XField Paintball is a small team. After 30 months of a hard and passionate indie work, we released the game when we had this package:
• A netcode, stable enough, with a paintball sophisticated physics (from fart the longest job),
• A scalable low latency Azure Servers infrastructure,
• The minimum animation and design integrated,
• Our gameplay, based on the very cool IRL paintball strategy and tactics.

It is paintball high season for sure, but, let’s be clear. As a small indie studio, we launched at this stage just to make the development possible. To make it simple, we need sales to keep the studio going...

At this point (two days after release), we note that players DO NOT use what the game designer imagined. We are no more in the beta, comfortably discussing on Discord with the testers (https://discord.gg/mTHTAcT), and the game is not explicit enough.
As a consequence, the game is perceived as really poor.

We want to change that, and get your constructive encouragement to continue this way, or critics to further improve.

1. By improving the ingame interface, HUD, feedbacks, instructions… Work is already in progress. Check the community hub for updates announcements.
2. By taking time to explain, out of the game, until the game is clear enough. On Steam hub community, Facebook, …

Talking about explanations, we found 6 main problems related to game design that needs clarifications.

[Strategy tools before the game starts / “Prebank strategy”[/b]

• Captain role
  
• Captain instructions: Go and shoot locations
  
• Captain instructions: Roles

* During the match

• XFP3 best way to play: IMPORTANT
  
• Game controls
  
• Communication tools

When a game starts, we see most of the players waiting.
-> The game offers 10 seconds per players (5 players in my team = 50 seconds) to the captain to prepare a strategy for the WHOLE team.
One captain per team. So if you are captain, you have to use this prebank time to give your instructions.


The captain is in the middle of the team.
With A and D control, the Captain changes the active user.
When a user is active:
• Mouse click left = Gives position to GO instruction.
• Mouse click right = Gives position to SHOOT instruction.
When done, change of player and give instructions like that to all your teammates.


The Captain has the power to affect roles or profile to all his teamates.
Choose between one of the three colors and picto on the bottom screen, then simply drag & drop on the player.
Repeat for each player.

Each player can see his profil on the bottom left of his screen, and performance gauges.

Please pay attention to this chapter.
Paintball IRL is NOT a basic « FPS sport ». Play paintball as you play CoD or CS, and you’re shot in 2 seconds.

First, it’s a 1 shot 1 kill gamplay. So, paintball is the art of playing covered by bunkers, organizing tactics shooting lines, and synchonizing movements with your team, from bunkers to bunkers (even if rush is part of strategy, but it’s not the main way).
You have to block opponents’ progression thanks to tactical shooting lines, to neutralize opponents in 1 on 1 markers fights, and communicate with your team to adapt the Captain’s strategy.

That’s the reason why, if you enter XFP3 directly applying CoD or CS tricks, tips and skills, you won’t get the interest of XFP3. As a small indie studio, we do not have the pretention, or the intention to copy and try to be better than the FPS world leaders ;-)
But, we want to offer to the paintball community a truly immersive paintball video game, AND, to offer to the whole FPS / Sport / Action fans something fresh and new.
For sure, we will have to adapt, and maybe change many things, but we want to offer to the Steam players, humbly, a new gameplay, even if at the beginning a bit « disruptive ».

Parabolic shooting is a key factor. It was very difficult to simulate, as each paintball has its own physic! But this introduces a new gameplay point, as you can shoot a player you can’t see behind a cover.

In other words, making a shooter simply replacing gun balls by paintballs is not our objective.

Let’s continue to explain our metagame proposal to make paintball a cool and new online video gameplay.


Classical FPS game designers highlights movements, precision and velocity skills,
This is important in XFP3, but not only.

We also want to highlight ability to play covered, team communication skills, and parabolic shooting lines with a brand new sensation (and lower precision simulated, like paintball IRL).

For that reason, we propose an original keybinding:
Ergonomic SHIFT control is not used, as usual to run (to run and shoot).
In XFP3, we propose to change the purpose of WASD, in order to improve the covering play.
So, when you are close to a bunker, press shift, and WASD will become:
• W: Snap shot, over the bunker.
• A / D: Lean, left and right.
• S: Change hand.

CTRL control becomes here “Run”.

The cover is an other mode so you can’t lean and walk the same time (paintballers never do that ;-))

Of course, XFP3 Settings allow you to change control mapping. But it is important for us to explain our game design intention.


Communication skills are key to win. Very soon, you’ll be able to play with your friends, but now you learn to play with unknown players. That’s why we integrated 2 communication tools:
• « Command wheel »: Press V to inform all your team of simple instructions. For example « Let’s push right ». Whatever your language, this is made to be fast, multicultural, and easy to use.
• « 3D Marker »: Press B to position a plot on the Field.