Now that Gamescom is out of the way it's time to catch you up with everything that’s going on in the Pow Wow Entertainment offices. We gathered a whole load of feedback from the Summer of Stunts playtests and it's been a huge help in highlighting areas we need to improve on, we wanted to share some details of what we found with you, the community.
First off we wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who turned up, got involved, and most importantly, let us know what you think. For the most part, it was hugely constructive and, you’ve given us a perfect jumping-off point as we head towards our next playtest.
One of the biggest bits of feedback we got was vehicle handling. While Stuntfest is not a racing game at heart, our cars provide a foundation for the game and really need to be something players can jump into and instantly enjoy, while building a preference for certain cars that fit their playstyle. As of Summer of Stunts, this wasn’t the case. Many of you raised the issue of under-steering, uncontrollable drift, and more. That’s why we are tackling both the balancing of the vehicles and also adding some missing functionalities, make sure to keep up with our dev blogs and Q&A’s for a deeper look at our four-wheeled friends.
Now, there isn’t a perfect science to balancing car controls, it becomes even more complicated when we want to straddle the line between arcade-like pick-up-and-play driving while also having a certain nuance to go from good to God-like behind the wheel. It’s going to take us some time to find the sweet spot but, with your help between playtests, we can refine this until we get there. Our supercar has already come along hugely since the playtest and we’re excited to show you the others soon.
In a similar vein to what's being covered above is the crashing. Multiple parts of feedback expressed how the crashing didn’t feel satisfying, the cars didn’t deform correctly and how in certain events, crashing wouldn’t be detected or, would be detected even if you didn’t hit anyone.
To begin with we’re hard at work reworking multiple elements of how the cars are damaged and destroyed. This includes working on how collisions are tracked to make them more accurate, making some flappy parts to enhance the look of the deformation and down the line will touch on realism and improve the sounds for that extra audio crunch!
The learning experience was something we found players struggled with. With Stuntfest World Tour being unlike anything else out there, it's important to us you’re able to pick up and play within minutes of getting in the game, and currently, our tutorial isn’t quite instructive enough to allow for that. Many players struggled to get to grips with how to eject, use gadgets and resummon their car. It’s of course a lot of different controls that our players need to learn to be competitive in the stuntshow and as every game mode requires you to play a bit differently that amplifies the challenge. With a new tutorial and extended playgrounds in the HUB we hope players will arrive with a stronger knowledge before hopping into a stuntshow.
First impressions are important and with this in mind, we’re re-working the user experience when you first start the game. Making it more obvious, more engaging, and repeatable in case you’re ever in need of a refresher course. We also hear you about the ability to customize your experience and, while we have no details on that yet, we’re working hard on making it a reality.
We’re reworking our lighting systems and beyond to, pardon the pun, show Stuntfest in the best light will still trying to match our vision for what we want you to experience. This means going over all our textures and materials to make sure everything fits. While we want to get across the “extreme” elements of Stuntfest, we want to make sure we don’t stray too far into a cartoon dynamic.
All of the above focuses on some key issues you highlighted and, what we’re doing to resolve them. While I’ve not covered everything, we are well aware of the bugs, the issues and the shortcomings and are doing what we can to resolve them. From random/no points during destruction derbies, people leaving lobbies early, and lack of the ability to group, these are all on our laundry list of things to resolve. If you were an early leaver, let us know why, the more information we have the better we can make the experience!
We’ll be doing our best to keep communicating with you, our budding community, on what we’re fixing, when we’re fixing it and how we’re going to fix it at regular intervals. Alongside this we’re also hosting regular private playtests which you can hear all about on discord, and even discuss the game and what you’d like to see directly with us!
So, from all of us at Pow Wow Entertainment, thank you for the feedback and we look forward to showing you the changes we’ve made, very soon.