Here's what's new in patch 1.2.1:
[h2]Badger Co. Bundle[/h2]
Badger Co. Olympia comes out today in our latest midmonth bundle. This includes the Badger Co. Olympia skin, emote, icon, and the Deconstruction Death Effect (+ coins and bucks). This skin also includes unique voiceover lines for her taunt and victory sequence.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
This skin was originally revealed live during the Twitch Rivals (of Aether II) Team Battle event.
Check out the VoD to catch 4 teams of creators led by Rivals pros battle for the crown.
[h2]A Little Main Menu UI Update[/h2]
The Main Menu now shows your most recent platform used in tandem with character and skin. This actually snuck into a recent Hotfix but we wanted to make sure it got listed in the official notes too.
[h2]Gameplay and Balance Updates[/h2]
We recently added dynamic Environmental Collision Boxes (ECB) to the game, which allows characters to behave more naturally when interacting near objects and the ground. While we initially did a lot of testing, we knew the change was too broad to catch everything off the bat.
A decent amount of the changes to general mechanics and characters this patch involve corrections related to the ECB changes. Beyond the ECB fixes, we have some changes to chaingrab protection, a few changes related to landing interactions, and a few character updates.
- Chaingrab protection will now last for an extra 5 frames after being disabled, unless you start an attack.
- This allows you to start an action without instantly making yourself vulnerable to chaingrabs. This is especially useful when landing before getting grabbed again, since doing nothing will leave you in the Hitstun Land state longer than if you cancel it into another action (Kragg Down Throw often forces this interaction).
- You can now land while rising near the peak of your trajectory arc.
- This prevents situations where you could pass through the ground if your Environmental Collision Box (ECB) bottom collided with a platform while you were still rising and then never went above the platform again.
- Fixed a bug that would cause characters to fall through platforms when they end up right above a platform while falling as their ECB gets taller.
- ECB bottom can no longer go lower than the character's origin.
- This prevents players from falling through platforms if their ECB bottom unfreezes on a frame where it was below the character's origin.
- Landing while in non-tumble hitstun will now give a maximum of 8 frames of Hitstun Land.
- This makes it less punishing when landing after weak/medium hits. This does not apply when you are spiked into the ground (i.e. Orcane Dair) and will mostly only affect extremely low angle moves (i.e. Zetterburn Neutral Special or Loxodont Forward Tilt hit 1).
- Bug fix: Non-tumble spikes on aerial opponents will no longer reduce their hitstun by half.
- There were a lot of cases where opponents right above the ground would get spiked into the ground and become actionable before the move they were hit by was finished due to this hitstun reduction. This change makes sure that spikes are better against opponents right above the ground, and will instead give a similar advantage to spiking them while grounded.
Zetterburn is getting a quality of life change for Tap Jump controls.
- Neutral Special will now listen for Jump inputs during hitpause.
- Previously, tap jump users had a shorter buffer for jump canceling this move, since joystick hard presses aren't stored for as long in the buffer. This keeps things consistent between control schemes.
Ranno is getting two changes that allow him to cancel Neutral Special with grab again, and will help him use tongue sling above platforms more consistently.
- Neutral Special can now be canceled by pressing the Grab button again.
- This was unintentionally removed in the 1.2.0.5 hotfix where many attacks that can be canceled by pressing Shield were normalized.
- Forward Special will now freeze his ECB bottom for the first 10 frames of tongue sling.
- This prevents him from unintentionally canceling the tongue sling by landing on a platform.
Loxodont is getting a few changes to his Forward Tilt that make the move function similar to how it did before the universal ECB changes affected landing timings.
- Forward Tilt hit 1 ASDI modifier: 1 > 1.5
- Forward Tilt hit 1 knockback angle: 150 > 160
- The addition of dynamic ECBs made some opponents take longer to land after getting hit by this move. This change makes the move function similar to how it did prior to the ECB changes when opponents DI and ASDI down.
Forsburn is getting a bug fix to his clone’s recovery, which will make it SD less often.
- Bug Fix: Clone will no longer Up Special offstage right before landing on stage after recovering.
Etalus is getting some love to his roll distances and his getup attack to help a bit with his disadvantage state.
- Roll speed: 28 > 32
- Tech Roll speed: 29 > 31
- Getup Roll speed: 27 > 30
- Ledge Roll speed: 26 > 28
- His width made him especially vulnerable to shield pressure and tech chasing. The increased speed will in turn increase the distance of his rolls a bit, making him a little more difficult to stay on top of.
- Getup Attack's innermost hitbox radius: 40cm > 60cm
- This prevents it from whiffing against small characters at specific spacings
Olympia’s release two weeks ago was exciting for us as an influx of new and returning players jumped at the chance to try out the Amethysts Fist! We’ve been monitoring community reception, tournaments, and have been playing a lot of Olympia ourselves with the intention of finding a perfect spot for her balance.
We feel that she has plenty of power, but don’t want to overswing on changes since she is so new and there’s still a lot to learn both in her meta and in her counterplay. That being said there's a few things we want to hit in this midmonth update:
- Up Special linking hits hitbox radius: 60cm > 50cm
- We're shrinking the hitboxes for this move to require tighter spacing, since it's such a powerful finisher.
- Neutral Special Gem Toss knockback angle: 90 > 75
- This increases the effectiveness of DI out against this move.
- Gem Dash startup: 4 > 6
- This attack was an extremely potent followup after Olympia hit with Gem Toss, while also being an extremely strong recovery tool. The increased startup makes it a little harder to combo into while also giving opponents more time to intercept it offstage.
- Gem Field broken duration: 2 seconds > 3 seconds
- This increases the reward for breaking Olympia's gem field, both on stage and during her recovery.
- Forward Special intangibility when slamming an opponent: 30 frames > 20 frames
- She gains intangibility here to protect her against opponents that wall tech after getting hit by this move while edgeguarding Olympia. 30 frames ended up being a bit excessive, since Olympia is actionable after only 15, so we're shortening it a bit.
- Forward Special no longer gets intangibility when slamming an opponent into the ground.
- The intangibility made this attack too difficult to punish in Doubles and Free-For-All.
- Down Tilt is now auto-floorhuggable.
- The speed of this move made performing a timed floorhug pretty unreliable, when it is generally the best counterplay to the attack.
- Up Throw knockback: 10.6 + 0.5 > 10.6 + 0.55
- We're increasing the knockback scaling to make it send opponents farther away at high percents.
- Bug fix: Neutral Special's projectile will no longer trade with opponents.
- Bug fix: Gem Field can now be hit by hitgrabs (i.e. Etalus Up Air, Wrastor Down Special).
- Bug fix: Forward Special will now prevent chaingrabs when slamming an opponent.
