s => .3s

King of Diamond

• Charge time shortened 1.3s => 1s

Chavez
We received some good feedback on the fact that a tight ammo economy is not a fun gameplay lever, we are moving away from this on two weapons this update, including Chavez’s Duke by giving him a full clip per box.

Weapon
Mod 2: Duke

• Ammo amount gained per box raised 2 => 4

Larcin
In the same spirit as Chavez’s change, we are giving a more lenient ammo economy to Larcin’s Violence to allow it to shine more as a unique option in his arsenal.

Weapon
Mod 2: Violence

• Ammo amount gained per box raised 4 => 8

Expertise
Grande Finale continues to be a very strong tool for Larcin and his team. We are making its cooldown longer than his other options for now to make its use a bit more of a commitment in a fight, but we are looking at fixing a few issues around its potential interactions that makes it stronger than intended in the near future.

Mod 1: Grande Finale

• Cooldown extended 60s => 75s

Red

The oppressiveness and strength of Red’s charm and heartbreak has been a hot topic of discussion recently. We are taking steps to make the ability less annoying to play against while making sure it’s still a useful tool in Red’s arsenal. We are also toning down the Lovebite shotgun which has been highlighted as the most destructive tool in Red’s arsenal in its current state.

Weapon
Mod 2: Lovebite

• Damage 40 => 37
• Fire Rate 1.15 => 1.05 shots per second

Charm

• Reduced Charmed duration 8s => 5s

Heartbreak

• Heartbreak Duration 8s => 6s
• Heartbreak additional damage now in line with vulnerable status effect 35% => 25%

Squire
Squire’s javelin is in a special position with the release of Operation Overhaul. While it’s one of the weapons that is most affected by recoil in the current state of the game, it’s performing extremely strongly for anyone that can control it. We will look into making the weapon less unwieldy in the future since this is beyond the scope of a live update, but we need to calm down the speed at which it melts opponents in the meantime to level the playing field

Weapon.
Mod 1: Trident

• Damage 11 => 10 per bullet
• Burst fire rate 10 => 9 shot per second
• Headshot Damage 15 => 14
• Reload Speed 2s => 2.2s

Maps
Hard Sell

• Fixed a close player spawn on top of the Auction Hall

Fragrant Shore

• Buffed ‘drawers spawn pools’ to have items more consistently.
• Fixed a keycard spawning behind a bed.

Sound Eclipse

• Buffed ‘drawers spawn pools’ to have items more consistently.
• Tweaked some close spawn points in the habitation section.

Known Issue: Due to the nature of live balancing, visual feedbacks on ammo pickup will display the old amount of ammo until we roll a client update in the future. This will affect Chavez's Duke and Larcin's Violence ammo pickup prompt in the meantime.