Hi-Rez Studios has revealed that its free-to-play multiplayer shooter, Paladins, has amassed “well over” two million console players since the game entered open beta on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on May 3.
Announcing the news on Reddit, Hi-Rez thanked players for positive word of mouth and wrote that Paladins is now “one of the fastest growing games.” Here are some other highlights that the studio recently shared:
- 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.
As for the road ahead, here’s what players should expect over the next few months, in Hi-Rez’s own words:
- 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.
For more on Paladins, check out our previous coverage.
[Source: Reddit]
