Mountaintop details for Specter Divide Season 1 and console launch in February

Pictures by Mountaintop Studios announced a new software update video for Specter Shareand provide a preview of “Flashpoint,” which is the first season of the main season title changes. It is coming in mid-February along with a version of the game for console players.

The three versus three tactical multiplayer shooter will launch worldwide on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S early next year. The game featured unusual anime art and interesting modes where players had a second body that they could place and move around in the game. But the implementation was difficult.

In addition to optimizing the quality of life for PC gamers, Mountaintop focuses on controller support for all PC and console models. Weekly testing of the functionality is underway, and interested players can sign up here to take part.

Specter Divide looked promising when it showed off the game this summer and launched the title on August 1. But it had a lot of bugs, including some that caused system crashes. The team was fired but there are a lot of people working and trying to fix what the players did, said Nate Mitchell, CEO of Mountaintop, in an interview with GamesBeat.

Mitchell, who was the co-founder of Oculus, launched Mountaintop in 2020 with game developer Lee Horn and the title has been in the works for four years. Above the mountains $30 million then he was silent as the group thought about what to do. They created a team of 70 people, and enlisted the help of gamer Shroud, an expert gamer who helped them with things that players would like. Their goal was to create a professional shooter that people would play for 10,000 hours.

I played this game and it reminds me of Counter-Strike, the team’s favorite game. But it was twisted. In Specter Divide, Mountaintop created Duality, where you have two bodies controlled by one player. You can play as one player in a 3v3 game, then place your second player in the right or hidden position by throwing the puck into the position.

Then you can switch between characters. If one of the specters is killed, you just switch to another. You get the benefit of one mind, two bodies. It’s a new feature that could allow the game to capture its dedicated audience in the competitive FPS market.

Bad start

It was launched at the beginning of September, but, as we have seen, there were many problems. On September 26, the company laid off 13 of its employees.

“It’s no secret, we had a difficult start. The game went down on opening day. This was brutal, especially for the players who were so excited to play. We had performance issues, especially on different types of devices than we tried,” Mitchell said. “In the beta, we had a lot of layers online, a lot of people with network issues, connectivity issues. We were not running servers all over the world. We heard the comments loud and clear. “

After the layoff, Mitchell said the company had to fix it with a smaller team. The goal is to focus on profitability, which is important for an indie studio that publishes itself, he said.

“We have to earn the necessities of life. We hope this will be better than giving up even running the studio and running the game, but in the end, we have to make a profit, and that’s our goal. Next year we are looking at how we can build to support the team we have. “

There were also price reviews.

“The bones are the same, the core is the same, but everything has been designed and improved based on what the players want to see,” Horn said.

On Steam, the number of players has reached almost one million so far. The contract is limited to about 1,000 players playing, compared to the number of 81,000 four months ago, when the company has reduced its sales and is in the process of improving the game. The team considered taking the game off the market but saw that there were players who were having fun chasing races so it didn’t make sense to take the game to them, Mitchell said.

Horn said, “We really want the players to know that we believe in the game and we’re working to improve it. So by continuing to update it if we’re here on Discord, they can chat with us, and we’re not going anywhere. We’re improving every day.”

Regrouping

The team’s goal was to make the title feel like a new game when players returned to Season 1, Horn said in an interview with GamesBeat.

“It’s not a few tweets here and there. We’ve spent a long time listening to player feedback. And one of the reasons we’ve done this is that we’re going to take a little more time to do Phase 1,” Horn said. “It was clear that we needed to do this in a big way that involved all the feedback and felt like a big change.”

“One of the biggest changes we’re excited about is that we’re increasing speed,” Horn said. “Anytime there’s a new engine, it’s a big change in the game. One of the things we found was that it was slow to turn and felt sluggish. We found that speed just opened up the game.”

He added, “You get a lot of team sports, which is crazy to say from a mechanic, but the result is that your team is together to support your team. You can go around and replace, you can go around and go back. We are very happy with the sprint, and this It’s like a good example of a part that takes time to clean up. We don’t want to mess with it.”

New “Flashpoint” Episode 1

Just like in The Hunger Games, there are agents in this game that will send you items to give you an advantage in battle. New to the update is Monark Tactical, and there’s a new map coming out called Canal, which will allow the team to showcase more of the sci-fi world building, Horn said.

There are also new characters, weapon skins, and cosmetics.

Horn said the assistant will give you a “battle escape,” which is a shield that will protect you when you activate it.

The company said the Season 1 Battle Pass offers tons of value including more than 70 rewards. Players can get more than a dozen free items including costumes for four characters, two weapon skins and 10 additional items.

There are changes to the original map to create better routes around where you expect enemies to be and to be counted. And there will be a huge reduction in the cost of cosmetics. Horn said that the control game has been in the works for a long time and the team plays with it regularly. The company decided that it is ready and therefore the controller can be used on desktop or PC models.

Horn said the group has good backend tools and can see crash rates and performance on different hardware types. This helps identify problems. The company also interacts with players on Discord and Reddit. It also has a team of trusted testers who have been helping for several years. The team has responded to thousands of Steam comments. All reviews among the 18,740 reviews are mixed, with a rating of three out of five stars.

Details on the Flashpoint and Console implementation will be shared in future updates, which are coming early next year.

Under development

Here is a complete list of the changes that are currently underway. It also includes in-game health and lifestyle changes, meaning fewer accidents. There is also a new “sprint” movement system, a sandbox overhaul, a new economy change (where cosmetics cost more than before), existing maps have been changed to shoot guns and have been updated and improved facial expressions.

On top of that, there will be the long-awaited “Careers” tab, infrastructure improvements, client and server upgrades, network improvements and new server components around the world, thousands of fixes have been sent since launch based on player feedback, fighting faster and faster. and moving and reshaping the scenery to get a workout. Anti-Cheat has been in development for several months and is making great progress in detection and prevention. And the viewing process has begun.

“We’re trying to be open with the players. We’ve been kind of quiet. We did a post that said, ‘Hey, we’re going to be focusing on improving the game.’ So the dev video is, ‘Look at all the stuff we’re doing. It’s a lot of inventory,'” Mitchell said.