December Patch Update 14.12.17

December 11 2017 By Joshua Boyle

Hey Quake Fans,

We'll be deploying an update for Quake Champions today that will take approximately 4 hours starting at 8AM EST – Noon EST. This is one of our biggest updates to date and adds KEEL as a new champion, the Vale of Pnath as a new Duel Map, Ranked Play, Custom Crosshairs, the Quake 4 Railgun, a ton of balance changes and much more!

If you haven’t already, check out the KEEL Story trailer here:

Also, as soon as the update is completed, it will be the start of a Double XP weekend running until 18.12.17.

Winter Celebration Items

The Winter Holiday has come to Quake Champions! Players who logs in during December and January will receive free rewards! We have a ton of new holiday items, all of which drop from Backpacks, Crates, and Reliquaries. New Winter items include:

  • 1 Winter 2017 Hat Vanity for each Champion
  • 10 Winter Profile Icons
  • 10 Winter Nameplates
  • 3 Winter 2017 animated Champion Shaders
  • 3 Winter 2017 Weapon Shaders for each weapon

Winter Hat Bundle

  • This limited-time bundle gives you hats for EVERY Champion. Happy Holidays!

Premium Shader Bundle

  • This bundle offers 3 new Premium Shaders for each weapon!
  • Limited time Winter Theme for the Dimension of the Doomed maps, Burial Chamber and Corrupted Keep

New Champion

Welcome to the arena heavy weapons specialists Lance Corporal Ben Keel, or at least what’s left of him. Brought back to life thanks to cybernetics and power-armor, Keel is armed to the teeth with two shoulder mounted grenade launchers.

KEEL

RESURRECTED WAR-MACHINE

  • Health 175
  • Armor 50/125
  • Speed 300/480

Active Ability: Grenade Swarm Keel can store and fire up to 5 grenades at a time. Grenades will bounce off the environment, detonating a few seconds later and inflicting splash damage. Direct hits deal 75 damage per grenade. Each grenade refreshes on a 10-second cooldown.

Passive Ability: Stockpile Keel can reduce his ability cooldown by 5% by collecting any ammo box.

New Arena

VALE OF PNATH

ITHAGNAL DUEL MAP Deep within the Netherworld, past the Peaks of Thok, lies this tower of metal and stone. The vault ghouls whisper that the death-maze of sharp angles could only have been hewn from the solid granite by Koth, the Never-Seen Sleeper In Stone. Prepare yourself for the Vale of Pnath.

Designed for Duel and 2v2 TDM, Vale of Pnath is a highly vertical three atrium arena where players will fight for control of both weapons and stack, using the sounds of heavy metal doors to track their enemies movements. Vale provides fun, hectic, and fast paced action for 2 players, but is also available in Custom Game for Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch.

New Weapon

VIOLATOR

QUAKE 4 RAILGUN From the weapons depot of Rhino Squad comes the Quake 4 railgun. Mathew Kane brought this beast of a gun back from Stroggos just so you can assess your aim down its scope. How many can you take down in a single shot?

Additional Features

  • New Ranked Play and Leaderboards for Duel
  • Added Crosshair Customization: one of the most requested Community features
  • Choose from over 40 different crosshairs and use a slider to choose your color of choice
  • Chests & Reliquaries now offer guaranteed rarities!
  • Chests reward at least one item of Rare quality and above
  • Reliquaries reward at least one item of Epic quality and above
  • Rune Challenge Animated Champion Shaders
  • Each champion now has 5 new animated Champion Shaders which you can earn from completing one of four Elder God rune challenges, and the Master Rune challenge.
  • Added FPS Limiter in Options
  • Added Teammate X-ray Outlines Option
  • Enabled load on demand of geometry for further memory optimization

Champion Balance

All Champions

  • +25 Starting Health Points
  • +25 Max Armor Points
  • Champions will now gain some speed by holding forward (except Visor who is too stubborn and set in his ways)

Anarki

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 310 to 400 ups.
  • Bunny Hop added, increasing from the base speed of 310 to 500 ups
  • Max strafe speed has been reduced from 640 to 560 ups
  • Injection speed duration increased from 3 to 10 seconds
  • Injection speed boost increased from 1.1x to 1.25x (700 ups)

B.J. Blazkowicz

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 310 to 400 ups
  • Bunny Hop added, increasing from the base speed of 310 to 500 ups
  • Dual-Wield rate of fire increased

Clutch

  • Forward Acceleration rate of gain increased, to reach its top speed of 500 ups faster
  • Dodge now resets after each landing, instead of a timed cooldown

Doom Slayer

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 310 to 400 ups
  • Berserk has a shorter range to lock onto target

Galena

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 300 to 400 ups
  • Bunny Hop added, increasing from the base speed from 300 to 500 ups

Nyx

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 320 to 400 ups

Ranger

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 320 to 400 ups

Scalebearer

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 300 to 520 ups
  • Scalebearer’s strafe max speed has been reduced from 500 to 480 ups

Slash

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 310 to 400 ups
  • Max Crouchslide speed has been decreased from 680 to 600 ups

Sorlag

  • Forward Acceleration added, increasing from the base speed of 290 to 320 ups
  • Bunny Hop added, increasing from the base speed of 290 to 500 ups

