Hello, Soldiers!

Last Week in WW3

We’re still hard at work getting 0.7 ready for prime time Live servers. Last week we’ve fixed a lot of underlying issues with replication and we’re on track to get all major bugs squashed. We’re currently optimizing server performance and testing a lot of settings with Replication Graph (read more about it here), making sure we’re utilizing it’s functionality as best as we can.

At the same time, we’re working on optimizations and fixing map bugs, making sure we’re finding and fixing places you can get stuck in and, most importantly, gain an unfair advantage.

Another issue is some long lasting exploits our players have found over the months, we’re starting to make sure those are being eliminated one by one.

Work on the new UI is also going strong, on both HUD and Customization fronts. You can already see some of the new HUDs in vehicles on the PTE, but we’re overhauling all of it for 1.0 release to make sure it’s much clearer for new players what is happening.

Breakthrough

As we’ve talked about previously, we’ve always thought that one of the great moments in World War 3 are when two armies collide and create a front line, trying to push one another back, flank and outsmart the enemy. Breakthrough is making those moments more frequent and makes for a really fun and intense game mode with just enough tactics that even a single soldier can change the outcome of the fight, but against a well coordinated team it will still be a tough task.

Since we last talked about Breakthrough, we’ve played with the numbers a bit and we’ve come to a version of the game mode that is working well for us and we think it will work for you as well.

The Rules

At this time, Breakthrough game mode supports 10v10 players in every match. Might seem like a low number, but even this can get pretty chaotic and crowded when all 20 people are fighting over single point.

At the start, the teams are split into two groups: attacking and defending. Attacking team starts with only one respawn point: their main base. Defenders have all points captured and can spawn on any of them, setting up defenses or just trying to get to the frontlines as soon as possible.

Each point represents an objective (a Radio Station) that the attackers have to destroy. They can do it by planting an explosive charge [default: F] and defending it for 30 seconds or by just destroying the Radio Station with normal explosives – RPGs, tank shells, airstrikes, C4 and even grenades. Not all Stations are in the open, so ranged explosive attacks won’t work on some of them.

Map is divided into 4 areas (A -> D) with 2 Radio Stations in each of them, called 1 and 2. As an example, here’s a look at Moscow at the start of the game as the defender:

The attackers start on the bottom of the map and go through A to D, having to destroy both points before advancing. This means that if the attackers coordinate, they can easily pin down the defenders and let the other squad take one of the points.

Every Breakthrough match starts with 15 minutes left on the timer. When the timer reaches 0, defending team wins.

Each time the attackers destroy a Station, if the timer was below 5 minutes, it will set the timer to 5 minutes left. This means that in the case of dominance of the defending team, the game will end after 15 minutes, but if the attackers break through, they will still have time to use that momentum to push further. In theory, the game can go up to 30 minutes if the fight is really fierce, but we’ve mostly seen it ending in 15 or 20 minutes.

Every time a pair of points is captured, the area becomes locked for the defenders, giving them 60 seconds to retreat to the next defensive position. Attackers can only attack the closest pair of points to them, they can’t go further into the enemy territory.

Attackers win when all Radio Stations are destroyed and the timer has not run out.

Breakthrough works on all current and future Warzone maps, using the Large variants on some of them.

All strikes are available in Breakthrough, but scoring Battlepoints is not as quick as in Warzone. This means working with your squad is more important than ever to gain an advantage in the form of strikes, vehicles and other support.

Breakthrough is fast, dynamic and very intense compared to Warzone, which is exactly what we’ve been looking for for the third game mode. It sits somewhere between Team Deathmatch and Warzone in moment-to-moment intensity but it’s not as simple as TDM – you still need to flank well and think about your approach, because each respawn is costing you valuable time.

Breakthrough will hit the Public Test Environment shortly after 0.7 is ready for Live servers. We know that 0.7 is taking a long time to be ready, but we want to make sure we’ve tested the patch well before pushing it to Live servers.

During the PTE testing we’re looking for player feedback on timings, Station locations, respawn locations, potential exploits and overall balance to make sure it’s fun on both sides of the map.

Ready when?

Some of the features we need for Breakthrough (like new HUD elements) are connected to the HUD redesign and we have to reach certain milestones before we can release it into the wild. That said, the current plan is to release Breakthrough to the PTE later this month or in the first half of October and test it with our players to make sure it will be a good fit for the game.

Once again, we’d like to thank the community members that came up with the idea and helped organize and test the game mode. We couldn’t do it without you and that’s exactly why Early Access was the way to go for us.

See you in the next one!