VAIL News

As a massive cold front hits the United States, the world of VAIL also got hit with a blizzard. Enjoy these wintry updates and if you have any feedback or just want to chill, please Join us on Discord!


Several maps were hit with a blizzard! Snow covered versions of the armory, Volt and Khidi are now available for a limited time.




In addition to the snowy maps, we added lethal snowballs. Snowballs will deal enough damage to kill the opponent in one hit. We've made them respawning in the snowdrifts on the snow maps. Snowballs are a seasonal feature, so make sure you invite your friends to a snowball fight while you can!




In addition to the new snowy features, we added an Impact Frag that will be a permanent feature. The impact grenade looks like the frag, but you can differentiate the two based on color. The frag has an ORANGE glow while the impact grenade has a BLUE glow.

The impact grenade is activated just like other grenades by hitting the trigger, but it will only detonate after you throw it and it collides with an object, You can also shoot the impact grenade mid air to protect yourself from one thrown at you. Our sound designer is still finalizing special sounds for the impact frag, but we couldn't help sharing it with you, so stay tuned for exciting updates!




We've heard the feedback from the community regarding our guns. While we are generally happy with the gunplay, we are always working to tune things and to improve based on feedback. It's clear from our beta tournament and since launch that the biggest concerns that many of you have are regarding recoil and peeker's advantage.

Many believe our recoil is too low, that our guns are like lasers and require no skill to shoot. While we've put lots of effort into our recoil to make it as realistic as possible (we often go shoot real guns for experience), we recognize that many of you are looking for something that requires more skill. And generally, as a competitive shooter, we are always striving to have a higher skill ceiling.

In addition to that, a meta has emerged called the peeker's advantage where a player will wait, listen for footsteps, and then swing out and kill the opponent before they can react. There's a lot of factors at play here, but we believe we can address both of these issues with one solution.

We are experimenting with a recoil stabilization penalty that increases the recoil of each gun based on your lateral movement. The best way to understand this change is to try it for yourself, but essentially you'll have a harder time controlling the gun's recoil as you shoot while strafing. The gun's recoil will move almost with the weight of the gun as you move side to side, making it harder to control while peeking, which is also more realistic. Your first shot will be the most accurate, and you'll have to stand still to maintain that accuracy.

We will be tuning this feature based on feedback, so let us know how it feels for you and your favorite guns!

• Adjusted Weapon Movement Penalty slightly to bring each gun class closer to each other
  
• Adjusted APC9Pro and Vector's damage to torso to be lower at pointblank range but still a higher dps than rifles at pointblank. Will do the same damage at longer distances that it did before.
  
• Snowballs got a unique grab sound and impact, make sure you have your audio settings right for the most immersive experience!
  
• Added new patreon names to the wall
  
• Applied centrifugal force to mag-flicking calculation
  

[h2]Este:[/h2]

• Made ladders easier to climb
  

[h2]Khidi:[/h2]

• Added Winter Mode with snow
  
• Fixed missing blackface and incorrect collision on A-site wall
  
• Adjusted hanging Cloth wind intensity being crazy
  
• Fixed up misplacement in the route to the museum
  

[h2]Volt:[/h2]

• Added Winter Mode with snow
  
• TDM- Adjusted spawn locations and added many new once
  
• Added additional cover on sides of map
  
• Adjusted all cover in map to be more forgiving/less open sightlines
  
• TDM/FFA/CTO - Adjusted and added more spawns
  
• FFA/TDM - Added new launchpads in upper spawn buildings
  
• Adjusted collisions on Volt near ladder
  

[h2]Miru:[/h2]

• General map improvements, such as: fixed up splotches on the landscape and LODs
  

[h2]Armory:[/h2]

• Added Winter Mode with snow
  
• Added Impact Frag to the gun table - it has a blue color
  
• Added more basketballs to the play area
  

Since the last update we fixed 5 public facing bugs in addition to lots of bugs that we found and fixed before you had to deal with them!

