Greetings, Agents.
Thank you for joining us in celebrating Blackout Protocol’s Early Access! To all Agents who have shown continued support for Blackout Protocol since its reveal at PAX West 2022, we share our sincere gratitude for seeing us through all the betas. To new Agents who are newly introduced to Blackout Protocol, we’re glad you found us!
While going live on Early Access was a big milestone for us, it is only the beginning of the game’s journey. Many of you probably saw ODS staff joining Agents in enjoying the game together. Our approach to Early Access and beyond will also be similar to that–we will be working together with our Agents to make the Blackout Protocol experience more pleasant.
We have a general roadmap for the content we plan to bring until official launch, but we will also be closely monitoring the community’s feedback, suggestions, and bug reports, to see where improvements are needed to guide Blackout Protocol cross the Official Launch finish line. Make sure you join our community and share your thoughts with us. Our Discord server and Steam forums are good starting points.
We’ve been taking a close look at all feedback and bug reports and discussing them internally. One of the very first steps we took was to release a day-1 patch to fix issues we identified with the help of our Agents. To see what issues were fixed, please check out the patch notes.
We also held discussions on community feedback and suggestions on the game, and we would like to share what we are reviewing at the moment. As it’s only the first day of release, we don’t have any concrete solutions or future plans but would like to share what the hot topics are that we are reviewing internally.
[Difficulty Level]
One of the more common feedback was the game’s difficulty, especially when playing solo. We have been approaching this matter from multiple angles. We have tested a few options during our past betas and demo, but there have always been pros and cons to each adjustment, and we came to the current balance for Early Access.
But, as we are aware that the current balance is not perfect, we are reviewing even more different options. Some ideas so far: add easier variations, change difficulty level for some of the variations, and even difficulty level adjustments for solo players.
We can tell you that we have seen players soloing their way to the mid-boss. So there is definitely a way to get there with the right combination of progression and boosts, including some chance elements with Synaptic Enhancements. However, as we want to make sure we have the right difficulty level that keeps the gameplay challenging enough, we will review all the possible options and share our plans going forward.
Our goal is to make sure the game is fun for parties of all sizes! So please stay tuned for future updates, and, more importantly, please continue to share your thoughts with us.
[Movement including Sprinting]
Another hot topic is about letting characters sprint and have faster movement speed. We do see why our Agents want that. However, as it can change the overall balance of gameplay significantly, we are discussing what we can do to make the controls feel more responsive and the level of challenge feels appropriate.
This will be reviewed together with the difficulty level, as both topics affect each other.
[Quality of Life Improvements]
We also discussed overall QoL feedback. We are currently reviewing how to improve the following issues:
- More Key binding options (especially for left-handed Agents)
- UI/UX improvements
- UI showing the button prompts for a different controller
- Facilitating blueprint unlocks in later levels
Once again, thank you for joining us on our launch day and participating in Early Access. As Blackout Protocol takes its first step into realizing its potential, we look forward to communicating closely with our community in this journey.
– ODS Team
