Quake Champions October Patch Update 11.10.18 adds Slipgate Festival, new Arcade Modes, and Athena

Quake Champions is receiving a massive update today that adds new mode Slipgate and Athena, the newest Champion to join the ranks. New Arcade Modes, an Annihilator weapon skin, Champion and weapon balance changes, and some bug tweaks are all included in today's patch. Bethesda estimates the update to take from 8:00 AM ET to 2:00 PM ET on October 11. Please take a look at the October Patch Update 11.10.18 notes for more information.

BUILD HIGHLIGHTS:

New Mode: SLIPGATE

Slipgate is an attack-and-defend mode where both teams fight over the Slipgate portal: a massive wormhole capable of summoning an ancient unnamed horror. Each-and-every sharpshooter spawns with all weapons, full health, full armor but a single, precious, precious life. The defending team of Elder God cultists are trying to open the Slipgate, while the attacking team must close the gate before whatever tentacled terror on the other side pulls itself into our dimension!

LIMITED TIME EVENT: SLIPGATE FESTIVAL

From October 11th - 31st all players taking part from day one will immediately receive the Elder Guardian Tentacle Weapon Shaders for all starting weapons (Machinegun, Shotgun, & Nailgun)! Subsequent festival milestones will result in the new Annihilator Heavy Machine Gun Skin being gifted to all participants, then unlocking the Overseer Scalebearer Lore Skin and, ultimately, Athena – or her Coalition Lore Skin if the Champion is already owned either through the Champions Pack, or by purchasing Athena any time before the goal is reached.

Read more about Slipgate Festival on the official Quake Champions blog.

NEW CHAMPION: ATHENA

Athena was among the first to sign up to the GDF and seek vengeance against the Strogg who devastated Earth. Caught in a trap laid for the expeditionary forces, she escaped when a Slipgate generator collapsed, teleporting her drop pod into the Dreamland arenas. Now she uses her grapple line throws and aerial acrobatics to dominate the airspace above her enemies and rain death from above.

Starting Statistics:

Health 125/100
Armor 0/50
Speed 320

Active Ability – Grappling Hook: Athena will launch a grappling hook to the target location and immediately pull herself towards it. While in flight, Athena can stop pulling herself and instead swing, allowing her to perform impressive maneuvers

Linear Pull Hook
Swing Hook
Piercing Damage 25
Swing Damage 50

Passive Ability – Ramp Jump: Athena can reach great heights by using the top ramp or step as a launching platform

NEW WEAPON SKIN: ANNIHILATOR

Used on all galactic fronts, the SMC Annihilator is a space marine's best friend. It punches holes through enemies like they were paper. This Quake 4 Heavy Machine gun fits right into to any player's perfect arsenal.

ARCADE MODES:

A brand new way to queue up and play! The Arcade is a weekly rotation of rule modifiers that shake up how you play Quake Champions in fun, different ways. This month we’re introducing four new modes, one for each week of the month (in order of appearance):

UNHOLY TRINITY TDM

Choose any champion, all weapons have been removed from the map, however you spawn with the unholy trinity – Rocket Launcher, Railgun, & Lightning gun & NOW WITH A TEAM FULL OF FRIENDS! Armor and health are still present on the map. Practice your combos!

LEAD THE WAY

Everybody’s Scalebearer in a Free For All Deathmatch where Bull Rush is an insta-kill on your enemies. So, basically, it’s an Insta Scaletrain to ChooChoo town!

SWINGER PARTY

Put your keys in the bowl and… No, not THAT kind of party!!! Everybody’s Athena in a Free for All Deathmatch where a direct Grappling Hook shot on an enemy Athena is an insta-kill. So, basically, it’s a SWINGER’S PARTY.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

SACRIFICE

Remember Sacrifice? Well, it’s that, but now w/ a shorter cap time - down from two-and-a-half minutes to just one minute!

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS:

In this update we’ve included a number of general improvements:

Game Hardening: The team have taken a forensic look under the game’s hood in order to better deliver solid framerates and eradicate ‘ghost’ inputs as part of our ongoing commitment to improving the game’s performance.

Read the full details of our Game Hardening in our latest Dev Diary.

Performance Summary

Improved performance of FX heavy Champions
Improved client and server-side performance for shotgun
Improved performance of Gore spawns
Improved performance of several maps through art/shader optimizations and poly count reductions

Quality Of Life Updates

Added a HUD section to Game Settings
Added Ally and Enemy Outline Color options in HUD Settings
Added Current Challenge Info toggle in HUD Settings
Added Zoom FOV options to Game Settings
Reintroducing Scoreboard to End of Match – Thanks to your feedback, we brought this back from a lost Slipgate in the depths of the Dreamlands

Champions

Fixed an issue where Respawning via the pause menu with Slash could cause death camera to shake rapidly
Fixed an issue with Strogg where player was unable to pick up the soul during Sacrifice after using Peeker
Fixed an issue with Strogg where the 'Sensor Antenna' Vanity did not cloak properly upon ability use
Fixed an issue where Ranger's Dire Orb could pass through doors

Maps

Addressed an issue on Longest Yard to improve Lighting on the pre/post game podium screens
Fixed various art issues by the Heavy Machinegun spawns on Longest Yard
Fixed an issue on Longest Yard where players could shoot and damage others through the floor
Addressed an issue on Tempest Shrine where players could stand out of the playable area by the Ship
Hourglass pick-ups adjusted to reduce how quickly active abilities can be restored, reducing the number of available hourglasses and/or moving them to positions that favor the player out of control.
Awoken 5 to 6 (increased, but moved them from areas of power to areas of weakness)
Blood Covenant 10 to 6
Blood Run 7 to 6
Ruins of Sarnath 17 to 10
Tempest Shrine 15 to 13
The Molten Falls 9 to 7

