We'll be doing a community playtest of Hawken on 7/7/2017 to gather feedback, bugs, and other items of interest on the PC platform. The developers will be playing alongside the community and will note their own observations, talk about the game and its future, and generally have fun playing Hawken. There will be approximately 60 minutes of gameplay, followed by a 15 minute Q&A session.

Make sure to follow our Twitch channels to participate!

https://www.twitch.tv/playhawken

https://www.twitch.tv/officialhawken

See you there!

Patch Notes:

• General

  • Fixed Secondary Weapons not showing Charge bar properly. Right EOC charge bar now appears on G1-Civ and G2-Civ.

  • Removed 'Devices' button from in-game settings.

  • Reverted changes on hitboxes due to player feedback.

  • Repeater shots no longer explode on contact with the terrain.

  • Healing torch SFX now plays correctly.

  • Pressing Shift+W+X no longer displays debug info.

  • Mouse input in the form of dragging the scrollbar or using the scrollwheel drags or zooms the camera, respectively, on the mech selection screen during a match.

  • Created a button to quit the game if launched in an undesired version.

• Maps

  • New Highways map added.

    • Highways is an entirely new map for Hawken, with, you guessed it, it features highways.

    • Just outside of Prosk, there was a location known as the ‘Highways’. Once a bustling intersection before the Hawken Virus, it is now deserted and considered a playground for pilots to hone their vertical game.

    • Highways is pretty much finalized, however we would like to hear of any bugs/exploits you guys experience with the map.

• Fixed ‘taking damage’ tooltip when starting an ‘Explore Maps’ game.

• Fixed various map boundary exploits.

• Added new Mech Credits screen with improved purchase flow

• Fixed various other visual issues.

We're moving our support from the old Zendesk Portal to 505 Games' Support Portal.

All the links have been updated on our website. If you have a previous ticket that still has not been answered, please contact 505 Games' Support at the following link. You can save time in getting a response by letting us know your pilot name/callsign in your ticket, and if you have a purchasing problem, attaching your proof of purchase(s) saves everyone a lot of time as well.

https://support.505games.com/en/support/solutions/folders/6000223976

If you have a question about this move, please contact support, do not PM any developers here regarding support tickets, they will be unable to assist you.

Thank you!

Hawken Dev Team

Have a great weekend,

CZeroFive

We're rolling out the PC relaunch update as you may have seen. This is *not* the final version of the PC relaunch update and everything is subject to change. This is a soft launch period that will last a bit of time, and I stress that this is not the final version of the game. There will be lots of bugs, and we will be fixing them as soon as we can. Expect several patches this week and the weeks to follow.

Please post any feedback you have regarding the softlaunch period in the "General Discussion" area of the forums. We will be working hard with the community on fixing issues that may arise in both the community-run Discord server and the forums, as well as customer support.

Thanks for supporting us, and we'll see you ingame.

CZeroFive

Ranked PVP + Competitive Ranking Leaderboard

Upon logging into HAWKEN for the first time after the update, you will see an icon in the top right, near your XP, Emblem, and Pilot Ranking. This will remain greyed out until you play a PvP match and earn a Seasonal Placement Rating. This rating will replace your general matchmaking rating for the duration of the season.



Upon completion of that first match, you will be ranked among all other HAWKEN players. There are quite a few tiers that you can eventually rank up to based on your performance in matches.



You will obtain rewards for competing in a season - it’s not just for sport!

An emblem is available for participating in Ranked PVP Season 1, and there are additionally end of season rewards that you will be able to obtain for placing high in ranking. Who knows what that reward might be?



First Time Player Experience

We have made a ton of adjustments to the experience when you first log into the game. You’ll be greeted by a familiar face named Laila. She’s taken some time off from the VR Training to spend some time with the newer pilots. We’ve provided helpful dialog, tips, additional pro-tips and other goodies for new players when they first get into the game (Free Vanguard anyone?).

In addition to this, new players should find it easier to get in the game and start playing. We’ve removed the match countdown timer and now instantly spawn new players in their Mech where they are bombarded with cool information about how to pilot it.

There’s also something really cool in the pre-match area for all game modes, but we’re not going to spoil it…

HDR Tone-Mapping and new Visual FX
We have implemented HDR into HAWKEN! The game should, in general, look better and feel better. It should feel more vibrant in light areas, and you should see some more detail in darker areas. There’s also some new bullet effects for hitscan weapons, which are really rad too!




Co-Op Team Deathmatch adjustments
Have you ever experienced someone just not readying up for a game, standing there AFK? We have also hated that! Co-Op Team Deathmatch games will now start automatically when a player joins, and begin the ‘blue forcefield’ state immediately. No more waiting; just fun!

Quickmatch + G1 Mech Experience/HC Boosts
Every day, experience a new gamemode with the Quickmatch functionality, which provides a boost to experience or HC. The Quickmatch bonus changes daily, so be sure to check it out!

G1 Mechs additionally gain bonuses to HC and/or XP. This is for those die-hards who want to impress corporations for extra payouts. G2s are still locked by progressing the G1s.

All The G1 Mechs Bundle (!!!)
Coming sometime after this content update launches. You will be able to get this bundle and receive EVERY SINGLE G1 Mech, current and future. This does not include the G2 variants of the Mechs. Bundle price to be determined.

