Welcome to Point Blank, the game dev blog of Magnus Larbrant, Hunt's Creative Director. Today he's here to talk about a feature that was released in Patch 2—the Dark Sight Boost.
Patch 2.0 and the Dark Sight Boost mechanic
Hey everybody! Today I want to talk about a problem we have been battling with for quite some time – excessive camping. You are a hunter risking your life with possible lethal danger around every corner, so while camping will be part of the game, we want to avoid stalemate camping where no one makes a move or players don't commit to taking out the boss.
We toyed around with all kinds of ideas at the beginning and we also tried to take other factors into account. We thought about how Dark Sight could be more useful, for example. What we ended up with, and what we will roll out for you guys to test works like this:
Once you have located the boss, killed it, and banished it, you pick up the bounty as usual. This is where the new Dark Sight Boost comes in. Once you have the bounty, you get super charged with dark energy and can briefly see the vague position of enemy hunters in a 150 meter radius. But it doesn't last for long. While using Dark Sight, a timer is ticking down. Currently it's set to last for 20 seconds in total. When the timer reaches zero, the boost is over, and you lose your advantage. It is up to you if you want to use the boost in one go or if you want to use it in small bursts of time.
We have been testing this a lot internally, and what the boost has done in those games is to make people compete more for the targets, and stalemate camping has decreased. It tends to create more of a “who dares, wins" scenario which is something we support. There is also a positive side effect that comes with it: flash bangs are getting used more, for example. While the banishing is counting down, throw in a flash grenade and run in and cut the enemies to pieces – S.W.A.T cowboy style! Watch out for the new bear traps when you run in though.
In our internal play tests the boost created a lot more competition and stressful situations that people though was really fun and now we are curious to how you guys react. Twenty seconds is not much time to play with the boost, so use it wisely and give us feedback on how to make it even better.
M.
See the Dark Sight Boost in action JUNE 14TH at 5PM CEST | 11AM EDT | 8AM PDT on the Hunt live stream: https://www.twitch.tv/crytek