Crucible Details Changes Coming to Game, Delays First Season
The free-to-play multiplayer shooter Crucible is having a bit of rocky launch. That's not uncommon for online multiplayer games, but Crucible's challenges appear to be unique in an unfortunate way. In a community update posted by the Crucible dev team this past week, it's confirmed that two of the game's three modes are being shelved for the time being. Crucible is also dealing its first "Season" and will remain in pre-season until several core features have been added and a new level of polish is introduced.
Crucible will feature seasons, not unlike other online multiplayer games like Fortnite. Crucible even has a pre-season season which includes a Battle Pass, challenges, and various rewards. So it's not like Crucible isn't maintaining its monetization. It just is, by delaying its first official s season, prioritizing different content plans then may have been previously planned.
Disabling two of Crucible's three modes seems like a much bigger issue. The Crucible team lists some of its logic for the decision in its community update, though. "Focusing on one mode allows us to refine the design of core systems without the compromises we needed to make to support three game modes," is how the change is characterized. If Crucible only has one mode, it only has to fix one mode.
This isn't a surprising move. League of Legends is an interesting comparison, as Riot Games has made, and retired, several different game modes over the years. The reason for retiring the modes was similarly said to be that it allowed the team to focus on the made mode. The Crucible team can build features and balance around just a single mode now, rather than struggling with three.
Some of the features that the Crucible team is planning to implement were listed in the post. Its first "phase" will focus on voice chat, a surrender option, AFK detection, better pings, and potentially a minimap feature. Phase two will, apparently, focus on player feedback and polish
The Crucible team doesn't provide a timeline for its changes, though it does have a Trello board for tracking ongoing development. That old adage, "when it's done," likely applies. It also isn't clear if the disabled modes will eventually come back, too. The Crucible team is focusing on the present. Hopefully, Crucible's fans are willing to wait to see how things progress from here.
Crucible is available now for free on PC.
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