Ubisoft overhauling sci-fi battle royale effort Hyper Scape to reach its "full potential"

Hyper Scape, Ubisoft's reasonably entertaining entry in the already well-represented free-to-play battle royale genre, has only been out three months but already the publisher is looking to overhaul the experience in order to reach its "full potential".

Writing in a new blog post on the Hyper Scape website, Ubisoft explained that while it considered the game's open beta and launch on PC a success, "we were not able to achieve the high expectations we set for ourselves with our full release on console".

Ubisoft says that in order for the game to reach its "full potential", it has identified five key pillars Hyper Scape's team will now focus on so it can become an experience "everyone can play and enjoy". These areas cover combat comfort, onboarding, game modes, player goals, and cross-play, with the broad aim being to get more people playing Hyper Scape and to find ways to ensure they continue playing for longer.

On combat comfort, Ubisoft says that while it wanted a high skill ceiling for Hyper Scape, its data shows "the floor is also too high", and it's simply too hard to aim, track, consistently damage, and eliminate players, "especially on consoles", making for a "difficult experience for new player". That's further compounded by an onboarding process that "does not currently provide enough time and opportunities for new players to learn and succeed".

As such, Ubisoft wants to "protect newcomers and provide training activities" to help them become more proficient at the game, and plans to add new activities and match size options alongside the currently "unforgiving" Crown Rush, including a respawn system and "deathmatch" style game modes. It's also rethinking limited-time modes given the player base split they create, and will be introducing cross-play earlier than originally planned to help bolster current issues surrounding lobby sizes.

Finally, Ubisoft says Hyper Scape currently lacks medium and long-term goals, meaning there's less incentive for players to stick around. This will be addressed at least in part by the new Player Ranking system in Hyper Scape's upcoming Season 2, although it says additional progression systems and "match-to-match flow improvements" will be implemented as well.

To help achieve its aims, Ubisoft says it will be restructuring the Hyper Scape team into the "cell-based" format used for Rainbow Six: Siege's development (another game which struggled to gain traction at launch), with each cell focussing on one of its five areas of concern.

Work has already begun on addressing these pillars, says Ubisoft, and it hopes to release more frequent updates in Season 2 compared Season 1 as a result.

The publisher has already confirmed Hyper Scape's second season will introduce the aforementioned ranking system, a new district, and the Atrax sticky explosive weapon. Additionally, there's a new Battle Pass, new game modes - including Crown Rush Duo and Floor is Lava - and the return of Crown Rush, Faction War, and Turbo Mode. Daily Gifts, including Battle Points or cosmetics, will also be available for logging in every day.

Hyper Scape's second season launches on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 next Tuesday, 6th October.

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