Developer Q&A Responses: #1
Thank you to our community for taking the time to submit questions on Discord for our very first Developer Q&A session! We received so many questions, in fact, that we’re dividing the responses into two parts. Today’s entry addresses the most commonly asked questions to give everyone the answers they’re looking for. We’ll follow up with a second entry in the coming weeks, addressing more technical questions around gameplay and mechanics.
Today’s responses come directly from our CEO, Peter Tamte:
Why has the Fireteam AI release been delayed?
The #1 reason we’ve had to push back release dates for Six Days in Fallujah is that we grossly underestimated the cost of creating and maintaining Procedural Architecture, and this has diverted resources away from overall game quality and other features. But, as you’ve already seen, the uncertainty Procedural Architecture creates in urban environments is a major step towards creating a much more realistic experience.
The #2 reason for delays is AI. There’s a very good reason so few companies tackle “real AI,” and instead settle for simple “Bot AI” or even just PvP – real AI is hard. Plus, we’re also building a friendly AI system players can control, and we’re doing all this in environments that randomly change shape.
The #3 reason for delays is that our team is 95% smaller than the Call of Duty team. Each Call of Duty is typically created with 1,000+ people working for three years. Until recently, we had 25-40 people. Now, we have 82.
Why did you choose an Early Access path? And is the feedback from players disheartening, encouraging, or both?
There are three reasons we entered Early Access:
#1: Feedback. Marines say, “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” We say, “no design survives contact with the player.” With hundreds of thousands of people having played the game now, we have lots and lots of really useful feedback, and it continues shaping our choices, as well as our ideas. Some of this feedback is disheartening, some is encouraging, but all of it is useful.
#2: Community. Even two decades ago when I was helping to run Bungie, I saw firsthand the incredible role Bungie’s community played in providing feedback to our team, spreading the word to new players, and giving satisfaction to the development team as they watched players enjoy their hard work.
#3: Money. Activision and EA now spend, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars making their military shooters, and, over and over, we’re seeing players expect that our team can make something of a competitive quality. But we don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars. And, as we hope you’re seeing, we’re trying to build something much more innovative.
Will the Quality Updates be one update or a series of updates?
We plan to release one batch of quality-focused updates in March and another in late-April or early May. Improvements to aiming, shooting, and movement will be included in both updates.
I know it says AI fireteams will be added in Q2 2024, but do you have a more specific date?
We’re hoping for June, and, right now, we’re on target for that. But, since we believe a controllable fireteam sits at the foundation of our whole experience, we won’t release it until we believe it’s working well, and we’ve created really compelling ways for players to learn how it works – and how to use real military tactics.
Is there any plan after the AI update releases to allow our fireteams that aren't a 4-player group to have AI fill in the missing spots?
Yes, we do plan to offer this, but it won’t be included in our initial Friendly AI release.
How many AI are planned to be under command? Will the game maintain the fireteam as the primary element, or will larger groups of Marines ever be present? Will we be able to command an assault team and a fire team to use fire and maneuver tactics similarly to the first 2 Brothers in Arms games?
We’re initially concentrating on the 4-person fireteam. However, you will be able to split this team into fire and assault elements, and there will be many uses for this. As we continue optimizing our AI system performance, we do plan to add more fireteams in the future. This is blocked by technical reasons right now, rather than creative reasons, but we’ll push through these over time.
How long is the campaign, and when will it be released?
The campaign should run 8-10 hours. The full campaign will be released with the Full Release of the game, with parts of the campaign released before then.
Why are you releasing the campaign in pieces, rather than at one time?
There are two related reasons:
#1: Trying to teach players how to control an AI fireteam, as well as how to use real military tactics, would create too long of a conventional tutorial (we worry it would be boring). So, we’re building much of this into our campaign story. Even in our co-op games, we’ve noticed a huge gap in knowledge about military tactics. So, we believe the deeper understanding of tactics provided through our campaign will benefit many players in co-op, as well.
#2: Our lack of a controllable fireteam is the #1 thing holding many players back from participating in Early Access, and revenues from Early Access are a key component funding the game’s development.
Will the campaign maps be procedurally generated or hand-made?
Both. There are times when the geography, or the architecture of the space, played a role in the tactics or outcome, and there are times when they didn’t.
“The nature of war is uncertainty,” as VonClausewitz said. We default to Procedural Architecture whenever possible because we believe stimulating uncertainty is often more important than the layout of the space in understanding why a scenario played out the way it did. But, where this isn’t true (and there are many examples of this), we hand-create the map, or a specific building within a procedural map.
This being said, the example you gave, Hell House, is a tricky one because both uncertainty and the layout of the house were essential elements. So, to be honest, we haven’t figured out yet how to balance this in all cases.
When will the game be released for consoles?
We plan to release the full game, with full campaign and co-op missions, simultaneously on PC and consoles early in 2025.
Will Console players be able to play with PC players, and can I opt-out of cross-play if this is the case?
Yes, a very substantial portion of our players want to play co-op with friends on another platform (whether this is Xbox to PlayStation or PC to Console). The central reason we built our multiplayer technology on Epic Online Services is to enable this cross-play.
Since the biggest need for cross-play is among friends, we do intend to allow players to opt out of cross-play.
Do the connection improvements in the Quarter’s update(s) include moving away from EOS?
We must continue supporting EOS, or we will lose our future cross-play functionality. This being said, many of our connection issues are not related to EOS. You can expect improvements to our networking in both March and late-April/early-May.
Will the next update improve performance (at least somewhat) on an AMD Radeon 470rx?
Maybe a tiny bit. But, overall, it will become increasingly difficult for us to continue supporting this generation of GPUs.
Are you guys planning on making suppression more effective at keeping enemies' heads down and making enemies less accurate, or do you want to keep it how it is now?
Yes. Suppression is not working correctly in the game right now. You should see improvements in this in our March and late-April updates.
Will you let me play in bigger squads?
Yes, but right now we are restricted by the number of characters we can have active in the game simultaneously. This will improve as we continue optimizing the game, but keep in mind that we’ll also have to add more AI, and balance difficulty, besides allowing more players.
Will the game ever offer PvP?
Yes, we do intend to offer PvP eventually. But, this is a ways off.
Do you plan to let me play in support roles, like a Sniper, for example?
Yes, but it is not on our near-term roadmap.
Will the game offer more options for clothing, weapons, and equipment? Will I be able to customize this?
Yes, we plan to offer a variety of clothing, weapons, and equipment variety within the “Operator Mode” of the game. This will roll out over time. We also know that, while we would lose some authenticity if we offered a wide range of weapons and equipment customizations for Marine fireteams, IRL Marines were offered more customization than we offer right now in the game.