Due Process News

A patch containing a lot of changes to gun gameplay balance, gun feel, along with tons of other QoL features and changes like Offscreen indicators for grenades and Customization Presets. Check out the video below for an overview of the changes. The patch notes also contain a lot of designer notes (in italics) to help players understand our reasoning behind the changes we're making.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]New Weapon Mechanics:[/h2]
Due Process is a game about planning and execution and part of that equation is optimal player positioning and movement based on weapon choice. The simplicity of weapon mechanics in Due Process currently leads to a gameplay strategy the promotes constant motion of any shooter. These changes are designed to create better tactical gameplay by giving clear advantages when holding an angle compared to assaulting a position.

[h3]Weapon Inertia:[/h3]
All Weapons now feature inertia. Inertia causes weapons to lag behind the aim point when turning, lagging behind further the sharper you turn. The amount and characteristic of the inertia is determined by the weight of the weapon and if it is stocked. Heavy weapons have higher amounts of inertia and slower inertial recovery. Stockless weapons have more positional inertia, causing their barrel to lose alignment with the players perspective.

The primary intent of this change is to make flicking for all weapons less effective, increasing the advantage to facing towards an opponent. Heavier weapons have the greatest penalty to sharp flicks and will have significant catch up time.

[h3]Flashbang Penalty to Inertia:[/h3]
There is a new concussion penalty that slows the recovery of weapon inertia, Stockless weapons receive a severe penalty to recovery while concussed.

Another lever for us to tune certain weapons in the Defender arsenal and create more characteristics per weapon. Heavier stockless weapons such as TUB-12 and KR82u will receive the greatest penalty when under a concussive effect.

[h3]Aim Settle:[/h3]
Weapons will have a brief moment before the ADS/Brace settles into alignment. The time it takes to enter ADS and Brace has been reduced across the board for all weapons. Lighter weapons settle faster than heavier weapons. Stocked weapons settle faster than stockless weapons.

Aim Settle increases the snappiness of Aiming or Bracing a weapon while infering a more significant penalty while bringing the weapon to bare. This mechanic allows heavy weapons such as the Ingmar to have a substantial penalty without making its ADS speed feel like molasses.

[h3]Weapon Movement Sway:[/h3]
While moving weapons now bob up and down and slightly side to side. Long Rifles feature less weapon bob but have slower ADS movement. Weapon bob is significantly reduced by walking and crouching.

Weapon bob is the primary mechanic to give an advantage to a player holding the angle vs an assaulting player. Reducing the effectiveness of Moving and Shooting at range, creating more space for long range weapons to be optimal and decreasing the lethality of mobile targets.

[h3]Shotgun Rework:[/h3]
In a game about CQB shotguns are very tricky to tune. We wanted to increase consistency and depth of gameplay beyond "get closer". Shotguns now have greater ADS accuracy and higher Head/Chest damage multipliers increasing it's effective lethal range with well placed shots. To balance this new lethality, the TUB-12 has the largest and slowest Weapon Inertia recovery, giving it distinct weapon characteristics compared to the stocked DL-12.
All shotguns now use the same spread pattern (TUB-12)

[h3]12 Gauge: (ammo used by all shotguns)[/h3]

• Head Multiplier increased from 1.7 to 2.0
  
• Chest Multiplier increased from 1.35 to 1.5
  
• Abdomen Multiplier decreased from 1.35 to 1.25
  
• The highest damaging 7 pellets are chosen instead of all 9 while calculating damage, to create more consistent damage based on range.

[h3]TUB-12:[/h3]

• ADS accuracy increased by 35%
  
• Brace no longer has a laser
  
• Brace no longer has an accuracy bonus
  

[h3]Super Shorty:[/h3]

• ADS accuracy increased by 35%
  
• Brace no longer has a laser
  
• Brace no longer has an accuracy bonus
  

[h3]Auto Shotgun:[/h3]

• Fire rate reduced from 300 to 240
  
• The Auto Shotgun increased in lethal range and consistency, the reduction in fire rate was to offset its buffs slightly.
  

