Ubisoft Says Hyper Scape’s August Release Failed To Meet Player Expectations

It takes a lot for a developer or publisher to be honest and admit that their game has room for improvement. With this in mind, we want to start off by giving kudos to Ubisoft on their September 30 post. 

In it, they acknowledge that even though the July launch and Open Beta on PC were successful, the full console release in August “didn’t fully meet the high expectations of our players” before vowing to take action to help improve Hyper Scape.

Ubisoft Says Hyper Scape’s August Release Failed To Meet Player Expectations

Ubisoft recently noted that the game failed to meet “high expectations” following its August release and recognize they have work to do to get the game where it needs to be. In a blog post, Ubisoft describes the situation as follows:

“Three months ago, we released Hyper Scape to the world. We were thrilled with the response, as millions gave our take on Battle Royale a try, telling us specifically how much they love the movement and fast pace of the game. While July’s launch and Open Beta on PC were successful, we were not able to achieve the high expectations we set for ourselves with our full release on console that followed in August. We also know we didn’t fully meet the high expectations of our players, so we are taking action. We have more work to do to get there, but our team is fully committed to the challenge.”

They go on to outline five “pillars” where improvements can be made in an effort to make Hyper Scape a game “everyone can play and enjoy.” A number of these pillars focus on the game’s difficulty and approachability, while other pillars touch upon ways to keep players invested in Hyper Scape.

“COMBAT COMFORT: We always intended for Hyper Scape to have a high skill ceiling, but it is clear from our data that the floor is also too high. This results in a difficult experience for new players. Currently, it is too hard to aim, track and consistently damage players and eliminate them, especially on consoles.

ONBOARDING: The game does not currently provide enough time and opportunities for new players to learn and succeed. We need to protect newcomers and provide training activities to help them become proficient with the game.

GAME MODES: Our core game mode, Crown Rush, can be quite unforgiving, so we want to provide players with a variety of formats in terms of activity and match size. This will start with introducing respawn systems in the game and “deathmatch” style game modes. We are also rethinking how we manage limited time modes and the player base split that is required to support multiple modes at once.

PLAYER GOALS: Currently, there are not enough medium and long-term goals for players to stick around in the Hyper Scape. We are introducing the first version of our Player Ranking system in Season 2, and we will bring more progression systems and match-to-match flow improvements as well.

CROSS PLAY: While Cross Play has always been intended for the game, we want to add it earlier than planned to help address the current issues of lobby size.

To deliver on these pillars, we are restructuring our development team into a cell-based format, which we have seen our colleagues on Rainbow Six: Siege use to fantastic results. These interdisciplinary cells allow greater focus and autonomy in tackling the work ahead. Each pillar has a dedicated dev cell.” 

The blog post ends by confirming they’ve (the Hyper Scape Team) already begun working on these pillars and aim to release more updates in Season 2 than they did in Season 1.

Even if it takes a while for the team to meet the goals they’ve set for themselves, it’s always reassuring to hear that player feedback is being taken seriously.  

They’re committed to working on these things, and that commitment will ultimately be reflected in Season 2 of Hyper Scape which is scheduled to begin on October 6.

If you haven’t played Hyper Scape, it’s never too late to give it a try. Hyper Scape is currently free-to-play on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC.