After Their Game Awards Playtest, Steel Hunters And Their Mech Combat Will See Big Changes

When Wargaming revealed Steel Hunters during The Game Awards 2024, they also announced that a 10-day playtest was coming on PC. That test came and went and the team enjoyed seeing players hop into massive mechs for some PvP combat. The fall of the NDA also put the mech-combat game's team in a position they weren't used to: seeing feedback come in at crazy rates through normal channels and all new channels.

Fast-forward to today and the team is ready to share some of their learnings, reveal changes coming based on player feedback, and to promise that each future test of the F2P game will continue to improve on the CPU/GPU performance front.

When it comes to content, it seems players wanted more PvE than the game currently offers. Since Steel Hunters is a mech PvP game, new PvE won't be added in the short term besides improvements to the AI already present in bot matches. However, the team does like the idea of a campaign or big mech boss fights, so they will consider these in the future.

PvP fans are getting 3 key changes to matches to improve the test's lackluster mid-game. With only 3 towers spawning at the start of a match for 6 teams, early matches were predictable and many teams were getting bounced before mid-game. The starting tower count will increase to 6 which should actually allow teams to make it to mid-game and extraction...a final phase that was almost meaningless in some testing with most teams already dead.

Wargaming does hear your feedback on squad sizes and they may mess with this later, but they are dedicated to the duos experience for now. This focus on duos also means that map sizes and match lenghts aren't likely to be increased in the near future.

With more testing planned in the coming months, you may want to check out the full post for additional details on a new tutorial mode, balance changes, and modified match details. On ounce of preparation, as they say.