[h3]Sniper Nerfs:[/h3]

• When reducing player top speed Sniper Rifles received a buff while still overperforming in their intended roles. As such they have received significant nerfs.
  
• Keep in mind: Snipers do not have Aim Settle, Weapon Inertia, or Movement Sway while scoped; instead, their movement speed while ADS has been greatly reduced to impede their ability in pushing angles, but they are more powerful in holding an angle with the reduction in top speed.
  

[h3]MAWP:[/h3]

• Damage reduced from 135 to 85.
  

At 135 damage the MAWP left enforcers feeling completely powerless when hit and created an incentive to settle for body shots. With the reduction in top speed landing body shots is even easier and we wanted to re-enforce the MAWP as a precision weapon.

[h3]SAB-R:[/h3]

• Significant Horizontal recoil after the first shot.
  
• Magazine size reduced from 7 to 5.
  

The SAB-R is intended to be unchallengeable while holding a long angle, but its lethality allows it to be deadly effective in too many scenarios; these changes are intended to increase the cost of missing shots and decrease the effectiveness of chaining multiple Body shots together.

[h3]Thigh Damage Multiplier:[/h3]

• Thigh damage multi increased to 1, up from .75 for all applicable weapons.
  
• Increase the consistency of weapon damage
  

[h3]Other Weapon Change:[/h3]

• Breathing effect from guns removed (when aimed at a static location, breathing used to kick in and cause the aim to start moving)
  

[h2]Movement Changes:[/h2]
[h3]General Movement Changes[/h3]

• Enforcers movement speed decreased from 6.2 to 5.5
  
• Enforcer sprint speed decreased from 9.6 to 8.5
  
• Defender movement speed decreased from 7 to 6.5
  
• Defender sprint speed decreased from 11 to 10
  

Top speed has been reduced. Acceleration has been increased. Players should feel snappier when accelerating. Acceleration/Deceleration is linear and no longer halts player movement when changing directions. Movement should feel more responsive and have an increased penalty when changing directions.

[h3]Jump Penalty Changes:[/h3]

• A player's first jump will no longer engage the movement speed landing penalty.
  
• There is large random horizontal offset when jumping while ADS.
  

[h3]Crouch Speed:[/h3]

• Entering crouch time increase from .35 to .4
  
• Exiting crouch time increased from .35 to 1
  

We want players to have an evasive response to incoming fire but decrease the effectiveness of spamming and decrease the speed at which players pop out of cover.

[h2]Other Changes:[/h2]
[h3]Retreat Ladder:[/h3]

• 60 seconds into the execution phase, The Enforcer Truck doors will close, locking players inside. They are considered "retreated" and out of play (like being dead). The round will end when all enforcers are dead or "retreated."
  

This addition will give Enforcers a mechanic to save gear without waiting out the round, decreasing downtime. It also introduces better parity for late-joining defenders and attackers.

[h3]Grenades:[/h3]
Grenade Bounciness:

• Grenades now maintain more velocity when bouncing off a shallow angle.
  
• Grenades lose more energy when bouncing off the floor.
  

The enforcers will have more nuance in grenade placement. Allowing for increased precision, either at close or long range, when bouncing off the floor or getting deeper grenades by bouncing off shallow angles.

[h3]Grenade Indicators:[/h3]

• Grenades now show a long range yellow indicator when thrown by a friendly and a short range white indicator when thrown by an enemy.
  

Grenade indicators are ultimately a QoL feature to help facility team execution and alleviate uncertainty in chaotic situations.

[h3]Auto-Equip Changes:[/h3]

• "Gruber Gang" has been replaced.
  
• Defenders will no longer spawn Grubers when entering the execution phase without any weapons. Instead, weapons will be chosen from the weapon wall automatically for them.
  
• Power weapons will never be automatically taken.
  

[h3]Preset Customizations:[/h3]

• A highly requested community feature, you now have three slots to save preset customizations.
  
• On the bottom right corner of the customization screen, you will find the preset buttons. Press the plus to save the current customization as a preset. Click a saved slot to discard your current customizations and load that preset. When hovering over a saved slot, you can click the red X to delete that preset and enable you to save over that slot.
  