• FIXED - Scoreboard layout wrong for Picnic and FFA Modes
  
• FIXED - Can grab tacticals off your same wrist during match start
  
• FIXED - Cannot mute players of the opposite team in FFA or 1v1
  
• FIXED - Crash when hitting specific items on Este
  
• FIXED - if host changes maps during match start, players will be stuck and cannot move
  

With Christmas around the corner, we are continuing to push fixes and improvements based on the valuable feedback you are all providing us with. If you have any feedback or just want to chill, please Join us on Discord!

And remember all feedback is welcome, your input directly affects what we do next.


Several months ago a special little soul joined our team, and as part of this update he’s now in the game in the armory! Blaidd (our misbehaving studio cat) can now be found hanging out in the armory. If you need a reminder on his story and how he came into our lives, you can check it out here: https://youtu.be/q_FYQqo64JY



One of the prizes for the MIAMI VAIL MAJOR lan tournament was custom in game skins for the first prize winner. As of this update we’ve added the MK418 VORTEX skin and in future updates we’ll be adding full character skins and a skin for the G17. These are only available to the players that won that tournament, but stay tuned for more tournaments coming next year.



Based on community feedback, we’ve made huge improvements to all of the 1v1 maps to make them more fair and fun. Every 1v1 map was made bigger with more cover and spawns. There is a known issue with the spawning logic that will spawn you right next to your enemy occasionally. We are working on fixing this for the next update.


To make reversed Khidi more viable, we added more routes for the colonists to get into the museum and mall. There’s now a route from mid that leads you into the museum, and an alternative route from the skate park that leads to the side entrance of the mall.


• We made improvements to the firearm damage impulse to the player’s own character. So if you get shot or take damage from the grenade, the character will ragdoll in the direction of the force from the bullet or explosion.
• The rebranded Graviti vending machine in the armory has a new video advertisement playing.
• Reduced haptic intensity on controllers when shooting
• Improved grip poses on milk bottles
• Improved performance and stability of 1v1 and FFA game modes
• Improved magazine weights


[h2]Este[/h2]
• 1v1 - Crates are no longer floating near and in Garage
• 1v1 - Added new side room with new engagement, additional cover, and spawn points
• 1v1 - Adjusted collision on the garden walk
• 1v1 - Brightened up general lighting
• 1v1 - The crate is no longer clipping into the wall near the teddy bear
• 1v1 - Patched spots where players could wiggle between crates and get out of bounds

[h2]Khidi[/h2]
• 1v1 - Fixed up concrete blocks that were floating around the map
• 1v1 - The water level is no longer rising over the dock
• 1v1 - Improved the reflections of the water around the map
• 1v1 - Adjusted the water kill volumes to kill a player at waist height
• 1v1 - Toned down the fog in the daytime lighting scenario
• Art Reversed - Updated the signage to reflect the new site positions
• 1v1 - Added more cover and spawn points
• Art Reversed - Added new rotation route through Mid to Museum

[h2]Maar:[/h2]
• 1v1 - Adjusted the lava heat/refractions around the map
• 1v1 - Fixed ziplines not being the same height
• 1v1 - Added more spawn points and adjusted existing ones
• 1v1 - Lava no longer has collision
• 1v1 - Adjusted the collision on the turbines to interact more accurately with tacticals
• 1v1 - Adjusted floor collision to prevent Colonists from floating on the sides of the map
• 1v1 - Crate is no longer floating in Pocket

[h2]Suna[/h2]
• Suna Night - Slight lighting increase to spotlights to improve the visibility of REYABS in the night lighting scenario
• ART - Patched remaining spots where players could throw the Artifact scanner and it becomes unobtainable
• 1v1 - Fixed ground collision being incorrect on the floor Adjusted ground collision to be more accurate
• 1v1 - Fixed up multiple floating props around the map
• 1v1 - Added more cover and adjusted and improved existing cover to be larger and taller
• 1v1 - Added elevation point over container units
• 1v1 - Patched spots where players could wiggle between barrels and get out of bounds

Volt:
• CTO - Removed front cover
• 1v1 - Added additional cover and spawns
• 1v1 - Removed visual gaps and seams in the structure in Mid

Miru:
• 1v1 - Removed visual seams in concrete walls

[h2]Armory[/h2]
• 1v1 - Added more spawn points
Night lighting scenario - Brightened up the night lighting scenario
• 1v1- Extended the entire map and added more cover and spawn points
• 1v1 - Fixed the non-symmetrical cover where players could walk through on one side

