Switchblade

Hey everyone,

We have patch 1.21 going out today which completely overhauls our voice coms system thanks to our friends over at Vivox! We’re thrilled to offer a huge quality of life improvement to our community and responding directly to player feedback. We’re also introducing new cosmetic vehicle mastery rewards to better reflect the commitment of players investing in individual vehicles. Finally, we added some UI tweaks to the sin bin to tidy up the user experience a bit. We also have a new roadmap for the community with a few early thoughts on what’s to come over the next month or so. For a more detailed breakdown of today’s patch, be sure to check out the patch notes!

Patch 1.21

Mic Check: One Two, One Two

We received a lot of feedback from players regarding the quality of the voice communication system in Switchblade, specifically regarding the audio quality and control available to users. Whilst we added the ability to mute team members in-game, there was a lack of overall system volume control that left players at the mercy of system controls alone. In today’s release, we’re implementing a voice coms system provided by Vivox! Users should immediately notice the improvement in voice quality that comes with it along with the extra features and control the team has been working on. We’ve added the option of push-to-talk as well as additional volume control sliders for players to better tune their audio experience. Let us know what you think of the system and be sure to get working on your tactical callouts and friendly banter!

Showing off Your Skills

The team wanted to give players new ways to show off their skills and achievements in-game as well as providing a new incentive to grind or diversify into other vehicles for new rewards. To achieve this, we’ve added new cosmetic items to the vehicle mastery rewards track. Each reward is uniquely tailored to the vehicle it was unlocked for and allows players to show their affinity for specific vehicles with special face paint and logos as well as new flight suit patterns to complete the look or to help players further customize their own outfits. These rewards have also been awarded retroactively to anyone who has achieved the appropriate rank, so check out your collections to see if you’ve got some new wardrobe options before your next game!

More Informed Upgrades

In our own playtests and in listening to player feedback, the team felt that the upgrade menu lacked a wider perspective on what the properties of your abilities currently are and what an ability would gain if upgraded to the next level. As a result of this, we’ve added more information to the vehicle upgrade menu in-game to better inform your upgrade decisions as well as providing a key, data-driven summary of an ability as well as the more detail explanation in the pre-game lobby.

The Road Ahead

The Switchblade team are not slowing down! We’ve just passed underneath a speed balloon and we’ve got a lot of content heading your way before the end of this month! We’re happy to share a new roadmap with the community (click the image to expand) and tease what we’re working on releasing this month. Our next patch will be mainly focused on minor bug fixes and implementing MMR into our servers. This patch is laying the foundation for the return of competitive mode at a later date. The patch afterward will come with the release of the first Switchblade Battle Pass! This will bring more challenges and grinding incentives as well as a new support vehicle, The Angel! Unlike previous vehicles that have been added to the game, The Angel will be part of the Battle Pass progression, and will be available for all users to level up and unlock, free of charge! However, Legendary Pack owners will receive access to the Angel for free when the Battle Pass is released and The Angel can still be purchased from the in-game store. We’re excited to share more details with the community in the coming weeks so watch this space!

This patch was a good mix of quality of life improvements and new content, it’s the kind of patch we love delivering to the community and we’re eager to hear what you think of it. Today’s blog post might have sparked more questions than we answered, but that’s always a thrilling environment for any games studio!  I’ll be around on our Discord server today to answer any questions you may have and discuss more about the upcoming Battle Pass so do stop by if you have time today!

See you on the battlefield!

Ruley