‍MATCHMAKER 2.0

Our new backend is live and that means Matchmaker 2.0 is here. So crack a Snapple, slap on some Astros, boot up Splitty, and portal into the future of your fave first-person shooter.

When you hop into Splitgate Beta Season 2, you should have a much better experience in your matches. You’ll have fewer matches with bots (with some exceptions - let’s cover that in a moment). You’ll be better matched with players of similar skill level, leading to fairer matches and an appropriate challenge. To put it simply: expect a better PvP experience in a PvP game.

• Faster and smarter matchmaking ensuring more matches with all human players
• Players can now be added into an in-progress unranked match if it began less than a minute prior
• Players are more likely to hop directly into a match than having to  be in a waiting area
• Maps within a playlist will appear more evenly, where certain maps used to appear more often than others
• Midwest server added
• The Matchmaker Rating (MMR) of parties now more heavily weighs the higher skilled members, which previously averaged the party’s MMR
• This is to combat “reverse boosting,” where players intentionally had parties with very low MMR members so that skilled players could go HAM on opponents
• The waiting area game mode is now Fiesta FFA

Now, there’s one more thing you absolutely need to know… it might be a rough launch. We have been testing this system for a while, but there’s nothing that can replicate real people across the world playing. As the great Splitgate pro Daniel Day Lewis is fond of saying:

We’ll be actively looking for and squashing any issues we spot as quickly as possible. If you run into an issue, you can report a bug on our Discord in the feedback-and-bugs channel.

BATTLE PASS

Beta Season 2 launches an all-new Battle Pass with both free and premium items to be unlocked throughout the season. Battle Pass costs 900 Splitcoin (but you can earn 1200 Splitcoin by completing the BP… I’ll let you do the math).

• 1200 Splitcoins
• 3 new characters
• 9 Armor skins
• 6 Jetpack skins
• 6 Portal Gun skins
• 42 weapons skins
• 6 legendaries
• 5 Carbine skins
• 3 Plasma Rifle skins
• 4 Assault Rifle skins
• 5 Shotgun skins
• 4 Sniper Rifle skins
• 5 Battle Rifle skins
• 4 Rocket Launcher skins
• 4 BFB skins
• 3 Pistol skins
• 1 Railgun skin
• 5 XP boosts
• 10 Drops
• 5 Sprays
• 4 Nametags
• 4 Banners
• 1 Badge
• 1 Portal

ABYSS REMASTERED

We’re setting a new visual bar for Splitgate and you can see that firsthand with the remastered version of Abyss. Many of the classic notes remain, but there are plenty of new touches to discover. Dive deeper into Abyss for more details.

GAME MODES

We’ve added three new game modes into the mix: Juggernaut, Hotzone, and Lockdown.

Juggernaut (Free For All): Every player against one (hard to kill) Juggernaut selected at random. Score points by surviving as the Juggernaut.

Hotzone (Team): Capture and control the neutral zone for 30 seconds to score a point. 

Lockdown (Team): Score a point by controlling all three hills at the same time. After each point, the hills move.

• Oddball renamed to Splitball
• Team Objective playlist changed to: Hotzone, Lockdown, Team Splitball, One Flag CTF
• Added Pistol SWAT to SWAT playlist
• Added Juggernaut to FFA Brawl playlist
• Added Ranked Hotzone and Ranked Lockdown to Ranked 4v4 playlist
• Added overtime support to Domination
• Hills A and C are now auto-controlled by their respective teams at the start of Domination and Lockdown
• Modes with overtime now only end when a team wins
• Changed One Flag CTF overtime to be a neutral round tiebreaker
• Added new audio announcements for Lockdown, Hotzone, and Juggernaut
• Added announcer lines in a number of modes, including One Flag CTF, Evolution, Fight or Flight, Speed Bats, Fiesta variants, SWAT variants, VIP and variants, Team One in the Chamber, Survival and Team Snipers
• Added game mode variants for Hotzone and Lockdown
• Added 2v2 King of the Hill and Team Deathmatch to custom games
• Takedown minimum respawn time increased to 3s
• Added friendly fire option to custom games
• Increased game timer in all ranked modes to 10 minutes
• Increased score limits in all ranked modes:
       - KOTH: 250
       - Domination: 700
       - TDM: 50
• Respawn timer in ranked changed to 7 seconds
• Decreased game timer for all quick play modes to 6 minutes and adjusted scoring requirements accordingly
• Respawn timer in quick play changed to 4 seconds
• Added number of emp grenades option to custom games

PROGRESSION

Your day-to-day experience in Splitgate is partly driven by the question, “What am I achieving next?” We didn’t think our previous answer was that great, so we revamped our progression and leveling system to be more rewarding, add new challenges, and to enable players to show off their achievements.

