Hey everyone, FBC: Firebreak Game Director Mike Kayatta here with an update on where we are with the game as we count down to launch day, June 17th. While we’ve been hard at work finalizing your day one experience, we’ve also been spending the past few months snapshotting and stabilizing different versions of the game to share with different groups for different purposes.
This has included a user research build to test progression and replayability with a selected closed group of players, a hands-on build for press and content creators that we also played live on our Developer Update stream back in April, and a slimmed-down technical test build to improve our networking and matchmaking capabilities for launch that you might have seen advertised by us recently. Because each of these custom versions was built with a specific purpose in mind, they have invariably lagged behind where we actually are in the game’s development (and generally by a few months—a very long time at this stage of making a video game).
So, all that being said, we thought this was a good time to talk a little about where we are with the game and how we’re focusing our time from here until launch.
We received invaluable feedback and data from the events mentioned above, some of which we already had in our plans, and some of which is now being added to our plans or reprioritized. Just normal game development, to be honest.
There’s a lot to it, but here’s a high-level look at some of the key focus areas that we hope to improve from what you’ve seen so far:
GUNPLAY AND COMBAT
- Guns are upgradable in Firebreak, but we now think we went too far with how weak they felt at the earliest levels. In response, we are making all level one guns radically more powerful, while adjusting other parts of the game to maintain the challenge balance. This also ties into some feedback regarding ammo scarcity, which we are improving in tandem with gun power changes.
- The double-barreled shotgun, in particular, drew some commentary about it not feeling “right” yet. We agree, so we have taken a long look with the team at how this gun plays and feels to make sure it meets the expectations of its shooting style.
- In terms of general combat intensity and difficulty levels, everything has been overhauled from what’s been shown so far. Among other things, we’re tying different enemy types to different threat levels, adjusting wave frequency and composition, and removing awkward lulls in the action.
CLARITY
- Some of the feedback we’ve heard is that it takes a bit of time to understand the game’s systems and the role of the Crisis Kits, but once you “get” those, players are having a lot more fun in the game. On the other hand, we’ve also heard how joyful the organic discovery of new systems and interactions has been for many people, who’ve asked us not to jeopardize that feeling. It’s clear to us that we must find a strong balance between these ideas. To help, we’ve added dynamic tutorials for global and job-specific actions and new “sub-objective descriptors” in the HUD to help better describe the specific actions required to progress against an objective. This should give players a clear path forward without limiting them from discovering alternate ways of going about things.
- Another part of clarity is visual clarity. We love how chaotic and intense this game is, but the chaos stops being fun when players can no longer make meaningful decisions based on what they’re experiencing. So, we’re cleaning up and reducing a lot of effects in the game, both on-screen and in-world. This should reduce the visual noise, so you no longer struggle to understand what’s happening during intense moments.
- Speaking of noise, another vital aspect of clarity is auditory clarity. So, just a note that we are now in the process of doing the final audio mixing and balancing ensuring players can focus on the right things at the right time. We are well aware that the general in-game volume has been very low in all of our builds to date, and getting the final audio mix in tends to happen at the later stages of game development. We also love hearing how much you like the “escape” music!
UI
- One of the significant changes to what you have seen from the game so far has been to the user interface. Multiple components have been or are about to have been updated based on what we’ve learned from user research and player feedback.
- The Perk system has been entirely overhauled, though it fundamentally works the same way we’ve always explained it. You can buy three levels of a Perk, and each level you equip will take up a different number of slots. Level one is weak, level two is strong, level three is strong and shared with your crew.
- The other significant change (and source of some confusion for people who have followed certain previews) is to how Clearance Levels and Corruption Levels will work. The most important thing to know now is that you’ll be able to fine tune the challenge using a combination of Threat, Clearance, and Corruption, which affect combat, session length, and modification respectively. We’re going to explain these systems in more detail soon, so, look forward to that in an upcoming post.
TECHNOLOGY
- We’re continuing to work on performance testing and improvements to nail down our minimum spec and recommended spec on PC. We’ll share those results as soon as we’re confident in them.
- Finally, just a note on the multiplayer side. Thanks to everyone who joined our closed technical test; we have found and fixed countless connection and performance bugs across all platforms. We’re still working on it, but we’ve already made great strides forward.
We’ve still got a lot to do to make the launch experience the best it can be, but the team is feeling really good about where we are. We’ll do our best to keep you updated along the way and can’t wait to play with you all on June 17th.
IT’S TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE