Hello, Agents,
This is Dongsoo Oh, Creative Director of Blackout Protocol.
It's the Tuesday morning after our first Early Access weekend, and we've received a ton of player feedback. Those of you have shown positive support for the game's direction have given us a fresh boost of encouragement, and those who shared constructive feedback are helping to lay the foundation for the game's future improvements. We're carefully listening to it all.
Here are some of our thoughts on the biggest items...
#1: Solo Playability
One of the main pieces of feedback we've received is regarding solo play.
As many of you are aware, Blackout Protocol was designed as a third-person co-op experience first and foremost. However, we know that many fans of roguelike games prefer striving to conquer challenges by themselves. In addition, a lot of players are buying Steam Decks now, so how best to support a solo offline experience is actually something we've been mulling over for a while. (Players who participated in some of our earlier beta tests will recall that we've tried out a few different approaches in the past, including difficulty options and auto-balancing for group size.)
All of which is to say: we've decided to add a dedicated solo/offline mode to Blackout Protocol.
Solo play mode will see a few changes from the existing 3-player co-op mode, including adjustments to the synaptic enhancements encountered during a run, and some minimum stat rebalancing to make a solo run a little more achievable. But the overall level of difficulty will still remain on the high side. Our hope is to offer enough challenge to encourage experimentation and replay.
Players who clear the final stage (in either solo or co-op mode) will receive one of two special badges according to the mode, signifying their achievement on their in-game player ID.
#2: Difficulty Curve
We'll also be making some adjustments to the game's current design, in the area of overall difficulty and map variation.
Our initial goal was to create a few memorable spikes in difficulty as players get deeper and deeper into Section 13, as we feel the triumph of overcoming seemingly insurmountable hurdles is part of what makes this genre great. We've tried to pace out these challenges at a reasonable cadence, both within the context of a single run, and over the course of multiple runs. But it's clear that some of these hurdles are maybe a little steeper than we intended, so we plan to patch in in a few tweaks.
We've given special attention to a particular problem spot for a lot of players (the lobby in level 2), so it'll hopefully feel a little more doable. If you felt the previous difficulty level was just outside your reach, I'd encourage you to give the game another shot after the patch coming in a few hours.
We also had a bug in the system that decides map variation/difficulty. We believe this bug, plus the difficulty spike in the lobby, conspired to create a nasty feedback loop that made the game feel extra repetitive and boring.
We're addressing this bug as well. You should encounter more map variations across multiple sessions once the the patch is love, with difficulty spikes that offer a wider range of experiences. If you felt your time with the game was a bit repetitive and lacked content, I hope you'll give it another look.
Finally, we've made some adjustments to the noise levels of various weapons, and how enemies respond to them. Normal firearm weapons and tactical gear like grenades will still alert and attract enemies, but weapons with silencers should become more effective at providing an alternative approach.
I should mention that these particular adjustments were made with solo players in mind, so I'd encourage you to give the stealthy approach a try and make use of it.
#3: Future Plans: Surprise Enemies, Camera Adjustments, and Session Length
We'd like to mention that our team has no sneaky intentions when it comes to forcing artificial difficulty on players mid-run. If you see enemies spawning into a level, on-screen, with no animation, that's a bug. We're working to stamp out this issue everywhere we're aware of it, but if you come across it during a run, please let us know.
Various other improvements are also in the works. These include minor polishes to perspective and camera angle across various map routes, to reduce moments where the camera is obstructed by in-game objects. Another of our plans is regarding session length – specifically, a shortcut to the Deep Storage Level. In the current version of the Parking Level, you might notice a cargo elevator on your left as you approach the Power Station. In our original roadmap, the plan was always to add a shortcut there, allowing players to speed up content they've thoroughly mastered. But right now, it takes even an expert team almost an hour to complete the current build, so we're accelerating this particular item on the agenda.
We'll have more details to share in the future and continue to work as fast as we can to stamp out any other gameplay-disrupting issues, so please report anything obviously strange on Discord or the Steam discussion boards. (Video is always helpful.)
Thank you for your support. We'll continue working to provide a game that's unique, memorable, and a worthy challenge.
Dongsoo Oh
Creative Director, Blackout Protocol
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/