[h3]Misc:[/h3]

• Matchmaking changes to reduce unintended team-stacking when adding new players to an existing minimatch via matchmaking
  
• A new state on the UI is introduced for attackers who have retreated or who were caught AFK in the truck, joined late, etc. NOTE: The defenders also have this state on the UI, but it currently only kicks in once the truck doors have closed.
  
• Bank tileset has 20 more seconds in Execution.
  
• Killfeed will display placeholder names if a player lacks renderable characters in their name
  
• Animation Blends related to movement have been Improved
  
• Some new maps rotated into the pool
  
• Fixes to eight maps from previous rotations thanks to community feedback on map issues
  
• Misc backend updates for maintenance
  

Minor update this week, some QoL stuff but mostly just addressing feedback and reported bugs while working towards our next big update. That update is planned for this month still, and we are currently working on addressing feedback and bugs brought up in testing.
[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• Charge Placement Ghosts: (re)Added feature from the Alpha; looking at an object while holding a charge will preview the placement of the charge as a ghost on that object
  
• Charge Placement Ghosts: Fixed a couple bugs with the original implementation involving moving doors and wall charge size
  
• Shoot Verb: New interactable verb for vents that tells you to shoot the vent from the inside (also works for two sided vents if we ever bring them back)
  
• Shoot Verb: New logic so that the shoot verb can check for weapons and tell you to pull out a gun to shoot the vent
  
• Doors: Make door renderer actually interpolate and render doors at more than tickrate speed
  
• Doors: Optimization to reduce how often we make door simulator calls
  
• Doors: Make door simulator calls happen throwable calls when simulating to make sure they're in the right state first
  
• Notification Banners: Banners render above chat window (like queue for ranked)
  
• Notification Banners: Banners should position themselves properly above other notification banners instead of overlapping
  
• Notification Banners: Banners render immediately above "Press Enter To Chat" if chatbox is disabled and not open, otherwise they render above the open chatbox
  
• Notification Banners: "Queue for Ranked" banner will now change to "QFR" at the start of defender setup phase instead of at the start of execution
  
• Spawning: Fix bug where players who placed pucks on spawnable surfaces that overlapped other spawnable surfaces could fail to spawn properly
  
• Spawning: Fix bug where logic to catch failed spawning players failed in a similar manner to puck placement that caused players to spawn on the emergency backup bomb spawnpoint
  
• Spawning: Emergency bomb spawn point should no longer spawn you in the ceiling
  
• Training: Fixed bug where players in training can sometimes "turn into bots" when spawning the bots for target practice
  
• New Maps: Putting this in the patch notes because our map rotation has been much slower lately as the level designers are spending more time overhauling existing tilesets/content for future updates.
  

[h2]Adjustments from "Omnibomb" patch feedback:[/h2]
We wanted to make sure to address as many issues as we could from the last patch, just a reminder that we do read our community's feedback and bug reports and try to address as many things as we can while continuing to work on the stuff in for the future in our roadmap.

• Adjusted bomb geometry to make the edge of the bomb where fins rise up a flat plane to prevent leaving small gaps that act as headpeeks
  
• Moved map screen version of match timeline (map order) to a different position where it's less cluttered, and adjusted it to work vertically
  
• Fixed characters looking up slightly in customization screen instead of forward
  
• Fixed issue where you could suddenly hear people jogging in versus screen
  
• Fix regarding bug reports where players would load two map backgrounds at the same time
  
• Adjusted ingmar to fix issue with how it could shoot through walls
  

[h2]Level Object Changes:[/h2]

• Dome beach sand ramps hitboxes redone to address old issue of shooting "air" near the bunkers
  
• Dome beach sand ramps physics redone to address issues having to jump over the lip, and grenades falling under the sand
  
• Fixed issue where you could not walk up onto certain doorways from beach in dome without jumping (probably)
  
• Fixed issue where you could not ping or pick up items through interior open doorways without doors on dome (this will only apply to future maps unfortunately)
  
