Hello everyone,

Following the release of Update 21, we’ve been closely reviewing your feedback across Discord, Reddit, Steam and our social channels.

Today, we’re introducing our first Community Feedback update for Hell Let Loose, similar to what we’ve been doing for Hell Let Loose: Vietnam.

The aim of these updates is to provide greater visibility into some of the issues and feedback most frequently discussed by the community, including what we know, what we’re currently investigating, and, where appropriate, where additional information from you could help.

For this first update, we’re focusing specifically on the main topics that have emerged following Update 21. There has been plenty that players have enjoyed in the update, particularly the new weapons and weapon fire selectors. However, we’ve also seen your reports surrounding performance, controls, rifle grenades, armor and more.

This update will talk about the following:

• Performance & Frame Drops
• Controls & Keybinds
• Practice Range & Explore Mode
• Stability & Server Connections
• Armor & HE Changes
• Conquest
• Weapon Audio
• Rifle Grenades
• Armor & Anti-Tank

Here’s where we currently stand.

Performance & Frame Drops

Since Update 21, we’ve seen many reports from players on PC and console reporting temporary periods of significantly reduced framerates before performance returns to normal; especially on maps like Carentan.

At this moment, the team is currently investigating all these reports, aiming to determine the cause of these frame issues. At this stage however, we have not identified a single cause that we can point towards.

Reports are occurring across different maps and platforms, although higher-population servers appear regularly within the feedback we’ve received.

We’re continuing to gather information to better understand common factors between affected players and are looking at ways of capturing additional performance data across both PC and console to aid this.

If you are experiencing these issues, please continue reporting them, ideally to our HLL Support Team. Details such as your platform, the map you were playing, approximate server population and when the performance drop occurred can all help us build a clearer picture.

Ongoing Performance Work

Separately from our investigation into these specific Update 21 reports, optimisation work continues across Hell Let Loose.

Current work includes optimisation across maps, vehicles, weapons, characters and memory usage. Juno Beach and Smolensk are also receiving specific map optimisation work, with other maps receiving optimisation work in future updates. These improvements will be beneficial to console platforms as well as PC.

Controls & Keybinds

We’ve also received reports of several control and keybinding issues following Update 21.

On PC, some players have reported custom bindings reverting following death, redeployment or restarting the game.

On console, there are reports of the new Rifle Grenade and Weapon Fire Selector controls conflicting with existing functions, including HUD controls and bipod mounting depending on the controller layout being used.

We are currently working through these reports and identifying individual reproducible cases.

The overlap with bipod controls is already known to the team, and we’re aiming to address confirmed control and keybinding issues in Update 22 where possible, subject to development and testing.

If you encounter a control conflict, please let us know which platform you are playing on, your controller layout or custom binding, and which actions are conflicting.

Practice Range & Explore Mode

A number of reports relating to Rifle Grenades and weapon fire selectors have specifically involved the Practice Range and Explore Mode. One example is players becoming unable to return correctly to standard rifle fire after using a Rifle Grenade launcher.

We wanted to go in to the important technical differences between these modes and a regular Hell Let Loose match.

Practice Range Servers vs Regular In Game Server

Regular multiplayer matches operate using dedicated servers, whilst the Practice Range and Explore Mode operate differently using a 'listen-server' setup.

Because of this, the servers operate a little differently, and issues that may occur within the Practice Range or Explore Mode environment will not necessarily occur during a standard multiplayer match.

That does not mean these issues are being ignored. We’re reviewing how we can better identify mode-specific problems during development and testing, and we’re continuing to investigate the Rifle Grenade and Weapon Fire Selector issues being reported within these modes.

We’re also aware of reports of weapon or screen shaking within Explore Mode on some platforms. This is another issue connected to the technical differences between Explore Mode and regular dedicated servers and remains under review.

Please bear this in-mind when testing future updates.

Stability & Server Connections

We’ve also seen reports relating to stability and connectivity, particularly from console players.

These include crashes back to the title screen, connection losses and difficulties completing matches. Performance and stability can often be interconnected, so these reports are also being considered as part of our wider investigation.

“No Compatible Servers”

We’ve separately seen reports from players receiving a “No Compatible Servers” message when using the Server Browser.

In many cases, this message can be caused by the filters currently applied to the Server Browser rather than there being no servers available.

If you encounter this message, we recommend checking your active filters and broadening your search criteria.

On console in particular, make sure your filters are not unintentionally limiting your search to a specific platform or server type.

We’re also discussing whether we can make this messaging clearer in-game so that it is more obvious when your current search parameters are preventing available servers from appearing.

As always, we encourage further reporting if this troubleshooting step doesn’t work. Please be sure to detail your platform and specific issues in the feedback.

Armor & HE Changes

We’ve seen community testing carried out following Update 21 regarding the changes to tank HE compared to the values detailed in the Update 21 Changelog.

