Public Roadmap - July 20, 2021

On July 16, we held a big stream where Stanis and Anton from the Community Team presented the Public Roadmap that highlights the main changes and features that will happen both on PTS and our LIVE servers before the end of 2021. All the changes are divided into quarters: Q3 (July – September) and Q4 (October – December).

Almost all the features described in this roadmap will be first tested on PTS and only then added to Guns of Boom Classic. You can help us greatly by taking part in testing and leaving your feedback through special forms - the next PTS will start very soon, don’t miss it!
Check out the list below for a quick glance, but better yet – watch the stream to get the full scoop. 

Q3 (July — September)

Balance patch – ON PTS & LIVE SERVER IN Q3

The Balance patch will come out on both PTS and Live Server in Q3.

Here’s what we plan on doing to make your gameplay more balanced and fun: 

(Remember: You will be able to test all of these changes on PTS and give us your feedback before they go to the Live Server)

• Scaling back Icebreaker – which is currently single-handedly dominating the long range battles.
• Reworking the E.Y.E – which we think is powerful and has no drawbacks
• Reworking Gecko pants – as we understand that the Thoughtful Gift perk has been sometimes very frustrating to play against.
• We’re scaling back Berserk as well – as it’s too powerful for its intended power level. 

After carrying out all the tests on PTS, and collecting your feedback, we plan to implement the needed changes in the main game, but only if everything works as intended. If additional changes are needed, we’ll return the feature back to PTS until it’s polished and ready for release.
 

Movable weapon change button – ON PTS & LIVE SERVER IN Q3

You will be able to place it wherever you like to make gameplay more convenient. It’s a minor feature but nonetheless a very important one. 

Tournament Arsenal: New Weapons – ON PTS IN Q3

New weapons will be added to the Tournament Arsenal which is used during Challengermode competitions to give players more variety and flexibility. But as with many features on this list, we will need your feedback on PTS before making any long-lasting changes in Guns of Boom Classic.

Tournament Arsenal in Pro Play – ON PTS IN Q3

We’ll be making all Tournament Arsenal weapons available in Pro Play on PTS. As we’ve been hearing your feedback about being able to test out different builds in a controlled environment.

PTS launch on iOS IN Q3

We will also expand our PTS audience to iOS players in Q3 – more testers, better results! Finally the iOS players will be able to join the testing! 

Classic voiceover – ON PTS IN Q3

There will be an option to turn on the classic Guns of Boom voiceover with ‘Multi Kill’, ‘Killing Spree’ and other old-school voice lines. Or keep the current elimination-based voiceover. You will be able to switch between both. Introducing this feature will later allow us to add other new thematic voiceovers. So tell us which ones you would like to have! 

Matchmaking: 3 new features – ON LIVE SERVER IN Q3

We plan to test a total of 3 new matchmaking features in the main game, you can find info about each of them below. The tests will happen in Guns of Boom Classic, and not on PTS, because they require a lot of players being online, and that is currently unavailable on PTS.

• Solo/party. We’re splitting solo play and party play.There will now be two queues: solo and mixed. If you’re a solo player, you’ll be matched against other solo players. If you’re in a party of 2-4 players, you’ll be matched against other parties of that size or solo players who chose the mixed queue. The time to find a match as a party may be longer, but the gameplay experience should improve greatly.
• Auto-leveling at mid levels. This is an experimental feature that is aimed at making gameplay more fun and less stressful for all gunslingers, and we’ll be testing it in Guns of Boom Classic. It will be used on mid-level players who cannot find a match for a long time. If you can’t find a match for a long-enough time, you may be put into battle with players of higher level, but your gear will be boosted to their level as well, so you don’t feel at a disadvantage. 
•   New skill-based matchmaking metrics. We’re working on new methods to assess a player’s skill-level and use it to guide the matchmaking system. This is an experimental feature that will be tested on the lower level groups on the Live Server, and we expect good results. 

We plan on completely reworking matchmaking in the game, and the three features described above will help us choose the right development path for this huge and complex task. 

Improved battle animations – ON LIVE SERVER IN Q3 

The character animations that we’ve tested on PTS, including right shoulder peaking, will be polished, finalized, and added to the game. 

Q4 (October — December)

Performance optimization – ON PTS & LIVE SERVER IN Q4

In the last few months, we’ve spent a lot of time on solving game crash issues, and now are shifting our focus to improving optimization (eradicating in-battle lags). It’s important to understand though that if you have an outdated mobile device, you should not expect radical changes, but if you have a rather modern one, your gameplay experience will gradually become better as we continue working on this. By Q4 we expect noticeable performance improvements on both PTS and Live Server.

