Z1BR
GAME HUB

Game Update: June 26, 2019

Z1BR servers will come down in all regions on Wednesday, June 26 at 2 PM PDT / 10 PM BSTto bring you the new game update. Estimated downtime is 2 hours. Full patch notes below:

 

Game Updates:


  • New Arcade Mode: Hot Dog Eating Contest 
  • Hot Dog Eating Contest will run from Wednesday, June 26 to Wednesday, JUly 10
  • Hot Dog Champion: Collect 100 Hot Dogs to earn the Patriotic Motorcycle Helmet (ultra rare)
  • Hot Dog Eating King: Win an Arcade Mode match with the Golden Hot Dog in your possession to earn the Patriotic Unicorn Mask (legendary)
  • Once a player completes the Hot Dog Eating King challenge, the golden hot dog will no longer be visible to that player (they can still collect regular hot dogs)
  • New Crate: Patriotic Set Crate is now available


Bug Fixes:


  • Item icons are fixed including the Vixen Set Crate

Z1BR and the Road Ahead of Us

First off, thank you all for your patience as we worked through what’s next for Z1BR. 


We have a deep love for this game. H1Z1 on PC, after all, is the OG BR game that launched the most popular genre in the world, and many of us have spent years working on it. We know as well as anybody how much the landscape for battle royale has changed over that time; but we still believe there is a special something to H1’s unique flavor of no-frills BR.

 

The dev team at NantG did an amazing job bringing Z1BR back to its roots, but the sudden transition left the game in today’s uncertain state. The challenges are real and significant. But we also know that many of you love this game just as we do. With your help, we believe we can try out some new ideas and get the game back on solid footing.


Ultimately, we understand that no single update or major content drop will ever get Z1BR back to #1 on Twitch or bring in millions of new players. But we’re not ready to call it quits either. Like you guys, many of us have poured thousands of hours into this game; we still believe it fills a special niche and offers a unique experience no other BR game can match.


PC vs PS4


The immediate challenge we faced at the beginning of this transition is that our team has been entirely focused on PS4 development for some time. Z1BR (PC) and H1Z1 (PS4) development and gameplay have forked in meaningful ways in the past year -- particularly when it comes to the core combat mechanics that make Z1BR so unique.

 

That said, while we don’t want to touch Z1BR’s core mechanics, one of the advantages we start out with is a deep library of PS4 content (past, present, and under development) that we’ve already begun scoping out for Z1BR. PS4 content like new modes (e.g. FFA), new weapons, new vehicles, new skins, and ultimately, a new map are now all on the table for Z1BR.

 

The game will still continue to look and feel like the Z1BR you know and love. Only now with both games under the same umbrella again, we have the opportunity to experiment with some of the fun new content we cooked up for PS4 that we can now bring to both games and both communities.

 

SEASON 4 


We initially ended Season 3 and kicked off a new, interim Season 4 so we could work on our strategy to support both games. Now that we’re ready, we plan to immediately introduce meaningful new content to Z1BR with our first game update next week on Thursday, June 13.

 

Next week’s update will include:

 

• ARV for all modes

• LMG and Scout Rifle for all modes

• 6 new Arcade Modes

• New Skins and Outfits


And on deck following next week’s update is the return of an old friend: Auto Royale!


This is our first opportunity to introduce some of the cool content our PS4 team designed, but it also signifies our focus on live service: more frequent updates, rotating Arcade modes, fresh content and new events.

 

SEASON 5…AND BEYOND


We have a lot more PS4 content available for Z1BR – some in active development, some tried and tested on console that we believe will make for a fun change of pace for our PC community.

 

But the BIGGEST content drop we know is coming to BOTH platforms is a major one: the new Outland map.

 


As our PC community remembers will with Z2 and Z1 Remastered, developing a new map is an enormous undertaking, and we’re not dropping a date until we’ve had more time for testing. But the good news is that Outland has been under development for PS4 for months now, which means we’re a lot closer to being able to bring it PC Test Servers than we would’ve been if we’d started developing it anew at the beginning of this transition.