Map Changes: Lockbox

Updated Lockbox item layout
Swapped the locations of Mega Health and Power-Up
Removed the Railgun near the floating platform in the Aeon Crystal room (upper toilet bowl)
Swapped the locations of Lightning Gun and the nearby Light Armor
Moved the Heavy Armor: In TDM/DM it is now located in the Blind Oculus room (Point B) - In Sacrifice / Slipgate it is in the cavernous staircase near the Blind Oculus
In the Bridge Room: moved the Light Armor from behind the Acidfall to the center of the lower level
Added a Teleporter behind the Acidfall that leads to the upper 3rd level of the same room
Replaced the Super Nailgun on the 3rd floor of the Acidfall Bridge room with a Railgun
Added two Small Healths near the Rocket Launcher
In Sacrifice / Slipgate: repositioned the Heavy Machinegun in the closed base (Point A) to align with the nearby jumppad
Added a new teleporter to Lockbox behind the acid-fall

Weapons

Fixed an issue which occurred after using abilities which could break the increased damage from zooming in with the HMG
Fixed an issue where Flame effect could appear on the gauntlet when not playing Death Knight
Fixed an issue where weapon textures could appear low res
Fixed an issue where weapon zoom would zoom in several times further than intended

Vanity

Fixed the historically incorrect US Flag on BJ’s Liberator set
Fixed a texture error on Sorlag’s Savage set
Removed a reversed decal from the Pummel Gauntlet

Fixed an issue where Players could appear in the lobby after disconnecting from a Custom match
Fixed an issue where the Player profile would appear blank when opened
Fixed an issue where the Time limit and score limit on the scoreboard were shown incorrectly
Addressed an issue where Users could not access their player profile
Fixed certain strings that were not showing up correctly
Fixed an issue where a box would appear when hovering over the Eradicator Weapon in the Store
Updated the Battle Report, Match Achievements to show proper amount of digits
Fixed issues where certain buttons were not easily selectable

Gameplay

Fixed an issue with Strogg where Players were unable to pick up the Soul after using Peeker, during a Sacrifice match
Fixed an issue playing Unholy Trinity where Rocket Launcher God medals earned were not added to profile properly
Fixed an issue in Unholy Trinity where the Rocket Launcher would play the near-empty audio when fired at all times
Fixed an issue in Team Instagib where Certain Champions did not take self-damage
Spawn Protection added to all Quick Play and Arcade Modes, for consistent behavior in all unranked play

Tech

Fixed a crash in spectator mode which could occur if player was in free cam between matches
Fixed a crash that could occur if players were using voice chat during warmup
Addressed an issue specific to AMD Vega machines which could crash on launch
Fixed an issue where the game could crash when spamming the Death Knight ability when joining a session in progress
Addressed various forum reported FPS and Performance drops and hitches during matches
Addressed various champion gore issues throughout matches on different maps

Spectator

Fixed an issue where the Spectator would see an empty Respawn button after a player respawned during warmup

Bots

Made various improvements to bot navigation
Improved weapon handling & difficulty

CHAMPION BALANCE CHANGES

All Champions

Adjusted View Heights to account for recent rescaling of player models - essentially this pass is updating all Champion in-game model sizes to reflect their hitbox changes that we have over many patches from Feburary to now
Unified Crouch Speeds
Light Champions increased from 80 to 160u
Medium Champions increased from 77 to 160u
Heavy Champions increased from 75 to 160u

*Slash’s changes noted below

**Scale = Model Scale + Hitbox

Anarki

Raised View Height 0.65 to 0.66m

B.J. Blazkowicz

Lowered View Height 0.58 to 0.56m

Clutch

Scale 1.175 to 1.15x
Lowered View Height 0.68 to 0.58m
Further Reduced Hitbox Size

Death Knight

Lowered View Height 0.555 to 0.52m
Flame Strike direct damage 50 to 40
Flame Strike splash damage 51 to 30
Flame Strike radius 3 to 2m (120 to 80u)

DOOM Slayer

Lowered View Height 0.75 to 0.6m
Hands Raise Time 0.3 to 0.4s

Galena

Scale 1.1 to 1.2x
Lowered View Height 0.62 to 0.6m
Further Increased Hitbox Size

Keel

Scale 1.15 to 1.22x
Hitbox size reduced (had too much padding after scaling)

Scalebearer

Scale 1.15 to 1.175x
Lowered View Height 0.65 to 0.64m
Bull Rush Damages Adjusted from 50/75/100/150/200 to 75/100/125/150/200

Slash

Lowered View Height 0.78 to 0.6m
Crouch Speed 85% to 50% (272 to 160u)
Crouch Slide Friction 1.3 to 1.0

Sorlag

Scale 1.1 to 1.0x
Lowered View Height 0.7 to 0.58m
Bunny Hop Acceleration 0.02 to 0.05

Strogg & Peeker

Lowered View Height 0.58 to 0.56m

WEAPON BALANCE CHANGES:

Lightning Gun

Cooldown 55 to 52ms (18 to 19 shots per second) resulting in a very slight DPS boost of 1 more hit per second

That is all the information about Quake Champions October Patch Update 11.10.18. Some of the most interesting highlights of this patch are definitely the addition of Slipgate and its limited time event. Athena and her grappling hook are a welcome addition as id Software continues to add Champions. Unholy Trinity TDM sounds awesome as Rocket Launcher, Railgun, and Lightning gun are some of the best weapons in the history of first-person shooters. It is also great to hear that the development team is working hard to improve the framerate performance of the game. Quake Champions is now the best version of itself and it continues to improve in Early Access. Let us know what you think of today's update in the comments below.