Dev Blog Update #3: Play Testing, Tutorial, Endgame, Difficulty, and a Demo

Hi everyone,

Last week has been all about incorporating player feedback, improving playability, improving end-game content, and adding an interactive tutorial for onboarding to the game's unique dynamics.

Player Feedback

We're getting early copies of the Project RedTeam into the hands of players for feedback. There was a focus on answering these questions:

• Is the game easy to pick up and play for the average gamer (e.g., no background in cybersecurity)?

• Does the game feel fun and rewarding to play?

• Are there times during gameplay that are unclear, confusing, de-motivating?

• Is the game's difficulty balanced nicely?

• Are there bugs, questions, or issues?

An interactive tutorial has been added

The game needed a tutorial to understand the "hacking tactics" and how they fit into the picture of network intrusion. Because the game is grounded in MITRE ATT&CK, a real-world offensive security reference and classification system for real attacks- the concepts and terminology in this game is often foreign to a regular player (but is common for a security professional). While the gameplay doesn't demand a deep understanding of the real-world specifics, the gameplay purpose of the 10 tactic categories is important.

New end game: Debts To Be Paid

Why pay a debt to just The Collective? We've added numerous Debts To Be Paid as a way to extend the concept of completing the run after 10 contracts are completed. These debts have different run modifiers (challenges) and provide an end game incentive to play a unique run. This was important to ensure that player's aren't simply "done" the game after successfully beating 10 contracts paying off the debt to The Collective.

Gameplay fun and rewards

Feedback: gameplay is fun, rewarding, and there's a reason to keep playing! There were a few fixes that we're introduced, such as Career Progression rewards being shown to the player when they are received at the end of a contract during the XP gain scene. Even though the player can't modify their career progression modifier loadout mid-run, it was important to still show the player what they've unlocked at that time. Changes to Play and Protocol reward scenes were made to prevent similar rewards with similar effects from showing up in the same set of rewards. Tactic Kill Chain failure punishment was reduced so that tactic cards are not lost when execution earlier in the chain fails.

Confusing, unclear, or de-motivating moments

A bunch of improvements have been made to address these small moments where the player felt "wait, what just happened?" or "what am I supposed to do now?". These scenarios are easy to miss once you understand the gameplay dynamics and flow, but for a new player they can be de-motivating and ruin the intended fast gameplay experience. I've improved visibility on key moments, modified colors on various UI elements, and added improvements to the weighted-probabilities on certain rewards to ensure the gameplay maintains a good pace and the player doesn't get "stuck" as easily.

Difficulty balancing

This was a big one. Average player only reaching contract 1 or 2 on a run and failing is a problem. We needed the first few contracts to be more forgiving, let the player get into the groove, understand the game dynamics, and have a chance to start developing their operator skill build for the run. No one wants to start a run and fail immediately. We decreased the overall detection capability of earlier contracts so that contract 1 doesn't feel like contract 4 difficulty. This lets player's enjoy the game early on, with lower risk of failing the contracts. We want to provide ample room for creativity and exploring the gameplay with less risk of failure on these earlier contracts.

Contract

Difficulty Band

1

-30% .. -20%

2

-20% .. -10%

3

-10% .. 0%

4

0% .. +5%

5–7

+10% .. +15%

8–10

+15% .. +20%

11+

+15% .. +30%

Bugs, questions, and issues

There were some bugs identified and squashed! Having players report back questions about how game systems work, and whether they were correct in understanding certain dynamics was important. There were bug fixes to certain calculations, behaviors, and systems.

In the end, nothing was critically broken, but certain gameplay edge cases led to interesting scenarios where the player wasn't sure if an outcome in the game was expected or not. Fixes included detection discounts on tactic chains, tactic roll probabilities, and other calculated states such as the contracts main detection %.

A demo is in the works

We'll be releasing a demo soon that will provide a chance to complete the tutorial and play a run up to contract 3.

Thanks!

-Dev