Spectre Divide News

This patch is another round of quickly addressing your feedback.

The big beats include faster forward movement, performance optimizations, revisions to the color grading, Ultra Wide support, a new Casual economy (‘Boosted Buys’), new experimental server regions (Seattle, Dubai, Johannesburg), and a number of fixes related to disconnects.

Please keep the feedback coming!





[h2]Movement [/h2]

• Increased forward move speed for all weapons
  
• This change should let you traverse the map more quickly with minimal impacts to gunplay
  
• This applies to running, walking, crouching, and ADS; melee movement speed remains unchanged
  

[h2]Performance Optimization[/h2]

• Improved GPU performance to help reduce framerate spikes
• Fresh pass at optimizing visual effects for Sponsors — we have more optimizations on the way, but this patch includes reworks to:
  
• Pinnacle – Splinter Grenade
  
• Morrgen – Meltdown, Hidden Grasp
  
• Bloom – Twin Mend, Swarm Grenade
  
• Ryker – Wave Scan, Hull Mine
  
• Vector – Dual Amp
  
• Ghostlink – Distortion Field
  
• Muu – Hyper Dome, Patches
  
• Umbra – Glare Burst
  

[h2]Color Grading[/h2]

• We’ve taken a fresh pass the color grading across the full game for a more vibrant look
  

[h2]Casual Match Economy [/h2]

• New experimental Casual economy driven by ‘Boosted Buys’ – You’ll receive free Heavy Armor, full equipment, and more money every round
  

Let us know how you feel about these changes and we’ll adjust if needed

[h2]Player Feedback[/h2]

• Added experimental Ultra Wide Mode that currently supports Standard (16:9 with black bars) and Fill (16:9 - filled to the screen)
  
• Please let us know if you if you run into any issues
  
• Added a new ‘Anti-aliasing’ setting under Settings > Graphics > Quality, featuring None, FXAA, and Temporal.
  
• Increased standing player view height so that aiming 'level with the ground/straight ahead/directly ahead' will result in a headshot regardless of range (You'll also feel a bit taller!)
  
• Added hype audio stingers for when you win the round with a Clutch or Ace
  
• Added a small number of experimental servers in Seattle, and Johannesburg to help with player ping in these regions
  
• Updated our underlying anti-cheat systems based on your reports and new live data
  
• Made several improvements that should reduce disconnects during matches
  
• Made additional changes that should help you avoid ‘Unable to join party request’ error due to network traffic challenges (If you’re still having issues, please reach out to Player Support)
  

• Your team’s Spectres will now spawn much closer to you at the start of a new round (It’s cozy season, right?)
  

• Keybinds using ‘, /, and - now show the symbol (rather than spelling out the full word)
  
• Re-enabled the “Expanding Search” UI below the matchmaking timer that lets you know we’re widening the matchmaking pool to help you find a match
  
• The “Leaver Penalty Warning” dialog no longer shows up when trying to quit the match after the match has finished
  
• Increased framerate limit maximum value from 400 to 480 to support 480hz monitors
  
• The Surrender button is now available on the Escape Menu all the time during Casual matches
  
• Revised styling of Stat Graphs to take up less space and improve readability
  
• We’ve removed the Career & Battle Pass Tabs from the Main Menu and re-organized the tab order
  
• These will return when they’re ready
  

• We’ve been making adjustments to Ranked progression behind the scenes that should make the climb to Champion smoother, thanks to more consistent SR updates.
  

• Your Active Endorsement is now shown on the Main Menu
  
• Fixed a bug where Weapon Purchases were incorrectly counted for Daily/Weekly Quests causing these quests to take much longer than intended
  

• Fixed a bug where you could be disconnected from Team Text & Voice chat unexpectedly
  
• Fixed a bug where you would sometimes be disconnected from the server unexpectedly
  
• Fixed a bug where mantling during the Buy Phase could be used to get to some unexpected locations
  
• Vector’s Nano Sphere no longer blocks bullets if you’re the one that deployed it
  
• Fixed a bug where using Umbra’s ‘Enhanced’ equipment would cause you take out your pistol
  
• Fixed a bug where interrupting a reload with a ZEUS plant would sometimes temporarily hide your hands
  
• Fixed a bug where teammates would sometimes be seen walking in place after using Map Placement
  
• Fixed a bug where the Pinnacle Adrenalink animation would sometimes pop when canceling use
  
• Fixed a bug where Pinnacle Adrenalink sound effects would continuously loop
  
• Fixed a bug where the “Drivers out of date” warning would sometimes show when your drivers were, in fact, up to date
  