The optimization solutions will be implemented on the Live Server as soon as we’re done testing them on PTS.

Battle Royale Test 1 – ON PTS IN Q4

A completely new game mode is coming to PTS in Q4 that will definitely need lots and lots of testing, as well as tons of feedback, before we can talk about making it available to the general public. NOTE: This will not replace standard Guns of Boom gameplay - this will be a test of a new mode, which might later on be added to the main game after extensive testing on PTS.

Improved reward screen – ON PTS IN Q4

Minor changes will probably apply to different screens and windows in the game, but the reward screen will receive the most drastic update. Overall, the game should become easier to navigate and more fun to control. 

Duel Arena mode – ON PTS IN Q4

We’ll introduce a new game mode where gunslingers play a series of one-on-one matches much like gladiator fights. Should be a blast!

Gamepads – ON PTS IN Q4

We plan to add support for some gamepads on PTS by the end of 2021. Though it might not be as high-priority as other issues and plans.

Perk rework – ON PTS IN Q4

This is a huge task: we think that the current perk system in the game is bulky and not player-friendly enough. We plan to make it simpler, more streamlined and easy-to-use, so you can have a better gameplay experience and in the end, have more fun enjoying Guns of Boom Classic. Of course, there will be compensation when this goes live - we know you’ve spent lots of time leveling up your perks.

Tournament Arsenal: New Weapons – ON LIVE SERVER IN Q4

After testing this together with you and collecting all of your feedback, new weapons will appear in the main game’s Tournament Arsenal. After that, you’ll be free to use them in Challengermode tournaments of your choice! 

New crossbow – ON LIVE SERVER IN Q4

We plan to add a new crossbow to sniper rifles, that will allow player’s who hadn’t had a chance to get the Daryl’s Crossbow to experience crossbow gameplay. 

Classic voiceover – ON LIVE SERVER IN Q4

The classic voiceover tested on PTS in Q3 will become available in the game options to all gunslingers. 

Consumable crafting – ON LIVE SERVER IN Q4 

We know some of you have got excessive Grenades and Medkits, and we know you’d like to use them for something good. We plan on introducing a crafting system that allows you to make higher-grade consumables from low-tier ones. 

And a lot more to come!

Of course, that’s not all we’re working on. This is a list of features we plan to implement - we did not include in this Roadmap the new content, Seasons, and Events, yet they will be happening in the game regularly as usual. 

We will share more news as time goes on. Tell us what you think, share your feedback, and join PTS to test all the changes which will make your Guns of Boom experience better, more stable and more fun! 

On May 4th, we came out with a message for you our players. We talked about making the game more fun, more stable and more fair to you. We talked about being transparent and bringing back the classic Guns of Boom experience. We returned the 4-gun loadout, got rid of battle coin resets and increased the Battle Fair rewards. But, maybe most importantly, we said that we would listen to you. And we have.

We’ve been collecting tons and tons of your feedback, questions and suggestions. We addressed many of them on our recent Dev Stream.
 

There are many great ideas coming from the community, and there are many things we’d like to address. This Future Plans article will keep you up to date on our plans, different news and our vision for the near future — look for it in the lobby. And expect regular updates of this article!

Today, we want to share the plans we talked about on stream:

Our plans:

• Launching the Public Testing Server (more on that below) 
• Presenting a Public Development Roadmap in the beginning of July
• Bringing back the old voiceover 
• Reworking the perk system
• Researching and improving the matchmaking 
• Researching and improving the game balance 
• Working on UI/UX to make the game easier to navigate
• Researching gamepad support
• And a lot more to come

The first thing on the list of new features is the Public Testing Server where we test all important balance changes, new mechanics, and features before adding them to Guns of Boom. The current version of PTS is available only on Android, however, by the end of July, we plan to release it both on iOS and Android for a larger number of players.

Useful links

If you’re interested in PTS, check out the following links:

1) What is PTS and how it works
2) Patch notes on what is being tested in the current version of PTS
3) How to test the game and report bugs

• After the full release of PTS on all supported platforms, most major changes will go through PTS before making it to the main game, including balance tweaking, new mechanics, and other key gameplay features.
• You'll be able to give your feedback directly on PTS through special forms and also by contacting our support team about technical issues or bugs you happen to catch. 
• Active participation in testing will be rewarded in the main game with useful items.
• Players with access to PTS will also have community spaces to share PTS experiences with us and each other, like a Discord channel.

Discuss the PTS and our plans on the Guns of Boom Discord