 




Thank you again for all your patience and support over the last few months (and years!). This is just a first step forward, but the road ahead could not be more exciting.

 

Update on Z1BR Seasons, Servers and Showdown

As we’ve stated since the transition, our number one goal is to maintain Z1BR game service while we evaluate the steps required to continue supporting the game. As part of this process, we want to provide our players information about the game as internal decisions are made in real time.

On Tuesday, April 30, we are ending Season 3. We are also shutting down South America servers at that time. This will consolidate our Americas player base on North America, speeding up queue times and ensuring Z1BR's other servers continue to operate for the vast majority of our global community as we lead into next Season. As of this time, we plan to kick off Season 4 on Tuesday, May 14.

 

We also wanted to inform you that we will be unable to host The Showdown. After much deliberation, we determined it's just not realistic for us to put on a massive global event in such a short window of time that will live up to the standard we've set with past Showdowns.

However, we're still making sure that every player who would've qualified for Showdown receives their rewards, per their Leaderboards ranking at the end of Season 3:

  • The top 10 players in each region will receive their Showdown placement skin;
  • The top 75 in each region will receive their participant skin;
  • And the entirety of our community will be granted the viewer skin that was promised to them at the beginning of Season 3

We sincerely thank you for your patience as we continue to work through this transition. We will be back with more information as we work towards kicking off Season 4.

Z1BR and the Daybreak Transition

As many of you saw last Friday, NantG officially announced their decision to transition Z1 Battle Royale back to Daybreak. Like you, we were reacting to that decision in real-time, and are still digesting what that means for the game going forward. That means we don’t have all the answers yet, but we can offer our immediate plans for now until we are ready to share more.

We can share today that servers will remain up, that we have no plans to change the name of the game, or make any other big changes that will affect your current Z1BR gameplay experience. Our number one goal throughout this entire transition is to make sure there is minimal disruption to the game’s service. That means you can still expect to receive Z1BR news through existing Z1BR community channels. It also means that we’ll continue to support the game – through hotfixes, live maintenance, other service updates – as our team works to get back up to speed.

Z1BR is a game that so many of us here at Daybreak have worked on and supported in myriad ways over the years, and we want to do right by our community. As we work through this transition, we only ask for your continued patience as we prepare our plans for the game’s future.

A Message from NantG Mobile on Z1 Battle Royale

In the past few months, NantG Mobile has been working feverishly on rebranding Z1 Battle Royale and reverting the game back to its glory days. We’ve since made countless changes to Z1BR in an effort to recapture the moments that once made the game vastly popular and truly unique and special to many of you. 

Despite the team’s determination and commitment to revive Z1BR’s player base with our recent Season 3 launch update, we soon realized that the road is still paved with many challenges that preclude us from long-term success, including the confusion it caused by having both NantG Mobile and Daybreak managing the same game under two separate brands.

Based on these events and the current state of the game, NantG Mobile will focus on its core mission of developing mobile games moving forward, and we have refocused our team toward this vision.

We have also decided to hand back the Z1BR torch to Daybreak Games, so that both Z1BR and H1Z1 will be under one publishing umbrella once again. Daybreak Games has agreed to keep the servers up for players and continue live maintenance on the game.

During this time period, we don’t foresee any issues of this affecting your experience with Z1BR, as we work with Daybreak on ensuring that the transition process runs as smoothly as possible without any disruption to the game's service.

On behalf of NantG Mobile and everyone on the Z1BR team, thank you for all your countless cheers during our entire journey toward “The Return of the King.” We would never have made it this far without your passion, support and invaluable feedback.

-NantG Mobile

Z1BR Game Update: March 27, 2019

Reticle Blocking Begone

Currently there are two situations where your reticle will get blocked, aiming uphill and while crouch strafing, both of which make it extremely difficult to aim. With today's patch we have made the following adjustments that address these issues:


  • Lowered the weapon placement on the back of the character model to prevent weapons from blocking the reticle when aiming up hill.
  • Moved the crouched camera height up to prevent the players head from blocking the reticle when strafing side to side while crouched.

