It’s been a troublesome ol’ time for Crucible. Following a considerably messy launch, the Amazon-backed hero shooter this week introduced it’ll be shedding two of its three modes – ditching battle royale and territory management gametypes to give attention to being a bit extra MOBA, whereas delaying its first aggressive season indefinitely to present the beleaguered beast some much-needed polish.
Developers Relentless Studios defined the adjustments in a Developer Update final week. Soon, Crucible will solely supply Heart Of The Hives, all day every single day for each final one among you.
Heart Of The Hives is Crucible’s most MOBA-ish mode – two groups slugging it out, rising in energy by killing enemy gamers and environmental monsters to seize three “Hive Hearts” first. Soon, it’ll be the one mode – with the battle royale-adjacent Alpha Hunters going offline “soon”, and level management ’em up Harvester Command scheduled for decommission as quickly because the “new player experience has been improved”.
“Moving forward, we’ll be putting all of our efforts towards Heart of the Hives and what we can do to make that mode shine,” defined Relentless’ Colin Johanson. “Focusing on one mode allows us to refine the design of core systems without the compromises we needed to make to support three game modes.”
Relentless have additionally postponed the game’s first aggressive season. See, Crucible launched with some fairly vital features missing on launch – key amongst them, voice chat. The devs are utilizing the prolonged pre-season to work on implementing these options and provides their hero shooter one other spherical of polish.
“We’re starting the first phase by developing the features we know we need: voice chat, a surrender option, a system to deal with AFK players ruining matches, an expanded ping system, and potentially some form of mini-map. We don’t have an exhaustive list of changes yet, but those are some of our top priorities.”
It’s a disgrace, actually. Even as Crucible promised to be a refreshing take on the hero shooter, it’s launch has provided something however. Our Matt reckoned it had some neat concepts in his Crucible review – however one which was in the end extra of an “interesting failure” greater than the rest.
“On paper, Crucible was built for me,” Matt defined. “It’s a MOBA-infused hero shooter with an emphasis on mobility, with a diverse line-up and some interesting new ideas. In reality, I’d rather play any of the many games that grapple with just one of Crucible’s heads, and pulls it off far better. This hydra might be sprawling, but none of it looks healthy.”
Hopefully, scaling again to 1 mode will assist Crucible pump some life again into its knackered coronary heart.
