First of all, to our Backers and new players alike - thank you for your incredible outpouring of love and support last week following the launch of BATTLETECH, and for sharing so many of your amazing game experiences with us. As a small developer, these stories mean the world to us. It's why we do this.
From the heartfelt reactions of our Backers, to the kind words from reviewers, to the epic marathons on YouTube, to the hysterical reactions on Twitch, to the goofy memes floating through social media, this week has been a whirlwind and we are thrilled to be on this ride with you.
Extra kind words and fun clip links:
- Waypoint
- Polygon
- GameWatcher
- Twitch Clip 1
- Twitch Clip 2
- Twitch Clip 3
We could easily fill this entire post and more just rounding up press and fan reactions to the game - but we'd rather talk about what's next. From the start of this project, we've viewed launch not as the end of the road, but as the birth of a living product. Over the course of development, you might recall that we often answered speculative questions about post-launch features or content with, "in success, all things are possible."
Well - thanks to you, this is the success we hoped for. And many things are now possible! We're working with Paradox on a roadmap for the next year of BATTLETECH development. This will include regular bugfixing, quality-of-life improvements, and free Updates adding new features to the game. Here's a look at the next few months of that roadmap.
****BATTLETECH Post-Launch Roadmap****
1. Compatibility / Performance Investigations
Our launch last week wasn't perfect. A subset of players are experiencing hardware/system compatibility and performance issues that our team is working hard to investigate. Solutions for critical issues are always our top priority, and will be released as soon as they're available and tested. Typically, we will release patches to our public_beta branch on Steam for a few days for testing before we push them to the default branch.
On that note - last Friday we released our first patch to the public_beta branch for testing. Today, that 1.0.1 Patch went live - you can read the full changelog here. We expect to release more patches to public_beta in the coming days and weeks.
2. General Bugfix (Late May)
We expect to release at least one general bugfix/improvements patch later in May.
3. Localization (French, German, Russian) and Linux support
These are both Kickstarter commitments and high priorities for our post-launch roadmap. (Along with a couple other Kickstarter commitments that didn't make it in for launch.) We don't have a more precise ETA yet for these items but will update you as soon as we do.
4. Update #1: Customization & Player Options (June/July)
We're already beginning work on our first larger free Update to BATTLETECH. This Update is all about customization and reacting to common pieces of feedback that we've received from you on the game. Here's a list of items we're currently looking at for Update 1 this summer:
- Accelerated combat options - We're working on options for players who would like to accelerate the pace of combat missions.
- MechWarrior customization - We know that many players would like to change the appearance, callsign, name, and voice of all their MechWarriors, not just their Commander. This didn't make it in for launch but we'll be adding it in Update 1.
- Granular difficulty settings - A set of discrete options for players to customize the challenge level of the game in different areas.
- MechLab / Store / Salvage quality-of-life improvements - Interface additions to reduce friction when buying and salvaging new items.
- Tutorial-skip option - Allowing players who have already played the prologue missions to skip those missions when starting a new campaign, and get right to the Leopard.
- Addressing difficulty spikes - We'll be working on smoothing out some issues with unexpectedly hard (or easy) content. Not to remove all difficulty variance, but to address clear outliers.
- Live-streaming quality-of-life improvements - Audio persisting when alt-tabbed, for example.
It's important to note that the exact contents of Update 1 may shift during development. Please consider these general directions and priorities. We'll post a more detailed and updated list of what's in the Update closer to its release.
5. More BATTLETECH!
The above is just the beginning! We'll be continuing with more free Updates after Update 1, and we'd also love to release a larger paid content Expansion or two - but right now we're staying focused on bugfixes and immediate reactions to launch feedback. With your support, we could not be more excited to continue making BATTLETECH even bigger and better.
Thank you,
HBS