Please keep in mind that this is a Work In Progress changelog and things are subject to change (items may also be removed or added) before the final release.
Agents, it’s time to lift the curtain on our biggest content update yet with “Of Queens and Kings”! We are extremely excited to show you what we have in store, so let’s not delay and dive into what’s new right away:
- The long awaited arrival of private lobbies
- A new Operation (map) with Sound Eclipse
- A new Spy: Octo
- A new catalog “Of Queens and Kings”
- Tweaks, bug fixes, and balance changes!
Major Additions
New Spy: Octo, The Boisterous Hacker
Introducing Octo
In the information world, few names attract as much attention as Octo. The self-proclaimed “King of hacking” has earned his reputation through un-rivaled skills and boisterous showmanship. An old acquaintance of Madame Xiu, Octo is as much a rival as an ally, working together countless times and trying to one up each other on every possible occasion. Even though she is annoyed by his extravagant attitude, Xiu herself would have to admit that he is the best when it comes to hacking into something.
The rumor goes that after a security breach in Deceive Inc.’s servers, Octo was immediately hired…
Bringing intel to a gunfight
Octo joins the roster as our newest disruptor character, introducing with him a whole new perspective on intel. Octo is all about Intel. Acquiring it. Spending it. Going all in on a gamble. Octo’s weapons all have a unique trait: their hip fire shots use ammo, but transform into intel-powered weapons when aiming down sight with unique properties.
All of Octo’s expertise are focused on ways to earn intel, from gathering it instantly to stealing it from rivals in a myriad of ways. On the flipside, his passives are all about spending intel to get benefits.
We hope you enjoy the push and pull of intel as you get to know Octo better in the coming weeks!
New Catalog: Of Queens and Kings
For this season, we jump in the cutthroat world of high fashion with the chess-inspired “Of Queens and Kings” collection. You’ll be able to earn new regal costumes, intro poses and calling cards as you make your way through 50 levels of unlocks.
Purchasing the premium catalog will give you instant access to our newest agent, Octo, and exclusive rewards. As a reminder, players can still buy Octo with Credits earned by simply playing.
New Reactive Ink “The entire court”
Catalog 3 comes with a new reactive ink that behaves differently from the one found in Neon Nights. “The entire court” will change appearance depending on your current disguise level as well as changing when outside of cover.
Private Lobbies Release
Following our Beta in September, we are now ready to unleash private lobbies in a definitive manner with Season 3! By far the most requested feature ever since our alphas, private lobbies will allow you to invite friends and play the map of your choice in solo, duos, or trios.
You’ll find private lobbies in the mode select screen where you can get started OR you will automatically be taken to the private lobbies menu if your party size exceeds 3.
A few notes about private lobbies:
- XP gains are 50% of regular matches XP.
- XP booster do not work in private lobbies and won’t deplete during a private lobby match
- Bonds Pile and Credit purses do not spawn in private lobbies
- You cannot start a private lobby with less than 2 players
To join or host a private lobby session, simply go to the matchmaking type menu and click on private lobby.
New Operation (Map): Sound Eclipse
Hazen, famous singer, artist and writer, is finally ready to unveil their newest performance: AGE OF DARKNESS, an opera that will revolutionize performance art forever.
The venue: The Valkyrie, the world’s first luxury space station for the rich and famous.
The catch? Hazen’s performance is a cover to unleash a powerful EMP device from space. Hazen, a true artist at heart, believes technology has rendered humanity incapable of creativity. The Valkyrie Comet, to them, is the ultimate sign of the decadence that technology has brought. If Hazen is not stopped, the highest note in their show will trigger the device, sending humanity’s technology back to the dark age. A veritable… sound eclipse, if you will.
General Changes
Account level cap raise
New season, new level cap. We are raising the cap to level 500 with the all-new Spinel ink to unlock as a progression reward.
Audio Occlusion Changes
We’ve made changes to how weapon sounds propagate in maps to make obstructions a bigger factor. In this update, walls and other obstructions will have a bigger effect on blocking sound while open areas will keep sounds propagating from far away. We hope this makes picking fights in closed off rooms safer and more of a strategic consideration.
