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 Collection 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 powerful.
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 properly finalizing the event of console variations. Weekly playtests for the performance are presently 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. Nevertheless it had loads of bugs, together with some that triggered 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 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 staff found out what to make. They constructed a staff of 70 individuals, and enlisted the assistance of gaming influencer Shroud, an professional participant who helped them with options that gamers would love. Their aim was to construct a tactical shooter sport that folks would play for 10,000 hours.
I performed the sport and it was harking back to Counter-Strike, a sport that the staff liked. Nevertheless it had a twist. In Spectre Divide, Mountaintop created Duality, the place you will have two our bodies managed by one participant. You possibly can 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’ll be able to 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 had 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 all around 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 aim 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 in the end, we’ve acquired to make some revenue, and in order that’s actually the main focus for us. We’re taking a look at how we guarantee that we will maintain the staff now we have.”
There was additionally pricing suggestions as properly.
“The bones are the identical, the core is identical, however the whole lot actually has been tuned up and improved primarily based on what gamers need 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 enjoying, 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 staff thought-about taking the sport off the market nevertheless it noticed there are gamers who had 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 imagine within the sport and we are attempting 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 wherever. We’re bettering it day-after-day.”
Regrouping
The staff’s aim 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 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 wanted to do it in a giant means 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 sport shift. One of many items of suggestions we acquired was that it was gradual to rotate and felt sluggish. We truly discovered that dash simply opens up the sport.”
He added, “You truly get extra staff play out of it, which is fairly loopy to say from a mechanic, however the internet result’s your staff is collectively extra you’re capable of assist your staff. You possibly can flank and get into place, you’ll be able to rotate and get behind. We’re very enthusiastic about dash, and that is sort of a nice instance of a function that takes a while to refine. We don’t need to simply 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 offer 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 is able to 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 provides 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 provides tons of worth together with greater than 70 whole rewards. Gamers can earn greater than a dozen free gadgets 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 shall 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 might probably see crash charges and efficiency on totally different {hardware} specs. That helps establish 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. Total critiques among the many 18,740 critiques is blended, with a score of three out of 5 stars.
Extra info on Flashpoint and Console launch shall be shared in future updates, coming in February.
Below improvement
Right here’s a full record of the adjustments presently beneath improvement. They embrace sport well being and high quality of life updates, that means fewer crashes. There’s additionally a brand new “dash” motion mechanic, recent sandbox rebalancing, new financial system tuning (the place cosmetics will value loads much less per merchandise than previously), present maps up to date to enhance gunplay and up to date and improved base facial fashions.
On high of that, there shall be an extended awaited “Careers” tab, infrastructure enhancements, consumer 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 sport. Anti-cheat has undergone months of tuning and developments making main good points 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 put up that mainly stated, ‘Hey, we’re going to actually deal with including to the sport.’ So the dev video is actually to say, ‘Take a look at all of the issues we’re doing. It’s a reasonably intensive record,’” Mitchell stated.
