Wildlight has deployed another update to its live-service hero shooter, Highguard, introducing a 5v5 limited-time mode that will only be available this weekend.
As part of the most recent update you’ll also find a brand new base, Soul Well, wherein “Wardens can now experiment with this dark relic from a lost age” in both the 3v3 and 5v5 rotations. You can find out more in the teaser below:
To accommodate the bigger fireteams, lobbies have been updated to permit parties of five, and raids are now 10 lives instead of six. You should also expect slightly longer respawns during raids “to allow generators to be planted/defused”, and the Firing Range cannot support 5v5 at this time, so expect the option to be greyed out if your party has more than three players.
“As one of two major patches released during launch week, this update is emblematic of the Highguard team’s dedication to creating a ‘ready for live service’ game, resulting in immediate action,” the team said.
“Just this week, the team has squashed hundreds of bugs, improved performance across the board: yesterday’s update, Patch 1.0.4 introduced a variety of bug fixes, new video settings, and highly-requested features.”
Here’s the full patch notes:
We heard the feedback!
For the weekend, we are experimenting with a 5v5 Raid Mode. This is a separate playlist and not meant to replace 3’s. 3v3 Raids are still there for people who enjoy it!
The lobby has been updated to allow for parties of 5 while the mode is live. Grab 4 friends and jump into some hectic raids!
A few small tweaks for this mode:
- Raids are now 10 lives instead of 6
- Respawns are slightly longer during raids to allow generators to be planted/defused
Dev note: As most of you know, we are working on optimizations across the game. Many are in this patch and 3v3 should see good improvements! But… adding 4 more players to the game is not going to improve performance, right? Please keep that in mind as you try 5v5!
Dev note 2: Firing Range does not support 5v5 at this time, so the Play button will be grayed out if your party is over 3.
New Base – Soul Well
Soul Well is a dark relic from a lost age. The Iron Vigil has now prepared this base construct for use in the field where the dead still speak.
This new base will be added to the rotation in all modes.
Optimizations
This patch contains several optimizations that touch on animation performance, projectiles, draw submission times, and other gameplay systems. These optimizations benefit console and PC, but every PC is different, so the exact speedup to overall framerate is dependent on GPU, CPU, and other factors.
Quality of Life
Enabled these visual settings on PC and consoles
- Motion blur toggle for PC and consoles
- Anisotropic materials toggle for consoles (PC has this already)
Highguard was announced last month, closing out The Game Awards. Coming from several former Titanfall and Apex Legends developers, Highguard quickly had a large influx of players on its release earlier this week, however there were a few complaints as well, with many disappointed with areas such as map size and the 3v3 game format.
Since this slightly rocky debut, other developers across the industry have voiced their support for Highguard, with Splitgate: Arena Reloaded studio 1047 Games stating: “No game is perfect on day one.” Yesterday, Wildlight released an update.
