Blue Protocol Staff Reiterates Wish for Global Expansion, New Gameplay and Details

Iyane Agossah February 27, 2020 1:29 PM EST

Bandai Namco held the third stream for PC online RPG Blue Protocol, revealing new gameplay and comments on a possible global release.

Bandai Namco held on February 27 the third and last weekly stream for Blue Protocol before the Closed Beta Test starts in late March. The game will be getting more streams later on at irregular intervals. On stream, the core staff of Blue Protocol revealed new details and most notably chatted about how many non-Japanese players are asking for a global release and/or global servers.

Before scrolling down further, if you don’t know much about Blue Protocol, I’d suggest reading our summaries of the first stream and the second stream.

Here’s a rundown of everything the Blue Protocol staff said on the third stream:

They’re planning to add more accessories to customize your character’s face. Ears accessories, mouth accessories, nose accessories, etc. Adding hand accessories like finger rings will be complicated, however.

Blue Protocol‘s main story can be cleared solo.

Blue Protocol is divided into 2 core content parts. You have Missions, which include dungeon exploration, quests, time attack, etc. And then you have free field exploration. When you form a party, all party members get 100% of the experience from defeated monsters, even if they dealt zero damage. If you meet another party or a solo plyer currently fighting mobs, you’ll only get experience if you/your party start fighting too. The drop system works the same. Each player’s drops are separate, meaning you don’t need to worry about someone stealing your loot.

Day and night cycle in-game is 48 minutes, for now.

In the upcoming closed beta, you’ll be able to make 2 characters, but you won’t be able to exchange items between these two characters.

In the launch version of Blue Protocol, you’ll only be able to exchange certain items between your own characters. Not everything can be passed from one of your characters to another.

Each character you make has their own separate friend list too.

In the launch version, if you die and decide to revive, you’ll temporarily be in a downgraded state: you only have half of your max HP, your movement speed is slower and the damage you deal is lowered. However, if you get revived by another player, you won’t get into this downgrade state. This downgrade state is the only death penalty system in Blue Protocol planned for now.

They’ll add drinking and eating animations later on.

Raid battles will have up to 20 players now instead of 30 players. They’re planning to add more difficult raid battles with up to 30 players later on.

In the Closed Alpha Test, raid bosses were directly in free exploration fields, but starting the Closed Beta Test, they’ll have their own exclusive area. The areas’ entrances will be in the fields.

You can auto-follow party members. Shown for a few minutes here:

The staff knows many non-Japanese people are asking for a global release and/or global servers, and they hilariously brought it up with a Japaneengrish question on stream:

The staff explained they can’t announce anything for now. They can’t share these kinds of details yet, and can’t say if Blue Protocol will have global servers or not. However, they stressed out they have global expansion in mind and how they’re hiring people to help with that. For now, they’re focusing on the upcoming Japanese Closed Beta.

Time Attack will be endgame content in the Closed Beta Test. For now, Time Attack rankings are only on the official site, and cannot be seen in-game.

That’s all for the new information. If you want to play Blue Protocol in English, the only thing you need to do is wait, as Goldman would say in House of the Dead 2. Whether or not it’ll be global servers, Blue Protocol will definitely get some kind of global release outside Japan at some point.

The stream also included new gameplay:

The first sequence shows some party gameplay with three characters together. They fail the quest and get wiped out a little bit before the boss. That one quest was the kind of quest where if your party gets wiped, you get kicked out of the quest and need to restart from the beginning.

Next, we saw more gameplay with another three-person party of characters fighting in the coliseum. It’s basically a survival mode where you need to defeat successive waves of enemies within a time limit:

Blue Protocol was first announced in June 2019. The game was currently only announced in Japan and on PC. The Closed Beta Test’s applications are open on the official site.