Player Spawning Rework
After a lot of discussions, player feedback and observations on the spawn system that determines where players start a match, we have a substantial rework to how things work.
This rework has two major goals:
- Reduce the possibility for experienced players to rush other players' spawn by introducing MANY more possible spawn locations with more randomness.
- Give more breathing room in the early moments of a game to prevent having a player right next to you at the start of a match.
The way this system works is with the introduction of “spawn groups”, multiple rooms that are considered mutually exclusive for spawning a player instead of setting single rooms as possible spawn points.
What this means in practice is that you could, for example, spawn in multiple different rooms in silver reef or even in the corridor in front of one of these rooms, but no other player will be able to spawn in this spawn group. This adds quite a bit of variables to where a player could be at spawn.
We have manually revisited every map to tweak them with these new rules and we will keep a close watch on how things go with the new system. Since the spawning system is tweakable live, you can expect some changes to happen in the background without an update.
Matchmaking delay options
A much requested feature from streamers is the addition of matchmaking delay options. We’ve added multiple tweakable settings to help mitigate possible stream sniping from constant delay to random delays within a maximum set by the user.
Room Weighting overhaul
A driving factor on how NPC navigate a map is based on “weights” attributed to room. In this update, a major overhaul of restricted areas weight has been made across the entire game.
This now means that all guard rooms have a balanced weight to not skew certain rooms to have much higher guard traffic than others, making some rooms more desirable to sneak into without a costume early on. This is a subtle change on the surface that should result in a better balanced experience overall.
NPC Vision arc tweak
NPC are getting a vision upgrade with this update. What that means is that the side of npc will be less of a deadzone for them to spot you at various angles. We were very careful to tweak this in a way that still allows players to sneak behind npc, but standing right next to one on their side will result in them noticing you now.
NPC Scolding behavior overhaul
Previously, when a npc spotted a player with the wrong disguise from far away, they would walk slowly to them to scold them. This meant that players could easily run through large restricted areas with very little risk of npc catching up to them. Now, aggro-ed npc that are far away will run toward the player to scold them.
We also think this behavior makes more sense for a player trying to emulate a npc and spotting someone with the wrong disguise from afar which should help blur the line more.
Duo Stats Tracking
Duo mode is losing its experimental tag and gaining full-fledged stat tracking in the stats menu. We’ve been tracking Duo wins for a little while now in the back-end and are finally making it official in the profile menu.
When revived at an extraction terminal in duo or trio, you will now respawn with a random civilian disguise instead of your last disguise before getting eliminated.
New Store Items
We have a new selection of legendary skins, inks and intro poses hitting the store with Season 3. Here’s a preview of Midnight Protect Yu-mi, Luchador Chavez, Marquis Larcin and Under-Convent Red!
Balance
General Balance
Lower Body damage Modifier removal
Since the Misery Empire update, the game has been operating with 3 types of hits: Headshots, body hits and lower body hits. This had multiple effects on the game that we now feel are undesirable.
The main reason we are removing lower body hits modifiers has to do with consistency. With the pace of the fights in Deceive Inc. you often do not notice that the hit you just landed was not a body hit and the change in damage could lead to fights feeling inconsistent or taking more shots than they should.
Lower body hits are also an indirect buff to the strategy of jumping in fights as it increases the likelihood of enemies shooting you in the legs.
We hope this will make combat feel more reliable and consistent by removing some of the noise in the damage between players.
Expertise charging on match start
With this update, you will notice that your expertise at the start of a match starts uncharged instead of being ready to use right away. This is a change we are trying for many different reasons:
- It’s a balancing mechanism against expertises that are very strong in combat in early gameplay. This means combat focused expertise will need some time to come into play and will encourage lower profile play in the early game.
- It gives quick-charging expertise an added appeal in early game vs long charging ones.
- It gives more leeway for cooldown reduction powerups to be appealing in low level slots to get an edge on the competition early on.
Agents Balance
For Season 3, we are bringing a mix of balance changes and reworks to some under-used tools in agents toolsets. We have also put an increased emphasis on bug fixing on our buggiest agents to get them in a better spot. Our focus was mostly on Madame Xiu and Red, but a lot of agents benefitted from the bug fix focus in some ways.
