- You can play private matches in Crucible until it's gone for good on November 9th - 19 October 2020
Amazon’s bang bang ’em up FPS Crucible has certainly been through—well a crucible, I suppose, though it hasn’t emerged stronger and reformed. After a messy launch and retreating back to closed beta , Amazon Game Studios announced that the game wouldn’t be making a return . As a last hurrah, Crucible has given players the ability to host private matches now that the matchmaking queue is shut off. You have until November 9th to enjoy some last shootouts with your pals, after which Crucible will be gone for good. (more…)
- Custom Games & Server Availability - 15 October 2020
With today’s release—the final update for Crucible—we’ve added the ability for players to create their own private matches and spectate them. The regular matchmaking queue will remain active through our final playtest tomorrow (Friday, October 16). The playtest will run from 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m Pacific. To help send Crucible off in high fashion, we’ve unlocked all skins, voice lines, emotes, etc. for all players. When our Friday playtest is over, we’ll be switching off the regular queue, and matches will be available only through custom games. This will remain the case through noon Pacific Time on November 9, when we’ll be taking servers down and removing Crucible from Steam. Release notes: Custom Games Players can now create their own private Crucible matches to play with friends, scrimmage against other teams, or arrange private tournaments. When selecting a game mode, players can n…
- Amazon's Crucible won't be coming back - 10 October 2020
So long, Crucible . Amazon’s free-to-play shooter hasn’t had the easiest ride, greeted by a release so underwhelming developers Relentless Studios chose to take it back to the shop for a bit of a tune-up. Three months later, the devs have decided that Crucible may just be beyond salvaging. Development on the beleaguered shooter has ceased, with servers set to shut off over the next few weeks. (more…)
- Amazon cancels Crucible - five months after release and four months after un-release - 10 October 2020
Amazon has cancelled Crucible, its free-to-download multiplayer action game. Crucible launched in May 2020 with little fanfare, and player numbers dwindled soon after. In early June Amazon "retired" two of its three modes. Then, later that month, Amazon "un-released" the game, bringing Crucible into closed beta in a bid to save a project years in the making. In a post on the game's website , developer Relentless Studios said "ultimately we didn't see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible". Read more
- Final Crucible Developer Update - 9 October 2020
Essence hunters, In July we moved Crucible into closed beta. We made a list of features we felt would enhance the player experience, which we shared publicly on our roadmap, and with the exception of custom games (which we expect to ship in the coming days), we completed them all. With those features shipped, our next step was to evaluate the feedback we’ve heard from you, paired with the data we’ve collected, to determine our path forward. That evaluation led us to a difficult decision: we’ll be discontinuing development on Crucible. We very much appreciate the way that our fans have rallied around our efforts, and we’ve loved seeing your responses to the changes we’ve made over the last few months, but ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of Crucible. We’ll be transitioning our team to focus on New World and other upcoming projects from Amazon Games. We’re offe…
- Release Notes: October 5, 2020 - 5 October 2020
Hunters & Gameplay General Changes: In-game damage floaters are now enabled for all players by default. Floaters can be disabled by navigating to Settings > Gameplay in the menus . Updated the location where damage floaters will display on the screen when damaging creatures. Bug fixes: Fixed a bug causing Ajonah’s Jamming Shroud to display damage floaters on detonation. Fixed a bug causing damage floaters to display when damaging inter-actable plants. Fixed a bug that prevented close-up shots from correctly registering as headshots. Fixed a bug causing the invulnerability status to not display on health bar flyouts. Bugg Bug fixes: Fixed a bug that caused the collision for Bugg’s plants to remain for a short time after they died. Captain Mendoza Bug fixes: Stimu-Health Packs : Fixed a bug that caused med pack visual effects (VFX) to be visible when cloaked. Shakirri Bug fixes: Fixed a r…
- Creature camps, central objectives, new tutorial, and more! - 24 September 2020
A lot has changed in the world of Crucible—in this week's build more than ever. Whether you played two weeks ago or haven't looked at the game since May, there's tons to check out. In addition to the performance improvements we've continually made since launch, we've almost entirely revamped Heart of the Hives. Read the full release notes here to see a full list of updates in just our most recent release, and join us for Friday's playtest from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time!
