Quantum League News

Hey, fellow time travelers! We just wanted you to know that we’ve been reading all your feedback with care because the Free Open Beta has exactly that purpose… to know what you think so that we can improve Quantum League!

So, in the spirit of making this the best game ever, we launched a new update that contains:

- New map in rotation!
For the last weekend of the Open Beta, we wanted to give you a taste of what’s in the pipeline in terms of new maps to play in, by swapping Overpass for CHRONOS, which is another “Point Capture” mode map with a very different experience from Quantum Arena. For those who still wanted to play Free For All, the Overpass map is still available in the Custom Match list.


- Switched Matchmaking criteria to prioritize ELO.
Now that everyone has had time to play and become familiar with the game, for the final weekend we’re prioritizing ELO over account levels for matchmaking, in the hopes, you’ll find more balanced & challenging matches.

- Balance change: Reduced SMG headshot multiplier from 2.5x to 2.0x.
While we have received a great amount of feedback on weapon balance during these last days, the only clear-cut actionable we’ve found is that the SMG damage output for players who are able to consistently land headshots was a bit higher than we expected. There were other changes we considered but we realized that they were changing the game in unpredictable ways, so we decided to hold off on them for now.

- Chat can now be disabled from the in-game options menu.
We realize that we shipped the beta without any tools to protect or report abusive players, and we’d like to apologize if you’ve had a bad experience during a match. We’re making it so you can silently toggle the chat from the options menu for now. We’ve also made plans to improve on this important aspect before release. We love the community that has grown around QL during the Open Beta and we want to make sure it remains a place where good sportsmanship and respect are valued.

- QOL updates
Fixed some cases where enemies weren’t visually highlighted in the HUD.

• Fixed some barrels hitting you through walls.
  
• Made it so that the timeline widget (bottom center) changes color immediately at the end of a loop to indicate who had the scoring advantage.
  
• Fixed a condition that prevented you from getting the Health Orb if you were standing on it while it recharged. Now, if two players are standing on the Health Orb while it charges, whoever was first to get there will receive it.
  

IMPORTANT REMINDER! There will be level transfers to the full game, which means that everything you win and play will still be there once we launch Quantum League in Early Access!


Check out the new changes and let us know what you think. Don’t forget to review Quantum League on steam and to wishlist the full game here!

Today we launched the Free Open Beta and, in the words of Quantum's Lead Designer Balthazar Auger, "it's a great opportunity for players to test their skill and experiment with the time loop mechanic."

So in this spirit, we invite you to join the game! Click here to play 1v1 and 2v2 mind-blowing matches by battling within a time loop, tactically teaming up with your past and future selves in this fast-paced competitive FPS!

You can try out different game modes like Death Match and Capture the Point, at the same time as you try our ou characters, weapons, maps, and skins!

The game will be free to play until March 2nd! So, the clock's ticking... will you be part of the League? 

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Wow, it’s been a long time since our last update.
They’ve been a long time coming, but we’re finally ready to introduce our first tutorials to the world! We believe that “less is more” when it comes to learning how to play an online game, however, and as a result, we’ve focused our efforts in smoothing out the first contacts with the time loop mechanic on one hand, and on the other giving players contextual hints during regular gameplay of smaller mechanics they might’ve missed.

You will find the following Tutorial / Practice features in this update:

• “Training” button added to the main menu
  
• First-time tutorial flow (skippable)
  
• Interactive tutorial and videos
  
• Shooting range level: play without a time loop in a dedicated level and test out all weapons
  
• Practice grounds prototype: play a capture point mode against harmless dummy bots
  
• Contextual gameplay hints which will slide in from the right (on by default)
  
• A setting to disable said hints in the Options menu 😉
  

If you introduce new friends to the game, do let us know if these new features help their understanding of the game! We’ll be bringing improvements and polish to these in the near future.

We messed around with guns again
Ok, I know we’ve been over this many times in the past, but we’ve gone back and tweaked a bunch of things regarding the SMG and pistol mostly, and fixed minor things on the Sniper and Shotgun. The GL and Laser will get some love in the next update.

The big changes are:

• Rewrote how patterns work to make them more reliable. SMG and Pistol have new patterns.
  
• Lowered spread in many shooting scenarios. We realized we were being too punishing to people who moved and shot at the same time, hurting the dynamic nature of gunfights.
  
