Welcome, friends, to a new year. We’re happy to report that our Season 1.5 Update has some resolutions we’re eager to share with you. This update is due to go live today at 4 PM PT.
You may have noticed some intel from our social channels last week teasing the upcoming changes to Vanguard Multiplayer. Along with new seasonal content in today’s update, you can expect to see some significant changes to gameplay and bug fixes. We’ve nerfed Incendiary Grenades and updated Perks to give you new ways to counter fire damage (sorry for the excessive burns). Alongside this, we completed a weapon balancing pass that buffs Sniper Rifles and fixed a few Camo Progression bugs that should allow you to unlock Atomic. Also, we’ve adjusted some of those crazy Control spawns and remedied a few issues resulting in packet burst.
We’ve heard your feedback on the issues you’ve been facing since Vanguard’s launch and we want you to know that we are committed to improving the state of Vanguard Multiplayer. Bluntly speaking, not every fix in today’s update will be a perfect fix. Some issues, especially with spawns and packet burst, might take us some time to thoroughly address. But we want you to know we hear you, we’re working on those things (and more) and you can expect more updates coming to Vanguard before Season 2.
Today’s update doesn’t only include seasonal content and changes to MP. It also includes a Zombies update from our partners at Treyarch. Read up on the top changes here, or you can get the full Zombies treatment over at the Treyarch blog.
For more information about seasonal content updates, check out the official Call of Duty blog.
Multiplayer Updates
Stability
- Several sources of packet burst have been identified and resolved
- Several sources of Multiplayer crash errors have been identified and resolved
- Xbox Series X players will no longer experience game crashing with CDN setting enabled
- Playing with keyboard and mouse will no longer result in ‘controller needed’ message
Spawns
- Spawn logic has been tuned to improve small maps with higher player counts
- Adjusted spawn logic for Domination on Dome
- Spawns in Control mode have been significantly adjusted to:
- Prevent out-of-map spawns on Tuscan
- Prevent spawning in the enemy’s line-of-sight on Bocage
- Prevent players from spawning directly on teammates
Weapons & Equipment: Bug Fixes
- Attack / Guard Dog kills now count towards Panzerfaust Camo Challenges
- STG “Reptilian” Camo Weapon Challenge is now tracking Bloodthirsty kills
- STG “Predatory” Camo Weapon Challenge is now tracking Multikills
- Katana unlock Challenge is now tracking properly
- Addressed an issue that prevented the “Kill an Enemy While They Have a Spy Plane Active 5 Times” challenge from tracking in the Counter Measures career challenges
- Player selected camos will now appear during the match intro sequence
- Locked Camos and attachments can no longer be swapped onto unlocked weapons
- A bug resulting in missing Post-Match Flow has been fixed
- A bug resulting in Type 100 Blueprint “Thunderhead” being invisible in the pre-match countdown has been fixed
Weapons & Equipment: Balancing Changes
- Weapons
- M1 Garand
- Type 99
- Reduced Aim Flinch
- Reduced ADS Time
- Retain One Shot Kill potential for chest shots when smaller caliber ammo is used
- 3-Line Rifle
- Kar98
- Retain One Shot Kill potential for chest shots when smaller caliber ammo is used
- Ammo
- Bolt-Action Hollow Points
- Removed damage range penalties
- Bolt-Action Hollow Points
- Equipment
- Stun Grenade
- Reduced Stun Grenade damage in Hardcore modes
- Reduced how long players are affected by Stun Grenades
- Incendiary Grenade
- Stun Grenade
- Killstreaks
- Mortar Barrage
- Duration of Mortar Strike has been reduced
- Number of Mortar Strikes per streak has been reduced
- Addressed issue where Mortar Barrage deployment was inconsistent
- Mortar Barrage
- Perks
- High Alert
- Slight delay added before Perk activates after being seen by an enemy
- Dauntless
- Gives immunity to fire and burning effects including Incendiary Rounds, Flamenaut, and lingering fire on the ground
- Fortified
- Reduces fire damage taken by 30%
- Reduces excessive damage of all explosives
- High Alert
Maps
- Polish pass to improve and fix player collision issues with map environments
- Overall polish pass on Destructibles throughout all maps
UI/UX
- “Seasonal Challenge” menu is now present in the Challenges tab
- Players will no longer experience visual rank swapping between players in Private Matches
- The Objective progression bar will no longer clips into reticles
- Unintended distortion of MVP images has been fixed
- The continuous post-game level-up animation when players reach Prestige 3 has been fixed
- Store: menu navigation has improved when viewing and toggling between Bundles