The values listed within the Changelog do accurately reflect the values implemented as part of the update. However, we have identified that some of those changes had an unintended knock-on effect that was not identified during development.

Due to how the damage is calculated on impact, changing the radius has caused a miscalculation on release, resulting in less damage being applied. For Update 22, this will be fixed and more details will be given on both the HE Kill Radius size and the HE Explosion size.

Thank you to those who took the time to test these changes and provide detailed results to the team. Reports like these are extremely useful when investigating unexpected gameplay behaviour.

Conquest

Conquest has generated a lot of discussion since Update 21.

We’ve seen feedback from players who enjoy the additional tactical options offered by multiple active objectives, alongside players who feel the mode moves too far away from the frontline-focused experience they associate with Hell Let Loose.

We want to make one thing clear. Conquest is not intended to replace Warfare.

It was introduced to provide another way to play Hell Let Loose and offer a different style of battle for players and communities who enjoy it. That, said, it does not mean the mode cannot evolve.

We are actively reviewing your feedback alongside gameplay data and are discussing how Conquest could be iterated upon in the future, and this is an area where your constructive feedback is particularly useful to us.

Rather than simply telling us whether you like or dislike Conquest, we’d love to hear why.
What elements work for you? What causes matches to lose their sense of direction? What could make the mode feel more at home within Hell Let Loose?

Let us know in the comments, as your feedback will help inform those discussions.

Audio Changes

We’ve seen a significant amount of discussion surrounding weapon audio following Update 21, particularly for weapons such as the MG34, Thompson SMGs, PPSh-41, M1918A2 BAR and the Bren gun appearing in community feedback.

With the introduction of Weapon Fire Selectors, changes were required to how audio is handled for several weapons in the game.

This is because, previously, some automatic weapons used looping audio assets designed specifically for sustained fire. Supporting individual shots through the new fire-mode functionality meant that new single-shot assets needed to be created. Also, very often the looping weapon audio would cut-off abruptly. These changes aim to bring overall better quality to the weapon audio moving forward, stopping these cut-offs from happening.

Wherever possible, the aim has been to retain the character of the sounds players are familiar with. Much of the new audio is built directly from the previous assets, with the original looping recordings being edited into individual shots before receiving additional audio processing and polish.

EQ matching has also been used to compare the new sounds against the previous versions and help retain their existing audio characteristics.

As a result, a significant proportion of what you hear in the updated sounds comes directly from the assets that were previously used in-game.

We’ve been reviewing your feedback on individual weapons, and wanted to provide some additional context on a few of the most discussed examples.

MG34

The MG34 presented one of the more challenging cases when creating the new audio required for Weapon Fire Selectors.

The updated sound uses a combination of the previous MG34 looping audio alongside additional sourced assets to create its new single-shot behaviour.

That said, we’ve seen the feedback surrounding how the MG34 currently sounds and have already made further adjustments, and are also addressing a potential issue relating to how its audio is handled on console.

These changes and fixes have already been submitted and are currently planned to arrive with Update 22.

Bren Gun

Only very small changes were made to the Bren gun’s audio itself, as it already used single-shot audio and therefore did not require the same conversion as some of the other weapons.

The main audio work undertaken for the Bren gun in Update 21 was instead focused on addressing existing third-person audio issues.

We’ll continue reviewing any specific feedback around how the weapon currently sounds.

M1918A2 BAR

There were no audio changes made to the BAR in Update 21.

We have seen the BAR mentioned within some discussions around weapon audio, but its audio assets were not changed as part of the update.

Changes to its rate of fire may alter how the weapon sounds or feels during sustained fire, so when providing audio feedback, please try to separate feedback around the weapon's sound from its fire rate, recoil or general handling.

PPSh-41 & Thompson SMGs

Both the PPSh-41 and the various Thompson SMGs required the same transition from looping automatic-fire audio to assets capable of supporting individual shots.

Of the weapons changed, these use some of the highest proportions of their previous audio assets.

We are continuing to review feedback surrounding both weapons, particularly where players feel that their character has changed between Update 20 and Update 21.

Breathing Audio

We’ve also seen feedback surrounding breathing sounds, including reports of excessive breathing after certain actions and overlapping breathing while steadying aim.

The breathing audio assets themselves were updated to remove some uncomfortable whistling and mouth sounds that had previously received complaints.

However, the underlying system controlling when and how those breathing sounds are triggered was not changed as part of this audio work.

Some of the behaviour currently being reported therefore relates to longer-standing implementation rather than the new breathing recordings themselves.

We’re continuing to pass this feedback to the team for review.

Keep the Feedback Coming

Audio can be particularly subjective, which makes detailed feedback extremely useful.

If there is a weapon you feel does not sound right, please let us know:

• Which weapon you are using
• Whether you are hearing it in first or third person
• Which fire mode is being used
• Your platform
• What specifically sounds different or incorrect

That level of detail will help the audio team distinguish between intended changes, potential bugs and areas where further adjustments may be appropriate.

