Mountaintop Studios introduced a brand new developer replace video for Spectre Divide, providing a sneak peek at “Flashpoint,” the title’s first main seasonal content material replace. It’s coming in mid-February together with a model of the sport for console gamers.
The three-versus-three multiplayer tactical shooter will debut worldwide on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Sequence X/S early subsequent yr. The sport had an uncommon anime artwork type and attention-grabbing ways the place gamers had a second physique that they may deploy and transfer to throughout a match. However the launch was powerful.
Along with quality-of-life optimizations for PC gamers, Mountaintop has centered on controller assist improvement for each PC and console variations. Weekly playtests for the performance are at present underway, and gamers can join right here to take part.
Spectre Divide regarded promising because it confirmed off the sport in the summertime and launched the title on August 1. But it surely had plenty of bugs, together with some that precipitated system crashes. The group had a layoff however there are nonetheless plenty of of us engaged on it and attempting to enhance the expertise for gamers, stated Nate Mitchell, CEO of Mountaintop, in an interview with GamesBeat.
Mitchell, who was a cofounder of Oculus, began Mountaintop in 2020 with sport designer Lee Horn and the title has been within the works for 4 years. Mountaintop raised $30 million after which went quiet because the group discovered what to make. They constructed a group of 70 individuals, and enlisted the assistance of gaming influencer Shroud, an knowledgeable participant who helped them with options that gamers would love. Their objective was to construct a tactical shooter sport that individuals would play for 10,000 hours.
I performed the sport and it was paying homage to Counter-Strike, a sport that the group beloved. But it surely had a twist. In Spectre Divide, Mountaintop created Duality, the place you might have two our bodies managed by one participant. You’ll be able to play as one character in a 3v3 match, after which place your second character in a strategic or secret spot by tossing a puck on the spot.
Then you possibly can immediately swap between characters. If one of many spectres is killed, you routinely swap to the opposite one. You get the advantage of one thoughts, two our bodies. It’s an innovation that simply may allow the sport to seize its personal viewers of devoted followers within the extremely aggressive FPS market.
A tough begin
It launched in early September, however, as famous, there have been quite a few issues. On September 26, the corporate laid off 13 of its individuals.
“It’s no secret, we got off to a bumpy start. The game went down on launch day. That was brutal, especially for players who were super excited to play. We had performance issues, especially on a wider diversity of hardware than we tested,” Mitchell stated. “In the beta, we had more regions online, more people with networking challenges, connection challenges. We weren’t running servers all over the world. We heard that feedback loud and clear.”
Within the wake of the layoffs, Mitchell stated the corporate has needed to do the fixes with a smaller group. It’s objective is to give attention to attending to profitability, which is a should for an indie studio that’s self-publishing, he stated.
“We have to make ends meet. We hope that’s better than break even on running the studio and running the game, but ultimately, we’ve got to make some profit, and so that’s really the focus for us. Into the next year we are looking at how we make sure that we can sustain the team we have.”
There was additionally pricing suggestions as effectively.
“The bones are the same, the core is the same, but everything really has been tuned up and improved based on what players want to see,” Horn stated.
On Steam, the variety of gamers has been about 1,000,000 up to now. The concurrency is low with about 1,000 gamers taking part in, in comparison with a peak of 81,000 4 months in the past, as the corporate has slowed its advertising and is within the midst of fixing the sport. The group thought-about taking the sport off the market nevertheless it noticed there are gamers who have been having enjoyable and working tournaments and so it didn’t make sense to take the sport away from them, Mitchell stated.
Horn stated, “We really want players to know that we believe in the game and we are trying to improve it. And so by continuing to update it like we’re here on Discord, they can chat with us, and we’re not going anywhere. We are improving it every day.”
Regrouping
The group’s objective was to make the title really feel like a model new sport when gamers got here again for Season 1, Horn stated in an interview with GamesBeat.
“It’s not just a couple of tweets here and there. We’ve spent a lot of time after launch listening to player feedback. And part of the reason we did this is we’re going to take some more time to do Season 1,” Horn stated. “It was clear we needed to do it in a big way that really hit on all the feedback and felt like that substantial change.”
“One of the biggest changes that we’re very excited about is we’re adding sprint,” Horn stated. “Anytime there’s a new movement mechanic, that is a major game shift. One of the pieces of feedback we got was that it was slow to rotate and felt sluggish. We actually found that sprint just opens up the game.”
He added, “You actually get more team play out of it, which is pretty crazy to say from a mechanic, but the net result is your team is together more you’re able to support your team. You can flank and get into position, you can rotate and get behind. We’re very excited about sprint, and that is like a great example of a feature that takes some time to refine. We don’t want to just jam it in there.”
New “Flashpoint” Season 1 Content material
Like in The Starvation Video games, there are sponsors within the sport that may ship you issues to present you a bonus in battle. The brand new one for the replace is Monark Tactical, and there’s a brand new map coming known as Canal, which can let the group showcase extra of its sci-fi worldbuilding, Horn stated.
There are additionally new characters, weapon skins, and cosmetics.
Horn stated the sponsor will provide you with a “combat escape,” which is a defend that may defend you as you activate it.
The corporate stated the Season 1 Battle Cross presents tons of worth together with greater than 70 complete rewards. Gamers can earn greater than a dozen free gadgets together with 4 character outfits, two weapon skins, and 10 further goodies.
There are updates to the unique maps to create higher lanes round the place you anticipate enemies to be and extra readability. And there will likely be a significant discount within the value of cosmetics. Horn stated that the controller gameplay has been within the works for a very long time and group performs with it the entire time now. The corporate determined its prepared and so the controller can be utilized for the console or the PC variations.
Horn stated the group has good backend instruments and it may possibly see crash charges and efficiency on completely different {hardware} specs. That helps determine issues. The corporate additionally communicates with gamers on Discord and Reddit. It additionally has a gaggle of trusted playtesters who’ve been serving to for a few years. The group has responded to 1000’s of Steam opinions. Total opinions among the many 18,740 opinions is blended, with a ranking of three out of 5 stars.
Extra data on Flashpoint and Console launch will likely be shared in future updates, coming early subsequent yr.
Below improvement
Right here’s a full record of the adjustments at present beneath improvement. They embody sport well being and high quality of life updates, which means fewer crashes. There’s additionally a brand new “sprint” motion mechanic, contemporary sandbox rebalancing, new economic system tuning (the place cosmetics will price lots much less per merchandise than up to now), present maps up to date to enhance gunplay and up to date and improved base facial fashions.
On prime of that, there will likely be an extended awaited “Careers” tab, infrastructure enhancements, shopper and server efficiency upgrades, improved networking and new server areas world-wide, 1000’s of fixes shipped since launch primarily based on participant suggestions, quicker and snappier fight and motion and visible overhauls for a extra vibrant sport. Anti-cheat has undergone months of tuning and developments making main positive aspects in detection and banning. And the observer mode has launched.
“We’re trying to be transparent with players. We’ve been sort of quiet. We did a post that basically said, ‘Hey, we’re going to really focus on adding to the game.’ So the dev video is really to say, ‘Check out all the things we’re doing. It’s a pretty extensive list,’” Mitchell stated.