Bugfixes, Adjustments, and Tweaks:

• Thrust Vectoring and various movement speed abilities are now working again that were once broken. (such as the Raider’s ability. Better get ready to go fast again!)
• Armor Fusor has experienced a considerable nerf to the percentage based values which puts it more in line with the PC version of Armor Fusor.
• Power Surger has experienced a buff by converting it to a percentage value, and now applies to run, boost, and dodge speed.
• There is now a “Dead Zone” slider. This allows console (or controller users in general) to adjust the ‘deadzone’ of the controller. (0-40, defaults to 20)
• Stats should sync without as much music hitching.
• Mech corpses last a little bit longer before despawning.
• Music playback should be cleaner during stats syncing, map loading, and map changing.

Lastly

We’re really, really excited to bring this update out to all of our Hawken players. We’re also excited to end a 2 year drought of no new content for the PC players.

We have a lot more content on the way, and the future for Hawken looks incredible.

Feature parity is important for us.  However, the PC build will generally receive updates before console builds.  Console releases need to be spaced out a little more than the PC releases, partly due to the patch size and release certification testing requirements and partly due to the fact that we can iterate faster with the PC build - we want to take advantage of that since it will benefit all platforms.

This will be the last update where console comes before PC. And we’re really excited about that.

We know that ‘2017 Will Be a Great Year for Hawken’, and we promise to deliver on that. See you on the battlefield, pilots!

-Hawken Development
 

Estimated downtime is about 4 hours, but downtime may be extended if we need additional time to complete the update.

Thank you for your understanding!

-Hawken Development

Estimated downtime is about 4 hours, but downtime may be extended if we need additional time to complete the update.

Thank you for your understanding!

-Hawken Development

• Primary Weapons
• Secondary Weapons
• B/C Class Arms
• Mids
• Uppers
• Lowers
• Abilities - while you could spawn without them, it'd be unfair to the end user.

Our fixup code automatically detects that these are missing and re-delivers them to the Mech that is missing these items.

As for the rest of the items that are missing - unfortunately, we have to admit that we have no way of repairing them. For those of you that are missing purchases, we feel that is completely unacceptable. We sincerely apologize for the troubles, and will be working on compensating affected players systematically and through customer support.

Lastly, I would like to share with you some of the improvements that will be going live in Content Update 3, which will be going live very soon.

I would like to first mention that Content Update 3 should see a slight improvement to framerate on killing another player's mech. This should help framerate spiking significantly on both platforms.

Additionally, Content Update 3 contains a ton of server join process cleanup which should make joining servers less frustrating. The game client's server browser should be more reliable as a result of these efforts, especially with the display of servers that should be available.

Let's talk about some features, though, shall we?

Introducing the daily calendar - a system that rewards you for just playing every day! Consecutive logins over the period of a month will result in greater rewards.

The rewards from the daily calendar will be the first thing that you see when you log into Hawken under Content Update 4. The goal with this is to encourage you to log in and check the game out - plus get sweet rewards for doing so!



Our in-game leaderboard has gotten a facelift. It now shows the player emblem, and functionality in general has been improved. You might even see a few more leaderboards! As part of Content Update 3, we will be resetting the leaderboards. This is due to an unintended bug where Co-Op Bots TDM kills were counting as PvP kills. Now you can *really* see who's on top.



We've added a system named 'Assignments' - what are assignments, you ask? Well, they're basically 'quests' that you can complete every day to get rewards. These are automatically generated when you log in for the first time each day, and stay for 24 hours from the time you log in. This is so they can be completed at your leisure. In the event that you do not complete one in the given amount of time, the assignment will reset after a 24 hour period.

Assignments are also flexible enough that we can add special event assignments without pushing out a client update. Holiday assignments anyone?

With the addition of the assignments system, we have removed the old daily bonus system which required you to complete one game of each type per day to earn HC. We feel that this system is an adequate replacement for the daily bonus system, and we hope you feel that way too.

Here's some screenshots of the system in action:





We have added two new systems that we hope will help enrich our new user experience and get players engaged more quickly than ever before.

First, we have a new system we have dubbed 'Pro-Tips' - this adds new functionality aimed at new users. The system will provide 'tips' dynamically based on what you are doing (or rather, what you aren't doing!) on-screen to help ease players into learning Hawken. After some time, Pro-Tips will automatically turn itself off based on the number of hints displayed. Don't worry, Laila is still there in VR Training if you like being told what to do immediately. Additionally, this functionality can be turned off entirely via the options menu.

Secondly we've changed how the Bots in BotsTDM operate. Bots will now prioritize targets based on a player's in game performance. Additionally Bot difficulty now scales throughout the match, rather than being fixed based on the initial skill rating of the server. These changes make BotsTDM games more contested than they were before and should make for a better gameplay experience for both old and new users.

We have a few new internals launching in this update. First up, the Repair Field Generator - a Technician-specific 1-slot internal.



Secondly, we have the Enhanced Servos - a 3-slot internal.



Third, we have the Afterburner, a 1-slot internal:



And lastly, Thrust Vectoring - a 3-slot internal.



Finally, we'd like to close this developer post out on a good note. We're really, really, really excited about doing the PC relaunch - more than you guys will ever know. We've been going the extra mile trying to polish and improve the game. We look forward to providing both Content Update 3 and Content Update 4 in early 2017.

Lastly, get a good, quick look at this guy. You'll be acquainted with him in the coming weeks :)





Until next time,
CZeroFive