Hey Runners,

Today it's once again update-time! One of the main focus of this update is "Man vs. World" balancing, as we saw a bunch of people showing interest in the gamemode but unfortunately it being too hard for most to even pass the first stage. We enjoy hard difficulty ourselves but surely there are ways to make it more accessible to everyone! Therefore we added a new casual difficulty setting which reduces the accuracy of the enemy as well as adding a new self-healing item which is specific for this gamemode - the bandage!

You can't find it in the armory, it's a enemy soldier loot drop. Make sure to keep your eyes open to not miss them, they can easily decide the outcome of the campaign! You'll also find them in the hard and veteran difficulty modes, just at a lower drop rate.




Next, we took the first steps into implementing some of our upcoming usability improvement plans to help (new) players get into the game more easily.
One part of it is the backpack design which didn't always make sense in it former state. We found out that especially new people were confused about the abrupt speed and accuracy penalty for having e.g. 1 extra weapon in their backpack and not realizing where the penalty comes from, leading to the decision to tweak the encumbrance system.

Now the accuracy and speed penalties increase linearly as you can see in the following chart where you can compared the old (1.64) and the new (1.65) ways.
As for a typical example, when you carry an extra stock weapon in your backpack such as a M16A4, in 1.64 your moving speed was reduced by 20% and your accuracy by 15% (respectively the dotted blue and red lines). In 1.65, the speed penalty would be 10% (blue line) and the accuracy 0% (red line) as it just starts to kick at 20% encumbrance.
Therefore having an alternative weapon in your backpack and nothing else would only affect your movement speed by 10% but not your accuracy. Having more items in the backpack will affect your movement even more and the accuracy will start to reduce too.

Visually, your character will have a visible small backpack on his back once the encumbrance reaches 20% and a big backpack once the encumbrance reaches 50%. We also added a backpack HUD icon with the encumbrance percentage below so that you won't have to check your inventory to get that information.



For online players, profile passwords have been another source of confusion since forever, and we're now switching to another mechanism that avoids a manual password input while achieving the very same thing by utilizing Steam. For new players or profiles on servers, you no longer need to come up with a password, instead you just pick a username and get into the game. For old profiles, the game requires you to supply the password once more after trying to join with the existing username, or, if you have used the "Remember me" option the game will automatically feed it.

In the last update (1.64) we added some new experimental netcode techniques which should help with synchronization issues some people have, especially when their network performance tends to fluctuate. We were rather cautious about those additions, therefore we didn't apply them as a default setting but only optional via command line. During the last 3 weeks, we activated the mode on some official servers, which ran surprisingly smooth without causing any issues that could have come along. We've now made the netcode mode the default setting for all servers and clients.

For Pacific, we've optimized some maps to avoid certain crash issues due to RAM consumption, and made a variety of gameplay changes.
Most of these gameplay changes are 'quality of life' for weapons - raising the effectiveness of certain firearm classes,
or reducing the performance of some of the incredibly powerful weapons. Additionally, commonness of some of the extremely-rare guns has been raised,
so that they might be encountered slightly more often. The player's version of the Sentry Vest has been nerfed (the enemy AI remains the same),
and there is also 1 new weapon variation - a rare Type 99 Light Machine Gun outfitted with a Scope.

Changelogs v1.65:

• maps: few modifications/fixes here and there
  
• gameplay: backpack system revamped - accuracy and movement speed are now decreasing linearly by increasing encumbrance
  
• weapons: commonness for elites to spawn with the M202 FLASH as secondary increased by 30%
  
• weapons: Lahti L-39 now semi-auto with a 44% increased rate of fire and damage boosted by 25%
  
• weapons: Buckshot Bess reloading speed increased by 25% and amount of projectiles increased by 50%
  
• weapons: AA-12 FRAG slightly re-balanced - less spread when not moving, 12% blast radius increased
  
• weapons: deployable mortar AI sight range decreased by 15%
  
• weapons: TOW AI sight range decreased by 20%, player sight range increased by 10%
  
• equipment: Claymore carrier is not forced to walk anymore
  
• equipment: "Bandage" item added (Man vs. World gamemode only)
  
• vehicles: decreased the DarkCat tank HP by 33%
  
• Man vs. World: casual mode added - reduced enemy AI accuracy and high amount of bandage item drops
  
• Man vs. World: low amount of bandage item drops for hard/veteran difficulty
  
• deathmatch: added Copehill Down map to the map rotator
  
• sounds: added more distinct sound effects on bullet character impact
  
• sounds: stabbing an enemy now always plays a distinct sound when the hit connects
  
