XCOM 2, the strategy game developed by FireAxis Games now available on PC in all regions, has received its first major patch today.
The new XCOM 2 patch comes with plenty of new features, fixes and tweaks that should make the experience more enjoyable. Among the most welcome additions is the new Zip Mode option, which creates a faster paced experience speeding up animations and more.
Here are the full patch notes for the new XCOM 2 update.
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
XCOM 2 is now available in all regions on PC.
