New Features
Changes
Battle Pass
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Switchblade
Patch 01.25 (28951)
Patch 01.24 (27636)
Hotfix
Hotfix 01.23 (26914)
Patch 01.22 (26382)
New Features
Fixes
Known Issues
Patch 01.21
New Features
Gameplay Changes
Minor fixes
Known Issues
Patch 1.20
New Features
Vehicle Changes
Gameplay Changes
Patch 01.18 (22750)
Major Fixes
New Features
Known Issues
Patch 01.17 (21731)
Major Fixes
Other Fixes
Known Issues
Patch 01.16
Steam
HotFix 01.16
Known Issues
SWITCHBLADE UPDATE: FREE TO PLAY
Switchblade is now Free to Play on Steam right now! PS4 will follow soon. Its been a long time coming and something we've been talking about since our first days in early access. Free to Play is another step along the way in our plans for the game as we continue to work with our community to make Switchblade as good as it can be for its eventual full release!
Welcome to Free to Play
Our main ambition for opening Switchblade up to the wider public by going Free to Play is to grow the user base as much as possible for the benefit of the game and the community. Not only do we hope that more people will discover Switchblade and decide to join us on this journey of creating an action-packed MOBA, but we also hope to broaden the feedback we receive from our fans to keep refining Switchblade all the way up to its full release out of Early Access, and beyond! If you're just joining us today, there are plenty of community resources we recommend you become familiar with:
- Switchblade on Steam
- Switchblade on PS4
- Welcome to Switchblade (A rundown of the game)
- What are vehicle packs?
- Community Discord Server
- Switchblade Twitter
- Switchblade Facebook
We recommend following us on Twitter to stay up to date on patches, changes and the general goings on around the office. We also recommend joining our Discord server to explore the Switchblade community and meet other pilots braving the new warzone of the future!
Upcoming Plans
We are working on an updated version of our roadmap which we hope to share with the community soon™. Whilst some of the dates might have changed, we're still committed to delivering on the promised content including the upcoming map Monorail along with new vehicles such as The Sundog. As we get closer to their release, expect more information from us detailing what you can look forward to once they hit the live game.
Lucid is looking to get into a routine of delivering patches around twice a month. The team is hoping that this will be the balance between effective workflow and meeting deadlines whilst not sacrificing the quality you've come to expect from us. Having said that, we'll soon be updating our game engine to the latest version of Unreal which might cause a slight delay in the delivery of future patches. It's not ideally timed, however, its an important step for us internally to ensure that we can take advantage of the latest features as well as security and stability updates.
Lights... Camera...
As we announced on Twitter yesterday, we'll be hosting a developer livestream at 3pm (GMT) on Wednesday 23rd January (tomorrow). There isn't a formal agenda planned here, we're mainly looking to celebrate the launch of Free to Play and spend some time talking to the community, answering questions and giving away some Bit Cash (in-game currency). If you have any questions you'd like us to answer, be sure to tweet them our way before the stream and we'll do our best to source the answer before going live! The stream will be archived and shared on social media if you can't watch it live.
He sure to follow us on Twitch to be alerted when we go live!
Transition from Early Access to Beta
When we launched Switchblade into Early Access back in August 2018, the state of the game truly reflected that classification as we were aware the game wasn't quite ready for prime time but still wanted to expose people to our take on an action MOBA and incorporate early community feedback into our development. As we've been working on the game, tweaking the balance and refining the overall experience, we feel confident in the games offering to change its description from Early Access to Beta.
Whilst practically speaking, this won't change how the game is handled on Steam and PS4 (we will remain in the Early Access process), we wanted to affirm our commitment to the community to get the game ready for its full release through a milestone such as this. Moving to Beta puts us in a position of "feature complete" but mainly addressing bugs and adding in new content. Whilst we are in Beta, the game will continue to benefit from community feedback so be sure to sound off in the appropriate channels on social media and in our Discord.
Whilst no launch is assured to go smoothly, and Switchblade is most certainly still in Beta (with several known issues) the team here at Lucid are proud of finally reaching this milestone and seeing more people jumping into a future of warfare designed for sport and entertainment.
We're confident that our community veterans are already welcoming the fresh wave of Free to Play players and showing them the ropes (whilst hopefully not giving them too much of a bruising!). Be sure to share your thoughts with us on Twitter and Discord, the entire team is always eager to keep in touch with the community.
See you all on the battlefield!
Ruley
Patch 1.7.0
Steam
New Features
Vehicle Changes
Game Play Changes
Known Issues
SWITCHBLADE UPDATE: MATCHMAKING, BALANCE TWEAKS AND MORE
Last week we announced that SwitchBlade would be going Free to Play later this month on 22nd January! Whilst we'll remain in Early Access, it's an exciting time for the team as we knuckle down and work on our last few releases before we push the big red button and open SwitchBlade up for everyone to play, absolutely free.
Free to Play Changes
There have been a few questions about what Free to Play means for players who have already bought SwitchBlade at any stage along the way and we wanted to give some clarity on the different versions and what this means moving forward:
Free to Play:
Free to Play players will have access to the daily rotation of 10 vehicles along with the option of buying more vehicles individually or upgrading to one of the vehicle packs via the in-game shop. This rotation exists to ensure that games can always be played and that teams have 10 vehicles to fill the 10 picks each game requires.
Starter and Epic packs:
These packs give players permanent access to 4 and 10 vehicles respectively, along with the daily rotation of 10 vehicles. There will be some overlap between the daily rotation vehicles and the vehicles players have permanent access to, but these packs are designed to supplement the offering of Free to Play with permanently unlocked vehicles.
Legendary and Founders Packs:
These packs are functionally the same as one another, with the only exception being the Founders pack skins that were awarded to our first wave of players. Players with these packs have full access to all vehicles in the game along with vehicles that will be added in the future.
All players have access to the in-game store where cosmetic items and experience boosters can be purchased with in-game currencies along with purchasing new vehicles to use in-game (if players do not own the Legendary or Founders packs).
Upcoming Matchmaking Changes
We've been teasing about the upcoming changes to the matchmaking system on social media this week and there's certainly a lot to talk about. Our ambitions are to reduce the number of empty space in lobbies and provide full 5v5 player lobbies for the community whilst shortening queue times overall.
The changes aren't quite ready for prime time quite yet, but we've managed to deliver a few fixed into today's patch which should stop parties from being split when joining a lobby from the Hall of Champions! We realise this has been a huge community concern and we're glad we're starting to get a handle on it.
Expect to hear more on these planned changes in the future.
Balanced, but not so Perfectly
We've made some further tweaks to balance gameplay in SwitchBlade. There have been some tweaks to the towers in that they no longer self-heal and their output damage of the tower laser has been reduced. Mods have also received a buff to their health along with some changes to how some deployable shield abilities work for some vehicles. If you want to dive into the patch notes in more detail, as well as reviewing the list of known issues and bugs in the build, you can check them out here!
Dress to Impress
Finally, we understand just how important it is to look your best in the Hall of Champions or whilst you're hanging out with other players whilst waiting to respawn. To help refresh your wardrobes for 2019, we've added new cosmetic items for players to earn and buy in Switchblade. There's a wide selection of patterns, helmets, hair colours, eyes and much more!
That about wraps up our first patch of 2019! We're always listening to conversations around Switchblade on our social media accounts and on our Discord server, so be sure to join in on the discussion on whichever platform you prefer. We're also running the occasional Bit Cash giveaway in our Discord server, so be sure to pay it a visit if you're eyeing up a new skin or helmet that you want to buy!
See you all on the battlefield.
Ruley