Star Citizen Alpha 3.20 welcomes the largest update Arena Commander has seen since its creation. Below you’ll find all the details for the changes, improvements, and additions coming in the latest Star Citizen update, and this only marks the beginning. We’re all excited to unlock Arena Commander’s potential and bring it to new heights with each patch going forward. In the meantime, please share your feedback with us in the dedicated section on Spectrum. We hope you enjoy everything this update delivers!
Additional System and Balance Changes
Below, you'll find a few more changes/additions we're implementing in Alpha 3.20. As we mentioned above, this is only the beginning, and we're looking forward to further revitalizing Arena Commander in each patch going forward.
Competitive Scoring
All competitive game modes now feature a new competitive scoring system where you are measured against the leaderboard rating of your opponent. Fighting the best pilot in the verse? You’ll get increased score depending on the difference in rating or on the flip side experienced players now receive significantly reduced score for killing new players.
Death Cameras
All game modes now feature new death cameras, which will follow your killer after death, giving you a better idea of the who, what and where.
Lobby Recovery
Introduced with the new lobby system, players who disconnect by any means from their lobby (be it in-game or forming on the Frontend) will now be presented with an option to recover your instance, reconnecting to your lobby and, if applicable, automatically connecting to the match they are in.
New Loading Screen Flow
Once you begin connecting to your match, you will first see a Game Mode loading screen. As soon as the map which you are connecting to is confirmed, you will transition to a loading screen specific to the map. This resolves a long-standing issue where loading screens would be inaccurate to the map you are loading into.
Pickup Balance
Ballistic pickups now award 100% of your ammo divided by the number of ballistic weapons (i.e. 4 ballistic weapons will receive 25% each upon pickup, while a single ballistic will be fully restored). Ballistic Pickups now also award Countermeasures.
Medpens
Resolved an issue that caused some medpens to heal approximately 3% health. Alongside this change we have made a number of quality-of-life improvements to Medpens overall including that once healed you will automatically switch back to your weapon and you should now automatically discard empty medpens among other quality of life and bugfixing.
Objective UI & Scoreboard Updates
The first of a series of updates to the scoreboard was added, including a minor visual update primarily for team-based game modes. This now shows team names, logos and rounds won.
Lethal Takedowns
You can now hold the takedown button to perform a lethal takedown, regardless of having a knife. Tap the takedown button to perform a non-lethal takedown.
Entitlement Refactor & Communal Vehicles
A refactor of how entitlements and free vehicles/equipment are handled in Arena Commander. This should provide a faster and more stable experience when using or renting vehicles and equipment. We’re introducing a “Communal” concept, which allows us to grant players vehicles or equipment on a per-game mode basis without the overhead of the entitlement systems. These communal vehicles are free to all players but non-customizable; however, in most cases if the player already owns the vehicle, they will be able to utilize their vehicle with full customization (though some game modes may purposely limit customization).