Remedy Entertainment's new co-op shooter, FBC: Firebreak, has had a bit of a rough start. The game currently sits at a "Mixed" rating on Steam and even professional reviews are sitting at just 64%.
Remedy has acknowledged that the game has several issues and have responded with a patch that includes several fixes. Not only are there bug fixes included in the update, but Remedy has included faster role progression and various economy changes.
Remedy talks about some of these issues and common player complaints at the same time they dropped this new update. The studio explains how they hope to improve FBC: Firebreak through this update, while also promising that other updates are coming in the near future.
One of the bigger changes, besides speeding role progression, is the fact that it's now much easier and faster to access higher tier Jobs. They are also working on improving the onboarding experience.
Better Onboarding and User-interface Clarity
Right now, we throw you into the deep end with little explanation on a variety of things from the systems in the game to what you are doing in the Jobs to status effects.
We’re working on better communicating the synergies between Crisis Kits and giving players much better information on what to do in the Jobs and how to be more effective in doing the work that Firebreakers must do.
This includes better readability on things like harmful conditions, like being on fire, and the flashing blue effect, which indicates that you entered or exited the range of your crewmates to have Resonance and a shared shield. Objective markers are not clear enough or don’t give a good enough idea of what to do. Lost Assets is an example of a critical thing that is too easy to miss. The latter issue has been improved in today’s patch.
We are taking a look at all of this, and have ideas on how to improve, but will need a bit of time to properly plan and execute.
Making Jobs Easier to Access
Our current progression flow is that new players must play the first Zone of each Job, which was meant to gradually onboard you to the Job. This clearly isn’t working. It is neither tutorializing players, helping matchmaking, nor players' perception of the full extent of the Jobs. We can see that when players experience the entire Job, more fun is had.
So, we will give players much easier access to the full Jobs.
We are changing the following in today’s patch:
Right now, we throw you into the deep end with little explanation on a variety of things from the systems in the game to what you are doing in the Jobs to status effects.
We’re working on better communicating the synergies between Crisis Kits and giving players much better information on what to do in the Jobs and how to be more effective in doing the work that Firebreakers must do.
This includes better readability on things like harmful conditions, like being on fire, and the flashing blue effect, which indicates that you entered or exited the range of your crewmates to have Resonance and a shared shield. Objective markers are not clear enough or don’t give a good enough idea of what to do. Lost Assets is an example of a critical thing that is too easy to miss. The latter issue has been improved in today’s patch.
We are taking a look at all of this, and have ideas on how to improve, but will need a bit of time to properly plan and execute.
Making Jobs Easier to Access
Our current progression flow is that new players must play the first Zone of each Job, which was meant to gradually onboard you to the Job. This clearly isn’t working. It is neither tutorializing players, helping matchmaking, nor players' perception of the full extent of the Jobs. We can see that when players experience the entire Job, more fun is had.
So, we will give players much easier access to the full Jobs.
We are changing the following in today’s patch:
- You are no longer required to play the first two Clearance Levels of each Job.
- New players start their experience with a full three-zone Hot Fix Job run (Clearance Level 3).
- Completing the full Job unlocks the next full Job, and so on.
- Completing a full Job also unlocks the Corruption option for that Job.
For now, they have added in some changes to how players unlock new Perks and better gear.
We are addressing this in a few ways in today’s patch.
- Lost Assets and Research Samples are now clearly visually highlighted, making it harder to miss them
- Rebalancing the cost of all unlockables
- We have split the Operational Requisitions into two:
- All cosmetics (sprays, armor sets) are placed in a new Requisitions page called “Expressions”.
- Operational Requisitions is renamed to “Essentials” and as the name implies, contains weapons, gear, and equipment.
- Making essentials like Altered Augments, Improvised Devices, and powerful weapons easier to access.
- The end result of these changes is that you can unlock and buy gear significantly faster than before. No more needing to unlock gloves just to get to a better revolver.
PlayStation 5: 1.002.000
Xbox Series X|S: 1.2.0.0
PC: 1.2.0
Windows PC: 1.2.0.0
(We expect to ship the Xbox patch within the next 24 hours. We hit a last (milli)second issue with it.)
Overview
We have overhauled core systems to make progression faster and more rewarding. Economy changes improve how you earn and spend currencies; the Requisition store now separates gear from cosmetics, and Job progression has been restructured to allow players to play full Jobs (all three zones) more quickly.