• Made pistol more accurate when not focusing
  
• Lowered the pistol’s headshot damage multiplier (Pistol headshot damage is now 40)
  

The smaller, nicer changes are:

• New muzzle flashes applied on Sniper, Shotgun, SMG, and Pistol
  
• Reworked the bullet trails to be smoother in slow motion
  
• Tweaked the camera shakes and kicks to make shooting feel more fun
  

Player Profile section
Some of you old-timers may remember that we used to have leaderboards ranking people over their MMR numbers and a Win/Lose ratio based value. We brought these back as part of the brand-new “Player Profile” section, in which we’ve also folded the Match Replays (now “Match History”).

The leaderboards show the top 100 players for a given metric and your own position in the case you (like me) are not in the top 100 of anything.

In-game HUD Major Surgery
We sat down to think long and hard about our on-screen info during a match, and reworked nearly everything:

• The round clock is now at the bottom of the screen. This is a bigger change than it may seem tbh, but we believe it’s more visible there.
  
• We’ve reworked the active clone health bar area, to show the full health status of all of your clones.
  
• In 2v2 matches, you can now see the current health bar and clone status of your teammate as well.
  
• Reworked the visuals of the overhead indicators to make them clearer and less intrusive.
  
• Reworked the objective area of all game modes. The top of the screen is now the official objective area, separate from the timer/timeline displays.
  
• We’ve added portraits and names for players in a match at the screen’s corners.
  
• Added a compass pointing you to the nearest active health orb when you get desynced.
  
• Reworked the weapon selection widget, we now show the status of the sidearm as well.
  

It’s a lot! We sincerely hope you like it.

Misc stuff!

• We’ve merged the character customization and play buttons into the “Play Lobby” screen. Select your desired game mode from the menu above the “ready” button
  
• Added a “League Status” widget in the main menu sidebar
  
• Added a “News” widget in the main menu sidebar
  
• You can now change the viewport FOV in the Options screen (between 80 and 104)
  
• Cooler music for the Player Intros
  

Known Issues

• While in party, matchmaking might fail randomly. We’re still looking at why, your reports in this area will be very appreciated.
  
• A tutorial item called “Arena Features” cannot be unlocked. (We haven’t done it yet)
  
• Leaderboards might not load sometimes, changing tabs will fix the problem
  
• Selecting a weapon while in-game moves the view upwards sometimes
  
• Devs-Community Tournament is stuck in space-time limbo
  

Don't forget! We can make your wishes come true if you Wishlist in the link below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1227800/Quantum_League__Free_Open_Beta/

You read that right… In a few weeks Quantum League’s Free Open Beta will go live for a limited time! We thought it would be cool to share the game and give everybody an opportunity to try it out so that you can tactically team up with yourself in THE time paradox shooter!

It will be the time for you to sample the game by choosing between characters, trying out some cool weapons and awesome maps in 1v1 and 2v2 fast-paced matches!

So wishlist now in the link below so that you don’t miss it! You’ll be playing before you know it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1227800/Quantum_League__Free_Open_Beta/

Stay tuned!

[h3]Quantum League On Reddit[/h3]
On Friday, our Lead Game Designer, Balthazar Auger, posted a description of Quantum League (alongside a very short game play video) on the r/gamedev sub Reddit.

Fellow developers (and also curious gamers browsing the sub) seemed to be really excited about the idea behind the game and also about the level of execution at this stage of development. The post reached more than 2.4k upotes in 24hs!

In his post, he explains some of the design decisions and the difficulties that the team has been facing, creating a multiplayer First Person Shooter where time travel mechanics actually have meaningful consequences.

He also talks about the kind of strategic and tactical game play that emerges from adding perfect information to the arena shooter formula: as players are in a time Loop, they can use their knowledge of what will happen in the future to really change the timeline to beat their opponents.

Other team members joined the discussion to respond to some very interesting game design related questions. We can't wait to show you more!

Follow this link to read the whole post: r/gamedev Quantum League, a competitive FPS Time Loop game in real-time multiplayer. And yes, it IS as tricky to make as it sounds!

[h2]New Recruitment Trailer[/h2]
If you missed our Quantum Athlete Recruitment Trailer last week Don't forget to check it out below to learn more about the game's unique mechanics:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]