• Fixed a bug where sometimes spectating teammates using equipment would show a brief visual pop
  
• Fixed a bug where the “Learn to use your knife” bot in the Tutorial could end up in extremely unfortunate ragdoll positions when killed
  
• Fixed a bug where Umbra’s Pulse Scan could be used to detonate a Ryker Hull Mine through walls unexpectedly
  
• Fixed a bug where you’d be unable to use Umbra’s Enhanced Recon Wing if you scanned an enemy with Pulsefinder and then equipped Recon Wing
  
• Fixed an issue where the Team Contract UI would persist even after that team/party had disbanded
  
• Fixed an issue that increased the likelihood that players on lower-spec machines might hit an Application Hang error during first-load
  
• Fixed a bug where your Inventory UI would show you primary weapon’s name in the wrong location when playing in 4K
  
• Fixed a bug where the round timer could go below zero due to latency between you and the server
  
• Fixed a bug where you could end up in a broken Lobby state if you accepted two party invitations while customizing you and your Spectre
  
• Fixed a number of rare crashes based on your reports
  
• Minor improvements to translations throughout the game
  

• We’re investigating an issue where Nvidia Instant Replay causes performance stutters even on high end machines
  
• We’re investigating an issue where some voice lines can become stuck playing repeatedly by mistake
  
• If you end up in this state, re-using the last equipment/item will usually resolve the issue
  
• The new ‘Experimental’ Ultra Wide Mode has a handful issues that we’ll address in the next patch
  
• In rare cases, the Ghostlink Partition (Q) can spawn at the incorrect location
  
• Occasionally, the holstered pistol of a disconnected player will remaining floating in the world
  
• If you try to join a Party that’s full via a Join Code, you can end up in state where you can’t queue for matches until you restart your client
  
• When creating a Custom Match in the Main Menu, the lobby can sometimes appear empty; leaving and rejoining will resolve the issue
  
• When creating a Custom Match in the Main Menu, quickly swapping maps can cause visual artifacting to occur
  
• When using Map Placement, then swapping to your Spectre, your rotation may be wrong for one frame
  

• Sorry for the huge launch week misses
  
• We’ve fixed the matchmaker, reduced pricing, improved server stability, and
  
• increased progression speed
  
• As an indie studio self-publishing our first game, we’re working around the clock
  
• to make the game better every day
  
• We have a big update coming next week with a focus on improving performance
  
• We’re absolutely energized by your feedback and excitement – keep it coming
  
• Have suggestions for what you want to see? Drop us a note in the Discord
  

Santai Competitors,

Spectre Divide has officially been live for just over a week. As an indie team launching and self-publishing our first game, it’s been an exciting and exhausting first seven days.

The team is grinding around the clock to ship fixes, make improvements, and address your feedback.

Yesterday we shipped a patch with big updates, including 2x progression speed, Custom Matches of any player count, improved server stability, and more.

Our top priority for the next patch is improving client performance.

There’s lots to do, but we’re just getting started.

As we enter week two, it feels like the right moment to reflect on launch week, take you behind the curtain, and share a preview of what’s next.

But let’s start with Tuesday morning of last week, and our missteps right out of the gate.





Within the first hour of being live, it became clear that our matchmaker wasn’t up to the task of processing the 30,000+ players that dove into queue.

After investigating, we discovered our matchmaking service – which puts you into a healthy match based on skill, region, party size, etc. – was taking minutes per cycle (way outside the expected bounds).

We immediately identified a bottleneck in the matchmaking architecture that prevented players from joining or leaving the queue while the matchmaking loop was in progress.

It took us the better part of launch day to narrow in on a fix, but the patch we rolled out in the early evening resolved the issues around joining/leaving the queue and reduced the matchmaking loop to a few seconds.

This was a huge miss on our part. We should have caught this architecture bottleneck ahead of launch. In hindsight, we missed some key indicators during load tests that were obvious red flags that matchmaking at scale with real players would fall over.





Second, we moved quickly to improve pricing for cosmetics across the board after we missed the mark with launch.

We really appreciate your direct feedback on this. Sorry again that we got this wrong.

BopNSwap, Spectre Divide’s Game Director, shared all the context in a blog post on the evening of launch day.

A massive thank you to everyone who’s spent anything to support Spectre so far.

We plan to keep the game 100% free to play. As an independent studio who’s self-publishing, every dollar you spend directly funds development and goes toward making the game better.