Xero:
• Added more spawns to all game modes
• FFA - Fixed visual gap in the watchtower

[h2]Heaven[/h2]
• Dusk lighting scenario no longer effects Heaven


• Fixed - AK12 and AK303N mag slap made more consistent
• Fixed - Cannot mute any other users in FFA
• Fixed - Cannot hear players in 1v1
• Fixed - Players being put in incorrect voice channels
• Fixed - Ping count resets to 0 when over 256 ping
• Fixed - Milk bottle grip locations feel incorrect
• Fixed - Milk bottle doesn't break when thrown
• Fixed - Server changing from FFA to other game modes breaks teams
• Fixed - A portion in the upper chest is being considered a headshot by sound, but doing torso damage

Since the Early Access release, we’ve been hard at work adding tons of new content. This update is a first look at some of the new content we’ve been cooking up for you. If you have any feedback or just want to chill, please Join us on Discord!

And remember all feedback is welcome, your input directly affects what we do next.



In this update we are bringing you TWO new game modes to mix things up. You can now 1 v 1 your friends in miniaturized versions of every map made specifically for dueling your friends. Or if you think you can handle more than 1 enemy by yourself, dominate an entire lobby in the new free for all game mode!





In addition to the new game modes, we have brought back the Dusk and Night scenarios. We had taken these out to ensure competitive integrity, but with the addition of player highlights you’ll be able to recognize enemies no matter which side they’re on or how dark it is. Servers will shuffle between all lighting scenarios randomly or in custom lobbies you’ll be able to select which lighting scenario you want.





We are also introducing our first iteration of an aim trainer, which we lovingly call Hurt Me Orb. To activate the aim trainer, shoot the green orb in the shooting range. Other green orbs will then appear randomly in front of you to shoot.





We’ve now added Capture the Orb (CTO) to VOLT! We’ve added new spawn points and new geometry to the map to provide cover to each teams’ spawn points and orb. In addition to that, we have a new version of Khidi (Artifact only) with the spawns reversed and the artifact sights located in mall and museum. Both of these maps will need to be tested extensively with the community to ensure they play as well as all of our other maps.





Always wanted to style reload by flicking your mag out? While now you can, by ejecting your mag and flicking your gun in any direction! Watch the mag fly as you style on your opponents.





• We’ve improved the loadouts menu so that only the correct gun sights and scopes are available to select when creating your loadout. Each gun has specific sights and scopes available for that specific gun, and now you’ll see the correct icons and names for every single sight in the game, including multiple types of iron sights for guns with those options.
• We’ve added new haptics for the frag grenade and charging handle slider. You’ll now feel and see the countdown beep of the frag grenade after you activate it. We also added haptics to the charging handle so that you can feel when you’ve fully pulled it back, making it more immersive than before.
• Added varieties of sound for different types of tacticals, such as when activating them and when landing on hard vs soft surfaces.
• The milk bottles in armory are now smash-able by hitting them or throwing them.
• Do you like immersion? Do you want to use ForceTube with VAIL? We’ve made changes to the haptics in game to better accommodate players using the ForceTube compatibility mode with VAIL.
• New audio event for colonists when a team mate drops or recovers the scanner. This provides colonists with valuable intel on what’s happening with the scanner during Artifact matches.
• You may have noticed in the last update that we added basketball to the armory.Based on community feedback and testing we’ve improved the bounce and size of the basketball so it’s easier for you to make those shots!
• We changed the artifact puzzle to be more friendly those that are colorblind. As always, you start an artifact scan by holding the scanner palm up in an artifact sight. Now you’ll see a variety of blue orbs. When you grab the larger and more pronounced orb in the middle, a line will appear directing you to the next connection point.



With the addition of new versions of each map for both FFA and 1v1, we’ve also been hard at work on the base maps to improve performance, remove exploits, and improve the visual fidelity of each map.

