Ubisoft’s stylish Hyper Scape came in as one of the latest entries on the battle royale scene, but Ubisoft is already set to make some pretty big revisions to its core elements after the console launch failed to meet the developer’s expectations. Citing an unfriendly nature to new players, the Hyper Scape team will focus on five main pillars and problem areas they identified as road blocks in the game that prevent a wide player base from enjoying it.
The first area of focus is in combat, which Ubisoft wanted to have a high skill ceiling, but also has too high of a skill floor for new players to easily jump in. They say it is currently too hard to aim, track, and consistently damage other players on consoles.
Secondly, they want to focus on a better onboarding for new players coming into the game. The team says there are not enough opportunities for the player to learn and succeed, with attention now being paid to protecting new players and offering training activities where they can improve outside of the brutal main modes of combat.
With respect to the modes, Ubisoft says the main “Crown Rush” mode is too unforgiving, so they are putting effort into introducing additional modes and activities that will vary in player count and objective. They will first implement respawn systems and a “deathmatch” style of game mode as well as putting thought into limited-time modes and how they manage the player base split that occurs when supporting multiple game modes.
The Hyper Scape team also wants to provide more medium and long term incentives for players to stick around and keep playing. Season 2 will introduce a player ranking system and other progression systems, as well as “match-to-match flow improvements.”
And finally, to address small lobby sizes, Ubisoft plans to add cross-play earlier than originally scheduled.
The Hyper Scape development team is reorganizing into a cell structure to work on these individual problems, similar to how Ubisoft’s own Rainbow Six Siege dev team managed a big revamp of that game. Each of the five main points above is being given its own cell of developers to address the issues as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Ubisoft says that Season 2 will see more frequent updates to the game in order to reach these goals, with more frequent communication on how these pillars are coming together to make Hyper Scape the game they want it to be. Whether or not its enough to bring players onboard remains to be seen, but for now they’ve at least identified the main issues and committed to working on them.
Hyper Scape Season 2 launches on October 6th, and includes the requisite spooky season events, as seen in the announcement trailer above. If there’s one thing that Ubisoft has been really good at, it’s taking lackluster launches of games that don’t meet expectations and turning them around to have beloved and long-supported titles. In the same way games like The Division, Rainbow Six Siege, and Ghost Recon Breakpoint saw a lot of attention and iteration based on feedback, Ubisoft hopes to make Hyper Scape into the game both the community and devs know it can be.
[Source: Ubisoft]