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 in February. The sport had an uncommon anime artwork fashion and fascinating techniques the place gamers had a second physique that they might deploy and transfer to throughout a match. However the launch was robust.
Along with quality-of-life optimizations for PC gamers, Mountaintop will proceed to deal with including new content material options for Season 1, making QOL enhancements requested by PC gamers, as nicely finalizing the event of console variations. Weekly playtests for the performance are at the moment underway, and gamers can join right here to take part.
Spectre Divide appeared promising because it confirmed off the sport in the summertime and launched the title on August 1. But it surely had loads of bugs, together with some that brought on system crashes. The staff had a layoff however there are nonetheless loads 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 recreation designer Lee Horn and the title has been within the works for 4 years. Mountaintop raised $30 million after which went quiet because the staff discovered what to make. They constructed a staff of 70 individuals, and enlisted the assistance of gaming influencer Shroud, an skilled participant who helped them with options that gamers would love. Their objective was to construct a tactical shooter recreation that individuals would play for 10,000 hours.
I performed the sport and it was harking back to Counter-Strike, a recreation that the staff cherished. But it surely had a twist. In Spectre Divide, Mountaintop created Duality, the place you have got 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 change between characters. If one of many spectres is killed, you routinely change to the opposite one. You get the good thing about 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 acquired off to a bumpy begin. The sport went down on launch day. That was brutal, particularly for gamers who have been tremendous excited to play. We had efficiency points, particularly on a wider range of {hardware} than we examined,” Mitchell stated. “Within the beta, we had extra areas on-line, extra individuals with networking challenges, connection challenges. We weren’t working servers everywhere in the world. We heard that suggestions loud and clear.”
Within the wake of the layoffs, Mitchell stated the corporate has needed to do the fixes with a smaller staff. It’s objective is to deal with attending to profitability, which is a should for an indie studio that’s self-publishing, he stated.
“We’ve got to make ends meet. We hope that’s higher than break even on working the studio and working the sport, however finally, we’ve acquired to make some revenue, and in order that’s actually the main target for us. We’re how we be sure that we will maintain the staff we’ve.”
There was additionally pricing suggestions as nicely.
“The bones are the identical, the core is identical, however every little thing actually has been tuned up and improved primarily based on what gamers wish to see,” Horn stated.
On Steam, the variety of gamers has been about one million thus far. The concurrency is low with about 1,000 gamers enjoying, in comparison with a peak of 81,000 4 months in the past, as the corporate has slowed its advertising and marketing and is within the midst of fixing the sport. The staff thought of 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 actually need gamers to know that we consider within the recreation and we try to enhance it. And so by persevering with to replace it like we’re right here on Discord, they’ll chat with us, and we’re not going anyplace. We’re enhancing it daily.”
Regrouping
The staff’s objective was to make the title really feel like a model new recreation when gamers got here again for Season 1, Horn stated in an interview with GamesBeat.
“It’s not simply a few tweets right here and there. We’ve spent loads of time after launch listening to participant suggestions. And a part of the rationale we did that is we’re going to take some extra time to do Season 1,” Horn stated. “It was clear we would have liked to do it in an enormous method that actually hit on all of the suggestions and felt like that substantial change.”
“One of many largest adjustments that we’re very enthusiastic about is we’re including dash,” Horn stated. “Anytime there’s a brand new motion mechanic, that may be a main recreation shift. One of many items of suggestions we acquired was that it was sluggish to rotate and felt sluggish. We really discovered that dash simply opens up the sport.”
He added, “You really get extra staff play out of it, which is fairly loopy to say from a mechanic, however the web result’s your staff is collectively extra you’re capable of assist your staff. You’ll be able to flank and get into place, you possibly can rotate and get behind. We’re very enthusiastic about dash, and that is sort of a nice instance of a characteristic that takes a while to refine. We don’t wish to simply jam it in there.”
New “Flashpoint” Season 1 Content material
Like in The Starvation Video games, there are sponsors within the recreation that may ship you issues to offer you a bonus in battle. The brand new one for the replace is Monark Tactical, and there’s a brand new map coming referred to as Canal, which can let the staff 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 “fight escape,” which is a protect that may shield you as you activate it.
The corporate stated the Season 1 Battle Cross affords tons of worth together with greater than 70 whole rewards. Gamers can earn greater than a dozen free objects together with 4 character outfits, two weapon skins, and 10 extra goodies.
There are updates to the unique maps to create higher lanes round the place you count on enemies to be and extra readability. And there will likely be a serious discount within the worth of cosmetics. Horn stated that the controller gameplay has been within the works for a very long time and staff performs with it all the time now. The corporate determined its prepared and so the controller can be utilized for the console or the PC variations.
Horn stated the staff 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 staff has responded to hundreds of Steam critiques. General critiques among the many 18,740 critiques 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 in February.
Underneath growth
Right here’s a full record of the adjustments at the moment below growth. They embrace recreation well being and high quality of life updates, which means fewer crashes. There’s additionally a brand new “dash” motion mechanic, contemporary sandbox rebalancing, new financial system tuning (the place cosmetics will price so much much less per merchandise than prior to now), current maps up to date to enhance gunplay and up to date and improved base facial fashions.
On high 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, hundreds of fixes shipped since launch primarily based on participant suggestions, quicker and snappier fight and motion and visible overhauls for a extra vibrant recreation. Anti-cheat has undergone months of tuning and developments making main features in detection and banning. And the observer mode has launched.
“We’re attempting to be clear with gamers. We’ve been form of quiet. We did a publish that mainly stated, ‘Hey, we’re going to essentially deal with including to the sport.’ So the dev video is basically to say, ‘Try all of the issues we’re doing. It’s a reasonably in depth record,’” Mitchell stated.