[h2]Este[/h2]

• Adjusted spawn blockers
• General performance pass on the entire map (LODs, fixed missing collision, triangle reduction on blockout - spawn)
• Patched spot you could get stuck behind concrete barriers on the edge of the map

[h2]Khidi[/h2]

• Reduced wind intensity on Cypress trees
• Removed jagged pieces on the ground of long A
• Added concrete bags to block Bunker peek to B site
• Fixed more places the scanner could be thrown out of bounds
• Fixed up Bullet hit effects being wrong on the barrier up to site B on Artifact Mode

[h2]Maar[/h2]

• Fixed LOD pop on the Control Room monitor
• Removed visual seam on spiral stairs
• Patched a spots where the Scanner could be thrown out of bounds and become unretrievable
• Removed visual seam on glass door panel in Laboratory
• Blocked off the entry into pillar near Mid lava pit
• Fixed instances where you could not walk through an open broken railing
• Fixed spot where players could get stuck behind crates below the zipline outside of the B-site

[h2]Suna[/h2]

• Patched spots where the Scanner could be thrown out of bounds and become unretrievable
• Collision improvements in multiple places on the map
• Fixed floating lights near the container units leading to B-site
• Patched spots where the spectator camera can escape the map

[h2]Volt[/h2]

• Removed visual seam between buildings on the left side of REYAB spawn
• Removed visual seam on the top platform on the right side of Colonist spawn
• Improved the collision of the tarp on the Generator

[h2]Miru[/h2]

• Improved the collision on elevated platforms
• Fixed up floating glass panes
• Patched spots where the Scanner could be thrown out of bounds and become unretrievable



Since the last patch notes we’ve squashed 10 major bugs as well as various minor bug fixes and improvements. In addition to these major bug fixes, we’ve also had to fix several bugs that you will thankfully never have to deal with because we caught them before they got released in a public build.

• Fixed - Dropping player’s equipment, including the scanner, before they are kicked
• Fixed - Balanced out shooting haptic feedback to better accommodate ForceTubeVR players using compatibility mode
• Fixed - Added "requires restart" to Plutosphere compatibility menu option
• Fixed - Grip pose on the basketball
• Fixed - Showing spectator as player on the scoreboard
• Fixed - Pre-match UI to correctly shows the win condition for all game modes
• Fixed - Players being able to kill themselves to purposefully reduce their teams score in TDM
• Fixed - Letting go of a zipline or hitting a jumppad will kick all other players off of ziplines in the server
• Fixed - Changing equipment or sights in loadouts, reset your secondary skin to default
• Fixed - All players in a server can globally hear the sound of a player "falling" if they step off a ledge or get stuck

Love you all, AEXLAB

With VAIL's Early Access release just over a week ago, the team has been working extremely hard to patch a few nasty bugs that have become apparent, as well as go through all of our community feedback and requests and start to plan our next steps from here on out. Within the next few months, we plan to push some optimization updates and a number of new features to spice up your experience. If you have any feedback or just want to chill, please Join us on Discord!

And remember all feedback is welcome, your input directly affects what we do next.



[h3]Enemy Highlights[/h3]
Enemy highlights play an important role in ensuring the game is fair and competitive. Especially as we add a variety of character and weapon skins, you still need a clear way to recognize enemies. As part of this update we’ve made it so that enemy highlights take longer to disappear at a close range. The highlight still fades as you get closer to the enemy, but it takes longer to fade out so that you can always recognize an enemy, even if they’re right in front of you. And as always, you can change the enemy highlight color and intensity in the settings.

[h3]Server Browser[/h3]
We’ve updated the server browser to allow for the games you see to be sorted by your category of choice; whether it be ping, game mode, or number of players. By default, games with lower ping will appear at the top of the list, making it much easier for you to find games in your region but if you require to sort by another category, just click on one of the category buttons located at the top of the server browser.

[h3]South American Servers[/h3]
To help more players to have lower ping, we’ve officially added servers in South America, specifically in São Paulo, Brazil. This, along with the recently added servers in South East Asia, means we have servers in every major region around the world and we’ll continue to add servers as needed.


On all maps we’ve continued to improve performance and fix various exploits.