Ace
We gave quite a bit of attention to Ace for the Upper Echelon update and as such she won’t be getting any gameplay changes this update.
Cavalière
We are adjusting Cavalière’s redemptions timers to make it a more competitive choice and give it a stronger fantasy.
Expertise
Mod 2: Redemption
- Downed spies and npcs will no longer expire as an interactable clue (unless the person that eliminated them is no longer alive).
Chavez
Chavez used to have an extremely strong presence a few updates ago, but the compounding effect of nerfs has brought him down significantly. While we need to be careful not to bring him back to a too oppressive status, we are going back on nerfs to his ammo pools to give him a bit more leeway in matches overall.
Weapons
Mod 1:Vigilante
- Starting Ammo 12 => 15
- Ammo per box 2 => 3
- Max ammo 12 => 18
- Starting ammo 6 => 9
Hans
This update we have reworked hit detection on both of Hans projectile based expertise to solve issues where players would sometimes not get an effect applied when they should. We hope this will make using them more efficient, especially in situations with multiple targets in close proximity.
Expertise
Base: Incapacitor Orb
- Increased reliability of hits
- Increased reliability of hits
Larcin
We know Larcin is currently a force to be reckoned with and as such we are tweaking quite a bit on his kit to make his window of opportunity tighter on his expertise and reduce Cadence’s lethality while keeping its longer range identity intact.
Weapons
Mod 1: Cadence
- Burst Fire rate: 10 bullets per second => 9 bullets per second
- Headshot Modifier 1.5 => 1.3
Expertise
Base: Au Revoir
- Duration reduced 6s => 5s
- Duration reduced 15s => 10s
Madame Xiu
We’ve spent a good amount of time on this update to fix some long-standing Xiu bugs (detailed in the bugfix list below) and took the occasion to update her less interesting passives.
Weapons
Base: Zhulong
- Reload time 1.7s s => 1.9s
Mod 1: Krait’s Instinct
- Can see out of cover low health enemies even through walls in a 35m radius around her.
- Now triggers every time a vault terminal is disabled in the first phase.
- Now triggers every time extraction arrives
Sasori
Sasori is getting some buffs to his overall reliability in combat with faster charge time, easier to land projectiles and some tweaks to his damage scaling on mod 2.
Weapons
Base: Ame and Kage
- Increased projectile travel speed
- Kunai Charge time .375s => .3s per kunai (1.5s total => 1.2s total)
- Increased projectile travel speed
- Damage scaling per status effect 50% => 75%
- Increased projectile travel speed
Squire
With Squire, we’ve been looking at under pressure as a good candidate for a buff. A lot of characters in the cast can get amped up without spending their expertise, so we felt it should do a bit more. With this buff Squire got the longest amped up duration in the entire cast and gets a substantial buff to his reload speed to help in tight combat situations.
Expertise
Mod 1: Under Pressure
- Duration 6s =>10s
- Reload speed buff 25% faster =>35% faster
Red
For Red, we are toning down her base weapon a bit to make it less deadly in longer range engagement and give more space for the jack of heart to take that role. We are also overhauling lovebomb to try and make it a much more appealing proposition as a trap.
Weapons
Base: Heartbreaker
- Damage 9 => 8
- Fire rate 6 => 5.7 bullet per second
- Reload time 1.7s s => 1.9s
- Tweaked recoil to give a bit more kick especially in hipfire
- Damage 18 => 20
- Reload time 2.1s s => 1.9s
- Fire Rate 1.15 => 1.30 shot per second
Expertise
Mod 2: Lovebomb
- Lovebomb now gives heartbreak to out of cover enemies in its range instead of charming them back into cover.
- Out of cover allies within the range of the blast regain cover.
Yu-Mi
For Yu-Mi, she settled in a better place with the recent nerfs to her kits. While we are aware that the healing bubble is still a top pick for her, we are mostly looking at future tweaks to make her other options appealing in comparison. Expect to see some changes to her expertise options in the future.
For now, we are adding some utility to one of her passives to make it a more interesting (and chaotic) choice.
