Hello Riftbreakers!

Thank you for the positive reception of our last Roadmap Update article. It was really heartwarming to see the comments section full of acceptance, understanding, and kindness. As we told you last time, online co-op mode for The Riftbreaker is our top priority. For most of the development time, we have been working on solving the technical issues and adapting the Schmetterling Engine for online play. Now, the technical issues are mostly sorted out. The Survival Mode is playable in co-op from start to finish, as we have done several times on stream. This means that we can finally start working on gameplay improvements to make the co-op mode fun and engaging. Let’s talk about some of the changes we have already implemented and our plans to ensure you always have something interesting to do when playing The Riftbreaker with your friends.

Working together you can build up and fortify your bases much more efficiently.

When we first started playtesting the multiplayer mode we were happy to just complete a run. More often than not, we would crash before finishing the mission, so there was not much point in making gameplay changes. However, as the months passed, we started completing co-op runs more and more often. Of course, we faced some issues here and there, but none of them were serious enough to affect the game’s playability. It quickly became apparent that when everything was working fine, four players could easily clear the entire map in just about an hour, build an impenetrable fortress and then start yawning and playing checkers. Some changes were necessary.

The majority of our testing has been done on the Brutal Survival mode. We are adjusting this difficulty level first. Don’t be afraid that we are going to make the game too difficult. The other difficulty levels will receive their individual treatments. You will still be able to customize the difficulty level. None of the changes are final, and we will make adjustments based on the feedback we receive from you during the beta. We know that different players have different preferences, and we’re not forgetting that!

Even early on, co-op will require you to work together to succeed. It's going to be Riftbreaker on overdrive!

The first thing we decided to change in the Survival Mode was the pace of gameplay. On most biomes, there is a seven-minute-long pause between attack waves. You can use that time to repair the base, build up your defenses, and prepare for the next round. It might seem obvious, but the more players we had, the less time it took us to rebuild and prepare, leading us to look for some additional challenges to pass the time while we waited for an attack to come. To combat this, we made quite a radical change, reducing the cooldown time from seven to just four minutes (for brutal difficulty - hard and normal have one and two minutes more). On paper, this change seems quite big, but in reality, it is more than enough time to maintain and upgrade the base - at least in Survival Mode.

Attacks with bosses get much more engaging. Apart from dealing with the main wave, you have to also pay attention to other parts of the base, which might be attacked by bosses.

We have also removed the attack waves tied to the Headquarters upgrades. We believe that they upset the rhythm of the survival run too much and allowed some unintended exploits. Previously, the players could trigger the HQ upgrade sequence and cancel an upcoming attack. After defeating the custom HQ attack, there would be a pause of a random length, allowing for even more time to build up the base and its defenses. With these attacks gone, players no longer have to worry about timing the HQ upgrade right. They can also comfortably predict when the next attack is about to come, even without looking at the timer, as nothing disturbs the mission flow. That leaves the players without any tangible reward for upgrading the HQ in Survival Mode. We are actively thinking about this, and we promise you will get something cool in return.

This boss unit has a 'Canceroth' skill that creates a barrier of little cells around it that serve as a shield. You will have to join your forces to beat it.

Another angle we chose to make co-op survival more engaging was the introduction of our prototype bosses. We told you about them in the previous article, but in short - we are experimenting with adding more challenging boss fights to the game. We prototyped a system that takes one of the biggest creatures we have in the game, gives them bonus stats, and anywhere between one and three special abilities. That can be a healing aura, damage resistance, or the ability to spawn meteor showers. A dynamic difficulty manager decides what kind of stats and abilities a boss gets. At present, we send out one boss every wave, plus additional ones when opening bioanomalies. This changes the anatomy of the fight. The team has to focus on the boss - otherwise, it will roll over the base. However, the base is also being attacked by the regular creatures from the attack wave. Players can split up or focus on one task at a time, but they must make sure that they can survive both of these aspects.

Even if you fail, you can always count on your friends to finish the job for you.

Speeding up attack waves and making them stronger via bosses definitely made the game more engaging but also quite difficult. We had to find a way to give players the tools they needed to survive. When we increased the difficulty level, we started dying more often as well. That lead to dropping weapons, often multiple times per wave. At times, we did not have any weapons left to use. We removed that penalty. Players no longer drop weapons upon death. This has a negative side-effect as well - it promoted kamikaze gameplay, with players running into hordes and blowing up for massive damage.

The solution to that is two-fold. First, we limited the power of the player’s death explosion. That’s already implemented. The second part is still in the works - we’re going to introduce a respawn cooldown. Players will drop a “wreck” after death. If someone interacts with it, the “owner” of the tombstone will be revived on the spot. Otherwise - they will have to wait a couple of seconds before joining the fray once again.

Bombing targets with the Mech's explosion is not a good play pattern, and we are looking into ways of fixing that.

One other major bottleneck when it came to survival were the crafting costs of various items. While it is true that you earn resources quicker in co-op mode, their amount is not infinite, and they are often sorely needed all around the base, leaving players with nothing to spare for improved weapons or armor. We have come up with a cunning plan to reduce the crafting costs of items according to the number of players. The more people you have in your party, the cheaper the weapons become, giving everyone a chance to craft something useful.

Getting caught out like this is harsh, but you can always teleport to any other player and continue the fight where you left off.

We also decided to pump a bit more resources into the economy to give the players a much-needed boost, especially in the early stages of the game. The small loot caches scattered across the map now respawn a couple of times during the Survival run. Thanks to this, it is beneficial to explore the map early, as opening one of these caches can pay for several important structures all at once. Additionally, we added an event that occurs several times during the run that respawns the opened loot caches. They respawn at random quality levels and their contents change between spawns. Collecting them in between attack waves can greatly offset the costs of rebuilding the base and growing your defensive network.

The fire damage aura that some bosses can get is one of the most spectacular things you can see in the game. Have fun dealing with that, though!

To make Co-Op play a more social experience, we have also increased the mobility of our players. Portals are a large part of The Riftbreaker’s gameplay. Placing them in strategic spots helps you move around the map efficiently and saves a lot of time. However, there will be some situations where you don’t have a portal at hand and a friend is in dire need of assistance. For this reason, we decided that every player is a walking portal that is always active. This means that when you open the minimap, you can simply click on any of the player icons and instantly join them to help with clearing a wave, opening a Bioanomaly, or simply exploring the map.

Every player acts as their own Rift Portal. That allows you to join the battle at any point and assist any of your teammates in a matter of seconds.

Another addition we are working on is a system of pings and emotes. We do have a live chat built into the game, and we are aware that most of the time, you’re going to do a voice chat while playing Co-Op. However, there are times when you can’t use voice chat, and there is no time to type anything into the chat. This is where the ping wheel comes in. It will feature some of the most useful phrases in multiplayer context, such as a warning or a call for help. After choosing one of these options, the server displays a message to all players and marks a location on the minimap. This way, you can communicate easily and efficiently. Please note that this is not the final shape of this feature - just a prototype.

There are probably plenty of things we will change and add over the course of the beta testing period of The Riftbreaker Co-Op mode. What we do and which direction we go will largely be shaped by your feedback, so make sure to sign up for the test!

To sign up for The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Beta please fill in the following form:

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Catch you next time!
EXOR Studios