• Updated killhouse background area where you could walk slightly outside the map and see through the walls
  
• Adjusted bank clock prefab for parkour reasons (let us know if this blocks any vent in any existing maps)
  

The largest change in this patch is the new version of the bomb, nicknamed "Omnibomb" for it's ability to be defused from all sides. Other changes include the community asked for "drop sounds" for when players jump off of heights, and showing the tileset order on the map screen, among other fixes and changes.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Omnibomb is the next iteration of the bomb design, we spent quite a bit of time during the development period testing this alternate design for the bomb, and now we are giving it to the community. The "omnibomb" focuses on shifting the objective of bomb defense by changing the dynamics around it, allowing the bomb to be defused from any open side while also fully concealing players behind it.

Bigger, rounder, and taller:

• The bomb is large and round, about one tile in diameter and about the height of a shipping container. Plenty of room for attackers to completely be concealed when hiding behind it.
  

Defusable from any side:

• As long as you're in the interaction radius and you have line of sight to the bomb, you can defuse it while looking at it's general direction.
  

Cannot move and defuse:

• Moving while holding the defuse key "stalls" the defuse. The defuse progress bar will remain visible but say "stalled", notifying both the defenders and the defuser.
  

Why Omnibomb?

• There's a developer Q/A at the end of the patch notes that will hopefully answer the "why" of Omnibomb, but if you have more questions or feedback you're more than welcome to join us in our discord for that. (Find the discord link in the in-game home screen)
  

Other Omnibomb Changes:

• There are slightly different sound cues for when the bomb defuse is started, stopped, stalled and progressed.
  
• Holding an unpinned grenade in the throw-prep state will block defusing, will need to pin or throw grenade to defuse
  
• No "long arming" the bomb, moving out of the defuse radius will correctly and immediately cancel defuse
  
• Defuse radius is plainly visible on screen when close to the bomb and highlighting it
  
• Bomb has an always visible "offscreen indicator" for the execution phase
  

• Landing on the ground from a jump height fall will create a specific "landing sound" separate from footsteps and gear sounds
  
• The above includes a jump from ground level
  
• Drop sounds are team specific; the attacker sound is more "heavy equipment" sounding
  
• Water now has an "entry" and "splash" sound, the splash sound is only made when the landing sound would be appropriate and replaces it, the entry sound always plays when entering water from any height
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Other New Additions:[/h2]

• Map View Tileset Order: You can see which maps are part of the current set on the Map View instead of having to memorize them
  
• Spawn Protection: Added behavior so that when you teleport, your velocity and movement input is arrested for a very small window to help stop you from walking off into pit or toxic, etc.
  
• Spawn Protection: Check player puck locations before teleporting, and move them to a backup spawn point if it's invalid
  
• Spawn Protection: Double check our default spawns, if they are invalid, spawn protection will spawn the defenders on the bomb in the case of a spawn failure
  
• Spawn Protection: Better puck dragging to prevent you from dragging the puck inside an object or tiny space
  
  
• Music Settings: Added "Competitive Music" setting to the Audio menu (this makes the music fade out at the start of execution instantly, and fade in later when round ends)
  
• Music Settings: Added "Disable Music in Main Menu" config setting to the Audio menu
  
• Music Settings: Redid settings menu to split Sound menu into Audio and Voice setting menus
  
  
• Phase Change Banners: Added back Detonation Imminent banner when < 30s left on the execution timer.
  
• Phase Change Banners: Replaced subtext on the sliding round banner with a more readable "Enemies are Approaching" banner
  

[h2]Other Changes:[/h2]

• Fixed bug allowing laggy players to defuse while dead or far from the bomb
  
• Fixed the client predicting the round ending when cancelling a defuse (the banner shows up and you can't defuse the bomb anymore, etc.)
  
• Can't interact with objects through solid objects now, require actual line of sight (we found a few problems and corrected them, but let us know if you find more.)
  
