Squad's Update 10.5.2 reworks suppression and arrives tomorrow

Squad's long-debated weapon suppression system is getting reworked in Update 10.5.2, which drops tomorrow, Aug. 12. The new version shifts suppression away from debuffing your senses and toward pressure on your aim, with faster decay and tighter triggering.

The team says the goal is to make being suppressed feel fairer, reduce its dominance in close-quarters combat, and keep it effective at range when used with intent and coordination. The changes follow multiple internal playtests and player feedback sessions, and are also meant to fit the refined gunplay introduced in v10.4.

• Suppression decays faster when you're not actively being shot at.
• The suppression radius is smaller, with smarter triggering: errant rounds that aren't a real threat no longer suppress you.
• Weapon types are rebalanced. A lone rifleman is less effective at suppressing, but coordinated fireteams can still be very effective, and squads will lean more on machine guns and automatic rifles to pin enemies down.

• The old fullscreen blur is replaced with a vignette that creates tunnel vision without obscuring the center of the screen or hurting visual quality. Explosives get their own distinct suppression visual.
• Weapon sway is more noticeable while suppressed.
• Hold breath can no longer cancel out sway while suppressed. To compensate, Focus Zoom is now usable indefinitely while aiming down sights; Hold Breath still times out, but you stay zoomed while holding the input.
• Bullet snap and crack audio have been updated to signal when a shot is close enough to apply suppression.

• MGs and heavy weapons now have a wider suppression radius, letting them saturate large areas more effectively.
• Marksman rifles, sniper rifles, battle rifles, and light support weapons like the RPK deal exponentially more suppression on near misses, making them effective point-suppression weapons.

The rework is meant to be less punishing and to reward squad coordination, but the design team says it isn't final. It will keep gathering feedback ahead of Update 10.6 in September.