A weekend experiment had become a turning point for Wildlight’s troubled hero shooter.
Highguard has announced a major gameplay shift following sustained criticism from its player base. The hero shooter, which launched to overwhelmingly negative reviews, will now keep 5v5 as a permanent mode rather than a limited experiment. Developer Wildlight Entertainment confirmed the change in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday (3 February):
“You've been asking, and we're happy to share: 5v5 Raid Mode is here to stay!” the announcement read. Devs also appreciated the players who tested the mode over the weekend, saying they saw a “fairly even split between 3v3 and 5v5,” which helped them decide to keep the game mode.
How 5v5 became a permanent mode
The game mode was launched as an experiment during the game’s first weekend, just a few days after the game launched, in response to player feedback about the map size and the number of players in a match.
“For our first weekend, we’re excited to drop an experimental 5v5 Raid playlist,” devs shared in a Steam community blog post Saturday (31 January SGT). At the time, they also emphasised that the experimental mode was not meant to replace 3v3 raids, which will still be available to players who prefer it.
It looked like the experiment was a success, since Wildlight Entertainment announced that the 5v5 mode would become permanent. This pleased a number of players who had been asking devs to add the game mode as they believed this would improve the game. A Reddit post by MysticMeerkat named “WE DID IT!” had a significant number of upvotes, with people commenting that this move was a huge win.
“Huge W,”MirrorkatFeces said, suggesting to keep 5v5 “for casual players (like [her]) who want a lot of action,” and keeping 3v3 more for competitive, tactical players.
“It definitely made a very big difference. Matches were more fast paced and frantic,” Snomann said. They added though that the game still has a lot of issues “but this is a good step.”
While many agreed that this game still has a lot to improve, others, like Friendly_Cowboy praised the devs for having the “ability to keep the finger on the pulse of the community and make changes accordingly and quickly,” which they said “is something you just don't see in the industry these days.”
Many others suggested other game modes, which they believed would add to the fun, such as 8v8 and 10v10. However, at this point of the game is not possible given then limited number of Wardens in-game.
It seems the game has found a small yet steady following, which according to SteamDB averaging to around 8,000-10,000 players daily for its first week, after hitting an all-time peak of 97,249 concurrent players on launch day.
However, devs may need to work hard to address other feedback which include inconsistent PC performance, map size, gameplay mechanics and more. At least for now, High Guard’s ratings on Steam have improved, from Overwhelmingly Negative to Mostly Negative, to now averaging at “Mixed”, with 44% of players recommending the game.
