Killzone 2 Patch 1.27 Details

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Even though the game has been out in stores for a while, Guerrilla remains committed to keeping Killzone 2 one of the strongest multiplayer experiences for PLAYSTATION 3. This week sees the release of Patch 1.27, which introduces a number of tweaks based on direct feedback from the Killzone community. We sat down with Eric Boltjes, Guerrilla’s Lead Multiplayer Designer, to walk us through the most important changes and the reasons for their implementation.

First of all, Eric, can you run us through the highlights of Patch 1.27?

Sure! Most importantly, we’ve added functionality to make the process of finding and playing with friends much easier, tweaked the Skirmish Mode to keep it interesting for players with lower-bandwidth network connections, introduced a new ‘High Precision’ option to the controller configuration menu, and improved the overall balance of the game. There’s also a host of smaller changes as well, but I’ll save that for the change log.

Let’s start with the first one: finding and playing with friends. How has that been changed?

We’ve examined how party systems work and added similar functionality to our game where possible. The ‘Join Friend’ option has been changed so that the player can automatically join a friend’s faction and squad – even if faction balancing is on. In addition, squads and their factions are now persistent over multiple games, so friends can keep playing together continuously.

Killzone 2 Patch 1.27 Join Game


You said the Skirmish Mode been tweaked – can you explain?

Well, we’ve decided to unlock all the badges in Skirmish Mode. Considering that the game has been out for a while, and that many players have already reached the rank of General, we believe this is a nice way for players with lower-bandwidth network connections to experience the full range of weapons and abilities available in the Warzone.

Control-wise, what exactly does the new ‘High Precision’ option do?

When this option is switched on, it makes the analog sticks more responsive to small movements. Turned off, the controls behave exactly as they did before the patch. It’s not a radical overhaul of the control system, so the layout and the ‘weight’ of the controls remain the same.

Still, a lot of us here at Guerrilla really enjoy the new High Precision option, so we’ve decided to switch it on by default for new players. Existing Killzone 2 players will have the option turned off by default after patching – we wouldn’t want to force a sudden change to the controls on you!

Killzone 2 Patch 1.27 - high precision

How have you improved the overall balance of the game?

For starters, Patch 1.27 allows players to switch factions manually if the factions are unbalanced. If the factions consist of, say, 13 players versus 11 players, a player from the largest faction can manually switch over to make it an even 12 versus 12. Switching in the other direction is not allowed, so players from the smaller team can’t defect to the larger team if the battle doesn’t go their way. Players who switch over retain all their points, but squad affiliations will of course be lost.

Furthermore, we’ve removed the temporary invulnerability awarded to players who spawn at a spawn point other than the base camp. The players will still be safe at their own base camp, but custom-placed or mission-based spawn points do not yield temporary invulnerability anymore. This will hopefully give opposing players already at this location a fair chance.

Finally, we’ve made a couple of changes to the Badge abilities. The Assault Badge, for instance, was deemed too powerful by many players – so we tweaked down its Armor ability from 100 hit points to 50 hit points. The Tactician Badge’s secondary ability (to request air support from a Sentry Bot) has also been tweaked to make the Sentry Bot more useful. It can aim more accurately now, and its health is a little higher as well. To make it even more useful, we’ve reduced the way automated turrets target them, so they’re not shot down as fast. It should certainly make the Air Support Specialist ribbon easier to obtain!

Thank you for your time, Eric!

Thank you, and thanks to all the Killzone 2 fans out there! We hope this patch demonstrates our continued support and dedication to Killzone 2. Stay tuned for more downloadable content and more tweaks coming in the near future!

Eric Boltjes

Eric Boltjes, Lead Multiplayer Designer, Guerrilla Games

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193 Comments

  • Direct Squad/Faction Join A Friend, Persistent teams, and new control layout among other tweaks…HUGE update David!

    Thanks! Gonna get my HG Killin’ on right now.

  • aw crap… I just got reminded from these comments that my backed up KZ2 game save file will not be restorable onto my refurb’ed PS3. I would also like to request that we get to make a backup copy of the game save file due to my situation where my system YLOD’ed and I had to get a refurb.

  • hey i love this game but because i get kicked off alot cus of the dlc i had gotten when i came out (as im not the only one with this problem i believe) i was wondering will this patch fix it so i wont always get kicked off line alot plz do something about it because of gettin kicked off alot i havent played kz2 much lately cus of it plz guys pplz fix this

  • >:) I got my game face on.

    The higher precision option is just what I was looking for this next patch.

    PS: inFAMOUS is absolutely amazing!

  • Thank you for this great patch, GG & Sony! I’m especially happy about the tweaks to the Tactician’s Sentry Bots because I was having a very difficult time earning the ribbons associated with them.

    Suggestion for Next Patch & Future DLC:
    Exo-Skeletons & Vehicles in Multiplayer.

  • High precision mode? I hope that makes the controls better, as I’m on the verge of returning this game for inFamous or Cross Edge. Probably will anyway the only shooters I play now are Bad Company and Socom. (and screw socom)

  • why did you disable the ability to transfer game saves?

    if its for trophies thats lame. not everyone is obsessed with that pointless trophy % thing… i just wanna be able to transfer saves to another ps3

  • Its nice to see updates are still coming, but instead of just changing things, why don’t you make them OPTIONS. Like the spawn invulnerability shouldnt be a forced change, it should be an option to the host when creating the server.