- Release Notes: September 23, 2020 - 23 September 2020
Developer’s note: Today’s update is a big one for us! It’s packed with a lot of work described on our initial roadmap from June (which you can see here]). We can’t wait to hear what you think of the changes! We’ll be playtesting this Friday from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Pacific Time, so come join us and try out the new-and-improved Heart of the Hives experience. Thanks for being part of the community! Spotlight Heart of the Hives Improvements Developer’s note: Back in June we announced that we’ll be doubling down on Heart of the Hives and making it the premiere Crucible experience. This allowed us to revisit many of the systems in the game that were originally designed to work with all three original modes and begin iterating on them with only Hearts of the Hives in mind. As a result, this update introduces some fairly significant changes to gameplay. For the most part, the map you’ve come to l…
- Release Notes: September 10, 2020 - 10 September 2020
Hunters & Gameplay General Changes: Updated interaction visual effects (VFX) on all characters. Positioned the interaction VFX to display for all characters, as they were previously hidden from view when playing as certain characters. Added new VFX for picking up Essence. The bottom edge of the screen will now display a blue glow effect to provide a more clear indication that Essence was successfully gathered. Bug fixes: Fixed a bug that caused UI elements to occasionally not display and sound effects (SFX) to not play for Ajonah and Drakahl. Ajonah Changes: Squid Mine : Mines now target practice dummies, allowing players to test them out in the practice arena. Bug fixes: Squid Mine : Fixed a bug where Squid Mines were always dealing the minimum amount of damage over time (DoT) damage. Squid Mine : Fixed a bug where damage from Squid Mines were not scaling with damage multipliers. Bugg…
- Play with us this Friday! - 27 August 2020
Every Friday, we gather closed beta participants (that's you!) from 11am-5pm Pacific to group up (or go solo if that's your deal) and play some matches. Join us--we'll be in-game and on Discord!
- Release Notes: August 26, 2020 - 27 August 2020
Hunters & Gameplay General Changes: Damage indicators (outgoing hit markers) now scale in size based on the amount of damage dealt by the attack. This should help players understand how impactful their attacks are. Improved the reliability of melee combat. This should improve the feel and hit registration of melee attacks, especially in higher latency environments. Reticles for Shakirri and Drakahl will now animate on melee attacks that successfully connect. Ajonah Changes: Jamming Shroud : Jamming Shroud visual effects (VFX) have been updated to better distinguish between ally and enemy shrouds. An ally’s Jamming Shroud is now easier to see through (in both directions), while an enemy’s Jamming Shroud is more difficult to see through (in both directions). Bug fixes: Grappling Hook : Fixed a bug that allowed Ajonah to grapple on Bugg’s plants. Drakahl Bug fixes: Sonic Pulse : Fixed a bu…
- Release notes: August 12, 2020 - 12 August 2020
Spotlight • The Lurker has been updated with territorial behaviors to create a more threatening and engaging encounter: o Movement: Forward movement is faster. Movement and turning is locked during attack. o Attack: When in range, the lurker telegraphs their next attack by shooting a targeting beam at the player. The beam has a max range of 20m, increased from the previous attack max range of 15m. The lurker is locked into place during their attack animation, allowing players to take partial or no damage at all if they move to avoid the attack. After attacking, the lurker resets before attacking the player again. o Chase & Retreat: Lurkers will wander nearby their original spawn points. They will chase the player 50-55m away from their spawn point and retreat when they are no longer threatened with damage. o Target Sense & Alert: Lurker's Perfect Sense (or the range in which the…
- Release notes: August 4, 2020 - 4 August 2020
Spotlight Mini-Map v1.0 Our initial implementation of a mini-map is in! The mini-map lives in the upper left corner of your heads-up display (HUD) and gives players critical gameplay information. You can, of course, still use the larger map to ping locations and see the state of things in more detail. This first version of the mini-map shows: • Your location and facing direction • Ally locations • The location of enemies detected by you or your teammates • Hives, hive telegraphs, and hive hearts • Incoming objectives • Active objectives • Pings Developer's note: As part of this change and because much of the information in the compass was duplicated by the mini-map, we've removed the compass from the HUD. We’re going to continue to examine how we can best use the space in the HUD to convey critical information, and we’ll keep an eye on feedback to changes like this. Quick Comms Update •…
- Developer update: July 30, 2020 - 30 July 2020
Last week we mentioned that we were planning to push a new release out the door this week and welcome our first wave of new beta testers. Unfortunately, due to a few critical bugs we recently identified, we’re postponing the release and the invites until next week. We know that’s not exciting news, but these bugs impacted core gameplay and we need time to thoroughly test out our fixes for them before pushing the release live. The upside of the situation is that the registration cut-off for the first wave of invitations is being extended to Sunday, August 2, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific. We’ll be running a playtest like normal tomorrow (on the current build), so you can still jump in for some matches. After the release ships next week we’ll be making some updates to our public development roadmap to reflect features that have shipped, add some new projects, and update details on some existing p…
