Splitgang, N00b here with some news to knock both your socks off. The day has arrived. Splitgate Beta Season 2 is live!
There’s a lot to dive into so here’s a snapshot of the biggest improvements, additions, and changes now live in Beta Season 2.
New matchmaker
New 100+ item Battle Pass
Abyss remastered
Three new game modes
New progression/leveling system
Plus lots of other improvements and changes we’ll get into in a bit
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
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.
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.
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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.
We also added badges, which you can equip to your player card to show off your achievements.
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
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.
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
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).