Visor

  • Increased strafe acceleration, to build speed faster while strafe jumping
  • Piercing Sight now highlights enemies fully in red, instead of just outlines

Champion Fixes

  • Fixed issue in Crouch Slide when 1st-person hands animation and audio can remain stuck after slide is interrupted
  • Fixed issue when some champions may play ability animation and sound effects after their first ability timer had ended
  • Fixed issue when BJ: Crouch walk posture appears unnatural
  • Fixed issue for Clutch's Mining Laser secondary ability which stayed in the air if a player died while using it
  • Fixed issue when Clutch’s Dodge could fail if he touched the stairs
  • Fixed issued when Doom Slayer could hit with active ability while strafing backwards
  • Fixed issue for Doom Slayer: Activating Berserk while firing slower weapons delayed bringing up the fists
  • Fixed issue when champions could play active ability animation twice
  • Fixed issue when Ranger is able to teleport after Dire Orb has exploded
  • Fixed issue for Scalebearer ability animation which would break if activated right before landing from a jump
  • Fixed issue when Some attachments for BJ may disappear from the customization screen after a match

Champion Costumes

  • Added "Executor" Scalebearer costume
  • Added "Pack Lord" Sorlag costume

Item Balance

  • Respawn times of minor items, Small Health and Light Armors, increased from 15 to 30 seconds

Weapon Balances

  • Improved hit detection for Lightning Gun
  • Decreased the range of the Gauntlet
  • Decreased the rate of fire of the Gauntlet

Weapon Fixes

  • Fixed issue when Gauntlet stopped spinning after each hit
  • Gauntlet hit detection improvements
  • Fixed some occurrences where LG bloomed heavily
  • Fixed issue when shooting RG near the geometry resulted in missing rail SFX
  • Fixed issue when using scope on RG and switching to another weapon did not cancel RG charge
  • Fixed issue on DOOM Shotgun for broken reload animations in first person
  • Nailgun hit detection improvements
  • Projectile prediction fixes (miss hits after knockbacks)

Tech

  • Fixed issue with incorrect resolution in borderless when trying to set 4k resolution
  • Fixed issue where Rate of Fire was impacted by FPS
  • Fixed issue where Voice Chat was triggered while typing in Match Chat

Network Traffic Optimization

  • Various Traffic Optimizations Made

Client Performance Improvements

  • Client outgoing bandwidth optimization
  • Player jitter fixes
  • Spectator jitter on steps fixed
  • Various Client Performance Improvements

Memory Optimization

  • Reduced frequency of player coordinate calls

Crashes

  • Fixed numerous crash issues

Maps

  • New breakables for Cthalha maps
  • New breakables for Ithagnal maps
  • Closed space around Pillar in Blood Covenant near Quad powerup allows for blind fire and Dire Orb travel to the space below.
  • Fixed issue when on Burial Chamber Dire Orb could fly for infinite amount of time
  • Fixed issue where players spawn facing wall on Lockbox
  • Fixed issue when portal on Lighthouse had no proper collision
  • Fixed issue when player was able to pierce level geometry with Dire Orb
  • Closed geometry holes in Church of Azathoth
  • Fixed issue on Corrupted Keep where a player could get on top of the statues
  • Fixed issue in Ruins of Sarnath where breakables were missing in DM/TDM
  • Improved respawn on Blood Covenant
  • Corrupted Keep: Player can get on top of the head statues above mega
  • Urns can be broken with Gauntlet
  • Fixed issue when spectator saw post-match podium geometry
  • Fixed issue Blood Covenant: Ranger can toss his Dire Orb out a window and use it to teleport later than intended
  • Fixed issue Blood Run: Cathedral Chamber: Players can get stuck on ledge near Heavy Armor
  • Fixed issue Blood Run: Railgun spawn point gives less ammo on pickup than other maps on both its first pickup and additional pickups
  • Fixed issue Tutorial: Heading for Heavy Armor tutorial reads "Light Armor."
  • Fixed issue Customization: Ranger's torso attachments disappear from the customization screen after a match

UI

  • Fixed issue where incorrect level showed in duels battle report

Spawn System

  • Fixed issue Ruins of Sarnath where Opposing Teams may spawn next to each other in Sacrifice Mode
  • Fixed issue in Church where Opposing Teams may spawn next to each other in Sacrifice Mode

Razer Chroma

  • Fixed ability fire and cooldown effect
  • Various Chroma effects added to gameplay events

Random drop

  • Added Holiday mood loot box scene
  • Fixed issues where Loot Box duplicated items were awarding inconsistent amount of Shards
  • Fixed issue when player did not see shards icon after receiving a duplicate

Misc

  • Fixed issue where Twitch stream didn't load when selected
  • Addressed multiple instances of medals not being announced on the HUD
  • Fixed string that did not have localization when adding player to ignore list
  • Fixed issue in Customization where Users were unable to sell pieces of a Champion’s Costume or sets if they had Attachments unlocked on them
  • Fixed issue where Enemy and Ally Outline options did not revert back to default
  • Fixed issue when Australia and Norway flags were unavailable

New Server Added

  • Added new server in Mumbai that will provide a new coverage area between Frankfurt and Singapor