There’s an update to what’s ahead for Paladins. Their goal is 30 Champions to start the E-Sports leagues. They’ll continue adding new champions after that but at a slightly slower pace. They are also adding a new game mode to test.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Paladins/comments/6bxmv3/paladins_8_months_since_early_access/
Paladins entered Early Access on September 15, 2016, after a long and winding Closed Beta process shaped by our community.
While some of the press greeted Paladins with skeptical “clone” allegations & clickbait-y headlines, you the Player Community immediately grokked what makes our game unique: Paladins is a team-based shooter but with heavy Customization elements (in match Items, out of match Card Loadouts). In Paladins you define your own playstyle and get just a touch of MOBA with your FPS.
Fueled by YOUR positive word of mouth (Steam player reviews, console player reviews), Paladins is now one of the fastest growing games:
- On Steam Paladins was the top new game of 2016 in terms of overall playtime.
- It is just 2 weeks since the Xbox One & PS4 Open Beta on May 3rd, and there are now well over 2 million console Paladins players.
- And so in the eight months since Early Access the total Paladins player count is now over 11 million, and growing rapidly.
- This does not count any players in China; since the China version of Paladins is still in Closed Testing on separate servers. In China, the game will be published by Tencent Games, the leading Publisher in that market.
- The success of the game so far has allowed us to greatly staff up the Development Team (Smite’s Dev Team also continues to grow by the way). In 2017 the Dev Team has managed to deliver: a new update every 2 weeks, 6 New Champions (Torvald, Maeve, Inara, Lex, Seris, Willo), 2 New Maps (Stone Keep, Brightmarsh), experimental Alternate Modes (PvE, Survival), a ton of test maps, and features we saw as most requested from the community, such as integrated Voice Chat
And we are just getting started. Because there is still SO much we will be improving within Paladins and adding to the game.
Over the next few months you will see:
- Mastery System / Mastery Rewards of various types
- Ranked 2.0, based more on Account vs Champion. We’ve heard your feedback and agree that the current Ranked Mode needs to be improved.
- Quality of Life / bug fixes. We realize things like Androxus’ Reversal bug and Fernando Shield bug are rage inducing. We addressed a few in .50 and will continue to pay attention to these gameplay & polish items
- New Champs. We are excited about the next set of new Champions and will continue to release 2 champs every 3 patches until we get to a total of 30 Champions around August. We feel that a large champion roster, combined with upcoming ability to Ban in draft picking, is healthy for our competitive game. After 30 Champs we slow down just a little; but for us slowing down still means a new Champion approximately once a month from August until the end of 2017.
- At least one new PvP Game Mode for your testing & feedback
- Getting updates out more quickly to both the Xbox One and PS4!
- This is dependent on platform providers and their certification timelines. But our goal is to get down to only ONE WEEK between PC updates and that same update going live on XBox One and Playstation 4.
- LORE! 'Cause Lore
- Legendaries. Some of them aren’t great and need help.
- Big Esports Investment and Announcements.
- The upcoming July Dreamhack Valencia event (100K PC, 50K Console Wars) is just the beginning. We’ve been pleased to see a global appetite to play competitive Paladins and we will be supporting that in a huge way. More details to be announced during the Dreamhack Valencia esports broadcast.
- Re-introduction of new PvE/Co-op mode; but this will be after all the above
The development team is very excited about the updates still to come in 2017, and please keep your candid feedback coming.
Together we’ll continue to build a great game and a foster a great community!
