Season 2 lands September 2 with Patch 1.2.0 and, alongside everything else in the box, it brings a healthy batch of quality-of-life improvements. Some come straight from your feedback and playtest reactions. Others are polish we wanted to ship because they make every battle a little better. Here's what's coming, plus a taste of what we're working on beyond launch.
PATCH 1.2.0
The Quality-of-Life Changes Coming in Season 2
A look at the quality-of-life improvements arriving with Season 2 on September 2, plus a peek at what's coming after launch.
Know your effective range at a glance
If you fire AP, APHE, or Canister shells, distance matters: past your gun's effective range, penetration starts to drop, and for some shells the damage goes with it. Those numbers have always lived in the vehicle stats, but in the middle of a fight it's hard to tell exactly where the line sits.
With Season 2, your reticle will show the distance to whatever it's pointed at. For AP, APHE, and Canister shells, the distance reading will also be color-coded to your shot's effectiveness: green while you're in optimal range, yellow once you're past it but not too far out, and red once damage and penetration drop off significantly.
HE, HEAT, and ATGM shells will show the distance without the color change, for a good reason: their damage doesn't fall off over distance, so there's no effectiveness band to warn you about. For the full picture of how each shell type behaves, check out our Shell Types Breakdown.
Control Base Randomization
Anyone with a few dozen Control battles behind them knows the rhythm: Base A, then B, then C, in the same order every battle. Play enough games and that fixed order can start to feel repetitive.
From Season 2, base order is randomized, so every battle will feel a little different. It's a small change that keeps things feeling fresh, and it came straight from your feedback during the closed beta.
No more guessing why a lock-on failed
Today, when a lock-on won't stick, the game shows you an "Out of Range" marker, and that's it. If your target is inside range but something like smoke or an Interference ability is blocking the lock, you're left guessing.
Season 2 adds a dedicated "LOCK DENIED" marker, separate from "Out of Range," so you'll know immediately that the attempt was blocked rather than out of reach. It applies to Fuzzer's Strike Laser Ultimate, Kent's Contracted Strike Ultimate, and the AMX 10 RC's Top-Attack Missiles.
A cooldown for ping spam
A teammate hammering the ping key can drown the map in noise. Season 2 adds a cooldown to combat this: using pings too frequently in quick succession will temporarily reduce how often you can ping again.
Some of you have also asked for the option to mute pings from a specific player. Before we start restricting anyone's ability to communicate, we want to see how much of the problem the cooldown solves on its own. Keep the feedback coming on this one.
Discord account linking comes to Xbox
From Season 2, Xbox players will be able to link their Discord account to HEAT, just as PC players already can. Once linked, your Discord friends show up in the in-game Friends tab, making it easy to see who's online and squad up without switching apps. We're also working on bringing linking to PlayStation.
Not on the official HEAT Discord yet? It's the best place for news, events, and talking directly to the team. Come say hi.
A sharper picture on PS5 Pro and Intel GPUs
Season 2 also sharpens the picture itself. PS5 Pro gets PSSR 2 support, bringing sharper visuals, enhanced detail, and a performance boost in certain scenarios. And Intel XeSS steps up to version 3, with improved image quality and greater visual stability.
A sweep of smaller fixes
Beyond the headline changes, Patch 1.2.0 also clears out a long list of smaller annoyances. A few highlights:
- Changing an ability's keybind now updates the cancel keybind to match.
- The aiming circle resets properly after a manual reload.
- Damage indicators no longer overlap or show the wrong multiplier when you land several critical hits in quick succession.
- In Control, the player count widget stays visible while a base is contested or in Overtime.
- The Repair Kit now properly repairs ERA, continuing until the job is done or your vehicle takes damage.
There's also a round of module adjustments shaped directly by your feedback. One example: the M1E1's ACIL-28 used to pop smoke in front of the turret no matter where it took a critical hit from. You pointed out that this doesn't help much, so the smoke now deploys facing the direction the hit came from. The full list lands with the patch notes on September 1.
More on the way
Quality-of-life work doesn't stop when Season 2 ships. Plenty more is already moving behind the scenes. Timings can shift while things are in development, but here's a taste of what's coming:
- An in-game friends list is in active development, aimed at the first update after the Season 2 launch.
- A season selector for the Top 100 leaderboard is ready and lined up for that same update.
- More Legendary modules are in the works: one additional module for each of the twenty vehicles, adding depth to late progression.
- Team voice chat is in development, at an earlier stage.
- Adjustments to the leaver penalty system are being explored.
We'll share details on each as it gets close. In the meantime, keep the feedback coming and let us know what YOU want to see next!
