Chivalry 2 Creators Plan to Be "Incredibly Agile" with Patches, Balance Changes

Chivalry 2 players were already trying to figure out optimal loadouts during the game's beta tests after unlocking and testing out different weapon and class combinations. Some formulas naturally stood out amongst others which in turn gave away to conversations about the meta before the game even released. Fortunately for those who are worried about weapons becoming too dominant and overshadowing other options, Chivalry 2's creators Torn Banner Studios say they're poised to be "incredibly agile" with the changes they can make to the game.

Alex Hayter, the Brand Director at Torn Banner Studios who's working on Chivalry 2, answered some of ComicBook.com's questions about the game in an email exchange around the game's release. During our questioning, we brought up those conversations that surfaced in forums when the game was in testing. The Messer stood out as a popular pick and archers were half-jokingly seen as frustrating by many. Anecdotally, it seems like the spear has become a popular pick since launch due to its reach and tricky moveset.

Hayter said the game is built "with a lot of flexibility in mind when it comes to combat balance," however, so if anything becomes too egregious, the developers can take care of the issue quickly without having to push an entire patch.

"Chivalry 2 benefits from live tuning, which means we can tweak things like weapon values using an online system and do not need to patch the game to implement those changes," Hayter said. "As well as taking in feedback from the community and monitoring discussion, we also do stat tracking to see if any weapon is overwhelmingly popular or underperforming."

Should something require a bigger patch, however, that's where the "incredibly agile" part coms in. Hayter attributed that speed in part to the Unreal Engine 4 foundation the game's built on and said the developers can take care of balance issues and greater tasks without messing with the game's code.

"When it comes to patches too, we're positioned to be incredibly agile with what we can tweak," Hayter said. "There are oodles of toggles our design team can tinker with. This was a major benefit to working with Unreal Engine 4 and its Blueprint visual scripting system. It empowers our designers to be able to tinker with things, including areas of the game that touch on balance issues, without needing to ever dig into code."

That bodes well for existing content, but as for its plans for the future, Torn Banner Studios also has good news. It's got plans for both short-term and long-term content, and it says players should be "very pleasantly surprised" to see how quickly that content releases.

Torn Banner Studios answered other questions as well which we'll cover soon in our full Q&A.