The XCOM 2 patch notes for the game’s first major patch, which went live today, is a fairly standard rundown of what you’d expect. The stand out change is an increase in the cost of mimic beacons , as well as a shift in their behavior. Now, mimic beacon decoys can’t take cover and will be shot by enemies on the first try. Bummer. Mimic beacon was an especially helpful pull-it-out-of-your-ass move for when you accidentally stumbled into too many enemies, but wanted to keep that “no save” thing going.
The first major XCOM 2 patch also removes a retroactive exploit for the Wet Works perk, which had been granting bonus XP to soldiers for actions before the skill was purchased.
Beyond that, it’s all about optimization. A feature called Zip Mode will let you speed up animations and troop movements, although it should just be called “all the time” mode because I don’t think anyone is savoring some of those torturous gremlin routes. On the whole a solid patch and we’ll be sure to update this story if we encounter any game-breaking effects. Here’s the full patch notes courtesy of the official XCOM blog:
*Required User Action: If you have mods enabled after installing the patch, launch it once, close the game, and launch it again. Players will only have to do this once. After the restart, the game will have initialized the patch to work with mods. While the majority of mods will operate in harmony with the patch, some mods may conflict with patch updates and will need to be updated to take advantage of the patch improvements.
Performance
Added Zip Mode gameplay option. While Zip Mode is enabled animation (like step outs & gremlin movements) speeds are significantly increased. Normal movement animations are moderately increased
Fixed an issue where shadow rendering during glam cam shot transitions was slowing down performance
Support for nVidia SLI and AMD Crossfire
Removed MSAA options from default presets and adjusted autodetect to target 40FPS instead of 30FPS
Reworked Light Clipping Manager
Particle Vertex Buffer Reallocation
Optimization to shadows in the Avenger
Enable triple buffering to fix VSync performance
Shadowed light fade out within Avenger; Disabled Post & Pre Mission cinematic lights not being used
Disabled shadow casting from character lights w/in Avenger
Reduced High Shadow Resolution - Reduce shadow resolution when set to HIGH to 1536, instead of 2048
Reduces the impact count of the Avatar Rifle
Removed a hitch that occurs when the camera enables/disables building visualizer
Deferred profile saves to next tick. This prevents multiple calls within the same frame from creating multiple requests to save the profile
After changing graphics settings, based on the selected preset, extra crew will be capped
Character head mesh optimized
Balance
Mimic beacon rebalance: Price increased to 75
Mimic beacons can no longer take cover, and are guaranteed to be hit by enemy shots
Wet Work is no longer retroactive
Graze is no longer a chance for 100% shots. Targets being shot by a concealed attacker cannot dodge
Gameplay
Added a new recommended Steam Controller configuration with support for additional actions
Fixed an issue where VIP units would take damage when their origin location was damaged
Fixed an issue where Promotion Earned text appeared before action is seen on screen
Fixed an issue where civilians pathed to the base of ladders and blocked XCOM units
Fixed an issue where Character Pool choices like Class, Attitude, and props did not save
Fixed an issue where weapons did not keep names and customizations upon tier bump
Fixed an issue causing some scan timers to go into negative time
Engineering items that are full squad upgrades are now designated in the UI
Fixed an issue where strategy project timers reset if players started building a radio relay immediately after making contact with a region
Fixed an issue with POIs not spawning when first visiting the Geoscape if Beginner VO is turned off
Removed start-of-turn hang during certain missions where enemy units had fallen out of the world. Auto-saves (and ironman saves) made in these situations should now be playable
Minimized action camera obstructions
Minimized camera look-at hopping during AI abilities
Fixed an issue where Psi abilities did not trigger death cams
Kill Zone now respects concealment status
Fixed an issue where the Ever Vigilant AWC perk did not work for Sharpshooters
Buildings don't cut down when tabbing through units
Fixed an exploit that skips the AI turn by spamming the END/BACKSPACE button while the Player's last action is being visualized
Rapid Fire and Chain Shot visualization optimized to get the second shot to fire faster
Fixed an issue where shot HUD wings would fail to re-open after taking an action that required the wings to close
Fixed an issue where crit chance would be negatively affected by shots with a success chance greater than 100
Optimized Return Fire hits causing long delays
Optimized AI reveals causing long hangs
Optimized Wait actions causing long timeouts
Optimized falling unit visualization to timeout faster
Updated the Geoscape save description to use the localized HQ time, instead of previously used GMT game time
Fixed an issue with an invalid spawn point on a specific Retaliation mission plot
Destroyed cover does not take reduce % to-hit on enemies
Systems
New option to only use Character Pool creations until the pool is exhausted
Bulletproofing bad saves from causing main menu crashes
Fixed an issue causing hitches in strategy
Fixed an issue where armor customizations did not save
Graphics
Unit Highlighting Flash when targeting units
Multiplayer
MULTIPLAYER: Fixes slow communications with internet players resulting in delays between actions, turns, and end-of-game screen.
Added camera rotation to MP
Still playing XCOM 2? Did you abandon it for Fire Emblem and then abandon that for Stardew Valley and then abandon that for The Division? If so, you’re me! Stay away from our offices or we'll turn into paradox goo.
