A spinoff of the popular Vampire The Masquerade series Bloodhunt launched last September. As we previously reported, developer Sharkmob made a precarious business decision. In preparation of a full-fledged release this Spring, their Early Access period came to a close ahead of schedule in order to address player feedback on game performance and a frustrating amount of cheating. This morning, Sharkmob announced the inclusion of a much requested ranked mode as well as a more casual “Bloodhunt Mode” on their official website.
“We don’t want to compromise on the high stakes and high skill ceiling, but we need to find a way to ensure that the game is welcoming to new players in order to guarantee that we always have a healthy number of players for quick matchmaking times,” read the statement.
Ranked mode is competitively driven. Its purpose is to facilitate fair player matchmaking, giving the best of the best in the community a chance to face-off against one another without alienating newbies.
“We are looking at requiring around level 10 of player progress to unlock it,” read the statement. According to Sharkmob, this will hamper cheating as much as possible.
Moreover, Ranked Points (RP) will determine your rank; your rank will be impacted by your overall match placement and kill count, with an emphasis on how many people you eliminate. Bloodhunt will introduce a six-tier ranked threshold ranging from ‘bronze’ to ‘obsidian’ shortly after launch, so all worthy Kindred can begin their grind to the top soon.
“Bloodhunt Mode” will be geared toward the “average” Bloodhunt player. Instead of being booted out of an in-progress match, “Bloodhunt Mode” will allow the player to respawn while giving them a bit of a breather. Sharkmob is hoping this more accessible approach will encourage people “to take more risks and go all out regardless of the skill level.”
Speaking of cheating, Bloodhunt is expected to support Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) on launch. Sharkmob will also be “increasing the number of staff that will be looking at anti-cheat reports, as we want to cut down the time it takes for us to act against the most aggressive cheaters,” read a previous statement.
Prior to this decision, Tencent-owned Sharkmob faced a baseless rumor about their former anti-cheat program that spread like a brush fire when a community member accused Bloodhunt of coming bundled with “Chinese” spyware.
“Anti-Cheat Expert” lingered even after the game was closed. A lot of people (who were unfamiliar with how spyware actually functioned) aired this grievance by making an uncharitable claim about the nature of the application, which Sharkmob attributed to a bug and swiftly patched. Sharkmob also provided a script tool that removed every rogue file for those who uninstalled Bloodhunt.
“The spyware claim is blatantly false. This has been demonstrated in many articles already. Not only is it false, but it is also damaging to our first game, Bloodhunt, and our studio Sharkmob. By posting these types of unfounded reviews and discussions, you are potentially putting in jeopardy the work of more than 150 people who poured their sweat and blood into making Bloodhunt the game we are proud to call our first baby,” the Sharkmob team posted via the Steam forum.
The official Bloodhunt Twitter announced a mid-March timetable for their PC playtest. Those who currently own a registered Bloodhunt account in good standing will be able to participate in the stress test.
