STUDIO UPDATE: What's next for Block N Load

We’re going free to play later this year.

What does this mean for me?

How will you earn soft currency?

What don’t we know?

When will it be ready?

Why should anyone still buy the game if it’s going to be free?

What else are we doing?

Anything else we should know?

When is this all going to happen again?

And Finally?

Hi everyone – we’ve got some news for you.We have had a great few months since our launch of Block N Load with hundreds of thousands of fantastic matches and great strategies. Speaking of strategies, you have been amazing and proper partners in helping to make this a great game. With your feedback in-game, on the boards and in our live streams, we’ve been able to make the game better, more balanced and created whole features based on your feedback.So as you’ve all noticed the game’s popularity has slowly declined, although it has stabilised now. We’d all hope for more players as it makes for better match making and for more fun games.So how are we going to improve the game even further and what are our future plans? One major area that ensures a good match and a good game experience in general is to make sure there is a broad player base to match-make from. More people playing means that you are more likely to end up with players of your skill level and also allows us to expand features that would only work with larger numbers playing at once.I’ve seen a lot of ideas on what should be done to move the game in a good direction. We’ve read all of this and taken it on board. Realistically we can’t do everything, so now it’s about picking the things that will have the most positive impact.What I’ve also seen is a lot of love and commitment for the game and this gives us the inspiration to work even harder.I know free to play is something of a mixed bag in terms of whether you view it as a positive or negative. We really want Block to be enjoyed by lots of people and we believe free to play is the way to make that happen.So, we want to do it in the right way. BNL is a core game, it’s competitive and we want it to stay that way soIf you own a full copy of Block N Load, you’ll get to keep all 9 heroes to date and the skins you’ve unlocked for them. Anyone coming to the game after we’ve moved over to F2P will not get the same access to heroes and skins. You’ll be way ahead of them there and although we have not finalized any costs for F2P unlocks, rest assured if you have bought, or are going to buy the full game now you are getting one heck of a deal.As is reasonably common these days in MOBAs and MMOs, anyone will be able to unlock new heroes by playing games and earning a form of in-game currency, or by purchasing points to unlock them. We will have a hard (effectively real money) and soft currency (value earned by playing the game).It’s our goal that all heroes have their place, value and viability and that everything available is high quality, fun and worth it.We are working towards a daily challenge system, which will be the most efficient way to earn soft currency, as well as playing games.Lots of things. We’re going to be as open as possible (as always) as we move to get there but we’d be very grateful to have you along for the ride, asking questions as we go.We’re hard at work making this shift at the moment though dates are not yet confirmed. It certainly won’t be this summer but more likely into the Autumn before we get there.Because it’s definitely worth it. Buying the game for its current price and getting access to 9 full heroes is great value, rather than waiting for free to play and working your way up to that level.We continue to work on initiatives to make the game easier to get into and more appealing for new players - we've already done quite a few things to try to achieve this goal.We have changed the flow into the game, adding significant tip segments in-game and made sure new players play on simplified maps for their first game.We are working on taking things a step further by creating a newbie queue - new players will only play with each other for a number of games. Alongside this, we are changing progression and they will have limited access to blocks and perhaps even block slots, weapons and abilities, although this is still up for debate.All of this should clean up the problems with new players getting crushed by the experienced players. We see much better long term engagement for new people who play with other new people, so this approach makes a lot of sense for us.We are going to remove the traditional approach to Ranked Mode for now. We will add ranked leaderboards to the upper tiers of the normal game and when the time is right, we will reintroduce Ranked Mode with full tiered leaderboards, draft picking and all the rest.With a far better idea as to how our players play the game “in the wild” now, we are also looking at a new game mode that is a major iteration on the core mode, that will take advantage of what makes Block fun and drives it even further.There will be new heroes introduced for the free to play re-launch. We will need your help testing these and testing the new game mode so look out for details of programs for this coming up. As with the entire development until this point, we still need your help and want your feedback!There is a lot to do so we’re back in full development mode, altering and changing things up.If you have ideas, things we definitely ought to do, things you’ve seen somewhere that are inspiring and really great – please let us know!We are looking at this Autumn for the free to play release but will keep everyone updated as we progress. In the meanwhile, the game will be UP and running; servers online and we will continue to support everything we have been to this point.Thank you all for your continued support of Block n Load. We simply couldn’t do this without you.Studio Head