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 early subsequent 12 months. The sport had an uncommon anime artwork type 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 has centered on controller help improvement for each PC and 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. However it had a variety of bugs, together with some that triggered system crashes. The staff had a layoff however there are nonetheless a variety of people engaged on it and attempting to enhance the expertise for gamers, mentioned 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 skilled participant who helped them with options that gamers would love. Their aim was to construct a tactical shooter sport that individuals would play for 10,000 hours.
I performed the sport and it was harking back to Counter-Strike, a sport that the staff cherished. However it had a twist. In Spectre Divide, Mountaintop created Duality, the place you could 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 may immediately swap between characters. If one of many spectres is killed, you robotically 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 received 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 mentioned. “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 mentioned the corporate has needed to do the fixes with a smaller staff. It’s aim is to give attention to attending to profitability, which is a should for an indie studio that’s self-publishing, he mentioned.
“Now we have 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 received to make some revenue, and in order that’s actually the main focus for us. Into the following 12 months we’re how we ensure that we will maintain the staff we’ve got.”
There was additionally pricing suggestions as properly.
“The bones are the identical, the core is similar, however the whole lot actually has been tuned up and improved primarily based on what gamers need to see,” Horn mentioned.
On Steam, the variety of gamers has been about 1,000,000 to this point. 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 of taking the sport off the market but it surely 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 mentioned.
Horn mentioned, “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 enhancing it every single 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 mentioned in an interview with GamesBeat.
“It’s not simply a few tweets right here and there. We’ve spent a variety 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 mentioned. “It was clear we wanted to do it in an enormous approach that actually hit on all of the suggestions and felt like that substantial change.”
“One of many greatest modifications that we’re very enthusiastic about is we’re including dash,” Horn mentioned. “Anytime there’s a brand new motion mechanic, that could be a main sport shift. One of many items of suggestions we received 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 web result’s your staff is collectively extra you’re capable of help your staff. You possibly can flank and get into place, you may 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 present 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 mentioned.
There are additionally new characters, weapon skins, and cosmetics.
Horn mentioned the sponsor will provide you with a “fight escape,” which is a defend that may shield you as you activate it.
The corporate mentioned the Season 1 Battle Go presents 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 anticipate enemies to be and extra readability. And there might be a significant discount within the value of cosmetics. Horn mentioned that the controller gameplay has been within the works for a very long time and staff 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 mentioned the staff has good backend instruments and it will possibly see crash charges and efficiency on completely 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 1000’s of Steam evaluations. General evaluations among the many 18,740 evaluations is blended, with a ranking of three out of 5 stars.
Extra data on Flashpoint and Console launch might be shared in future updates, coming early subsequent 12 months.
Below improvement
Right here’s a full listing of the modifications presently underneath improvement. They embrace sport 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 economic system tuning (the place cosmetics will value quite a bit much less per merchandise than previously), present maps up to date to enhance gunplay and up to date and improved base facial fashions.
On prime of that, there might be a protracted 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, sooner 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 factors in detection and banning. And the observer mode has launched.
“We’re attempting to be clear with gamers. We’ve been kind of quiet. We did a publish that principally mentioned, ‘Hey, we’re going to essentially give attention to including to the sport.’ So the dev video is admittedly to say, ‘Take a look at all of the issues we’re doing. It’s a fairly intensive listing,’” Mitchell mentioned.