Optimizations

  • Made an optimization to how the system handles packet bundling. Players should be seeing an improvement of 5-10 ms in their pings.
  • A few things relating to how the in game HUD animates specific elements are being changed/optimized to increase performance and address possible micro stutters.
  • Applying a change to a system that interacts with the in game UI that should net players some extra frames. FPS gain will vary based upon players hardware.
  • Optimized the in game flora.

Bug Fixes

  • Removed vehicle spawners for POIs that no longer exist. (ex: Carnival)
  • Swapped out the H1Z1 logos to Z1 logos on the crates in the background of the "Redeem a Code" menu.
  • Fixed an issue with the wood slats on the back of some 2 story houses where players could get stuck and be unable to move.
  • Fixed the "Prone Blocked" messaging getting stuck permanently on screen.
  • Fixed an issue with the in queue timer overlapping onto the crowns currency in the front end menu.
  • Green text was popping up at the start of the match in the broadcast message. This text color has been corrected to white to match the rest of the messaging that occurs in this system.
  • Fixed: After a team mate died and went into spectate mode their chevron was still visible to the players were still alive. It would show up floating behind whoever the player was spectating.
  • Fixed a bug that was briefly popping the end match screen onto a players screen when they were clicking spectate to watch their team mate who was still alive.
  • After throwing your last grenade, regardless of type, players were being swapped to their fists. This has been changed to use whatever the previous weapon slot the player had active before using the throwable.
  • Fixed an issue preventing the end game screen from showing up in fives matches.
  • Fixed a bug that was making the shot block icon get stuck on screen if you switched to fists while a player was using free look.
  • Various fixes to the messaging on the requirements of a few missions.
  • Fixed an error for a portion of the UI that wasn't switching from English to the localized language for other regions.
  • Audio feedback was not playing when mousing over menu options, this has been fixed.
  • In normal solos at the end of a match the messaging was still telling players they needed to go to Ranked Pro mode to progress. This was a messaging error in the system and has been corrected to show the player how far they have to go to get to the next tier.
  • Cleaned up team mates loading into the world on the front end menu when joining the group.

Known Issues

  • The weapon model in the kill feed may appear facing the wrong direction.

Z1BR Game Update: March 22, 2019

We have a small update going out right now with the following changes:

  • Master and Royalty ranks for solos are no longer locked to the Ranked Pro mode. They have been added back into the standard solos play list. Players will see their rank update after they play their first solo match once the patch is live.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing bandages from dropping in Ranked Pro mode.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing players from being able to purchase the in game sale items from the message of the day on the front end menu.

Z1BR Game Update March 13th: Gamers Outreach Charity Event and more!

Today's patch marks one week since the Season 3 update and the rebrand to Z1 Battle Royale. It has been a crazy week and we are ecstatic to see you all in game and having fun with the new season. The feedback and love shown from all of you in the community has since the patch has been nothing short of heart warming. It has been great seeing all the new and returning players having fun in game and on stream. We have also noticed through the feedback and streams where we can make fixes/improvements/ With the patch came the introduction of many new bugs. Today's patch is targeted at those issues, which you will see as you read through today's notes in the Misc. Updates and Bug Fix categories below. Alongside the bug fixes we also have a world update reintroducing sun reflections to the roads, a new in game item for St Paddy's Day, and a brand new Gamers Outreach Charity Hoodie supporting http://GamerOutreach.organd their mission.

  

One last rambling before for those that haven't skipped ahead to the notes. We would like to say thank you to everyone who has taken time out of their day at any point to report bugs and issues they have come across to us. The videos, pictures, and steps to reproduce the issues are extremely helpful. They allow us to reproduce the issues much quicker, which in turn allows us to fix them much sooner. For anyone looking to make a bug report in the future drop those reportshere[forums.z1.live](there is also a great guide to the perfect bug report pinned at the top of the forum).

