Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt (opens in new tab) is a very solid battle royale: I enjoyed it more than I expected to when I horsed around with it in the early days of its Early Access release, and more recently Morgan said he’s “really impressed with how well developer Sharkmob has nailed the basics” in the full release. But it hasn’t been entirely without problems, and today Sharkmob announced that ranked play will be paused until the launch of the next update.
“After careful evaluation, we have decided to pause Ranked mode temporarily until the new update arrives,” the studio wrote on Steam (opens in new tab). “We hope the new balance changes and gamepad improvements will increase the mode’s popularity again and make matchmaking viable once more.”
The biggest issue plaguing Bloodhunt right now appears to be the implementation of controller support, which “needs a bit of love,” Sharkmob said in recent pre-patch notes (opens in new tab)—something of an understatement, given that developers are essentially replacing everything.
“We have tweaked the current system, replaced our dynamic response curve with a more traditional exponential curve, set the acceleration to a fixed speed and adjusted the AA to fit what we have,” lead designer Gustav Stigenius explained. “We feel like this is a great step in the right direction, but we’re only at the beginning of the road. Stay tuned for a follow-up article where we deep-dive into reworking the controller look, aim, scope turn rate, aim assist and settings so that you can customize your game experience.”
Bloodhunt is available on PC and PlayStation 5, and its controller problems are exacerbated by crossplay. While crossplay can be disabled on PS5 (the toggle is apparently required by Sony), it is on by default—and cannot be switched off at all on the PC version. Furthermore, Sharkmob “strongly” recommends (opens in new tab) that PS5 players don’t disable crossplay, as doing so “may lead to slow matchmaking times.” But the alternative appears to be PS5 players getting viciously and repeatedly owned by those on PC.
“As is, the new player experience is awful and I imagine that PS5 players are churning like crazy,” GungJoe wrote on Resetera. “Right now, you have no fantastic option. Turn crossplay off and you have fairly long queue times (albeit less than a minute for me). Keep it on and the experience is fundamentally unfair.”
“As someone who has played on PC and PS5 this game on console is impossible against PC players,” Corgiiiix3 wrote in similar comments on Reddit. “It feels like there is no aim assist which is a GOOD thing. But not if you’re up against mouse players. It’s not even close to fair. And without 120 fps support it’s even more of an issue. PS5 playerbase probably won’t last long when the winner of every single match has a PC icon next to their name at this rate.”
Hello Bloodhunt Community! After careful evaluation, we have decided to pause Ranked mode temporarily until the new update arrives. We hope the new balance changes and gamepad improvements will increase the mode’s popularity again and make matchmaking viable once more. pic.twitter.com/hevBckuhSPMay 25, 2022
Ironically, but I suppose predictably, a few PC players see the matter in a very different light, complaining that the aim assist on the PS5 is too strong (opens in new tab) and makes it too easy for PS5 players to rack up kills.
Sharkmob didn’t address the PC/PS5 imbalance specifically, but hinted at it: Stigenius said the topic of improving controller support in Bloodhunt is “one that I care about a lot as a lifelong PlayStation player.” The update doesn’t have a release date yet but is expected to be out sometime in June.