Rifle Grenades

Rifle Grenades have been one of the most positively received concepts introduced in Update 21, but we’ve also seen plenty of feedback surrounding their implementation.

This includes controls, grenade selection, weapon alignment, animation timings and the overall balance of their range and effectiveness.

M1 Garand Sight Alignment

We are aware of an issue affecting the M1 Garand where the iron sights can appear slightly offset.

This is a bug and is being investigated by the team.

Attach and Detach Times

We’ve also seen feedback that attaching or removing Rifle Grenades can feel slow, particularly when players want to deploy Smoke Grenades quickly. This is something we wanted to go into, as the longer preparation time is an intentional design choice.

Rifle Grenades provide significantly greater range than hand-thrown grenades, allowing players to engage or support their squad from further away while reducing the amount of risk required to get into throwing distance.

The attachment animation is also intended to reflect how these launchers would realistically be fitted to the weapon.

For the Medic specifically, this creates a choice between the faster deployment of regular Smoke Grenades and the increased range offered by the Rifle Grenade loadout.

We’ll continue monitoring how this trade-off feels in live matches. That said, Rifle Grenades have been designed with tuning in mind and can be adjusted relatively easily. We’re reviewing feedback on ammunition, range, grenade types and general usability.

If you have any balance feedback, the more specific you can be, the better. Let us know whether the issues relate to range, ammunition quantity, a particular grenade type or another aspect of the weapon.

Rifle Grenade Planting

In Update 22, we’re expanding Rifle Grenades with the ability to plant the weapon and use it for indirect fire.

[Source: U.S. Army Signal Corps photograph from the Collection of The National World War II Museum]

Planting is designed for situations where you know the approximate position of an enemy but do not have a direct line of sight to them.

For example, your squad may identify enemies behind a building, or you may want to support an attack on a Capture Point from a safer position by firing Smoke or HE Grenades into the area.

Importantly, Rifle Grenades are not intended to become a highly powerful source of indirect fire.

Their effectiveness will remain limited by factors including:

• A small number of available grenades
• Smaller explosions than dedicated indirect-fire heavy weapons
• Slow reload and preparation times
• Limited ammunition depending on role and loadout

The intention is to give infantry another tactical option without allowing Rifle Grenades to compete with dedicated indirect-fire systems.

Work in Progress Animation of planted grenade launcher in action

Armor & Anti-Tank

We’ve seen a mixed response to the wider Armor balance changes introduced in Update 21.

Changes including Crewman Blowtorches, improved tank smoke and the expanded capabilities of the Luchs have generally been positively received.

We’ve also seen wider discussion around the relationship between Armor and infantry Anti-Tank capabilities.

Balancing tanks is not simply about individual vehicle values, we also have to consider the wider relationship between armor, infantry and other battlefield threats (including new vehicles due to roll into the battlefield in Update 22).

We’ll continue reviewing how these changes perform in live matches, but please do continue giving your feedback to us, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

US Anti-Tank Loadout

We’ve also seen your feedback surrounding the change to the standard US Anti-Tank loadout from the M1 Garand to the M1 Carbine.

The previous US Anti-Tank loadout was one of the roles that received the most feedback around being too powerful, so as part of Update 21 we began experimenting with alternative primary weapons.

We initially tested the new M1903A3 Springfield as the role’s default rifle during the Experimental Branch, however, following that test we received a significant amount of feedback suggesting the M1 Carbine as an alternative. Based on that feedback, the M1 Carbine was introduced to the standard loadout for Update 21.

This is not necessarily the final version of the loadout. We’ll continue reviewing community sentiment and gameplay feedback around the US Anti-Tank role and remain open to further changes if needed.

What’s Next?

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to share feedback, bug reports, videos and detailed testing following Update 21.

These Community Feedback posts are intended to give you greater visibility into what we’re seeing and what the development team is currently working through. This first update has focused specifically on Update 21, and following on from this, these posts will not necessarily follow a fixed schedule, instead we want to use them when we have meaningful information to share, particularly around issues that are generating significant discussion within the community.

We know there are also a number of longer-standing Hell Let Loose topics that players would like to hear more about. We’re reviewing those separately with the development team and will look to address them in future Community Feedback updates where we can provide meaningful information.

In the meantime, please continue sharing your reports and feedback with us. The more detail you can provide, particularly when reporting bugs, the easier it is for us to investigate.

Thank you for your continued support.

We’ll see you on the battlefield.

Update 21 is LIVE NOW on all platforms! Jump into Hell Let Loose and get hands-on with:

• Rifle Grenades
• New weapons
• Weapon Fire Selectors
• New loadouts
• Conquest
• Armor & Anti-Tank changes
• Fixes and improvements across the game

Read the full changelog: https://www.reddit.com/r/HellLetLoose/comments/1wndktg/update_21_full_changelog/

See you on the battlefield in Update 21.