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Greetings pilots!
For the past few months, we've been placing a major focus on improving the accessibility and balance of HAWKEN. In order to achieve these improvements, we are making some significant changes. In this article, we'll take a look at the adjustments we've made to our progression system. You should know that community feedback was a major factor in these changes and helped us a great deal.
Please note that these changes are still in development and our goal is to include them in our next major update. This is not all that is coming to the game, more details will be rolled out over the coming weeks but this is a high level view of some changes that has a big impact on the rest of what's coming.
Pilot Progression and Matchmaking
Our matchmaking system is undergoing some revisions and we hope to roll out the changes to you soon. Part of this change will include putting a primary emphasis on Pilot Skill instead of Pilot Progression when finding quality matches for players. Pilot Progression is more of a system for unlocking new item, internal and cosmetic options. It will still effect matchmaking to a certain degree, but not to the extent it does currently. More information on our changes to matchmaking will be coming in the near future.
Reworking Mech Ranks
Mech ranks are another feature that received some adjustment. Instead of acting as a monetized gating system, mech ranks will simply act as a representation of your play time with a mech and an avenue for unlocking cool customizations and weapon options. The ability to purchase ability upgrades has also been removed.
Removal of Tuning Points
Another major change is our decision to remove Tuning Points from being used by players. Now, each mech's strength will be determined ahead of time and will not change as a pilot progresses. Instead of being required to advance through pilot progression to acquire tuning points, players will have access to a fully balanced experience right out of the gate. The system still exists and we're able to use it in the background to really balance out each mech but it will no longer be something that players add points to over time.
Removal of Mech Unlocks
Since we've removed the ability to purchase mech ranks, we're also removing the free mech unlock that players would receive after reaching max rank. The reasoning behind this is simply based on monetization and economy. Previously, the cost of mech ranks contributed to the total cost of a single mech. This enabled us to provide mech unlocks to those that reached max mech rank. Now that mech ranks no longer have a cost associated with them, mech unlocks have been removed and the cost of each mech has been adjusted accordingly.
Return of Mech Test Drives
With the removal of mech unlocks, we needed a way to enable access to a variety of mechs. The solution is the return of mech test drives. When a new player experiences HAWKEN, we want them to immediately be able to obtain an understanding of what HAWKEN is as well as help them find the mechs that will suit them best. For these reasons we will have a rotation of several mechs available to play for free each week. This way, new players will have a number of different mechs to choose from right away. This is an improved system over what we had previously in the game and will give us greater test drive options for the player in moving forward.
Summary
We learned a lot from our current progression system. It gave us a wealth of data that we studied alongside community opinion in order to help us decide what would benefit the game the most. Ultimately, we decided that major adjustments were needed in order to achieve our goals. We appreciate the feedback that was given regarding progression and found it immensely helpful to our design process. More information on our next major update will be coming soon. In the meantime, we'll see you on the battlefield!
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