13AM Games highly successful release Runbow is receiving a new update to help support online play. The two changes seem small but should go a long way to bringing more players online and solidifying a solid experience.
Oh, and the updates brings some type of secret…
Check out the full statements about the update below.
MORE UPDATES INBOUND
First off we want to make a heartfelt thank you to everyone that took the time to play with us online in Open Party Runs last week. We gave away a lot of soundtrack codes and had a ton of fun. We also learned a bunch about how to improve the Runbow experience for you!
A lot of people ask us to get more people online. I wish I could just go “yes, here you go,” and dump 1000 concurrent users on the servers for you at any given time. Since that’s impossible with my current level of income and free time (who will walk my dogs?), we can see if we can get more people excited about being online in general.
Less Players < More Players
One of the main factors that deters people from getting online is the worry that there will be no one to match up with. This means less people go on because there are less people, and the cycle continues forever. Matching rooms with up to 4 people is still hard (and we shipped with 5-player matching!).
To fix this, we’re going to set up the lobby to match 2 consoles into a game. This way we can always be sure that any match-up the server makes will lead to a chance to play Runbow. 2 Player matches are a blast (get the swapper, run to the back or throw yourself off a pit. Top-tier kill) and we hope that everyone starts getting excited about being able to turn on Runbow and match up immediately.
While 2 player matches might not be everyone’s cup of tea, the more players that are on the server, the better chance there is of forming bigger and bigger games.
And once you have the game created, we’re designing it so it’s harder to lose the people in that party. More games constantly going will hopefully bring more people onto the servers, and that cycle will hopefully continue forever (in a good way).
Less Crashes = More Players
It’s going to be a lot easier to start playing and continue playing. We have a few fixes in place to help address a few well-known issues that our community will be happy to see go, and we hope these demonstrate to you guys that we are constantly working to make this game work for you. We’ll start to announce what these things are as reports start coming in that our fixes have worked, but since a lot of issues can’t be tested until we see them with different types of hardware, suffice it to say that no news will be good news on this front.
Secrets…
We’ve also added something little… but hopefully it’ll give you a hint about what’s to come. We appreciate you guys taking the time and bandwidth to download our updates, and after this next functional update we’re going to rewarding that loyalty by bringing you some really exciting stuff. Stay tuned to us for news.
And as always, get ready…
What do you think of these new updates? Does the help the online experience?