• Fixed matchmaking bug that allowed 6v5s
  
• Attempted fix for issue that caused server-wide crashes when loading some maps
  
• Fixed chat box text wrapping and font sizes incorrect after 2021 upgrade
  
• Fixed various maps with feedback from players
  
• Fixed variant of killhouse lockers that was thinner than others, they should now be all the same thickness
  
• Fix two input bugs involving crouching and aiming with toggle crouch reported by players
  
• Players should no longer get stuck with a brace sensitivity setting of 0.1
  
• The volume slider on players in the main menu now has a wider range; you should be able to make players much quieter before actually muting them.
  
• Fixed bug where the client would not realize their config was incorrectly formatted, leading to various bugs (like Vivox not working) The config now detects if it's incorrectly set up / unreadable and will reset itself if that is the case.
  
• Optimized dragging the player puck (to make up for the new cost of checking the collision)
  
• Spectators: Spectators get kicked from the match as soon as they disconnect (they don't have to wait 3 minutes to join)
  
• Spectators: Fixed bug where spectators joining a new match after the match ends would have broken voice
  
• Spectators: Spectators can reconnect to matches as an attacker or defender that they have been "kicked" from (they are no longer banned when admin kicked)
  
• Made message of the day reset itself after the servers come back up because I never remember to do it manually, I'm sorry
  

New Known Issues:

• Defuse sounds from the new bomb interaction may not correctly line up with the defuse progress on screen and may end up playing for a few extra seconds after a successful defuse
  
• The bomb's position may not be ideal on every map, while just about every bomb has been moved or tweaked, the older maps were not made for the new bomb
  
• Room labels may be missing from some older maps (feedback is appreciated if you spot one)
  
• The position of the new match timeline / map tileset order on the map screen is not ideal, the bottom left corner of the screen is a little cluttered and it will likely get moved, but I wanted to give it to the community first before spending too much time tweaking it.
  
• You may find yourself not spawning where you placed your puck; if you have this happen to you and you can get video or a screenshot of where you placed it, please report it. The game is simply trying to make sure you don't spawn inside an object or floor.
  

rev: What was the ultimate goal for omni bomb?
Vince: Well, the goal came down to how one on one engagements or two on two engagements unfurled without Omni bomb. And you know, the anticlimactic endings of holding really long angles for the defenders, which is what we explicitly wanted to change.

rev: Right now in the game, what we see a lot is attackers playing a little mini game at bomb where they’re moving back and forth around the interaction point, right? We won’t see that anymore will we?
Vince: Yeah. That that's not going to be a factor anymore. What we'll get is a lot more ‘play’, a lot more kind of ‘jockeying’ around the bomb to, you know, lure the defender in. You might have a flash bang and you're just waiting there on the bomb to hear that first footstep, then you toss it over and then you go into the assault position to wipe out that last defender.

rev: Do you think that the nature of sniper rifles as a power weapon will dramatically influence how people approach defuses on the omnibomb?
Vince: You know, we're going to have growing pains. We're going to recognize what a bad position for Omni bomb looks like. It's going to come down to like, all right: we recognize these are the types of bombs we don't want in the game, where the enforcers can cover way too many angles from too far away, and all they need to do is get one body on that bomb-and they're good. We’re keeping an eye on that.

rev: Will you be retroactively updating all the previous maps for omnibomb?
Axsom: Ozy is going to give us a list of maps that are going in and we’re going to have a look at them. I don’t think the new bomb will be much of an issue on old maps. On bank, we don’t really care, it’s already in a vault. But on c-store, again, (it’s) very small, we might have to shimmy it around a little bit on c-stores to get it away from the storefront windows.

rev: With attackers able to approach the bomb in different ways, it seems the meta might change for a lot of people’s defenses. We might see players value different rooms or hold more aggressively.
Axsom: Yeah, like I said, I think overall it be better for the health of each map. You’ll be able to play the map in a lot of different ways rather than the one I dictate now, which will increase the longevity of each map. Right now I dictate where you can hold the bomb from how I place it and how I orient it, and you know, with the new bomb that just goes away. So there’s a wider variety of places you can hold. Metas will surely arise from this but I think that’s a good thing for the game.