Echo Combat Open Beta Starts Today With A New Party Patch

For those lucky individuals who own an Oculus Rift, you can start playing Echo Combat’s open beta starting today. Ready At Dawn has announced that the Open Beta will be taking place Thursday September 6th at 10:30 AM PDT / 17:30 UTC through Sunday September 9th at 9:00 AM PDT / 16:00 UTC.

In addition to the Open Beta launch, Ready at Dawn will be releasing a new Party Patch which will ring in some more fun in virtual reality. Below is a list of some of the changes you will see in Echo Combat.

Parties: You will now be able to form parties in Echo Combat.

Arc Mine Balances: The Arc Mine now continuously detects enemies while armed, and allows detected targets a short window of opportunity to either escape from its radius before it stuns them or destroy the mine.

Instead of pinging periodically, the Arc Mine will now constantly search for enemies within its detection radius. Upon detecting an opponent player, the Arc Mine will now emit a warning sound as it begins to activate. If a detected player can escape the mine’s detection radius before it finishes activation, the mine will now return to scanning. Skilled players can use this activation time frame to find and destroy enemy Arc Mines.

The Arc Mine will now begin its cool down even while the player has an armed Arc Mine placed on the battlefield. If, upon full regeneration, the player pulls out a new Arc Mine, the original armed one will now disappear.

Energy Barrier: To prevent players from turtling for extensive periods of time, the barrier created by the Energy Barrier Tac-Mod has been nerfed. The duration of the Energy Barrier, once generated, has been reduced to 15 seconds (it was originally 25 seconds). The Comet will now do slightly less damage to the Energy Barrier and will take a full clip to break it down.

2D Spectator Mode: 2D Spectator mode is perfect for ESL teams practicing plays, players creating tutorials, or individuals looking to stream/shoutcast unofficial matches. To enter 2D Spectator Mode, players will need to enter Spectator mode, and then take off their headset.

Spawn Timers: The spawn time for the Defending Team at the 1st Checkpoint has been increased to now make pushing the payload out of its initial starting room easier for Attackers. The Defender spawn time for Checkpoint 1 has been increased from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.

Echo Combat Fission Map Changes: There have been a number of changes to the environment in the Cargo Bay that serve to help the Attacking team push the Payload out of its initial room;

· Multiple new pieces of cover have now been added.

· Line of sight from overly dominant Defending team post positions has been broken by cover either being added or moved.

· Attackers will now have a number of safer path options to exit the initial starting room and engage with Defenders.

Make sure to hop on today and check out all the changes in Echo Combat.