Interview: Yiming Sun, the Lead Producer of Arena Breakout, speaks about creating a hardcore shooter for mobile

If you've been following our coverage, you'll know that Arena Breakout is an upcoming tactical shooter due to release later this year. Developer MoreFun Studios has hosted numerous betas since the game was first announced, with the team hard at work tweaking different aspects to ensure it's as good as can be. We'll have a first impressions article up soon, but for now, I will say it's looking promising.

We recently had a chance to chat with Yiming Sun, the game's Lead Producer. Together we discussed the inevitable comparisons to Escape from Tarkov, the importance of player feedback when making changes, and the team's plans for helping newer players get to grips with Arena Breakout's many facets.

Could you please introduce yourself and your role on Arena Breakout?

My name is Yiming Sun. I started my career as a level designer about 20 years ago, and I used to work for game studios like Ubisoft and Guerrilla Games. I mostly worked on shooter game franchises like Ghost Recon and Killzone. After that, I joined Tencent Games’ MoreFun Studios and began and continue to work on mobile games. Now I am the lead producer of Arena Breakout.

What do you believe sets Arena Breakout apart from other mobile shooters?

In my mind, Arena Breakout is a tactical shooter. It distinguishes itself from other mobile shooters on the market with its focus on providing players a serious tactical shooter experience and immersive tension in the palm of their hands. The game seamlessly brings the core experience of console and PC tactical shooters to mobile.

Arena Breakout offers a staggering amount of customisation for weapons. Why was this important for you to include in the game? And what do you believe it brings to the experience?

Combat lies at the heart of tactical shooters, and weapon customization has totally evolved the experience. In the pre-battle strategy phase, players must choose weapons and equipment with different performance statistics and requirements. In turn, firefights themselves are intense because they are full of variables.

Intelligence is key in every Arena Breakout match. Players must anticipate the kind of DIY weapons and equipment their opponent will carry. To add to the realism, we put a lot of effort into studying weaponry and refined our weapon design accordingly.

What were the biggest challenges the team faced during development?

The biggest challenge came mainly from whether the team had the confidence to develop such a complex and serious project on mobile. Many of our peers expressed pessimism when they learned we were working on such a project, including some fairly experienced developers. Arena Breakout is indeed very different from other mobile games - people might be quick to assume it’s simple, easy, joyful and funny. Fortunately, myself and the studios’ leader were very firm in our direction and managed to convince key team members to continue working on the project.

When looking at Arena Breakout's gameplay, people will say it's like Escape from Tarkov. Are you happy with that comparison? And what do you believe differentiates Arena Breakout from Tarkov, aside from being a mobile game?

Frankly speaking, we learned a lot from EFT's gameplay, and there are some questions and accusations of over-imitation when Arena Breakout is compared to EFT. Plenty of successful game models have imitators and followers, and there are many PC and mobile games that have imitated EFT. I'm not terribly bothered by this, as mere imitation does not lead to success. As you mentioned, there are big differences between Arena Breakout and EFT aside from the fact that Arena Breakout is a mobile game.

First of all, Arena Breakout is a service-oriented online game. We won't focus on role-playing gameplay. Rather, Arena Breakouts’s system and economy are designed as a repeatable single-game experience.

Secondly, all the core elements of Arena Breakout, including levels, weapons, enemies and the game’s plot/premise, are original. At first glance, our game may share the same realistic military style as EFT, just as WWII games share similar elements with one another. Generally speaking, it’s hard to see the difference at first glance in post-apocalyptic survival games.

Finally, Arena Breakout is based on extraction-stylized gameplay, and will derive many different gameplay elements and plot content from this genre. This includes the operation cycle that allows players to advance and gain experience in the game.

In short, regarding content, Arena Breakout and EFT are completely different.
Interestingly, I’ve seen players compare Arena Breakout’s graphics directly to EFT and other console and PC masterpieces, which indicates the quality of our game’s visuals does meet our expectations.

A buzz term I've seen regarding Arena Breakout is Volumetric Cloud technologies. Can you explain what this is and what it brings to the game?

Volumetric Cloud technology is one of the more advanced techniques we apply to sky and atmospheric lighting effects, often in large 3D games for consoles and PCs. In a nutshell, it means that the clouds in the sky are physically simulated instead of using simple mapping. The most obvious benefit is that when our team needs to integrate different weather systems and times of day into levels, we can get very realistic atmospheric lighting effects.

A few examples of this technology in action may be seen in Arena Breakout’s morning sunset, cloud diffraction after rainfall, and cloud density. As previously mentioned, we want Arena Breakout to provide a sufficiently immersive tactical shooter experience. Immersive environments are very important to engage players, and lighting effects also play an important role in enhancing the game’s sense of realism.

You have spent time working on the game's sound effects. But, in my experience, most mobile players game with the sound off. Do you have plans to encourage players to enjoy Arena Breakout with the volume turned up?

You can actually play with the sound turned off! Our sound visualization assistance system will help players enjoy the game smoothly in most cases. However, when the situation allows, we highly recommend players plug in their headsets to experience Arena Breakout as if they were playing a PC or console game.

This way, they can fully enjoy the game’s immersive combat and listen to everything going on in their immediate environment - this’ll be especially important during later, more challenging levels. Keeping this in mind, Arena Breakout will be best enjoyed with a headset, as the external sound feature of one’s phone will be limited by the phone itself, and turning up the volume may not be a great experience.

How important will the game's community be when making changes to Arena Breakout?

