When Steep update 1.03 launched last week for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, it included tricks improvements on all platforms, as well as a fix for ghosts stuttering at 60 frames-per-second on PS4 Pro and PC.
Here’s the improvements made to tricks:
If you ever struggled to perform tricks on skis or snowboard, this should definitely make things easier for you!
From now on, you can pre-select your next rotation before releasing your jump. Just push the left stick forward toward a specific direction, release your jump and your rotation will instantly be triggered.
Also, you can now combine turns and rotations more smoothly. Try to trigger tricks as you turn or switch and you’ll really feel the difference!
If you still appreciate calculating timing and using additional stick inputs, don’t worry, nothing has changed for you.
We hope you’ll enjoy these tricks improvements and look forward to hearing your feedback soon!
In an interview with Game Informer, Creative Director Igor Manceau explained what you can expect from Steep’s post-launch sports coming in the Extreme Pack DLC – Rocket Wings, Base Jumping, and Speed Gliding:
Rocket Wing definitely impacts wingsuits. The fact that you can get higher and not always fall from your initial position really changes the way you see the mountain, and it’s just pure fun. This one is very important for us from just a fantasy, pure fun perspective.
The base jump actually is more of what we call the chain ability. What it brings is your ability as a player to start, for instance, skiiing, jump from a cliff – that’s the basejump ability – and then trigger paraglide, land, and move on. That ability we like a lot because it actually allows you to revisit the whole mountain in a way that is really different. The zones where you couldn’t pass because of a huge cliff, you suddenly can open them. The places where you had to go for various lines, to go from top to bottom, you can now chain it and create a challenge that actually chains all these moments.
When the new sports are added to Steep, Manceau acknowledges that the player base will be kind of split, as some challenges will only open to those who buy the DLC. “It’s right that it kind of divides the community between those who have them and those who haven’t, but we felt like that it was less of a problem than actually adding worlds and environments where the community was really split,” he continued. You’ll still be able to play together in the same zone as a player with the DLC though, they just might have more abilities than you.
Steep has only been out for a month, but Manceau hopes to follow a similar post-release structure as Rainbow Six Siege and The Crew, where they tweak stuff here and there, add new content, and make the game much better overall. All in all, Manceau says the philosophy with Steep is to support the game that just launched, rather than jump to a right to a sequel:
And that’s a major focus for us, even though we may start working on a follow up at some point, the focus for us right now is really to keep working on Steep – the one you know. And it’s almost an industry switch. We used to work very hard until the launch, ship the game, potentially fix a few things, come with the DLC, and then start working on what comes next or another project, and so on.
Asked about the usage of each current sport in Steep, Manceau said snowboarding is in first, skiing is in second, wingsuits are in third, and paragliding is “way behind,” which they expected due to the pace of it being so different.
Because Manceau thinks they missed something at the beginning of the game in terms of how Steep’s explained and what you can do, the team will make some improvements to the opening hour very soon. They’re also working on how to fix issues where players are stuck in a chalet and can’t stop. “It’s going to be fixed in various updates because some of the topics are tougher to solve than others,” he added. “It’ll be more and more fluid. It’s really a few villages. The thing that makes it feel worse than it is is that it’s actually at the beginning of the game, really in the Aravis. It’s less of a problem in other places within the game, but we’re working on that.”
Although nothing’s set in stone, Manceau did say they might think about making Steep playable offline at some point in the future. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen, [but] we may consider it,” he said. “But so far, the plan is really to push on the online aspect, which works quite well.”
[Source: Ubisoft Forums, Game Informer]