As soon as you log into Beta Season 2, you will notice a big change. Your XP is untouched, but what it means within the new system is different since our previous notion of Levels 1-1000 are gone, replaced by a new Pro system. This system adds new Pro tiers (from Pro 1 - Pro 10), proving more rewards along the way.
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We also added badges, which you can equip to your player card to show off your achievements.
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• Daily and weekly challenges:
       - Removed ‘party up’ challenges
       - Balanced daily challenges to be a bit quicker to complete and achievable in most playlists modes
• A new set of seasonal challenges (to release in four phases)
• Converted all current player levels to new Pro system (all earned XP remained the same)
• Added new badge system, including update to streak badges, plus numerous challenge badges
• Updated player card to allow players to equip two badges
• Added pop-up to start Beta Season 2 that shows players their new Pro level

GAMEPLAY

Following countless playtest sessions and hearing feedback over the past few months from players, we’ve made a number of balance changes. These include slight adjustments to many of the weapons.

• Increased Battle Rifle fire rate from .5 to .48 seconds
• Reduced Shotgun pickup ammo from six bullets to five
• Increased Carbine fire rate from .36 to .35 seconds
• Decreased Plasma Rifle damage from 17.5 to 15 and increased fire rate from .1 to .09 seconds
• Increased Pistol clip size from 12 to 15
• Decreased Pistol bodyshot damage from 15.5 to 12.5 and headshot damage from 17.5 to 16
• Decreased Pistol fire rate from .125 to .13 seconds
• Added V1 of “tap to pickup” for controller with further improvements planned
• Fixed bug where bullets were the incorrect size going through portals; this had given portal campers an advantage when being shot at through their portals from a distance
• Made bullets 25% bigger when going through ally and enemy portals
• Portal Gun no longer blocked by characters and can now beam through enemies
• Slightly decreased aim assist for BFB, Plasma Rifle, and Rocket Launcher to improve usability
• Updated weapon spawn times as follows:
       - Blue (1 Minute): Assault Rifle, Battle Rifle
       - Purple (2 minutes): Plasma Rifle, SMG, Sniper Rifle
       - Gold (3 minutes): BFB, Railgun, Rocket Launcher, Shotgun
• Fixed issue where players sometimes failed to respawn
• Fixed issue where zombie UI in Contamination game mode wasn’t showing correctly
• Moved and changed weapon spawns on most maps
• Moved and changed objective placement/order on several maps
• Improved hills and flag visuals
• Equip times tweaked on most weapons

UX/UI

We have a vision for the look and style of Splitgate by the time we exit beta. Updating the way you interact with the menus and non-gameplay elements is a key focus, as is the visual design. We call Beta Season 2 UX/UI 1.1. It’s an improvement, but not our final destination.

• Replaced all menu screens with updated versions
• New home screen and lobby to highlight Abyss Remastered
• Added badge section to the locker
• Added new flavor copy to item types in the locker
• Updated copy for all game modes
• Added “dismiss all” option to notifications on the locker screen
• Hills in objective modes including King of the Hill, have a new visual look
• Added Beta Season 2 to player record to view stats specific to new beta season
• Killcams now show nameplate with badges
• Replaced drop icon with one that fits new UI
• Players now must hold for 1 second to make a purchase with Splitcoin (no more accidental buys!)

MAP CREATOR

Map Creator was introduced in Beta Season 1 and was a huge success. We’ve dedicated ourselves to continuing to improve and drive Map Creator forward and Beta Season 2 has some big additions and improvements.

An entirely new map, Wet Ocean, is now available and twice the size of the first map, Flat Earth. It’s an island, surrounded by mountains (but you can actually build underwater if you want). A new save feature enables you to save your created map to the cloud and share a code with anyone. Plus, new assets for your maps and magnets on objects to make snapping pieces together much easier.

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• Added new environment, Wet Ocean
• Creators can now upload maps to the cloud and share a code for anyone to download their map
• Creators can now turn on magnets to make snapping blocks together easier
• Players now join a match after all objects have loaded; previously some players joined maps still being loaded which crashed games
• New objects added, including trees, grass, ferns, flowers, cliffs, crates, and scalable cube, cylinder, and ramp (as space fillers so you can keep that object limit lower)
• Game mode objects can now overlap each other
• Fixed pivots on many objects, most notably portal walls
• Smaller (and rotation-sensitive) bounding boxes around interactable objects for more reliable overlapping, connecting, and dropping
• Created maps are no longer required to support every game mode, but can be designed for specific modes
• Only two spawn points are required for a valid map
• No gameplay objects are added to maps by default
• Weapon pickups can now be rotated in all directions
• New hill visual integrated into Map Creator

ADDITIONAL

• Referral pass updates
• Added esports section for Splitgate Pro Series team weapon skins in the item shop
• Increased replay refresh rate on more powerful consoles
• Player name indicators now show up over opponents’ heads when spectating while dead
• Fixed muffled jetpack audio
• Fixed issue where GeForce Now users were kicked from matches
• Plus numerous optimizations
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Phew, that was a lot of words. My fingertips are aching. We hope you enjoy everything the new beta season has to offer. If you run into issues, be sure to hit us up on our  Discord.

See you out there (if you’re an appropriate match, of course).

N00b