Greetings Subjects!

We are pleased to announce the release of our Midseason Update, introducing a range of new features, improvements, and updates.

Here’s what’s new:

Introducing A Brand New Innocent Role - The Seer
Get ready to redefine your strategy with our brand new role - The Seer! The Seer brings a unique edge to the innocent team by allowing you to catch someone transforming into Terror or confirm a teammate's innocence, building crucial trust. The Seer's ability to disrupt ghost forms provides vital intel, giving your team a strategic advantage. Plus, enjoy the brand new animations and visual effects that make identifying opponents easier and more exciting. Harness the Seer's power and lead your team to victory!

Intro Sequence & Visual Updates
This update we have made some visual improvements driven by our commitment to creating a more immersive and visually appealing game world, ensuring that every moment you spend in Deceit feels vibrant and engaging. We've also addressed several map exploits in both Millhaven and Wurgen, ensuring that your gameplay experience remains seamless and fair.

We’ve revamped the intro sequence to enhance your immersion from the moment you start the game.

In addition, you’ll see some improvements have been made to some in-game ritualistic elements:

• The peddler and escape doors are now adorned with brand new runes
  
• The Blood Altars have been given a makeover, and are now much more detailed and ominous
  
• The Banishing Ritual has been overhauled with brand new effects

Pacing and Scale Tweaks
We’ve made some changes to the player movement to improve how it feels to shoot and traverse the map. This is an ongoing process, so we’ll continue to read feedback and make adjustments as needed.

• 10% Faster Sprints: Both Humans and Terrors can now sprint 10% faster, intensifying the pace of your encounters.
  
• Adjusted (De)acceleration for Humans: We've refined the (de)acceleration mechanics to improve precision when hitting players that are rapidly turning around.
  
• Increased Gravity: We’ve increased gravity to make jumping snappier, enhancing overall movement responsiveness.

In-Game Player Reporting
In response to concerns about toxicity, we're actively enhancing our community experience. Previously, reporting players mid-game wasn't an option. Now, with this update, you can open the game menu and report someone instantly. This proactive approach empowers you to address issues as they occur, fostering a fair and respectful environment. But our efforts don't end there. We're dedicated to ongoing improvements, which include refining our guidelines, expanding the moderation team, and enhancing reporting tools. Ensuring a positive and inclusive gaming experience for all remains one of our top priorities.

Voting System Overhaul
We've replaced the remote voting system with a brand new Suspicion Wheel to streamline the process and make it easier to understand for new players and viewers.

Interacting through an interface diminished the essential face-to-face interactions, and the overuse of the “Remote Voting” wheel for both voting and role abilities led to excessive interface interactions, which new players found quite unintuitive. Additionally, players often voted randomly when someone was downed using the radial wheel, which felt less meaningful. By voting in person, the process becomes clearer and more engaging.

In place of “Remote Voting” you can now mark players as “suspicious”, which will add a helpful marker to their nametag.

You Asked, We Listened

• Button Remapping for Gamepads: You can now - finally! - fully customise your gamepad controls, allowing for a more personalised and comfortable gaming experience.
  
• Heat Goggles Tweak: In response to your feedback, we've made adjustments to the heat goggles visuals to enhance clarity and usability. This change comes as a response to concerns about the strength of these visuals when pushed to their limit.

Infrastructure Improvements
Server Migration: We’ve been working hard to ensure that we reduce the number of cancelled games, improve latency and reduce connection issues. This is an ongoing process as we are trialling numerous different server locations this month. We appreciate your patience, and are confident that you will notice improvements over the course of this month.

Engine Upgrade: We’ve upgraded our engine version to UE 5.4.1 to enhance performance and introduce new capabilities. As part of this upgrade, we’ve temporarily removed DLSS and FSR support (on PC), as they’re still being updated. We will release a patch to enable these as soon as possible, but in the meantime we’re confident you’ll still see improved performance from the previous patch. For users needing extra performance, we recommend using TSAA and lowering the resolution scaling. These adjustments should automatically apply to other graphics settings by default, but if you had manually enabled DLSS or FSR, you may need to update your settings.

Sneak Peek: Season 3
We’re already looking ahead to Season 3, and we’re excited to give you a sneak peek! Get ready for the Manor, a new map featuring a chilling new terror, an intriguing new role, and a brand-new item. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to Season 3!

Thank you for your continued support and feedback. We can’t wait to see how you leverage The Seer and enjoy all the enhancements in this midseason update. Jump in, explore the new features, and see you in the ritual!

The Deceit Team

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Patch Notes

Animation

• Each character now has a unique animation when first spawning into the game.
  
• [FIXED] The head of a downed player will rotate based on where they’re looking.
  
• [FIXED] Feminine characters have larger than intended heads in-game. This can cause clipping with cosmetics that cover their faces.

Art

• Updated the visual of the Blood Altars.
  
• Updated the visual of banishing rituals, used when voting players out of the game.
  
• Updated both Millhaven & Wurgen to address several map exploits, commonly leading to players being inaccessible to the Terrors.

Audio

• Added audio to several emotes.
  
• Updated the effects applied in the Inbetween to increase the reverb.
  
• Adjusted the volume of several sounds, including the Final Showdown music, tasks and executions.
  
• Added audio for transforming into and out of the Werewolf Terror.
  