To cap off launch day, at around 9pm PT we started seeing random CCU drops fitting the pattern of a single-source denial of service (DoS) attack.

For players, this manifested as being stuck unable to login to the game or being stuck loading – the ultimate nightmare.

We worked with our backend and server partners to setup protections to prevent single-IP attacks. That resolved the outage, but we ran into similar unexpected CCU drops during the next few days.

Over the course of the investigation, we’ve discovered a series of minor issues, which ranged from hitting invisible rate limits within our hosting provider to misconfigured admin tooling that we use to manage the game. We’ve addressed all these, and we’ve been working around the clock to set up additional metrics and alerting for future detection and mitigation.

On Saturday morning, we were the target of a malicious DDoS attack on our backend. Fortunately, our backend partners gracefully handled this for us with minimal impact to players thanks to the protections we put in place earlier in the week.

Special shout out to our partners at Pragma, AWS, and Hathora who’ve been in the trenches with us investigating these issues.





A large number of players, especially those behind network firewalls, had trouble connecting to our platform services, receiving an innocuous “Cannot Create Party Join Request” error.

We discovered this was related to our region detection flow – what we use to make sure you’re playing at the lowest possible ping.

On Saturday morning, we simply moved our ping endpoints to a different port which seems to have resolved the issue for most players.

If you still find yourself running into this, you’ll receive a new error message with more context. We’re currently working on a solution for this that should be ready in an upcoming patch.





Despite all the launch week havoc, we have been absolutely energized by your feedback. Keep it coming.

We’ll be deploying a few patches over the next two weeks. Our top priorities:

• Nailing client performance and reducing framerate spikes
  
• Improving core gameplay based on your feedback
  
• Making sure servers are online around the clock
  
• Tuning and improving our anti-cheat systems based on live data
  
• Fixing bugs that take away from the moment-to-moment fun
  

If you have suggestions for what you’d like to see, make sure to drop them in #give-feedback channel in Discord. We’re reviewing every single post.

Also, the team was able to pull forward Ranked for a surprise Friday launch and lower the requirement to 5 Casual Wins based on your feedback. You asked – they delivered.

We started on Spectre Divide because we love competitive shooters and wanted to share something fresh with this community. We’re in it for the long haul, and we can’t do it without you.

Thanks again for all your support. Between the long hours putting out these fires, we’ve been out there grinding the Ranked ladder alongside you.

If you're enjoying Spectre Divide, please consider leaving a review on Steam.

This helps new players to discover the game. And if you've already left a review, thank you! We appreciate your support. 🙏

If you see us in Discord or a heads-up match, make sure to say Hi.

gl hf,

Nate, CEO & Cofounder

Stable matchmaking has been a major focus for us, especially after our launch day issues. With Ranked live, we’ve been hard at work to improve your ability to stay connected to our backend services, getting you into fair matches, and avoiding disconnects during play.

We have more updates and fixes on the way, but here are the patch notes for this morning.

[h2]PROGRESSION UPDATES[/h2]

We’ve been tracking progression closely since launch.

To our surprise, Weekly/Daily Contracts and Crew Score Progression have been slower than intended, so we’ve increased the amount of XP and Fame from Daily and Weekly contracts.

You’ll now unlock Endorsements faster, and you’ll see a quicker climb toward Crew Rewards.

[h3]Weekly/Daily Contracts:[/h3]

• Round Played: increased from 100 to 300
  
• Daily Goals: increased from 3,000 to 6,000
  
• Weekly Goals: increased from 12,000 to 24,000
  
• Team Goals: varies by quest, but generally doubled
  

[h3]Crew Competition:[/h3]

• Crew Star: increased from 2,000 to 4,000
  
• Crew Competition Rewards: varies by goal, but generally doubled
  

[h2]GENERAL[/h2]

• You can now start Custom Matches by yourself to practice line-ups, learn maps, or create content
  
• You can now Surrender starting on Round 2 with /ff (This should help if you have an early abandoner or leaver on your team)
  
• Fixed a set of issues that prevented players from connecting to our backend services, commonly manifested as ‘Online Services Error’ or ‘Party Join Error’
  
• Fixed an issue that should reduce disconnects from matches due to network throttling
  
• We’ve improved graphics performance on Mill B-Site with another optimization pass
  

[h2]BUG FIXES[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where the Social & Report functionality wasn’t consistently working from the End of Match Scoreboard
  
• Fixed a bug where you were able to click the through to the Endorsement buttons from the Store
  
• The remaining time for Store offers now reflects the correct duration
  

[h2]KNOWN ISSUES[/h2]

• We’re investigating an issue where you can lose connection to Team Voice & Text Chat unexpectedly
  
• We’re investigating an issue where some voice lines can play repeatedly by mistake
  
• We’re investigating an issue where Nvidia Instant Replay causes performance stutters even on high end machines
  
• In rare cases, the Ghostlink Partition (Q) can spawn at the incorrect location
  
• In rare cases, part of the Pinnacle Adrenalink sound effect can become stuck looping.
  