We take player feedback very seriously. This includes hardcore players and those who do not traditionally enjoy tactical shooters. As a service game, I want Arena Breakout to be loved by as many players as possible. We will listen very carefully to the voice of the community, think through and validate their various comments and suggestions, and ultimately use research and internal testing to determine which comments will directly affect new versions.

In terms of fostering a community, there are a few things we believe we need to provide from the get-go that will show our players we're serious about listening to them:

A strong anti-cheat system: Not just in terms of technology, where we have an advanced automated system to detect cheaters and a team of engineers focused solely on maintaining game integrity, but also in terms of attitude. We have a zero-tolerance policy here. We added an elimination replay feature for players to better participate in the process, which has the additional benefit of allowing players to self-educate during each unsuccessful raid.

Strong anti-toxicity: Similarly, we want our community to know what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior. The best way to do that is through clearly communicated warnings and consequences. Players shouldn't be surprised when they're hit with a ban for blowing up their teammates for the third time in order to take their gear.

Open channels: We're very active with our players in all of our socials, whether it's Discord or Reddit, Facebook or Twitter. Without the ability to communicate directly with our players, we wouldn't be able to hear their voices.

You have hosted several closed beta tests for the game in different countries. How has the feedback been? Have you made any notable changes based on player thoughts?

We heard from users all over the world during our various tests. The most common concern was language support, which I’m happy to say is one of our top priorities.

Secondly, we noticed there is a device threshold for next-generation shooters on mobile. Players from many countries worldwide want to enjoy and experience Arena Breakout, so the optimization and adaptation of the game for more devices is another priority.

Another important goal is to improve the new player experience, especially for those who have not been exposed to tactical shooters. We want to make Arena Breakout more accessible so that newcomers may learn the rules and gameplay faster.

Looking ahead. Do you already have plans for the game post-launch? If so, can you sure any details with us about what they might be?

New characters, new maps, and new challenges are definitely planned. Stay tuned!

You recently announced that you are working on controller support for Arena Breakout. Will players using controller and touch be placed into the same matches or will there be separate queues?

Since Arena Breakout was designed and optimized around touch control, players using a controller won’t gain any noticeable advantages. At the moment, there are no plans for separate queues.

Valley and Farm Blockade are two new levels for players to enjoy. Can you tell us what differentiates these maps from the ones already available and how you believe it will change how players approach the game?

Valley and Farm were each introduced during the test period. Two map modes are available in the Farm map: Normal and Blockade.

Although the Normal and Blockade map modes are identical in terms of terrain, there are many differences to be found in each mode’s settings and enemy parameters. Blockades are generally more difficult, which means higher enemy strength, fewer extraction points, and a higher barrier to entry. However, Blockade areas also net higher returns. Compared with their Normal counterparts, item values are higher, there are more file boxes and drawers, and the probability of discovering a high-value item is higher. Therefore, the same map can produce completely different game experiences via different modes.

We hope that as Arena Breakout’s community grows, players with different technical skills, equipment capabilities, and combat styles will learn to work together. On this battlefield, it’s important that players build their wits as well as their courage, proudly assume the roles that suit them, and adapt to an ecosystem that will always keep them on their toes. Immersion lies at the heart of every Arena Breakout experience.

You are marketing Arena Breakout as a hardcore shooter for mobile, which isn't catered for that often. With that being said, it's quite a complicated game for beginners to get into. What plans do you have for making the onboarding process for new players a smoother experience?

We’ve noticed many new players were relatively unfamiliar with Arena Breakout’s gameplay, and some of the game’s design wasn’t easy to understand by those who have not been exposed to military first-person shooters. However, many of Arena Breakout’s seemingly complex systems do not have to be mastered from the get-go. Players will gradually familiarize themselves as they experience the game. We’ve also optimized and rebuilt our tutorials for genre newcomers.

Our goal is to allow new players to enjoy the fun of Arena Breakout without spending a lot of effort on learning, and to reduce the tedious ramp up process. We also plan on educating beginners outside in-game tutorials with promotional content including gameplay introductions, knowledge encyclopedias, and videos across various official channels.This way, players will be able to familiarize themselves with Arena Breakout before they stomp onto the battlefield.

There's always scepticism with any free-to-play game as players assume it will be pay-to-win. How will Arena Breakout be monetised?

Arena Breakout will be a fair free-to-play online game, as paying players will not be able to buy combat abilities that other players cannot obtain for free. Players will mainly pay for value-added perks that do not affect the game’s balance, such as direct access to materials and game currency rewards (both of which can be obtained completely for free), or guaranteed safety boxes that won’t allow paying players to win more easier, but will rather reduce the losses they suffer in defeat. We also plan to explore cosmetic options like personalized clothing and weapon skins.

Arena Breakout has enjoyed a lot of popularity on Twitch during the beta testing. How important is the feedback provided by streamers? And likewise, will you listen to both content creators and other players when making changes to the game?

First of all, we want to thank every creator who produced content on Arena Breakout during our beta testing period. Their love of the game makes us feel like all of our hard work is really paying off. Creators are very important to us, so we schedule regular online activities and interviews with creators, and we also recently held a special offline event dedicated to them. We’ve been carefully listening to their feedback and plan on introducing changes based on their suggestions.

For example, in this offline event, the creators gave us tips to improve the game’s FOV Slider, Proximity Chat, Leaderboards, Control Schemes, and more. We’re already begun working on adjusting Control Schemes, Anti-cheat measures and Beginner Guides. We fully understand and optimize the game based on feedback in a targeted manner in hopes of providing a better battlefield experience to all players around the world.