Fighting robotic enemies gets boring, however. Against humanoid opponents the combat is fun, but drones are too small to have hit locations and the many legs of spidery robots confuse the system. Neither are as interesting as removing cyborg arms like you're debranching trees. It's definitely best against humanoid opponents, although awkwardly teleporting into position for a gory finishing animation can cause problems, especially when fighting on ledges or around toxic waste.

Blitz

• Team doors that are controlled by a rally point now show capture progress via progress bar,
• Added directional and location indicators for the first front for defenders at the beginning of a blitz round.
• Added Delivery Point text to delivery point beacon.
• Fixed scoring display when defense wins early on last Blitz round.
• Reduced time for pre match intro.
• Reduced Blitz intermission time in standalone matches.
• Show combat icon on rally indicator if rally is hot.
• Only show pre match Blitz objective text in training game.
• Display Out of lives message when terminated and spectating.
• Added base mesh to rally points.

Warm Up

• Bots participate in warm up, to give players someone to fight while waiting for warm up to end.
• Esc will not close interactive scoreboard before match starts.
• Spectators don't have scoreboard up during warm up if viewing players.

Tutorials

• Basic training bots no longer adjust their skill above their starting difficulty.
• DM training starting difficulty now 2.
• Reduced DM training time limit to 5 minutes.
• Return to main menu, not training menu, from the initial DM tutorial.
• Fixed starting with armor in training.
• Updated duel tutorial, added overtime change.

First Person Weapon Meshes and Animations

• Added first person dodge animations

Networking

• Improved game clock synchronization between client and server.
• Fixed weapon desync issue in network games when run out of ammo on a shock combo and continue to hold down fire.
• Apply small impulse to character when he fires a redeemer to make sure a location update is replicated to the formerly owning player.

Spawn Selection

• New playerstart selection algorithm to improve randomness, use of all available spawns.
• Fixed potential for two players dead at the same time during Duel picking the same spawn.

Announcements

• Added callout for when player drops the udamage.
• Show player name for last man standing and terminated messages.
• Instant replay announcement.
• Fixed prioritization of "x stars ending" announcements.

Misc. Gameplay

• Fixed Mercy Score calculations in team games and Duel.
• Block feigning death in the middle of ragdoll recovery.
• Force standing during 3rd person taunt so crouching cylinder isn't used.
• Fixed ragdoll exploits.
• With friendly fire on, hitscan is blocked by teammates.
• Fixed some issues with death cams.
• Fixed countdown camera.
• Powerups tick at full speed when dropped.
• No default leader hats.
• Ranked matches are now gated on having played 10 matches instead of viewing tutorials.
• Fixed supporting large bot counts in LAN games.

Parties

• Party members see full match information when searching for a quickmatch.
• Don’t provide join option for players in ranked matches.
• Fixed party joining a private match started by party leader.
• Fixed joining Duel in progress by joining party.

Server Admins

• Fixed the game not unpausing when the admin pauser leaves the game.
• Added "Admin:" to admin messages.
• Fixed various admin panel issues.

Engine

• Removed Win32 version. Added support burden and almost no one using it.
• Fixed various crashes.
• Don't allow framerate capping below 30 fps.

UI

• Fixed “Connecting to instance” dialog is opening behind the menu.
• Moved the “change team” button back to the top menu after the match starts.
• Fixed Country Flag drop down menu can get into a broken state if player clicks out of menu.
• Fixed "Number of Round" Text is missing within the Game Settings option for Showdown Game modes.
• Fixed Ranked Matchmaking buttons do not appear on the main menu after leaving a Quickplay game.
• Fixed Menu music stops playing when exiting offline matches using top UI bar.
• Fixed the update / patch note system.
• Kick dialog shouldn't have a reconnect button.

Levels

• FR-Loh

Opening section layout changes.
Courtyard/Arena/Cave changes.

• TitanPass

Unified post and lighting rebuild.

• CTF-BigRock

BP_TeamDeco_WeaponShield is now BP_TeamDeco_SpawnShield to properly match current use case in Blitz.
New BP_TeamDeco_Weapon_Shield is the new version that blocks weapon fire for everybody (i.e. CTF-BigRock).
Rebuilt CTF-BigRock.

• DM-Underland

Fixed water.
 
Weapons

• By default, weapon allows firing any mode if any ammo left, not just min ammo for that mode.
• Redeemer

Fire and Alt-fire both fire a guided missile.
After 0.5 seconds, guided missile can be detonated (fire) or released to continue its trajectory (alt-fire).
Redeemer explosion is in 3 stages instead of 6, takes 0.54 seconds instead of 1.08 to fully explode.

• Grenade Launcher

Increased grenade overlap size and min damage.
Tweaked grenaded bounce behavior.
Grenade rotation rate now correlates to fuse time remaining.

• Flak Cannon

Made flak spread more consistent.
Reduced Flak shard starting radius 40->36.
Increased Flak shard radius reduction rate 150->450
Made sure flak shard spawn locations are always valid, not embedded in geometry.

• Lightning Rifle

Fixed lightning rifle projectile collision.
Lightning Rifle max ammo 28->24.
 
Movement

• Fixed being pushed away from dead teammates.

HUD and Scoreboard

• Don't alpha out damage numbers as fast, and slightly increased minimum size of damage numbers.
• Tweaks to end of match XP display.
• Show clan names in spectator slideout.
• Fixed HUD kickback on translocator alt with no disk out.
• Updated minimap armor icons.
• Fixed link pull indicator left on after running out of ammo.
• Rocket lock indicators scaled by resolution.

Hubs

• When returning from a hub, go to the hub menu instead of the main menu.
• Fixed rules for competitive CTF and Duel Showdown rulesets so can start with bots if desired.
• Removed Duel Showdown from default rulesets in hubs.
• No join option for in progress competitive matches in hubs.
• Fixed Hub menu does not include scroll bar in the right panel when more than 7 games are active.
• Deathmatch default ruleset now has max 6 players.
• Fixed idle kick notification not appearing when getting kicked back to hub.
• Improved the delay when leaving a hub instance.
• Fixed Player unable to exit Blitz hub instance match during an Instant Replay.

Host Controlled Start

• Improved host start messaging for matches controlled by a host (hub instances and LAN servers).
• Host control of match start now respects "match must be full" checkbox.
• Fixed centering of host controlled warmup message.

Effects and Rendering

• Updated 1st person UDamage effects - Tweaked placement, counts, offsets, and material properties.
• New lightning rifle primary fire projectile effects.
• Added respawn effects for pickups.
• Increased gib threshold for flak shards
• Fixed grenade primary trail color in non team games.
• Update to muzzle flash position for lightning rifle 3rd person.
• Made blood effect brighter.
• Made red team player armor effect brighter.

Sounds

• New Flak Cannon sounds
• Play low ammo sound when switch to weapon that has low ammo.

Mod Support

• Fixed replay support for matches using custom content.
• Added -altpak which causes servers to look for pak files in the main game's location so that local lan servers can pick up installed content of the main game.
• Added a path for the game mode and mutators to restrict or change say/teamsay messages.
• Added support for more than one material ID override for Generic_Lift, updated preview material and added custom color/opacity settings.

Quickplay

• Redraft quickplay teams on map transition.
• Allow team changes in Quickplay before match starts.
• Removed 3v5 coop Blitz Quickplay option.
• Reduced auto-adjust skill levels for Quickplay bots.
• Fixed what maps are available for co-op vs AI Blitz quickmatch