Dear Neighbors,
While we are waiting for the Robots to invade Heartsville early next year, we have decided to treat you with a balance pass, shorter matches and decoration for Christmas instead.
As you may know we are moving Neighbors into a more casual direction. This also goes for Destruction, but this time we have not touched the game mode, but rather done some initiatives on making it more fair to fight between each Neighbor and we have brought down the match length of each session.
Shorter Matches
We want fun, short and quick matches so you go in and have more fun regardless of when you join the game. And if you lose, well you just play again. So we have decided to bring down the match length by decreasing the health of fences, windows and house essentials and decreased the amount of House Essentials to destroy from 4->3. As always you can chose whatever you like from the custom settings.
Full Character Balance Pass
Our logic, so far, has been to "punish" high-mobility Neighbors with low health or strength. We believe we have found a golden middle-ground, nerfing the mobility of especially PA and Kevin to some degree. On the contrary they now have a better chance in fighting all Neighbors.
The focus of this update has furthermore been to give Neighbors like MJ, Gramps and Cookie a better fighting chance against Neighbors like Doreen and Chad. This means that now it might actually be worth taking up a fight if you play a weaker character instead of running away. Kevin, Kim, Louie and PA has also gotten a bit stronger but has been nerfed a bit in mobility. It can be frustrating to have a Kevin or a PA on your roof every 30 seconds. Now this should not happen as often and hopefully it will concentrate some more fights around the front fences and windows. There will be more changes in future updates, going towards a generally more "balanced" experience. We are currently looking at giving melee possibilities to Gramps, Mary Jean and potentially also Louie. Feel free to comment your thoughts on this.
Based on the above and the fact that we try to drive Neighbors into a more casual experience, we have also decided lift the max cap of Neighbors pr. team by default. Now you can pick any character you like and try many weird and crazy combinations of Neighbors. We feel like we are able to do this because the Neighbors are more balanced now. At any time you can set the cap back to whatever you like, in the custom settings if you are looking for a more competitive or "fair" experience which is understandable but not the default intention from our side. If any completely crazy metas arise from this, we will do what we can to alleviate it.
Additionally, a lot of bugs and smaller annoyances has now been fixed, giving a more coherent and smooth experience! check out the full patch notes below!
Full Patch Notes
New Features
Christmas has come to Heartsville introducing decoration in all maps and houses
Snowballs introduced to all maps - now giving damage and the real snowball fight can begin, so watch out!
Tweaks & Balance pass
P.A.
PA’s general health slightly increased
PA’s general strength slightly increased
PA’s helmet damage increased
PA’s cannon damage increased
PA’s cannon hit knockback reduced
Angle on PA’s cannon capped to shoot straight (meant for player attacks)
Cannon responsiveness when playing with high latency greatly improved
Big Bertha responsiveness when playing with high latency greatly improved
Cooldown on PA’s deploy cannon increased
PA’s helmet attack speed slightly decreased
Knockback on PA’s helmet reduced
Jetpack now needs to charge up fully before being attached to an enemy
Mary Jean
Mary Jean’s’ general strength increased
Mary Jean's health slightly increased
Mary Jean’s Yarn Ball cooldown increased
Mary Jean’s Yarn Ball entangle-time shortened
Lifetime of Ascending needles increased
Added cooldown to a successful lockpick with knitting needles (25 sec)
Kevin
Kevin's general strength slightly increased
Kevin's health slightly increased
Kevin’s Slingshot damage slightly increased
Kevin’s Slingshot charge-time slightly increased
Kevin’s triple shot cooldown slightly increased
Fixed slingshot projectiles sometimes flying in strange directions when being fired
Louie
Louie’s health slightly increased
Louie’s general strength slightly increased
Knockback on Louie’s fireworks decreased
Louie’s firework damage slightly increased
Louie’s Tripwire damage significantly increased
Rocket Barrage ability now has a 2 second “build up” before releasing rockets
Gramps
Gramps’ general strength slightly increased
Gramps’ health slightly increased
Gramps resurrection ability cooldown decreased
Doreen
Doreen’s health slightly reduced
Doreen’s speed slightly increased