On top of that, there are many visible and under-the-hood improvements to the game included in this patch.
Read our extensive blog post about what is included in this patch and what improvements we are looking at bringing to the game in the near term.
Economy Changes
Xbox Series X|S: 1.2.0.0
PC: 1.2.0
Windows PC: 1.2.0.0
(We expect to ship the Xbox patch within the next 24 hours. We hit a last (milli)second issue with it.)
Overview
We have overhauled core systems to make progression faster and more rewarding. Economy changes improve how you earn and spend currencies; the Requisition store now separates gear from cosmetics, and Job progression has been restructured to allow players to play full Jobs (all three zones) more quickly.
On top of that, there are many visible and under-the-hood improvements to the game included in this patch.
Read our extensive blog post about what is included in this patch and what improvements we are looking at bringing to the game in the near term.
Economy Changes
- Upgrade currencies (Lost Assets and Research Samples) are now visually highlighted in the Jobs to make them easier to spot.
- All unlockable costs have been rebalanced to better match actual player currency earnings.
- Players will now earn and spend Lost Assets at a healthier pace, enabling smoother progression and gear unlocks.
- New players now start at Clearance Level 3 (CL3) for the first Job, Hot Fix.
- Players can still choose to play at CL1 or CL2, but it's no longer a requirement
- To unlock the next Job, you must complete a full three-zone run at CL3.
- Completing a Job at CL3 also unlocks the Corruption modifier for that Job.
- These changes provide faster access to full Job experiences and improve matchmaking and onboarding.
- The Operational Requisition has been split into two categories:
- Essentials: Weapons, gear, Improvised Devices, Altered Augments.
- Expressions: Cosmetic unlocks, like sprays and armor sets.
- You no longer need to unlock unrelated items (e.g., gloves) to access key gear like weapons or augments.
- Overall, gear progression is now significantly faster and more focused.
- Decreased the time it takes to build the BOOMbox and Swivel Cannon
- Increased Hiss Trooper health and stagger threshold
- The Fix Kit’s Wrench now does damage at every Tier
- Increased the health pool of Powerful Enemies (the ones with names)
- The Stapler Corrupted Item is now less elusive and easier to follow
- Fixed missing third-person perspective sound effects for Shock enemies that were not being played properly
- Fixed music transition issues when moving from the Main Menu to gameplay
- Shield recharge sound effects are now properly audible, with a new implementation for out-of-range scenarios
- Fixed a bug preventing harmful condition sounds from other players (such as fire effects) from being heard properly
- Added a sound effect when exiting weapon or grenade selection in Loadout menu, and added transition sounds for lobby Quick Kit selection
- Fixed Crisis Kit XP level indicators in the Results screen display
- Fixed player reputation overlapping XP progress in the post-match results screen
- Fixed a crash issue when inspecting weapons in the Loadout menu
- Fixed a misleading error message shown when the host leaves or disbands a party. It now correctly indicates that the party was disbanded
- You can now ping ziplines
- Temporary change: Removing the active Perks list from the top right of the in-game HUD due to performance issues (We will fix this urgently and bring the Perk list back)
- Fixed an issue with the Humidifier where the water level changing was only visible to the player who placed the Humidifier
- Enhanced DualSense haptic feedback in different parts of the Main and other Menus
- Jump Kit Impactor Tool can now be charged while sprinting.
- Performance improvements
- Entering or exiting a teammate’s Resonance Shield range no longer triggers blue screen flashes.
- Added a glowing highlight to Lost Assets and Research Samples to make them more attractive
- Improved blood visual effects
- Implemented distance fade for distortion effects inside fans
- Freezer Duty – Added a ramp to the top of one of the buildings in Zone 2 so that Hiss can now get there. Sorry.
- Ground Control – Fixed a wall in Zone 2 so players can no longer see through it
- Updated various props and environmental elements
I blame it partly on the name, it could be a firefighting implement or one of Steam's hundreds of sim games, the cover art makes it look cartoony and dumb, it's based in the Control universe but doesn't advertise it unless you know what FBC stands for and even then the gameplay is so different i'm not sure what the point was, if this was a co-op game which played like Control that would be wild, then of course just the fact that it's a multiplayer game from Remedy probably introduces some reservations, it's not what they're known for and when they did do it before it was catastrophically bad, i've heard there might be a lack of content too, to stand out in the always increasingly crowded multiplayer market you've got to do something incredible or appeal to a trend really hard.