Ask Us Anything Answers - September 22, 2017

Hey Champions!

You've been asking us questions, and we've compiled some of the top ones from this week to answer! You can find previous Q&A threads on the official Bethesda.net forums here:

Ask Us Anything - September 1 Livestream Q&A Answers

[Questions answered by Lead Designer Adam Pyle]

Q: Are you going to rework some of the rune challenges? Some of them are very difficult, especially for new players. Other challenges require insane luck. **A:**Yes, absolutely. While it was great to get the Rune System out there to introduce it to players, we plan on going over all of the existing challenges and making adjustments. Some challenges will have their goals adjusted, while others may be replaced entirely.

Will there be more passive ability focus on mobility? (Like wall jump, crouch slide, etc.) I think we will continue our current trend of having a mix of passives, some that provide movement mechanics, others than provide gameplay buffs. We certainly have a few Champions slated for next year with movement passives.

Visor’s passive, Full Sprint, is not too useful due to his slow acceleration, especially with small maps. Its uniqueness is also lessened since every character can break their speed cap by rocket/tri-bolt boosting. Will you look at retooling his passive to better match his kit? I don’t anticipate changing his passive or adding a new passive ability to Visor. We have some changes coming in the next couple of update that will make his active ability more effective. We’d like to see how Visor plays after making those changes before looking at further changes, but I would be more tempted to increase his acceleration, causing him to make better use of his passive, than change the passive itself.

When will Tim Willits be a playable character? We don’t foresee making Tim or any other developers Champions. We have so many Champions right now that we’d like to get into the game.

Are there any ideas for maps with volumetric fog? Ideas? Sure. But nothing we're going to capitalize on yet. A lot of players dislike heavy fog maps, and we probably need a lot more maps in our library before we brand out into those.

Are we going to get fast weapon switch? Not sure. If it ever is desirable for one of our upcoming modes then we may add the feature and make it available as a Custom Game option, but we probably won’t pursue it until such time.

Will there be a chainsaw skin for the Gauntlet? We’d love to have one eventually, but it may present some technical challenges that prevent us from doing so immediately. We would have to build a lot of new animations to support custom melee weapons.

Do you plan to add an option for raw mouse input? I would like to eventually add raw mouse input.

Any new info on customizing crosshairs? No new info yet. I reviewed some crosshair work last week while visiting Saber, but most of this work is planned for October and November.

How is progress going on the zoom sensitivity slider? We’re slated to work on those features in October for release later this year.

Can we expect quality of life additions like the client remembering data center choices? Yes, this is another one of those features we’re tackling in October for a release later this year.

Can we have the option to disable chat completely to avoid toxic players? Perhaps, although I would personally prefer just the ability to mute or report such player behavior so that we may address the issue at hand.

Can we get shaders for our names? I want my colored name back from Q3A! We’ll discuss it, but there are currently no plans right now for colored names. While they were fun, I actually prefer the clarity gained from being able to have team colored names in UI and chat, and colored names either interfere with that, or you have to choose only select places to display those colored names.

Do you have any information you can share about how ranked will work? Are there different divisions? Will there be different ranks for each ranked mode? (A player having one ranking for Duel, one for TDM, etc.?) Currently there are 5 divisions, with room to expand if needed. Players will be able to see their division in all modes, and in ranked play players will see their division rank as well as their MMR value.

Will Custom Game allow us to adjust things like champion stats, item pickup placements, respawn/ability timers? While Custom Game does have a lot of planned features, we don’t plan for players to be able to make these adjustments in Custom Game.

Can you talk about what each developer works on for Quake Champions? Specifically, what does id Software do, and what does Saber Interactive do? That's not an easy question to answer! We have a lot of developers at both Saber and id. The bulk of design direction comes straight from id, and a lot of the art and programming is done at Saber. But in all cases, we have people at both studios doing work. There's no single part of the game - level design, character creation, programming, animation - that we can point to as being 100% developed by one studio or the other. It's a collaboration.

Stay tuned for future Ask Us Anything answers from the development team!