• sounds: Desert Eagle shot sound reworked
  
• fix: bug were soldiers were stucked on roofs of refinery tanks or churches fixed
  
• fix: bug where Claymores didn't explode in Man vs World mode
  
• misc: fuel barrels lethal explosion radius increased from 3 to 4m
  
• misc: new "president" rank added for extremely high ranks - XP requirement is 10 million
  
• online: changed password mechanism for official servers when playing through Steam; manual password no longer needed for new profiles, old profiles need to give it once more
  
• character: added some animations specific to being without weapon
  
• network: experimental mode to avoid out of sync and rubber banding due to unstable lag applied on all hosts
  
• modding: added walk_footstep_interval and run_footstep_interval for character files, by default 0.45 and 0.3
  
• modding: use class weapons can do vest equipment "untransform" for own vest repair with untransform_count set greater than 0
  
• modding: added ability to enable character_spawn/die/kill events from game/server to script, see heal_on_kill.as
  
• modding: update_inventory xml command can be given untransform_count to do vest repair for the given character, see heal_on_kill.as
  
• modding: stab_receive sound key added in character
  
• modding: stab_hit_any sound key in weapon, happens with any colliding stab/melee regardless of outcome

• maps: removed one radio jammer location from Peleliu Airfield.
  
• maps: optimized Guadalcanal and Peleliu Airfield
  
• gameplay: adjusted weights of weapons in accordance with the new backpack mechanics
  
• gameplay: reduced the RP avialable to AI Sentries, which should reduce their ability to spam call-ins
  
• gameplay: reduced the frequency of AI using calls slightly
  
• gameplay: restricted firing arcs on PT Boat Oerlikon Guns to prevent gunners from killing eachother
  
• weapons: Type 99 Light MG with SCOPE variation has been added
  
• weapons: added prone reload animations to Sentry MGs.
  
• weapons: raised Flamethrower ranges slightly.
  
• weapons: changed name of M1 Garand Field Modified Launcher to M1 Garand 60mm Launcher
  
• weapons: M1 Garand 60mm Launcher - cost raised from 175 to 250, damage from 2.0 to 1.5, lowered rate of fire
  
• weapons: adjusted accuracy of M1 Garand 60mm Launcher and Type100 Grenade Discharger while overencumbered
  
• weapons: raised commonness of M1 Garand 60mm Launcher
  
• weapons: raised commonness of Type 98 LMG, Type 11 LMG, M1919 Stinger, Thompson w/100rnd Drum, Type97 AT Rifle and Type 2 Machine Pistol
  
• weapons: reduced magazine size of M1917 'Mobile' from 250 to 200
  
• weapons: Type 96 Trench sight range from 1.5 to 1.6, recoil from 0.15 to 0.14, cost from 300 to 425
  
• weapons: raised commonness of Type96 "Trench"
  
• weapons: raised rate of fire of bolt-action weapons by 10% across the board
  
• weapons: recoil recovery of Type 44 Carbine from 1.4 to 1.6
  
• weapons: M1A1 Thompson recoil from 0.375 to 0.365
  
• weapons: raised kill probability of M1911 and Officer variant from 0.8 to 1.05. Reduced kill-decay-start from 0.2 to 0.11
  
• weapons: raised kill probability of Type 14 Nambu and Officer variant from 0.55 to 0.65. Reduced kill-decay-start from 0.275 to 0.25
  
• weapons: all Pistols now change in faster, enabling them to be brought out more quickly in an emergency
  
• weapons: reduced recoil of Type100 Folding Stock from 0.28 to 0.25, raised kill probability from 0.47 to 0.5
  
• weapons: M1 Carbine and C96 Carbine cycle time from 0.15 to 0.135, cost from 8 to 15
  
• weapons: M1919 Heavy MG and Type92 Heavy MG kill probability from 0.5 to 0.675, kill-decay-start from 0.4 to 0.6, AI sight range to 1.05
  
• weapons: raised commonness of M1919 Heavy MG deploy and Type92 Heavy MG deploy being carried by AI
  
• equipment: reduced the effectiveness of player's Sentry Armour against small-arms (no change to AI version). Players will also be stunned on their 2nd last layer of armour
  
• equipment: increased damage of Demolition Charge from 15 to 24
  
• sounds: added a new sound for the Stinger LMG
  
• fix: optimized RAM consumption on a few maps that could cause a crash
  
• fix: fixed bug with Binoculars' XP requirement.
  
• fix: fixed M1 Garand Field Modified firing over cover issues
  
• misc: adjusted cascading of secondary weapons in armoury