- Developer update: July 22, 2020 - 22 July 2020
Hello, Essence hunters, Welcome to another Crucible developer update. We have a medley of topics this week, so let’s jump right in. Release cadence Since launch, and up until a few weeks ago, our goal was to put out a new release each week. This approach allowed us to quickly address the issues we saw at launch, but it came at the cost of reduced internal efficiency. Our goal moving forward will be to put out new release every two weeks. This is more sustainable for the team, and it gives us some extra time to make sure we’re putting out quality releases—which is important considering there are a lot of changes coming in the next few weeks and months. You’ll see some of those changes in our next build, which is currently slated for next week. This one’s a chonker: We’ve got the mini-map coming online, new context-specific pings for the quick comms system (including 2,500+ new voice line…
- Release notes: July 10 & 14 2020 - 10 July 2020
Hunters & Gameplay General Changes: • We made a change to the way we draw projectile trails so you will now see the trails on the first frame of the shot even if the projectile hits a target on that frame. Developer's note: This should make projectiles easier to read and allow players to react to them. Bug fixes: • Fixed a bug that allowed explosions to pass through nearby shields, like Shakirri's Holo-Shield. This fix should prevent Summer's Ignition Spark and Drakahl's Resonating Quake from passing through shields. Ajonah Changes: • Squid Mines no longer target invulnerable or invisible players. Bugg Changes: • Booming Blossoms : Plants will no longer self-destruct on detonation. Plants that now Disrupt upon becoming overcharged, rather than Stunning nearby opponents. Developer's note: We wanted to improve this upgrade and make it easier to use. We feel like not destroying the plant i…
- Release notes: July 2, 2020 - 2 July 2020
Spotlight Voice Chat (v1) • Added support for Team voice chat. o Voice chat is enabled by default. To opt out, players can disable the Auto-join Team Voice option in Settings → Audio → Voice Chat o Team voice chat is only available while connected to the match server. (i.e., from the time the pre-match versus screen is displayed through the post-match scoreboard). There is currently no voice chat in the main menus. o Added a UI notification that briefly displays at the beginning of each match to notify players whether they have or have not joined the Team voice chat channel. o There is a new Social Menu (bound to by default) that lists the current players on each team and provides support for joining/leaving the Team channel, muting, and reporting players. Players have the additional option to Join/Leave Team Voice Chat on a per-match basis through the Social Menu . Simply click on th…
- Developer Update: Crucible Beta - 30 June 2020
Hello, Essence hunters, A few weeks ago, I told you about the steps we were taking to change and improve Crucible in response to your feedback. That plan is still the same, but we’re taking a new step that will help us focus on providing the best possible experience for our players as we continue to make the game better. Starting tomorrow, Crucible is moving to closed beta. We’ll continue following the roadmap we laid out previously and working on map, combat, and system changes to improve the Heart of the Hives experience as well as implementing other improvements based on your feedback and what we think the game needs in order to thrive. For the most part, your experience as a Crucible player will stay pretty much the same while we’re in beta. One of the biggest changes you’ll see is that we’re going to schedule dedicated time each week when we as devs will be playing with the communi…
- Developer update: June 26, 2020 - 26 June 2020
Hey all, On June 4 we published a developer update that explained how we’re extending Pre-Season and restructuring our team to focus on a new set of development priorities, which were largely determined by the feedback we’ve been hearing from all of you. It’s been about three weeks since we made that announcement, so today we’re going to take some time to talk about what we’ve been up to. We’ve shipped three updates in the past three weeks (June 6, June 10, June 18) that were focused on balance, bug fixing and polish, but we know you’re eager to hear news on some of our bigger projects. So let’s dive in: Voice chat v1 Voice chat remains a top priority for the team and we’re very close to shipping it. In fact, it’ll be in our next release. In full transparency, we had planned to ship it this past week, but in a recent playtest we realized that the implementation at the time just didn’t m…
- Release Notes: June 18, 2020 - 18 June 2020
Hunters & Gameplay General Changes: • Updated the minimum time threshold to start a vote to surrender and the time between surrender votes. Developer’s note: We've made these changes to try to mitigate the impact of people spamming surrender. Please note we're still working on AFK prevention, which will go a long way towards addressing one of the chief causes of teams needing to surrender. o Time from start of match until surrendering becomes available increased from 1.5 minutes to 7 minutes. o Time between surrender votes increased from 1 minute to 2 minutes. • Updated critical hit sound effects. • The loadout screen now shows passive abilities. • Creature and object healthbars will now show shield information if the creature or item has a shield—for example, Bugg’s plants will now show when they have overshield. Drakahl Changes: • Revised blade impact sound effects. Shakirri Changes:…