[h3]Khidi[/h3]
• General performance pass on the entire map (LODs, texture size reduction and instancing)
• Performance pass on Colonist Spawn
• Performance pass on REYAB Spawn water
• Adjusted the collision on the left-elevator in REYAB spawn which would unexpectedly launch players
• Fixed visual clipping where the pond mesh would not line up with the water near Bridge
• Asset reduction pass in all areas of the map for TDM

[h3]Maar[/h3]
As we’ve done with other maps, we’ve gone through and done a visual fidelity pass on multiple prop materials around the map. Get up close to those wall and floor textures and see if you notice the difference.

• Optimization pass on the entire map (LOD's, reflection captures and texture size reduction)
• Adjusted the kill volume near the container units that would unexpectedly kill players that were traversing past it
• Patched the spot where players could climb behind Rock Tunnel and walk into a kill volume
• Adjusted the collision on the pipes in Armory to not stop the movement of players traversing past/along them
• Adjusted the collision of the stairs in Pumping Station to prevent players from pixel walking up them
• Adjusted the collision on pumps to prevent players from sticking their heads into them
• Adjusted the collision in Power Station which would prevent players from traversing smoothly through it
• Removed Z-fighting on the wall underneath Catwalk
• Patched the one-way see-through gap located in upper-Catwalk
• Patched unfair sightlines in Mid
• Removed the visual hole in rocks near Mid
• Removed Z-fighting on metal panel in upper-Catwalk,

[h3]Miru[/h3]
• Material optimization pass on multiple props around the map
• Removed visual seams and Z-fighting on the floor in Colonist spawn
• Adjusted the collision on the rock in B-site to allow for players to traverse up it more smoothly
• Adjusted the collision in REYAB spawn to prevent bullet casings from falling through props
• Updated the lightmaps on the central building to improve visual fidelity
• Adjusted the overall lighting in the map, to increase performance
• Removed the visual seam on the wall in Mid/Colonist Spawn
• Adjusted the collision on the floor in Mid where bullet casings would clip through

[h3]Este[/h3]
• Adjusted geometry and volumes around dumpster drop-down to not block visibility when snap turning
• Clouds no longer effect directional light
• Fixed bad reflection captures on Vista
• Lightmap pass on the entire map, cleaning up all bad shadows
• Plants no longer block bullet penetration
• Patched pixel walk in the side planters
• Patched spot near side building stairs where players could get out of bounds
• LOD pass on the existing props in the map
• Triangle reduction pass on the surrounding landscape
• Patched pixel walk that would allow for an advantaged view of Jacuzzi and its surrounding area
• Props with fabric are no longer fully penetrable
• Props that were unintentionally climbable and walkable, are no longer climbable and walkable
• Added reflection capture to miner room The Miner room now has reflection captures

[h3]Nine[/h3]
• Geometry clean-up pass on the central ground

[h3]Armory[/h3]
• Updated the Patreon wall
• Added b-ball for the ballerz
• Food products no longer get visually effected by spilt milk decal
• Patched visual seam in wall near the cat statue
• Removed visual black splotches in the back of the Armory, on the floor and rocks
• Lights are no longer floating near the character customization station

[h3]Heaven (artifact)[/h3]
• Material fidelity pass


While we work hard on adding new features and content, we are always working to squash bugs thanks to our bug hunters. Since the last patch notes we’ve squashed 11 major bugs as well as other various minor bug fixes and improvements.

• Fixed - AK303N fire selector grab position is in the incorrect location
• Fixed - MK418 fire selector is not grabbable on the right side of the gun
• Fixed - Swapping teams in TDM subtracts a point from your previous team
• Fixed - When another player first bumps out an AK mag on spawn, it defies physics and glitches to space for other players
• Fixed - Continuously recovering the Orb in CTO spams "Recovered the orb"
• Fixed - Players can steal tacticals off each other's wrists even though they cannot see them
• Fixed - Using a jump pad or letting go of a zipline will cause all other players on the map to be dropped off a zipline if they are currently on one
• Fixed - Enemy highlights no longer abruptly disappear
• Fixed - Tablet and cursor lag behind the player while moving
• Fixed - You can reach behind the tablet and click things by accident from behind it
• Fixed - Mags sometimes don't fully fall out of some guns

Love you all, AEXLAB

We are excited to announce to our South American friends that we have launched servers in South America East, in Brazil. We were surprised by how many of you want to play VAIL, and we hope you enjoy competing with each other with much lower ping.