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 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 powerful.
Along with quality-of-life optimizations for PC gamers, Mountaintop will proceed to concentrate on including new content material options for Season 1, making QOL enhancements requested by PC gamers, as effectively 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 seemed promising because it confirmed off the sport in the summertime and launched the title on August 1. However it had loads of bugs, together with some that brought on system crashes. The group 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 group found out what to make. They constructed a group of 70 folks, 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 folks would play for 10,000 hours.
I performed the sport and it was paying homage to Counter-Strike, a sport that the group beloved. 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 change between characters. If one of many spectres is killed, you mechanically change to the opposite one. You get the advantage of one thoughts, two our bodies. It’s an innovation that simply would possibly 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 folks.
“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 variety of {hardware} than we examined,” Mitchell stated. “Within the beta, we had extra areas on-line, extra folks 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 group. It’s objective is to concentrate on attending to profitability, which is a should for an indie studio that’s self-publishing, he stated.
“We now have to make ends meet. We hope that’s higher than break even on working the studio and working the sport, however finally, we’ve received to make some revenue, and in order that’s actually the main target for us. We’re taking a look at how we be sure that we will maintain the group now we have.”
There was additionally pricing suggestions as effectively.
“The bones are the identical, the core is similar, however the whole lot actually has been tuned up and improved based mostly on what gamers need to see,” Horn stated.
On Steam, the variety of gamers has been about one million to this point. 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 marketing 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 actually need gamers to know that we imagine within the sport 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 bettering it every single 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 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 an enormous means that basically 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 received 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 group play out of it, which is fairly loopy to say from a mechanic, however the internet result’s your group is collectively extra you’re in a position to assist your group. 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 provide 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 group exhibit 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 Go gives 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 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 might be a serious 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 might 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 bunch of trusted playtesters who’ve been serving to for a few years. The group has responded to 1000’s of Steam critiques. General critiques among the many 18,740 critiques is combined, with a ranking of three out of 5 stars.
Extra data on Flashpoint and Console launch might be shared in future updates, coming in February.
Below growth
Right here’s a full listing of the adjustments presently below growth. They embody sport well being and high quality of life updates, which means fewer crashes. There’s additionally a brand new “dash” motion mechanic, recent sandbox rebalancing, new financial system tuning (the place cosmetics will price lots 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 prime of that, there might be an extended awaited “Careers” tab, infrastructure enhancements, consumer and server efficiency upgrades, improved networking and new server areas world-wide, 1000’s of fixes shipped since launch based mostly 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 beneficial properties 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 mainly stated, ‘Hey, we’re going to actually concentrate on including to the sport.’ So the dev video is de facto to say, ‘Try all of the issues we’re doing. It’s a reasonably in depth listing,’” Mitchell stated.
