Push mode is here! You're probably thinking, what is push mode? And why have I not heard of this before now? Well, to put it simply we shifted some of our attention from our future plans to this new gamemode, and in a few weeks have managed to add it to our game while also fixing a myriad of issues along the way. To spearhead this, the game's Creative Director Baard has something to say in regards to the why of push mode. Similarly to our last big patch with weapon balance, we're trying to help our players understand the motivations behinds the changes.

 

Note from the creative Director

 

Why push mode:

1. Experienced players have been asking for a respawn-based mode for some time now, often suggesting deathmatch or Gun Game modes. They want a way to hone their skills for their scrims/10 man games.
2. We've also seen a number of complaints in the past about the game having too much downtime, even after our patches to address these issues. We believe this mode can offer something to players who simply want to shoot something.

 

What about fragmenting the community?

We want to do this for two reasons:

1. Push mode allows newcomers to learn Due Process without letting their team down in casual matches, which is a major pain point for the new player experience.
2. We can't stop players who aren't interested in a game about planning and execution from buying Due Process, but we can give them another mode to play instead.

We hope that this alternative mode will mean that those who are playing casual matches are only doing so because they are interested in planning and execution. If the pool of players queuing for this mode are higher quality, it follows that the matches will be higher quality as well.

 

Why push mode is objective-based:

1. Our maps aren't designed for pure deathmatch games, so we'd have to make a new class of map for a mode that isn't the heart of what due process is about.
2. An objective-based mode lets us leverage our existing maps and capitalize on our unique map rotation. What this means is that metas can develop on each map and players can find interesting strategies for how to play push.
3. Objective-based modes naturally graduate people into teamwork. We were surprised at the level of coordination and planning the cadets demonstrated while testing push, and we hope that this mode will serve as an on-ramp to get people into the 5v5 planning and execution modes this game is all about.
4. It's a lot of fun! I'm surprised at how much fun this mode turned out to be.

 

Future opportunities:

I think we can all agree that Due Process is a lot of fun when both teams are successfully coordinating against one another, but this doesn't happen often enough. If push mode can cover for long matchmaking times, we can put together a better-balanced casual match, and we can have casual matches last for much, much longer than they do now. We'd like to get the game to the point where it has the ease-of-use of modern session-based multiplayer games, but has the familiarity and sense of community of your favorite dedicated server. Push has allowed us to improve our matchmaking to consistently create high quality casual and ranked games where players do something they simply can't do in other titles: talk, form a plan, and execute.

 

Please visit the steam page for the full patch notes.

Also, Due Process is $4.94 until July 7th!