We're finally set up for testing! While we do have to use Champlain's official Games Testing Lab for some tests, we also decided to set up our own separate group for even more testing. Thus far, we've only been able to test with our external group, as the GTL hasn't responded to our initial requests.
Right now, we are really focusing in on the individual experience of our game, mechanic-by-mechanic, slowly adding more in each week. There is no multiplayer testing happening yet, because we want our mechanics to be able to combine and stand on their own before we tackle balancing a social experience. I've been thrilled with how our testers are responding to this approach; we've seen a few people make connections between how our game feels, and how another game feels (particularly Titanfall 2), and many have mentioned "I loved <game> and how that mechanic felt , and this reminds me of that, but it still isn't the same thing". That's the kind of experience we want to target with this FPS, and to see it actually happening after just a few testing weeks is surreal.
I thought that there would be a gap between our intended and delivered experiences, especially since it's still early in development and none of us have every developed an FPS before. As a team, we always make dedicated tasks for "personal testing", where we go through everyone's work that's being done over a sprint, play the game, break mechanics, etc. Then, we usually hop into an impromptu meeting to go over feedback and iterate. I know this is what we've been taught to do over the last 4 years, but no other class has provided the opportunity to actually do this, and it feels rewarding to execute it as well as we have thus far.
I think our next area of risk for gaps between our assumptions and our audience's assumptions will be dealing with narrative. We've already received comments that there isn't any notable narrative content in the builds, which is of course expected at this point, although we've now started to implement some storytelling. Narrative in most FPS games is handled via a campaign mode, or something of the sort. Our game won't have a campaign and will be multiplayer-only, so I think there may be a disconnect there. We intend on handling narrative through environment, characters, and voice lines, which takes a different approach. Another game that does this is Overwatch, and they've had their problems with storytelling using this method. Personally, I'd love to see a campaign built out, but due to time constraints, we can only do one mode of play and multiplayer is the more challenging mode to develop and fun to play. I'm excited to see the feedback we get on our style of storytelling, because it's really going to guide how we execute it.
As for messages being sent to our audience, we have a heavy amount of dystopian messages. In the design document, Rhys called it "suffocating", which I believe to be an accurate description of the world we're building. I think it'll end up connecting to the times we live in as a sort of pessimistic prediction of the future, with one company running everything in a corporate manner. There are many games that have done this before (Borderlands, The Outer Worlds, etc), so our game will also be providing the players some sort of "resistance" messaging, since you're playing as an organized band of underground guerilla rebels. Again, this is our intent, but we haven't gotten that far in implementation yet, so we have yet to get feedback; however, I think we'll need to iterate a lot over this in order to get the messaging to be received consistently.
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