The rapidly growing extraction shooter subgenre sees Berlin-based studio Yager Development (Spec Ops: The Line, Dreadnought) fully invested in expanding The Cycle: Frontier, the free-to-play game currently available on PC. Launched in June 2022 via Steam and the Epic Games Store, The Cycle: Frontier is about to receive Season 3, introducing the first flying enemy to the game (the Howler), new campaign quests, improved matchmaking, and free loadout runs. Most importantly, though, Yager is about to end wipes once and for all, and NVIDIA DLSS 3 will be integrated into the game early next month.
To talk about all that, plus the status of console ports and the likelihood of a switch to Unreal Engine 5, we reached out to Lead Producer Matt Lighftoot. Keep reading below for the full transcript.
You recently announced that The Cycle: Frontier will soon end its wipes. Why did you make such a decision at this point in time? How did the community react so far?
Matt Lightfoot: We’ve taken the decision to move to a non-wiping economy, as we want The Cycle: Frontier to be an even more accessible free-to-play extraction shooter where FPS fans of varying skill level can equally experience a satisfying balance of tense high-stakes gameplay and rewarding long-term progression.
One of the most common pieces of feedback we’ve received from members of our community is that it can be tough to reach the later game gear and mechanics within a single season. The Cycle: Frontier got lots of cool features, such as dungeons, calling down drilling platforms, and crafting equipment at the Forge. While these features are orientated towards established Prospectors, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to engage with them. By moving to a consistent economy, we give all of our players the opportunity to experience these features with their friends.
Following the announcement, we initially saw mixed reactions. Some of our top end players with lots of played hours are rightly concerned that this would mean that there is limited replayability, which would result in vast in-game wealth sticking with a small subset of players. That is why we are implementing some significant economy changes in Season 3.
From newer players and the vast majority of people who play The Cycle: Frontier a few hours a week, we’ve had an extremely positive reaction, as they will see a long-term benefit from the time they put into the game and ultimately have the opportunity to reach The Cycle: Frontier’s later game features.
Beyond the end of wipes, what can players look forward to with Season 3? Can you also share a broad roadmap outline for the full year?
Season 3 will bring the Howler, which is a terrifying new PvE monster. We’ll be adding new campaigns and missions both in the beginning and late game to provide a better new player experience and ensure that our endgame players have additional content to explore.
We will also be giving Prospect Station, our immersive explorable lobby, a facelift.
Some players would like to see you leaning more into the sci-fi elements for maps, modes, weapons, gear, etc. Is that something you're considering?
We definitely want to utilize the lore of Fortuna III and Prospect Station. In Season 3, the Howler will be leaning into the Sci-Fi world.
In future seasons, we will ensure The Cycle: Frontier’s features are supported by our Sci-Fi fantasy so that our players can lean into the Prospector life and enjoy all of the alien and exotic opportunities in the game.
Do you have any plans to improve controller support?
We do want to improve controller support for players that prefer to use a controller, however, this is a long-term objective for our development team.
You previously mentioned that console versions of The Cycle: Frontier would be launched after Season 3. Does that mean Season 4 is a potential target? Which platforms would get the game, and would it support cross-play?
At the moment we don’t have a timeline set for console versions, and we also can’t confirm any specific feature for any of these potential versions.
Do you have any plans to switch to Unreal Engine 5?
Currently, we don’t have a timeline for this transition. However, this is something that we have scoped out and that we would like to move to with The Cycle: Frontier.
The Cycle: Frontier already supports NVIDIA DLSS 2. What kind of performance improvement can GeForce RTX owners expect from DLSS 3? What do you think about the technology?
Based on the profiling that Nvidia had completed, we are roughly seeing an increase of up to 3x FPS for users of DLSS 3 vs. not using DLSS.
One of the potential drawbacks of DLSS 3 is the additional latency due to the AI-generated frames, which could be an issue in competitive games. Does Frame Generation add significant latency in your implementation, or is Reflex able to cover that?
Reflex is able to cover that. It’s also important to point out that while The Cycle: Frontier has high stakes and tense PvP, our game is not focused on being a purely competitive game but an accessible extraction shooter. The performance gains therefore benefit a larger audience of players.
When is DLSS 3 coming out for The Cycle: Frontier?
We’re currently targeting an early March release date, however this will depend on some final checks to make ensure stability and a high-quality release to our players across all hardware.
We’ll share a more specific and final release date when we’ve finished our hardware testing.
Will you add AMD FSR/Intel XeSS, too, at some point?
We have discussed implementing this, and we’ll be in a better place to have a roadmap for this after we have released Season 3.
Thank you for your time.
