In the survival MMO H1Z1 July has been used for a summer cleanup. The sparse new ideas that were intended for the summer month have been postponed to “later”. They want to slow down the pace at which new features are introduced, testing and polishing them beforehand.
In H1Z1, “roadmaps” are released that outline what should happen in a month. In July, there were only a few new points compared to usual: Professions that survivors practiced before the zombie apocalypse were supposed to come and provide small bonuses. They wanted to introduce a new type of zombie, the “Screamer”.
None of this has materialized; even the few new things have been postponed. July saw almost exclusively bug fixes and minor upgrades to systems. They wanted to increase the quality of the game and its stability.
Of course, they were not idle: Just this week they patched twice, changing things like the “jump height” or resolving issues with the battle royale that had come into the game shortly before. With the “5-man Battle Royale”, they have now activated a fresh mode for players who are in fixed groups and are looking for a rush of adrenaline for a foreseeable time; the “normal mode” of the game, the survival mode, does not have this time limit, but keeps running continuously.
Apparently, they have taken a liking to this new, more deliberate approach, saying that they want to take more time in the future to integrate new features into the game: The previous results of quickly introduced new features have been rather sobering.
It will be exciting to see if August, after all the polishing, brings a bit more application. We learned this from The Karate Kid: You need both.
The competition is not sleeping; the dino MMO Ark Survival Evolved has already announced its own “Battle Royale” mode. The “Hunger Games” have made such a last-man-standing thing with a continuously shrinking combat area unexpectedly popular.