• [FIXED] The Dialogue volume slider doesn’t affect the Game Master’s VO.
  
• [FIXED] The sound for the Wolf AI spawning is played in 2D.
  
• [FIXED] Beck plays Hans’ scream when being executed by a Terror.
  
• [FIXED] Terror execution sounds, and passive idle sounds, can play shortly after returning to Reality.

Gameplay

• Reporting Blood Altars is now done via the Pinging system rather than an interaction.
  
• Updated the Heat Goggles, primarily to help address how dominant they can be when pushed to their limit:
  
  • Revealed players will no longer have a black silhouette behind the red ‘haze’, revealing extra animation information.
    
  • Added a fade to/from black when going in/out of the view.
    
  • Once the Heat Goggle view is active, there is a brief delay before players are revealed.
    
  • You can no longer re-equip the Heat Goggles as you’re unequipping them.
    
  • Slowed down the battery drain tick rate from 0.1s to 0.25s. This results in the minimum drain being higher than before.
    
  • [FIXED] After using the Heat Goggles your hand is left as if it’s holding the Heat Goggles.
    
  • [FIXED] Very infrequently it’s possible for the Heat Goggles to contain to drain your charge despite not being active.
• Increased the Inquisitor’s effect duration from 4 to 5 seconds.
  
• The world will now desaturate based on the number of votes cast on you.
  
• Adjusted the camera offsets used both when you’re downed, and when you’re emoting, so that they’re centered around your character.
  
• [FIXED] Wurgen’s 4 digit code system can break after the Generator has been destroyed, causing valid codes to be rejected.
  
• [FIXED] After an execution, players with high latency can occasionally see the human form of the Terror involved in the execution.
  
• [FIXED] The Chemist’s poison fails to activate if they use their last poison charge whilst transitioning into the Inbetween.
  
• [FIXED] The human form of a player can be briefly revealed after using the Invisibility Medallion or transforming into a Terror.
  
• [FIXED] A blank character mesh can be briefly shown when a player switches items in the Inbetween.
  
• [FIXED] When spectating, other players aren’t correctly turned into their ghost form.
  
• [FIXED] The Muzzle’s “Zip It” accolade doesn’t progress if you use the Muzzle on a Cursed Subject.
  
• [FIXED] When using the custom setting to spawn with a Pistol, players using Gamepads are unable to equip items.
  
• [FIXED] You can shoot through Wurgen’s Inspection Vat doors whilst inside of them.

Input

• Added support for changing button mappings on Gamepads.
  
• Added native compatibility with DualSense (PS4/PS5) gamepads on PC. If you previously were using Steam Input for this, it’s now recommended that you disable it.

Progression

• Items were previously unlocked when you leveled up a Subject whilst playing on the Innocent team. This was unintentional and, since last week, you will now unlock items any time you level up a Subject, regardless of team.

UI

• Players being voted on will now be waypointed to you, showing their current vote status and distance.
  
• Updated the UI shown when voting players out of the game. Most notably the interaction prompt is now separate to the vote status.
  
• Updated how 3D UI is rendered so that it is consistent across different maps and lighting setups.
  
• Added a UI element to the bottom left to indicate when the Generator is destroyed.
  
• Reduced the delay before the voting UI appears above a downed player.
  
• The Escape Door now displays the win conditions for each team when you look at it.
  
• Infected players will now see the global popup informing them that a player has been banished after executing a Subject.
  
• Added a link to our Medium webpage on the Menu, allowing players to view the latest patch notes through the game.
  
• [FIXED] Waypoints don’t correctly show directional arrows when the target is off screen.

Season 2, Midsummer Nightmare, is officially underway! Your feedback has played a pivotal role in refining our gaming experience with quality of life enhancements and bug fixes. We're delighted to see such active engagement and contribution from our community.

As we navigate through this season's journey, we encourage you to continue sharing your feedback. Join our Discord community[discord.gg] to directly contribute your suggestions and feedback.

Stay tuned for our upcoming mid-season update, which promises to unveil a brand new role. And for a sneak peek into what lies ahead, explore our roadmap[trello.com]!

See you in the ritual,
The Deceit Team

Patch Notes

Art

• Updated both Millhaven & Wurgen to stop players from reaching several spots that are inaccessible by the Terrors.
  
• Updated the ‘Silicone’ CCTV Tablet cosmetic so it’s easier to see the screen.
  
• [FIXED] The ‘Beach Blue’ Bag Scanner cosmetic’s screen doesn’t show the scanning information.

Gameplay

• Reloading the Pistol is now prioritised over interacting if both actions are bound to the same input, which is the default on Controllers.
  
• [FIXED] Players can have their banishing circles spawn outside of the map on Wurgen.
  
• [FIXED] Transforming into a Terror shortly after using a Wall Crack can leave you unable to aim properly.
  
• [FIXED] Canceling the Generator sabotage animation leaves you unable to move.
  
• [FIXED] Players can interact with some of the Keypads on Wurgen through walls.
  
• [FIXED] Players can be left able to walk through objects after using Emotes.

Tech

• [FIXED] Motion blur is unintentionally enabled on Consoles.
  
• [FIXED] Muting players in-game doesn’t persist across to the post-game voice chat.

Other

• The Decontamination door exploit has been addressed by preventing those doors from closing during the task. We may consider reintroducing it in the future, but disabling it was the most expedient solution for the time being.