The latest patch for the PS4 version of Daybreak’s popular battle royale title H1Z1 goes live today, featuring vehicle tuning, lighting updates, and a handful of bug fixes to boot. The primary focus of the update seems to be some fine-tuning of the game’s vehicle mechanics, which is being done in order to “help combat the number of cars currently present in the final few gas rings.”
Cars are now much easier to destroy with pistols and rifles, which will now do the job with roughly 15% and 26% less shots, respectively, though SMGs and shotguns now require about 11% more hits to disable a vehicle. In light of this change, the devs have also made cars slightly tougher while they’re on fire before exploding in order to allow passengers adequate time to bail out. To top it off, cars now start with half as much fuel in the tank (save for ATVs, which now start with double the previous amount of gas) and consume fuel at a considerably higher rate. The patch also updates the game’s vehicle HUD, which aims to be “cleaner . . . and easier to read.”
On top of that, the update implements new lighting and weather varieties, allowing each match to begin with a “sunny, dusky, or foggy climate.” It also makes a couple of gameplay changes, creating more variety for endgame combat zones — which should now end in cities “far more often than previously” — and adding the ghillie suit to “any Military Crates that contain the M40” as well as allowing it to sometimes drop alongside the Scout Rifle. And of course, the patch also brings with it an array of bug fixes, the details of which can be found alongside the full list of changes in the official patch notes. And if you’re interested in the detailed reasoning behind the changes, you can check out this post by the game’s design team on the H1Z1 subreddit.