Passive
Mod 2: Booby Traps
- Now creates a bubble when destroying rival gadgets too
Gadgets
One of our major areas of focus around gadgets is to diminish the presence of effects that lead to the “Team Deathmatch” impressions on the overall gameflow. We feel Tripwire and Hacktrap are major culprits of this and as such we are reworking their capabilities in this update.
We hope these changes keep these gadgets useful but reduce the pinpoint accuracy of finding rival players and the hopelessness it instills in victims.
Bounce Mat
We are making the cooldown to get your bounce mat higher to make the “drop and forget” strategy less efficient and drive more plays where you go back to pick it up after use.
- Cooldown to regen 45s => 60s
Hacktrap
With Season 2, we gave the hacktrap a massive power boost by making it trap players even when they had the keycard to a door. While this gave the hacktrap a lot of reliability (which it desperately needed), it made it a gadget that has very few counter plays as a victim. With this tweak, we are giving victims more lee-way to disappear into the night after getting hacktrapped while still keeping the gadget’s DNA as an alarm that you can set up anywhere.
- No longer traces but leaves a snapshot of the player that triggered it at the location it was triggered.
- The silhouette stays in place and does not follow the victim, giving them a chance to escape the scene.
- Silhouette shows which spy they are playing as
Tripwire
After a lot of observation, we came to the conclusion that broadcast is a very problematic effect to put into the player's hands. We are keeping the Tripwire almost identical to before but substituting broadcast with a trace. This way, the whole lobby won’t hop into a room as soon as you walk into a tripwire, making it less of a deathmatch summoning machine.
- Replaced broadcast with trace status effect
Turret
We are tweaking the turret a bit to make it more reliable in the time a fight normally takes place. We are not upping its damage, but making it more reactive so that players can see their traps setup bear fruit.
- Deploy Delay 2s=>1s
- Rev Up Time 1s => .5s
- Hit frequency .5s => .4s
Scrambler
We added a distinctive VFX on everything affected by a scrambler to make it easier to read and give a better idea of what it’s currently doing for the user.
- Added a visual effect to everything affected by Scrambler
Umbrella Shield
Like the bounce mat, the umbrella shield gets a higher cooldown to prevent it from being present multiple times in a single prolonged fight.
- Cooldown to regen 45s => 60s
Field Upgrades
Overclock Chip
- Gold 75%=>60%
- Purple 60% => 50%
- No longer affects healing stations and Ammo dispensers
Side note: We have made the ammo dispenser interact faster by default to compensate for this change and make using them more convenient for everyone.
Bug Fixes
General
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to see out of cover spies outline through walls if looking through a teammate’s body.
- Fixed an issue that showed the expertise and gadgets in the HUD as red even when fully charged.
- Fixed an issue where intro poses that were off screen at the start of the player intro would be delayed.
- Fixed issues where some actions would stop players from running when using the “toggle run” feature.
- Fixed an issue where extraction could not be highlighted in navmode when having downed teammates on your team.
- Fixed an issue that showed the tripwire image when unlocking items instead of the correct image.
- Fixed an issue that caused the gamemode to randomly swap back to tutorial after playing matches.
- Fixed some elements that would not update immediately when changing language in settings.
- Tweaked navmode overlay to make sure it does not hide players when a highlighted item is in front of them.
- Items unlocked through mastery level will no longer require to leave to the main menu to be usable when requeuing in the spectate screen.
- Fixed an issue that led to the revive icon being visible when dead in solo.
- Fixed an issue where a revived spy could keep their red outlines for enemies, even in cover.
Agents
Ace
- Fixed an issue with Big Blind where transparent NPCs would remain visible when turning it off while far-away from it.
- Fixed an issue that showed a magazine in hand if meleeing while reloading the king.
Cavalière:
- Fixed an issue that caused Cavalière’s guns to clip inside her notepad during her expertise.
- Fixed an issue where the screen effect of Cavalière’s expertise would stay stuck in the end screen.
- Fixed an issue that made Chavez locket desynced during his expertise animation
- Fixed an issue that led to Chavez base walk being his reverse walk animation.
- Using your expertise right before going back into cover will no longer keep the vfx visible.
- Fixed an issue that led to the neutralize effect staying forever in the hud when dying during the effect and getting revived.
