Hunt: Showdown – What to expect with update 1.9

The new update 1.9 for Hunt: Showdown was announced and presented in a detailed developer livestream.
The content focuses on performance, server improvements and fairness measures, new content is limited.

Monetization blog postponed again

Crytek had already announced more transparency in the form of a detailed blog post about the monetization of Hunt: Showdown a while ago.

In the livestream, the developers now announced that the format will now appear as a video – but there is no date or timeframe for it yet.
Reasons for this are the format change and the own claim to cover all points sufficiently.

New Quests

There are some new quests called “Summons” in Hunt: Showdown. Here, according to the developers, they have been guided by collected data as well as feedback and suggestions from the community.

• New Summons Added.
• New summons to complete with certain legendary hunters.
• More summons that must be completed with certain legendary weapons.
• Also, with the update, you will no longer receive progress in a game round itself for Summons that require player kills, as this would allow you to check if you landed a kill.

The announced quest line system will come at a later date, but is still planned.

New feature: Black Market

A new way to get legendary content at a discount is the Black Market. This will be available as an additional tab in the main menu and works as follows:

• There will always be three packages offered, whose items are reduced by 20%.
• The items of the package can only be bought in random order
• You can roll a new item up to three times with 25 blood tokens

The random order that you can only minimally influence by further investing premium currency seems questionable and is likely to cause some negative feedback.

Map changes

Stillwater Bayou

• Alice Farm: The small barn now has a window and another access to the roof
• Darrow Livestock: The tunnel entrance to the outside is now more open
• Pitching Crematorium: clearer structure in above ground area, new access to underground portion from woods
• Port Reeker: more stairs and better access to change the different floors
• Stillwater: new access to the boss area in the basement

Lawson Delta

• C&A Lumber: new access (ladder) to the Boss area underground
• Salters Pork: Tunnel leading into the side building and more cover in general

DeSalle

• Kingsnake Mine: The mine itself has been opened and is walkable, tunnels are now available under the area
• Fort Bolden: More suitable bridge with more cover
• more new spawn points
• Minimum distance between potential spawn points enabled

Reduction of the round time

The maximum duration of a round of bounty hunting will be reduced from 60 minutes to 45 minutes. Reasons for this include the fact that only a few percent of players ever go the full length and the long runtime blocks server resources.

The developers hope that the reduction will lead to more possible sessions and game rounds and thus to a reduced server load overall.

Ping Limit

Another controversial feature is the ping limiting, which will be introduced with update 1.9. So you can no longer connect to server regions where you would have a ping over 225ms.
However, there is no direct “region lock” and if all servers have a higher ping than the threshold for the player, he can still connect to the one with the best ping.

On the one hand, this feature is supposed to achieve more fairness and a better performance for the players, but also a relief of the servers.

The only drawback is that the ping limit can be circumvented, since it is set in a group by the host. If, for example, someone from Europe wants to play together with two players from Asia and invites them directly to join him, the ping limit is bypassed.

Other minor gameplay adjustments

More details after a round

The Team Detail page now shows highlighted actions for you and your teammates that are color coded from those taking place with an opponent.

Audio improvement for weapon sounds

A change has also been made to weapon sounds, which should change the sound and length of the sound depending on the distance and whether the player performing the action is inside or outside a building.
The practical example in the stream didn’t seem very convincing, though, as the nuances seemed so minimal and could only be heard in quasi-complete silence.

However, since you’re basically always making sounds yourself by running, fighting, and other actions, these subtle changes could probably go down quite a bit.

Improvement of server stability

According to Crytek, the reasons for the partly miserable server performance of Hunt: Showdown lie in several weighty points, such as the global nature of the game, overloading of the backend, a general increase in traffic, but also malicious attacks against the infrastructure of the developer and publisher.

With update 1.9, a new server system should now provide a remedy, which has already been in use and tested for the Asian region since update 1.8.1.
Now the EU and US regions should also be able to enjoy the benefits of this innovation.

The aforementioned ping limit should also contribute to the improvement.

Improvements to the player movements

An annoying problem of the game are the so-called “desyncs”, i.e. synchronization problems between the server and the game client. This leads to players “teleporting”, shots not hitting or you standing in one place and suddenly sliding down or being reset.

All these synchronization problems, especially in connection with player movements should be significantly reduced in update 1.9.

Weapon adjustments

The following weapons and ammunition types will be adjusted in Update 1.9:

• Winfield Centennial
  • Fire rate increased by 20% (effective when shooting from the hip, aiming, levering)
• Winfield Terminus
  • reload speed 20% faster
  • Fire rate increased by 5%
• Adjustments for Long Ammo
  • Changes apply only to the “Caldwell Conversion Uppercut” so far
  • Damage at short range has been slightly reduced
  • Damage drop at distance has been reduced
• Shotguns – Slug Ammo
  • Reduced effectiveness on medium barrels
  • Adjusted damage multiplier, more accurate hits on upper torse needed to kill with one hit
  • Less ammunition reserve
• Poison ammo
  • Poison bullets now have the same base damage as normal ammo (but no penetrating power)
• Melee weapons
  • Heavy knife: One more heavy attack possible with full stamina
  • Saber: One more heavy attack possible with full stamina
  • Machete: Base damage of heavy attack increased
  • Talon variants of weapons: damage adjusted to that of battle axe, 2 heavy attacks until stamina is depleted.

New legendary content

• Knife “The Last Word” (broken beer bottle) – 700 Blood Bonds
• Winfield Terminus “Burn Out” – 700 Blood Bonds
• Winfield M1873 “The Redmartin” – 900 Blood Bonds
• Berthier “Cassius” – 900 Blood Bonds
• Specter 1882 Compact “The Collins” – 800 Blood Bonds
• Vetterli Marksman “Swamp Song” – 900 Blood Bonds
• Vetterli Silencer “Fates Whisper” – 900 Blood Bonds
• Legendary Hunter “Hawkshaw Jack” – 1000 Blood Bonds

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Bugfixes

Of course, a large update should not be without a lot of fixes and smaller improvements.
Worth mentioning here is probably the currently still occurring bug in connection with the LeMat turret, which should definitely be history with the update.

You can read a complete list of all bugfixes on Steam.

Update 1.9 on the test servers

The update 1.9 for Hunt: Showdown is currently already available on the test servers. As always, the developers at Crytek are asking for your help to collect as much data and find bugs as possible before the update is pushed to the live servers.