  

Z1BR Client Hotfix March 7th, 2019

We have just pushed a hotfix with the following list of changes:

  • UI: The in game HUD should now match the HUD from Solos in Duos and Fives.
  • UI: The Killfeed will no longer start rotating the feed into itself as it gets longer.
  • UI: The Arcade Challenge is no longer available. This should not have been showing up since there is no active Arcade Mode running at this time.
  • UI: The Hotshot Crate confirmation will no longer refer to it as “Premium3 crate”.
  • Weapons: Fixed mismatched M9 refire timing. PS3 timings on the M9 had the ADS fire rate set to a faster refire than hipfire. These timings now match up to PS3 values.
  • Animation: There was an issue occurring with the shoulder animation when firing the AR-15 in ADS. It was skipping the animation on many shots. This issue has been lessened and we will continue to tweak this if the issue continues.
  • UI: When exiting a match in 5s, the camera on the front end menu was focusing on the user’s position rather than the group as a whole. 
  • UI: If a player accepts a group invite on the press any key screen, they will no longer receive an erroneous ping lock message
  • UI: Fixed an issue when a player accepts a group invite on the character select screen they will be seen standing in place by other group members.
  • Animation: Ensure empty hand sprint animations are properly playing.
  • UI: The recycle shoes and boots match challenge description was inaccurate.
  • UI: Fixed 3 white backgrounds that were showing up in the front end menu.

Z1BR Season 3: The Return of the King (March 6th Patch Notes)



A foreword from our General Manager, Anthony Castoro.

"Today's patch is huge, not just because it contains tons of content, or that it's the start of the first new Season since early November, or even that the game now has a new name. It's also huge because it represents the first big delivery on the promise that the new NantG team made when it took over development last September: Bring back the game that so many of you fell in love with in the classic "King of the Kill" era around Preseason 3 at the end of 2016 and in early 2017.

Since September, the NantG team has been as transparent as possible about our goals and plans and many of you have stuck with us through the challenges of starting a new company, transferring the development and operations of a live game and releasing updates on an almost weekly basis. We want to take this opportunity to thank so many of you for sticking with us and to welcome those of you who are returning, or even just discovering the game for the first time.

We're not done! We still plan to address old weapon models, classic in-game UI elements and more. So if you want to keep up with the latest plans go tohttps://www.z1roadmap.comor join us in the official forums athttps://forums.z1.live!"

Thank you Anthony. Today's patch is absolutely one of epic proportions as you will all soon see in the massive patch notes below. It has been a crazy ride since making the transition from player to Community Manager and I am ecstatic for you all to get to play this first giant step in the development of Z1 Battle Royale.

On behalf of the team I would just like to say "Welcome Home!"

Z1BR Patch Coming March 6th, 2019

Over the past few months NantG has taken over development of H1Z1 Battle Royale and has been re-branding it to Z1 Battle Royale, the team has been working feverishly to recapture what made the game so special. The return of classic King of the Kill gameplay that everyone fell in love with, the classic movement, gun mechanics, the look and feel of the world/environment, the works. It's all getting overhauled, and we are bringing it back to the glory days. The team has touched just about every existing system the game has, while also bringing in some brand new systems to give players more to do and interact with. This is our biggest update yet, and the kickoff of what the team here at NantG believes the game should have been all along. In just under two weeks on March 6th we will be dropping our Season 3 patch.


A small preview of what is coming w/ Season 3:

  • Major Overhaul/Restoration of Movement and Animations
  • Updated/Restored Combat and Gun Mechanics
  • Restored Vehicle Mechanics
  • Restored PS3 Era Map, Environment, and Lighting.
  • New: In Match Missions
  • New: Fragments/Collection System
  • New: Seasonal Play and Ranked Playlist
  • Announcement of New Showdown Tournament
  • All New Rewards
  • And One or Two Surprises
  • Full patch notes to be listed the day of the update

This is a patch you won't want to miss. See you all March 6th.

For even more info please check out our public trello at z1roadmap.comFor updates as they happen you can keep up with us on twitter.com/Z1BattleRoyale

The Arena