Greetings Kindred and welcome to our learnings from the recent community survey. We have some good news for you!
The Combat & Power Update came with a new fresh take on some of our core mechanics in Bloodhunt. Including changes to our weapon classes, Archetypes, and resonance progression. It also added the Double Shotgun, the artifact system, bot adjustments, weapon balancing, and some bug fixes!
Our community’s reception of this update has been incredibly positive, most of you think this was one of our best updates since the release of the game. The quicker progression through the resonances, the emphasis on Archetype powers, and the new Expeditus’ Boots artifact were some of the highlights that many of you enjoyed.
Additionally, we are happy to hear that many of you noticed better networking performance, and we see that the changes to our matchmaker have been mostly well-received.
More players stay longer
We have also seen that new players on average stay longer in Bloodhunt compared to last month (and the previous months), which has been one of the main goals of the CVC (Core Vampire Crew). While we are still not satisfied with where we are currently, this number is moving in the right direction, which is an indication that our current strategy of working on content and features that keep players playing longer is working.
We are also incredibly happy to see that very few of you said that you are not sticking around to play Bloodhunt. Digging into the reasons why has been particularly important for us and has played a big part in our prioritization for future updates of the game.
Ban wave, bye bye cheaters!
Another topic that has been brought up in the recent survey concerns cheaters. Nobody likes them (nor do we) so to combat them even further we recently did a ban wave where 800+ cheaters were permabanned. Bans of course happen all the time, several times every day, but we also do (and will continue to do) additional ban waves like this one to catch additional cheaters, all to keep your games as cheater free as possible!
Trios' investigations
Last week we were doing investigations into complaints that we have seen in the recent survey related to long matchmaking times. What those investigations revealed was that there are people who want to play Trios, and queue for the game mode, but spend an exceedingly long time doing so before giving up, and by extension stating that this is an issue with Bloodhunt.
What our investigations also revealed was that throughout most of a full 24-hour cycle, people are queueing for Trios, but during several of the hours of the day, very few matches start at all. Despite players recurringly trying to queue for the game mode – but still not enough of them for a match to start. This is a problem.
We already know that waiting for too long to play any game mode is a major deterrent for our players and it has been a strong cause leading to players not returning to the game. This is why we originally implemented bots in the game, which contributed to much faster queues and made many more players eager to continue playing.
This led to us thinking about implementing a solution for Trios that would add bots during hours of the day when a Trios match could not start at all. But when we presented this plan, we were met with a clear message from many members of our community: There needs to be a solution that allows for a pure PvP game experience. We certainly understand this desire and realize that we are balancing between two potentially opposing options.
We have therefore decided to postpone implementing any kind of bot backfill for Trios for now and will continue monitoring your feedback on this – we however will want to implement a solution to this issue, that continues to exist, albeit this solution will be announced later and after more deliberations.
Prioritization for the next update
We have been working hard on the next update for Bloodhunt which contains several key requests from the community, and we are optimistic and feel extremely excited about its release.
Most of you have expressed an ardent desire for more things to progress toward. Among the highest demands are for a new battle pass. So, without further ado, we will add another free 100-tier pass in our next update!
Furthermore, not only in this survey but also in others, you have requested additional features and content.
Some of these requests include a new clan and Archetype with new abilities. Many of you mentioned that there is one in particular that you would prefer us to add. Which also would help switch up the dynamics in the game. We certainly have paid attention to that feedback.
On top of this, you have asked for another weapon, and at least one additional artifact to choose from. And... you have expressed a desire for a spot in Elysium where you can try out the many weapons available in the game, as well as a place to able to test out the parkour movement mechanics.
You have also indicated a need for something to do besides running around while waiting for a new match.
Additionally, you want us to replace the tutorial and implement a better way of learning the basics for fresh players in the game.
Accomplishing all these things all at once is of course a big undertaking for the CVC, so some of our work on this started already late last year.
We expect our next update to be our biggest one yet since the release of the game and we are optimistic about its reception. We also hope that player numbers will increase since it addresses most of the things that our community has been asking for. We think this is a big impetus for that growth.
A glimpse into the near future of Bloodhunt
Something else many of you have requested is a glimpse into the future of the game. While we cannot provide you with a roadmap, we can at least talk a little bit about what we are thinking and considering putting into Bloodhunt over the next few months after our next update.
One of the key things that we mentioned already is of course that we want to keep our community engaged inside the game and to keep players around. We are planning to integrate more things that players can interact with within the game, which we hope will give a positive boost to the overall experience and that provide more things to do, and at the same time gives our community the ability to vote on certain things.
We will add some features already in our next update that progress further on this plan, but we additionally want to add some beyond that, an upgrade that potentially could help make our community feel more engaged in the game.
A recent idea is to add an interactive community voting section inside the game where you as a player could pick between a few pre-determined alternatives that we have prepared.
An example of what you might be able to choose between would be voting between for example temporarily removing certain weapons from the loot table, rotating maps in TDM (Team Deathmatch), or disabling or enabling certain artifacts during a set time. In one iteration, we would want to get some basics in place to try this system out to get your feedback on it.
The idea for a first implementation would be to give more agency to our players by allowing you to potentially influence a few of the things in the game that give it more variety and that by extension makes you want to play longer.
The development of this particular system will be our next step and focus once we have pushed the next update. We do this and prioritize this because we treasure our community. Implementing features that help make the game feel more community-run is something we will put our effort into.
Closing words
We have high expectations for our next update and we really look forward to showing you more of what our talented team has created.
Thank you for all your positivity in the surveys and reviews. All that energy keeps our spirits high and is a big part of the labour of love that is the next update for Bloodhunt.
Until it releases, see you at dusk!
/Sharkmob
