PS4 Patch: March 21, 2019

Performance Improvements, Rank Icons, Numerous Bug Fixes, and a note about Lobby Leaderboards.

All PS4 servers will be coming offline at the below times in each region for an estimated 3-hour maintenance to bring you the latest game update:

• NA Server Maintenance: Thursday, March 21 at 8AM PDT (convert to your local time)
• EU Server Maintenance: Thursday, March 21 at 10PM GMT (convert to your local time)
  
  

Welcome to the March update for H1Z1: Battle Royale!

When Season 3 initially launched in February, our goal was to introduce new content to create a deeper, more meaningful H1Z1 gameplay experience: two new game modes, Career Leaderboards and Ranking, a completely re-imagined UI, Team Lobbies, Attendance Rewards, and a host of other features. Since Season 3 launch, our focus has shifted to quality of life: performance optimizations (primarily to FFA), bug fixes, and other player-requested improvements. Driven largely by your feedback, this update focuses on a number of those improvements. We’ve fixed some of the issues with FFA that should improve performance in all modes, returned rank icons to the kill feed, addressed several exploits that gave players an unintended competitive advantage, and dealt with dozens of bugs.

LOBBY LEADERBOARDS

Before we get to the patch notes, let’s talk about Lobby Leaderboards. As we’ve mentioned previously, it’s been a top priority of ours to get to the bottom of the bug that is causing stats to occasionally reset on the Lobby Leaderboards visible in Fort Destiny (NOT the new Career Leaderboards in the front-end UI). It has been a frustrating, on-going issue both for you and for us, and we want to be fully transparent about why this has taken so long to address and what steps we’re taking to resolve it.

Those of you who have been with us since the early days of H1Z1 on PC know that Lobby Leaderboards have gone through extensive changes throughout their history in the game. Porting that system into H1Z1 on PS4 at the start of Season 2 was always intended to be a temporary solution while we worked on a new, more dynamic system to replace it on the front-end (our new Career Leaderboards), but we know how much the Lobby Leaderboards mean to our community. Identifying the root cause of the resets has been a little like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles, but we've added extensive diagnostics to track the specific stats that are resetting, and are getting closer to isolating exactly where and when the reset is occurring. Your reports on this issue have been HUGELY helpful to our investigation – please keep them coming on the forums! Every bit of information helps.

It’s a time-consuming process, but once we single out the specific reset scenario we will immediately fix it and push it out to Live servers. Thanks for hanging in there with us – we share your frustration and will make it right.

Full patch notes below:

BUG FIXES

• Optimized two key areas that should improve performance in FFA mode.
• Rank Icons are now showing in the Kill Feed.
• Players no longer occasionally remain on vehicles instead of entering FFA when the match begins.
• Fixed numerous UI issues that could occur for a player who is in a loading screen when the FFA match ends.
• Weapon wheel slot placement for Combat Shotgun and SOCOM are no longer reversed in FFA.
• When loot pops out of an airdrop or loot bag, ammo is now placed near its corresponding weapon.
• Fixed an exploit where users could throw grenades through nearby ceilings.
• Flashbangs now cause the intended effect when detonating in water.
• Explosives no longer leave unintended extra scorch marks on nearby walls.
• Players can no longer reload or fire weapons while opening airdrop crates.
• Improved the alignment of pistols to the reticle with the third-person camera.
• Equipping the crossbow no longer incorrectly shifts the camera angle.
• Firing a crossbow no longer jerks the crosshairs, and the crossbow now properly resets to its original position after the recoil ends.
• Bullets can now be properly seen exiting the M40 when pulling the bolt action back in first person.
• Downed players that are killed in Smoke now properly give kill credit and are displayed correctly in the Kill Feed.  As a result, Smoke Grenades should no longer incorrect display on the Kill Feed.
• Players now only must press Crouch button once to get up after being downed while prone.
• Reviving a teammate while zoomed in with a scope no longer occasionally causes the gun to become invisible.
• Being downed while in a moving vehicle no longer incorrectly reduces the players health.
• Prone button input is now ignored while downed, as it was effectively doing nothing other than playing “prone blocked” messages.
• Very long names now display properly in the in-game UI.
• While opening airdrop crates, your weapon model no longer disappears.
• Aiming down sights while emoting no longer causes the weapon model to disappear.
• Healing animations now play when the character uses healing items while on fire.
• Hoodies now fold down when wearing a helmet, as intended.  This prevents players from being able to hide the fact that they have a helmet equipped by wearing a hoodie.
• Rockets fired from the RPG now properly disappear when detonating.
• Hellfire empty magazine reload animation is now consistent between first and third person.
• All shells are now visible during the Riot and Combat Shotgun reload animations.
• Dying in a match after canceling the Exit Match timer no longer causes severe issues including missing end screens and exit match buttons.
• Starting the Exit Match timer no longer incorrectly removes the bleeding edge-screen graphics; causing them to stay missing after canceling the timer and continuing normal gameplay.
• Taking actions (shooting, jumping, etc.) now cancel the Exit Match timer.
• Users are no longer able to use the right analog when operating the team menu in the in-game map, which could cause button prompts to incorrectly change.
• When spectating a teammate, your map indicator no longer incorrectly shows up under theirs.
• Added sound effects to numerous menu options that were missing them.
• Mute Game Audio no longer mutes Voice Chat.
• Experience Gain ticking audio no longer persists if it’s playing when entering spectate.
• Players no longer see an error message when attempting to rejoin a party after having been kicked.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Acquire AR-15 items stamp mission to not be completed.
• Navigating to a different menu from the leaderboard then to the game lobby no longer causes the character model to be invisible.
• In Customization, rapidly cycling through weapons, rides, gear, and emotes no longer causes the game to automatically move the selection.
• In Customization, characters now retain their sideburns when weapons hats and swapping between character models.
• Cleaned up the hand animations for the Air Guitar emote and when holding Combat Shotgun with a female character.
• Firing animations now play properly when shooting while falling.
• Cleaned up the throwing animation when throwing from the ARV top hatch.
• Fixed Blue Barbed Hellfire weapon name going slightly out of the border in the weapon HUD.
• Fixed numerous minor wording and spacing issues across the entire Main Menu UI.
• Warden Tactical Helmet no longer severely clips through Warden Tactical Armor when worn together.
• Travel challenge can no longer be completed while in Spectate mode.
• Fixed a client crash that could occur when rapidly entering/exiting the PS Store via the Main Menu R1 option.
• Passengers can now exit vehicles while reloading, which will cancel the reload process.