• (Restarting the client should resolve this issue for now)
  
• Teammates may occasionally be seen walking in place after using Map Placement
  
• In rare cases, your teammate may look like they’re holding an invisible gun in third person
  
• As Umbra, if you scan an enemy with Pulsefinder (Q) and then take out Recon Wing (E), you will be unable to use Enhanced Recon Wing on the enemy ping
  
• Occasionally, the holstered pistol of a disconnected player will remaining floating in the world
  
• If you try to join a Party that’s full via a Join Code, you can end up in state where you can’t queue for matches until you restart your client
  
• When creating a Custom Match in the Main Menu, the lobby can sometimes appear empty; leaving and rejoining will resolve the issue
  
• When creating a Custom Match in the Main Menu, quickly swapping maps can cause visual artifacting to occur
  

“Strive to be first, fear to be last.” - Five Stars proverb

We hope you’ve been swapping your heart out in your Spectre Divide matches so far. But competition is the heart of Santai, and Ranked is the home of competition in Spectre Divide.

Ranked matchmaking goes live on Friday, September 6.

To play Ranked, you’ll need to have scored 5 Casual wins. Ranked matches also have a win by 2 requirement.

Now, here’s everything you need to know about Ranked and your journey to Champion!




When you play Ranked, you can either compete for Solo Rank or Team Rank scores.

[h3]Solo Rank[/h3]

Solo Rank is your traditional rank. It measures your individual score on the ladder. You can compete for Solo Rank when you’re playing alone or in a party of two or three.

[h3]Team Rank[/h3]

Team Rank is the competitive rating of your unique 3-person team. It is indepedent of Solo Rank, which means, your unique 3-person team can climb to the top the Team Ranked ladder together.

To earn Team Rank, you’ll need to be playing Ranked as a 3-stack, and the Party Leader must select Team Rank before matchmaking .


Keep in mind there is only one matchmaking queue, so individuals can be matched up against duos or trios. However, the matchmaker takes party size into account when creating fair matches.

[h2]RANKED SEASONS[/h2]

Each Ranked Season will last several months. You can celebrate your Ranked achievements with Seasonal Rewards.

Keep in mind, there may be cases where we need to adjust or reset Ranked tunings during a season.We’ll work to avoid these situations, but you’ll be the first to know of any issues.

[h2]RANKED SEASONAL REWARDS[/h2]



Ranked Sprays and Charms will be awarded based on the highest rank that a player achieves during a Season.

Top Rank Sprays are awarded in both Solo and Team. You can earn both, but you’ll only earn 1 Spray for your best Team Ranked rating (of all your teams).

Solo Rank

• Spray awarded to all players with a solo rank of Diamond or Champion (Top 3%)
  

Team Rank

• Spray awarded to all players with a Team Rank of Superstars, World Class, or Champions (Top 5%)
  

Ranked Season Gun Charm

• A Gun Charm that shows off your highest Solo and Team ranks
  

[h2]SANTAI RATING (SR) & RANK TIERS[/h2]

The Solo Ranks are: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Emerald, Ruby, Diamond, and Champion.

The Team Ranks are: Undiscovered, Prospect, Talent, Professional, Elite, International, Superstar, World Class, and Champion.

With the exception of Champion ranks, all ranks are split into 4 Tiers, I through IV, where I is the lowest of the Tiers, and IV the highest.

Santai Rating (SR) are the points used to track your progress up and down the ladder, shown at the bottom of the Post Match Scoreboard (more on this below). Earn enough SR to increase your Tier, and move up from the IV Tier to the next Rank.

You'll always gain SR on a win, and only ever lose SR on a loss.

• Your SR changes should fall between -40 or +40 in all but the most extreme circumstances
  

Ties are forced after 22 rounds without a winner, but you'll never lose SR from a tie.

If you reach the Champion rank, you’ll no longer have a cap on your SR. This means you’ll be able to continue increasing your SR by winning more matches.

• This allows Champion ranks to act as an ongoing “leaderboard” to climb for the very best players.
  