Doreen uppercut damage slightly reduced
Added cooldown to Doreen’s uppercut
Knockback on Doreen uppercut reduced
Doreen springy glove jab hit speed slightly increased
Doreen springy glove jab damage slightly increased
Doreen normal jab hit speed slightly decreased
Doreen’s deflective fists - blocking stamina drains significantly less
Doreen’s deflective fists lets through 20% damage
Doreen’s speed using deflective fists significantly increased
Cookie
Cookie’s general strength slightly increased
Cookie’s health slightly increased
Cookie’s Multi-tool damage increased
Cookie’s Multi-tool speed slightly increased
Cookies tunnel can now be placed anywhere while playing Brawl
Tunnels are now indicated to teammates when getting close to them
UI feedback if Cookie’s tunnel does not have an exit
Kim
Kim’s general strength slightly increased
Kim’s Wrench damage slightly increased
Wrench repair slightly increased
Wrench throw cooldown decreased
Kim’s Oil Turret damage slightly increased
Kim’s homing wrench damage increased
Chad
Chad’s health slightly decreased
Charge-up time on Vacuum Swing slightly decreased
Time between attacks on Vacuum Swing reduced
Chad’s general strength slightly decreased
Chad’s speed slightly increased
Knockback on Chad Vacuum swing reduced
Items
Sledgehammer damage decreased by 15%
Baking Roll hit speed slightly decreased
Hammer’s repair amount increased
Golf Club durability decreased
Baseball Bat durability decreased
Pop Gun second-use damage slightly increased
General
Neighbor Limitation for each team removed (can be set in custom settings)
Respawn timer lowered
Respawn home-multiplier increased
Pinging items now sends more information to the chat
General critical chance reduced from 4.5% → 3%
All fences, windows, and house essentials now have less health
Nightstalker perk slightly better during day and slightly worse at night
Increased visibility of indicators when your house is under attack
Damage numbers now attach to the target to improve visibility
Improvements made to the tutorial
Bug fixes and Quality of Life
Fixed scaling of Louie’s explosion VFX in character select
Fixed tooltips being duplicated when re-joining a match
Destroyed fences and vents now behave correctly for hot-joining players
Jackhammer can no longer bounce you off level bounds
Cookie can now climb ladders just as well as any other Neighbor
Fixed Tai-Chi perk not applying slow correctly after respawning
Fixed the jetpack model staying on players after the ability is over
Fixed several UI sounds not playing correctly when structures were being attacked
The icon for house being under attack is now visible when Louie uses Fireworks
Dying in brawl when you are the only player no longer rewards the opposite team with a knockout
Fixed an issue where the front fence gates would show blueprint outline with the Hammer equipped
Fixed an issue in Evergreen Residence where the overhang roof at the terrace had a floor clipping through
The timeframe in which a player’s spot is reserved for re-joining after crashing has been lowered from 150s → 100s
Louie’s firework is now affected by spawn-camp volumes in brawl mode
Triggering bear traps with resources no longer plays a large global sound
Mary Jean’s Ball of Yarn VFX now correctly follows targets being pushed
Physical items are now less likely to desync for hot-joining players
You can no longer equip the item you currently have equipped
The cooldown on switching teams in the lobby can no longer be bypassed by using spacebar
Performance of damage number UI elements increased by up to 500%
A destroyed tunnel will now use the correct name in the kill-feed
Fixed warmup duration custom setting
Fixed a bug where if someone crashed during loading, the match would never start
Added critical damage numbers in red with clearer feedback
Ladders are now destructible, team-based only, and repairable
Fixed P.A.’s cannon responsiveness when playing with high latency
UI feedback added if Cookie’s Mole Shots does not have an exit
Price of Seagull-130 increased to 1800
Price of Barbed Wire decreased to 600
Price of Bear Trap decreased to 400
Price of Rake Trap decreased to 130
Price of Sledge Hammer reduced to 2000
Known Issues
When joining a game in the moment that match is traveling from lobby to match, can cause a number of issues such as: Starting at the enemies house, Player camera in the wrong location, missing portraits
It can happen that you can't see when the delivery van will arrive after having ordered an item
You can see the enemies' "pings"
Some audio notifications play after the match has ended
Tool-tips can show when joining a match in progress
- Stay safe and MERRY CHRISTMAS dear Neighbors. - Invisible Walls
