Mountaintop Studios announced a new developer update video for Spectral divisionoffering a preview of “Flashpoint,” the title’s first major season content update. It will arrive in mid-February with a version of the game for console players.
THE three-on-three multiplayer tactical shooter will debut worldwide on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S early next year. The game had an unusual animated art style and interesting tactics where players had a second body that they could deploy and move to during a match. But the launch was difficult.
In addition to quality of life optimizations for PC gamers, Mountaintop has focused on developing controller support for both PC and console versions. Weekly playtests for the feature are currently underway and interested players can sign up here to participate.
Specter Divide looked promising as it previewed the game this summer and launched the title on August 1st. But it had many bugs, some of which caused system crashes. The team was laid off, but a lot of people are working there and trying to improve the player experience, Mountaintop CEO Nate Mitchell said in an interview with GamesBeat.
Mitchell, co-founder of Oculus, launched Mountaintop in 2020 with game designer Lee Horn and the title has been in the works for four years. Raised mountain peak $30 million then fell silent as the team thought about what to do. They built a team of 70 people and brought in gaming influencer Shroud, an expert gamer who helped them with features that gamers would love. Their goal was to create a tactical shooter that people could play for 10,000 hours.
I played the game and it was reminiscent of Counter-Strike, a game the team loved. But there was a twist. In Specter Divide, Mountaintop created Duality, in which you have two bodies controlled by a single player. You can play as a single character in a 3v3 match, then place your second character in a strategic or secret location by throwing a puck there.
Then you can instantly switch between characters. If one of the specters is killed, you automatically move on to the other. You benefit from one mind, two bodies. This is an innovation that could well allow the game to capture its own audience of dedicated fans in the highly competitive FPS market.
A difficult start
It was launched in early September but, as noted, many problems arose. On September 26, the company laid off 13 of its employees.
“It’s no secret we’ve had a rocky start. The game crashed on launch day. It was brutal, especially for the players who were super excited to play. We encountered performance issues, particularly on a wider variety of hardware than tested,” Mitchell said. “In beta, we had more regions online, more people experiencing networking and connection issues. We did not operate servers all over the world. We heard these comments loud and clear.
As a result of the layoffs, Mitchell said the company had to make the fixes with a smaller team. His goal is to focus on profitability, which is essential for a self-published independent studio, he said.
“We have to make ends meet. We hope it’s better than breaking even on running the studio and running the game, but ultimately we have to make a profit, and so that’s really our goal. Over the next year we will look at how to ensure we can maintain the team we have.
There were also comments about pricing.
“The bones are the same, the core is the same, but everything has really been tuned and improved based on what the players want to see,” Horn said.
On Steam, the number of players so far stands at around one million. Competition is low at around 1,000 players, down from a peak of 81,000 four months ago, as the company has slowed marketing and is in the process of fixing the game. The team has considered removing the game from the market, but she found that some players were having fun and hosting tournaments and so it didn’t make sense to take the game away from them, Mitchell said.
Horn said: “We really want players to know that we believe in the game and we’re trying to make it better. And so continuing to update it like we’re here on Discord, they can chat with us, and we’re not going anywhere. We improve it every day.
Grouping
The team’s goal was to make the title feel like a brand new game when players returned for Season 1, Horn said in an interview with GamesBeat.
“It’s not just a few tweets here and there. We spent a lot of time after launch listening to player feedback. And part of the reason we did that is because we’re going to take a little longer to do Season 1,” Horn said. “It was clear that we needed to do this in a big way that would really match all the feedback and make it feel like a substantive change.”
“One of the biggest changes that we’re excited about is the addition of sprinting,” Horn said. “Every time there’s a new movement mechanic, it’s a major game changer. One of the comments we received was that it was slow to spin and felt sluggish. In fact, we found that sprinting just opens up the game.”
He added: “You actually get more team play, which is pretty crazy to say from a mechanic, but the net result is your team is more united, the more you’re able to support your team. You can flank and get into position, you can pivot and get behind. We’re very excited about Sprint, and it’s a great example of a feature that takes some time to refine. We don’t want to just trap him in there.
New content from “Flashpoint” season 1
Like in The Hunger Games, there are sponsors in the game who can send you items to give you an advantage in battle. The new map in the update is Monark Tactical, and a new map called Canal will be available, which will allow the team to show off more of its sci-fi world-building, Horn said.
There are also new characters, weapon skins and cosmetics.
Horn said the sponsor will give you “combat evasion”, which is a shield that can protect you when you activate it.
The company said the Season 1 Battle Pass offers tons of value, including over 70 total rewards. Players can earn over a dozen free items, including four character outfits, two weapon skins, and 10 additional gifts.
There are updates to the original maps to create better pathways around places you expect enemies to be and greater readability. And there will be a significant drop in the price of cosmetics. Horn said the controller gameplay has been in the works for a long time and the team plays with it all the time now. The company has decided that it is ready and therefore the controller can be used for the console or PC version.
Horn said the team has good backend tools and can see crash rates and performance on different hardware specs. This helps identify problems. The company also communicates with players on Discord and Reddit. It also has a group of trusted testers who have been helping us for a few years. The team has responded to thousands of Steam reviews. Overall reviews among 18,740 reviews are mixed, with a rating of three stars out of five.
More information about the Flashpoint and console launch will be shared in future updates, available early next year.
In development
Here is a complete list of changes currently in development. They include updates to game health and quality of life, which means fewer crashes. There’s also a new “sprint” movement mechanic, new sandbox rebalancing, new economy tuning (where cosmetics will cost much less per item than in the past), updated existing maps to improve gunplay and updated and improved basic facial models.
On top of that, there will be a long-awaited Careers tab, infrastructure improvements, client and server performance upgrades, improved networking, and new server regions around the world. , thousands of fixes delivered since launch based on player feedback, faster and more snappy combat. and motion and visual overhauls for more dynamic gameplay. Anti-cheat has been the subject of months of development and progress, bringing major progress in detection and banning. And observer mode is launched.
“We try to be transparent with the players. We’ve been pretty quiet. We put out a post that basically said, “Hey, we’re really going to focus on adding content to the game.” So the dev video is meant to say, “Look at everything we’re doing. “It’s a pretty long list,” Mitchell said.
