Advanced Warfare Patch Notes 12-4-14

A 605 MB update was released by Sledgehammer Games this morning for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare featuring major changes in the spawn system, weapon balancing, exploits in maps, ranked playlist, and others.

A few weeks ago the BAL-27 was nerfed on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions of the game. Now they have released it for Next-Generation Consoles. When you start up your game today, you will be prompted to update the game in order to play online.

Today marks the one month anniversary for Advanced Warfare and the first major update to hit the game. Some of these changes are specifically made for Xbox One, PS4, and PC and will make its way to Xbox 360 and PS3 at a later date that is unannounced. We will be covering the main points that will be affecting Call of Duty eSports as a whole.

Security and Anti-Cheat Updates

• Multiple fixes for invalid player data, which allowed custom “super” classes.
• Added offensive emblem policy message to emblem editor main page and save pop-up.
• Added additional enforcement for offensive player-created emblems.

Over the course of the past few weeks, players on next-gen consoles have been experiencing some players having classes which gave you unlimited UAV, silent footsteps, and ping. This allows for all of that to be terminated and have players have a fair game against one another, especially in big online tournaments such as the 10k before Columbus which there were few instances where players were using these “mods”.

eSports Settings Changes

• Search and Destroy Silent Plant = Enabled
• Spectating POV = First Person Only
• Battle Chatter = Disabled
• Uplink Respawn Delay = 5 Seconds
• Hardpoint Respawn Delay = 2.5 Seconds
• Team Kill Penalty = None
• Friendly Fire = Enabled
• Explosive Delay = None

You may be thinking, what’s the difference with this? Well in Hardpoint and Uplink there was originally no respawn delay which made these game modes seem sporadic and random. Before you would have to manually add the respawn delays, but now the eSports rules have been updated and allow you not to have to manually fix them anymore.

• Ranked Play Updates:
• Remove Join in Progress.
• Turning on Skill Based Matchmaking.
• Turning off friendly fire.
• Fixed issue where the player wouldn’t lose division points from abandoning the match by using the system close application option.
• Initialize disconnect penalty as soon as the match starts.
• Utilize latest eSports rule set:

  • Primary Weapons – All Specials
  • Secondary Weapons – All Launchers
  • Attachments – Tracker, Grenade Launcher, Akimbo
  • Wildcards – Bombardier
  • Exo Ability – Ping
  • Exo Launcher – Tracking Drone, Explosive Drone
  • Scorestreaks – UAV, Orbital Care Package, System Hack
  • Scorestreaks Modules – Bombing Run Care Package Upgrade, XS1 Goliath Recon, and All Support Modules.

For most, this playlist is the go to for competitive Call of Duty for everyone. This patch brings the rules to a more relative area to what pros and ams play while scrimmaging and at LAN events. The patch brung bans to multiple things such as scorestreaks like UAV, Care Package, and System Hack which was overly used in this playlist. Players will be happy with SHGames for their effort on the Ranked Playlist.

Weapon Balancing Updates (Note: Adjustments affect the base weapon and all loot variants)

• BAL-27: damage reduced, max damage range decreased, recoil adjusted
• HBRa3: max damage range decreased
• ASM1: max damage range increased
• MP11: max damage range increased
• EM1: damage increased
• EPM3: damage increased, ads time decreased
• XMG: damage increased, lockdown mode increased
• Ameli: damage increased
• Pytaek: damage increased

As this is the most important part of the patch for all players, many will be disappointed by some of the other buffs added to guns. The BAL-27, gun a choice for a good chunk of the community, has received a recoil adjustment which adds little kick to the gun. Most of the other guns gained strength and some lost, but mainly this was for the BAL-27 to be not as overpowered.

Game Mode Specific Updates (Note: Adjusted score amounts for various events and objective modes.)

• Search and Destroy:

  • Fixed rare Search & Destroy Killcam issue.
  • [Broadcaster] Added various Search & Destroy UI improvements.
  • [Broadcaster] Fixed the bug where the “Target A” and “Target B” in-world icons wouldn’t disappear when the bomb was planted.

• Capture the Flag:

  • Removed the text that duplicates the information presented by the flag icons.
  • Adjusted spawn logic in Capture the Flag to make it less likely for players to spawn near their own flag.
  • [Broadcaster] Added a timer that displays the time remaining until the flag automatically resets when the flag is on the ground.

• Uplink:

  • [Broadcaster] Added various Uplink UI improvements.
  • Added distance limitation to passing the Satellite Drone in Uplink. This prevents the players from passing it across the entire map. Also adjusted the required throw angle.
  • Fixed spawn points issue in uplink.

• Hardpoint:

  • [Broadcaster] Added various Hardpoint UI improvements.
  • Altered Spawn logic to prevent cluster spawning near the Hardpoint.
  • Fixed rare Hardpoint location disappearing issue in Private Match.
  • [Broadcaster] Adjusted so that the broadcaster will now see a “Defend” icon appear on the HUD when the spectated player is standing in the Hardpoint.

Last but not least, here are the few fixes they added into the competitive game modes. We saw some instances in Hardpoint where a team would go all down and spawn on top of each other to end up getting wiped out again. The patch fixes this to add more spawn points in order to make it easier to control maps, same thing with Capture the Flag. There were times where players would spawn right up on their own flag while the opposing team had complete map control and make them lose it instantly.

#AdvancedWarfare Update: Celebrating One Month Since Launch & Game Update 12/4/2014 https://t.co/rE1PqCcBnL pic.twitter.com/NbyO1p0wCx

— Sledgehammer Games (@SHGames) December 4, 2014

Do you guys like the new patch that Sledgehammer Games is rolling out? Let us know.

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