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First XCOM 2 Patch download available now

The first major patch of XCOM 2 has been deployed; it will correct many bugs and performance issues of the game. It will also provide some balancing to gameplay and new options that greatly increase the comfort of the game.

XCOM 2 Screenshot
XCOM 2 Screenshot

In terms of gameplay balancing, we note especially the reduction in efficiency of the tags lures that were too powerful and a reduction in power dodges of the enemies that we have to say were quite harsh. Having an enemy attacked by surprise and by far dodging an attack was enough to enrage any commander.

The XCOM teams have worked very hard to improve performance, balancing and stability of the game reported by the fans of the genre and will continue to enhance the experience of XCOM 2 with new updates and patches in the coming months.

All details on the XCOM 2 first patch are available below and also on the official blog post here:

Performance

1. 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
2. Fixed an issue where shadow rendering during glam cam shot transitions was slowing down performance
3. Support for nVidia SLI and AMD Crossfire
4. Removed MSAA options from default presets and adjusted autodetect to target 40FPS instead of 30FPS
5. Reworked Light Clipping Manager
6. Particle Vertex Buffer Reallocation
7. Optimization to shadows in the Avenger
8. Enable triple buffering to fix VSync performance
9. Shadowed light fade out within Avenger; Disabled Post & Pre Mission cinematic lights not being used
10. Disabled shadow casting from character lights w/in Avenger
11. Reduced High Shadow Resolution – Reduce shadow resolution when set to HIGH to 1536, instead of 2048
12. Reduces the impact count of the Avatar Rifle
13. Removed a hitch that occurs when the camera enables/disables building visualizer
14. Deferred profile saves to next tick. This prevents multiple calls within the same frame from creating multiple requests to save the profile
15, After changing graphics settings, based on the selected preset, extra crew will be capped
16. Character head mesh optimized

Balance

1. Mimic beacon rebalance: Price increased to 75
2. Mimic beacons can no longer take cover, and are guaranteed to be hit by enemy shots
3. Wet Work is no longer retroactive
4. Graze is no longer a chance for 100% shots. Targets being shot by a concealed attacker cannot dodge

Gameplay

1. Added a new recommended Steam Controller configuration with support for additional actions
2. Fixed an issue where VIP units would take damage when their origin location was damaged
3. Fixed an issue where Promotion Earned text appeared before action is seen on screen
4. Fixed an issue where civilians pathed to the base of ladders and blocked XCOM units
5. Fixed an issue where Character Pool choices like Class, Attitude, and props did not save
6. Fixed an issue where weapons did not keep names and customizations upon tier bump
7. Fixed an issue causing some scan timers to go into negative time
8. Engineering items that are full squad upgrades are now designated in the UI
9. Fixed an issue where strategy project timers reset if players started building a radio relay immediately after making contact with a region
10. Fixed an issue with POIs not spawning when first visiting the Geoscape if Beginner VO is turned off
11. 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
12. Minimized action camera obstructions
13. Minimized camera look-at hopping during AI abilities
14. Fixed an issue where Psi abilities did not trigger death cams
15. Kill Zone now respects concealment status
16. Fixed an issue where the Ever Vigilant AWC perk did not work for Sharpshooters
17. Buildings don’t cut down when tabbing through units
18. Fixed an exploit that skips the AI turn by spamming the END/BACKSPACE button while the Player’s last action is being visualized
19. Rapid Fire and Chain Shot visualization optimized to get the second shot to fire faster
20. Fixed an issue where shot HUD wings would fail to re-open after taking an action that required the wings to close
21. Fixed an issue where crit chance would be negatively affected by shots with a success chance greater than 100
22. Optimized Return Fire hits causing long delays
23. Optimized AI reveals causing long hangs
24. Optimized Wait actions causing long timeouts
25. Optimized falling unit visualization to timeout faster
26. Updated the Geoscape save description to use the localized HQ time, instead of previously used GMT game time
27. Fixed an issue with an invalid spawn point on a specific Retaliation mission plot
28. Destroyed cover does not take reduce % to-hit on enemies

Systems

1. New option to only use Character Pool creations until the pool is exhausted
2. Bulletproofing bad saves from causing main menu crashes
3. Fixed an issue causing hitches in strategy
4. Fixed an issue where armor customizations did not save

Graphics

1. Unit Highlighting Flash when targeting units

Multiplayer

1. MULTIPLAYER: Fixes slow communications with internet players resulting in delays between actions, turns, and end-of-game screen.
2. Added camera rotation to MP