  • wow now we all weapons badges from the start? That’s the greatest gift guerilla could give I mean thats like a month’s work gone for alot of people who started skirmish months ago. Haven’t even started skirmish yet and I’ll get everything from the start that was the only thing I hated about KZ2 was having to unlock all the weapons classes through winning crap loads of matches. Never made general in beta but now I’ll get the sniper class from the start yeah!

    many thanks Guerilla

  • Thanks for tweaking the Air Support Badge that one has been a pain.

  • This is awesome. My only other comment would be that I hope you decide to make it a tad easier to unlock the revolver. I feel like that’s going to take me forever. Otherwise, this all sounds like good stuff! It will be particularly nice to prevent people from using spawn points so aggressively.

  • high precision mode = win
    thx!

  • Man, they forgot to create a feature to prevent ppl from cheating or as they call it..”boosting”

    They play games with friends to kill each other and earn ribbons and medals..how is that fair for the rest of us who really earn those thing in battle?

  • Everything sounds goods to me.

  • Please unlock the save file! You’re literally one of the only PS3 games out there that refuses to allow the user to copy their save file for backup purposes, or if they own a second PS3.

    I am now forced to play this game on only one of the two PS3 machines I own. Please fix this mistake you made! There is absolutely no reason for it to be this way.

  • Sweet!

    That’s all that needs to be said.

  • This is incredibly good news. Concrete changes/additions which will help this game survive when many good games will arrive in the near future. Very excited to play this tomorrow. Thanks GG for listening to the community!

  • I finally might have a chance at the air specialist badge. Might.

  • Great update, good to hear you’re listening…now to back up the other comments regarding the game save. Just had a PS3 break on me. Lost all my offline progress. WHY?????? Please do as other games have (e.g. Burnout) and lock the gamesave to the PSN – or provide an explaination as why you’ve locked it. I’m not going to bother replaying this until I know my gamesave can be backed up.

  • Seems to be a great patch. Removing the temporary invulnerability will force tatcticians to place them protected places, which hopefully will eliminate the green-red-mixed-smoke-everyone-spawn-into-each-other-parties :)

  • i think this a great patch, but for me it’s to late, i mean i for one walked away from the game, because of some of the issues that are now being addressed. i wish the game would’ve shipped with these new alterations. one of my biggest frustrations was trying to get my sentry bot to kill anyone, while everyone was a Engineer, with their bots killing my sentries like nothing. and the Assault class has been long overdue, for a tweak, that game was just a frag fest, and wasn’t fun anymore. the matches were so predictable, half the team were Engineers the other half were Assault.

  • Nagash_MalKaVian

    woooohooo! good job! updates likes this are welcome! I’ll have to check de air support, is the only one I’m missing

  • guerrilla is just great they know how!

  • Nice UPDATE.

    Thank you

    SPARDA

  • @ 50 Ditto!

  • Nice work GG thanks for listening to the players and I like what you have done. Props to the change in the assult class as well

  • Outstanding changes. /clap

  • Yes! all i wanted is to play together with my friends all the time. Thanks!

  • An option to see if the server/s have friendly fire on or off, weapons not allowed is all I want.

  • Can’t wait to get my Kizzy 2 disc back… I’ve missed so much, but I already have the Steel and Titanium pack paid for and downloaded! :D

  • ah yes everything I asked for on KZ2….after I already spent a butt load of time getting the platinum trophy. For shame.

  • AWESOME!!! I am so glad they removed the spawn invincibility!!!!!!!

  • Nice! Maybe now I can get that last airbot badge…
    :)

  • THANK YOU! Thank you for listening to the players! These are all great things especially the join a friend fix. Now me and my clan can bust some caps on public games without getting split up! SWEETNESS!

  • NJz-Greatest-420

    am liking this game even more now am glad about the air support finally its going to be more easier to obtain that badge well for me it was so hard i only have 2/8 or 1/8 don’t remember am glad though thanks GG and thank you eric for your time

  • I’m not too happy about the fake party system. I play with friends almost on a daily basis in a private room, and if the teams don’t change between rounds it would basically spoil all the fun.

    I’m also concerned about the new control options as it looks like it will give a competitive advantage to anyone who uses it. I’ll try it and I’ll try to get used to it, but it sounds like the kind of thing that could turn me off the game if I don’t click with.

    I also don’t like making the air robots more powerful. If anything I wanted turrets to be less powerful, they can be very annoying. Instead, looks like we’ll have even more annoying robots in the game.

    With that said, the changes to the assault class and specially the end of spawn invincibility are really welcome changes. Thank you for making them.

    Also, the post doesn’t mention anything but I hope searching for matches is better now. It’s very hard to find a game with your prefered settings in Killzone 2 right now.

  • Yes Good News

  • Those changes are all excellent additions that will definitely have me coming back to Killzone 2…

    …after I’m done with inFamous! :P

  • meh, i was hoping for more

  • Thank you!! Keep it up!

  • Oh btw I know you guys said “this week” but on what day?

  • time to bust out KZ2 again, it was collecting dust for a while :P

  • w00t! Party support! This game just gets better and better!!!!!

  • Awesome news about air support badge!
    I’m not too sure about the removable of spawn invincibility though…A reduction of time may have been a better choice but we’ll see.

  • i officially love you guys

  • Way to listen guys. You’re doing a great job improving what is already one of the best competitive shooters on the market today.

  • Great job GG. The removal of invulnerability at spawn points was a long time coming. Keep up the good work.

  • yay!

  • I must say that’s an amazing tweaking patch, should make me go back to killzone 2!

  • since we get to unlock badges now in skirmish mode…will the trophies tied to badges also unlock as well if we get them in skirmish mode?

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