From December 15th until December 31st we opened up our servers for everyone to jump in and help test the game. Now the servers are closed while we crunch some bugs and add some more features to the game.
To start out then for this Christmas playtest we chose to move away from the cumbersome Steamkey-system where we need to request keys from Steam and then deliver them to you - our players.
We feel like this method was successful and in this post, we will try to dive into some of the things that we learned from the playtest...
... but first of all, we would like to give a huge thanks to everyone who provided feedback, broke the game, stress-tested our servers to the max or simply were there to have a good time. Thank you for being so awesome helping us make First Class Trouble a better game for everyone in the future.
Thank you!
Over the last few weeks, you have played 1000+ matches where you have trusted and lied to each other in the true spirit of Christmas. We hope that you enjoyed yourselves. Judging from the comments on our Discord and through the in-game feedback system, we have gathered that most of you have had an enjoyable experience.
In many ways, we proved again that there is a market for games like this, it should already be quite evident with the huge success that is Among Us, but it is nice to read kind messages from people who enjoyed something that you personally have handcrafted over such a long time.
You have reported hundreds of bugs, which is great as we still have a long way to go before release. Moreover, we got a lot of the same bugs reported, which further helps us plan the things that you the players would like fixed first. Some bugs were so critical that we had to work hard in the days after the opening of the servers, so people did not receive fatal errors that ruined their experience. After a hotfix or two we managed to create a more stable experience for the majority. The other reported bugs have, and will, keep us entertained for a good amount of time :).
We had a preconfigured notion that people would like to play with everyone, but it was quite evident early in the test that players craved a lobby system so they could play private games with their friends. 92% of all games played where through private games, which is something that we kind of expected, but not to this degree.
Private queues solved a lot of matchmaking issues, but it also hindered the experience from other players who did not have 5 other friends they could group with. Only 8% matches through the public queue are not enough and we saw that it became almost necessary for people to queue together - sharing lobby codes through our Discord. It is amazing that people gather up, but we really want you to queue up alone, with a single friend etc. and get put in a game with other players. This is something that we strive to address in the next large update where we should reach full integration with Steam friends and a robust lobby system.
We also need to further work on our communication to our players. We have for a long time been accustomed to talking directly to our players through our Discord Channel, but by opening it up to everyone through the Steam Playtest system we lost capability to talk directly to our players as they were spread out over many platforms. We think that this is something that we could mitigate through in menu communication from us the developers.
We can see through our data that we probably still have hardware specification that limits who can play the game. Moreover, we can possibly also see that people with low-end hardware tend to fail to load, run out of VRAM etc. they sometimes force other players to go through the pre-lobby again. We need to revisit our hardware requirements to run the game, further optimize the game so as many as possible can enjoy the experience and lastly lessen the impact that it has on all players when a player runs lower end hardware - reworking how people load in the game.
Lastly, we will be releasing our roadmap here shortly, which will give you all a peak into the future of First Class Trouble. We cannot wait to show you more of the things and features we have planned.
Thanks for taking part of the test - now we are taking a small break from public playtest but will announce when we are ready to take it public again. To get up to date with all information add First Class Trouble to your wishlist and of course catch up with everything on our Discord here.
Happy new year! Let us hope 2021 will be a good year for everyone!
- Invisible Walls