• We won’t have viewable Leaderboards at launch, but we’re working to bring them back online for future Ranked seasons.
  

[h2]RANKED PLACEMENT[/h2]



When entering Ranked matchmaking for the first time, with a new team, or at the start of a season, you’ll need to play in 5 Ranked Placement Matches before the system can calculate your initial ranking.

When you or your team are still in the process of completing your Placement Matches, you'll see a tracker that shows how many placement matches remain before your initial ranking. .

You’ll see a green check ✅ for a win, a red X ❌ for a loss, and ⚪ white circle is shown for any ties.

[h2]RANKED PROGRESS[/h2]



After completing placements and playing more Ranked matches, you’ll see additional UI elements on the Post Match Scoreboard that communicate your SR progress.

• The progress bar spans 200 SR, indicating the Promotion (200) and Demotion (0) thresholds
  
• After promotion, you start with 50 bonus SR points
  
• This buffer is to give you some breathing room after jumping into a new Rank
  
• Along with the bonus 50 SR, you’ll retain any leftover SR you had since the promotion
  
• Demoted players will drop a Tier and the formula is 200 - 50 - leftover rating
  
• The bonus 50 SR previously gained from a Rank up is removed to prevent any point inflation.
  

Here are a few examples —

Silver II promotion scenario:

• You are Silver II with 190 Santai Rating.
  
• You win and receive 25 SR, break the 200 SR threshold and are now promoted as Silver III.
  
• Because you were only 10 SR away from a promotion, you are now sitting at Silver III with an SR of 65
  
• You get any SR over the 200 threshold, so 215 SR will carry over as +15 SR to your next division, in addition to the 50 SR bonus
  

Silver II demotion scenario:

• You are Silver II with 10 SR.
  
• You lose a ranked game and lose 25 SR, break the 0 SR threshold and now demote to Silver I.
  
• Because you were only 10 SR away from a demotion, you are now sitting at Silver I with and SR of 135
  
• You get a reduction of SR below the 0 threshold, so -10 SR will carry over along with the -50 SR correction
  

[h2]POST-LAUNCH[/h2]

We know how important it is to nail Ranked and maintain competitive integrity with fair matchmaking throughout.

Launch has introduced a huge new pool of players at different skill levels, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on where we can make things even better based on data and your feedback.

Best of luck out there on your rise to Champion! 🫡

Hi, it's BopNSwap here with an update on pricing. First and foremost - my personal apologies for the situation. We’ve heard the feedback on pricing and we’re going to make some big adjustments:

[h2]Weapon + Character prices will be decreased in the store by 17% - 25%.[/h2]

• Cryo Kinesis Masterpiece bundle with a Melee weapon 9000 SP -> 7000 SP
  
• Medusa Prestige bundle 4500 SP -> 3400 SP
  
• Eternal Guard Prestige Weapon Skins 1500 SP -> 1200 SP
  
• Mako Elite Weapon Skins 1000 SP -> 800 SP
  
• All Masterpiece character skins 1800 SP -> 1500 SP
  
• All Prestige character skins 1300 SP -> 1000 SP
  

[h3]Anyone that purchased these items before the store changeover will get 30% of the Spectre Points spent on these items added to their account, rounded up to the nearest 100.[/h3]

• This rollout could take about an hour from when we update the store with the new prices, so please hang in there and we will confirm when it’s complete
  
• For example, if you bought the Primal Skin, you would get 1800
• .3 = 540 rounded up = 600 SP back
  
• This should put all of our initial spender supporters ahead of where they would have been if they purchased after the pricing changes. We deeply appreciate your support!
  
• If you have any issues, please reach out to player support

The Starter pack, Sponsors, and Endorsement upgrade prices will not have any adjustments. Anyone who purchased the Founder's pack / Supporter pack, and purchased the items above will get the extra SP added to their account as well.

Context on why we landed on the initial pricing:

• We are a completely free game. It’s important to remember that 90%+ of players never spend a dime on the game.
  
• We love our free players deeply, but we also have to pay for the servers they play on (as well as the massive initial and ongoing cost of development), so the “freeness” comes at a cost to us.
  
• Being a new, fully independent studio with limited resources is tricky. We're self-publishing, so every dollar you spend directly funds Spectre and makes the game better everyday.
  
• So we took a swing that we thought would best set us up to support the game. Turns out we swung a bit high, so we are adjusting to be better in line with your feedback.
  

We appreciate everyone’s support and understanding as we try to iterate to a game y’all love. See you all in Breakwater!