Larcin
- Fixed an issue where Sasori was unable to use his sword inside Larcin’s Grande Finale zone.
Red
- Fixed an issue that led to lovebomb staying active even after Red was eliminated.
- Fixed an issue where Sweet Embrace would cleanse the poison status effect, permitting Red to heal anyway.
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to recall lovebomb for free the first time, but not the second time onward.
- Fixed an issue when players would break charm quickly after receiving it that would keep the locket reticle for the entire match.
- Fixed an issue that could stack the resistant status effect if regaining cover multiple times in a short period.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Red resistance VFX to stay active in the result screen.
- Fixed an issue that caused Naughty List passive to trigger even when Red is dead.
- Fixed an issue that caused the Red trace indicator to stay stuck when regaining cover on victims.
- Fixed an issue that caused Red to not regain cover when using her expertises if she got shot at the same time.
Madame Xiu
- Fixed an issue where using the serpent's bluff expertise, Xiu players could see a red outline on spies in disguise.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Xiu’s from using her third cast of Python’s ruse if the player waited longer than a second before using it.
- Fixed an issue that made players visible from an infinite distance with Krait’s instinct in certain conditions.
- Fixed an issue that led to players teleporting on NPC that were currently off-screen because targeting was too wide.
- Fixed an issue that caused Xiu weapon sounds to continue playing when using expertise while shooting.
- Fixed an issue that kept the “serpent’s bluff” NPC silhouette visible even after the expertise cooldown expired.
- Fixed an issue that allowed Xiu players to teleport around the map by setting a serpent's bluff on a NPC falling off the map.
Sasori
- Fixed an issue that lowered Sasori ammo count in the background when keeping the “fire” input held in an online match.
- Fixed an issue that made Sasori’s footsteps possible to hear even when in cover.
- Sasori will now say his voice lines when changing into a civilian.
- Fixed Sasori’s video reel in agent select not playing completely on Steam Deck.
- Projectile trails now visible from other agents in third person.
Squire
- Fixed an issue with animation scaling while using under pressure that would give the impression that Squire was reloading slower than normal.
- Fixed an issue that caused squire “out” animation to never play when landing melee attacks.
Yu-Mi
- Fixed an issue that made the glint on Yu-Mi’s fully charged slingshot not visible for other players.
- Projectile trails now visible from other agents in third person.
- Breaking an umbrella shield weak point will now give expertise refund when using the energy catalyst passive.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes made Yu-Mi’s pellet visible to other players while in cover.
- Gadget cooldown time will now display correctly on the compoudrier when using base passive.
Gadgets
Bounce Mat
- Fixed an issue where the mat could appear visually inflated when placed in a corner even when not inflated.
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to place one more trap than they should be allowed to.
- Fixed an issue that would cause the hack-trapped VFX to not play if the trapper was too far away from the victim.
Mimic
- Fixed an issue where double tapping the mimic button while airborne can stop players from being able to use their expertise.
- Fixed an issue that could allow players to mimic while getting scolded in some situations.
Drone
- Fixed an issue that caused what the player was holding to disappear when the drone came off cooldown.
- Fixed an issue that made it hard to hit mimicked players with the drone.
- Fixed an issue where equipping the drone right after a stance expertise could lead to multiple issues.
Level
Diamond Spire
- Fixed benches that could not be sat on on the rooftop central bridge.
Fragrant Shore
- Fixed an issue with shortcuts near terminal D sometimes not opening completely.
- Fixed benches that could not be sat on in the park area.
Silver Reef
- Fixed Silver Reef mannequin having the wrong texture once mimicked.
Private Lobbies (from previous beta)
- Fixed an issue that would lead to the team selection drop down menu to close prematurely.
- Fixed an issue that allowed a party leader to start a private lobby even if all players were not ready.
- The “play” button is no longer accessible while spectating in a private lobby.
- Error messages now work properly if matchmaking encounters an issue in private lobbies.
- Fixed an issue with private lobbies UI not updating without closing the game when changing language.
- Matchmaking now stops for the entire party if the party leader cancels it.
- Fixed an issue that led to players being kicked from a private lobby still appearing in the lobby from their end.
- All private lobbies text elements are now localized correctly.
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