Just today, the roadmap for Back 4 Blood was announced, detailing new additional content for the game, included in the roadmap is the feature of single-player progression, which many players considered to be a fundamental issue.
Back 4 Blood was released on the 8th of October and created to be a spiritual successor to the well renowned Left 4 Dead franchise, as intended by developer Turtle Rock Studios. The game features the same formula as its supposed predecessor, where four players are pitted against an everlasting zombie horde consisting of normal and special enemies, as they cooperate to survive and progress through the level against their opposition.
The Devs released their roadmap for the game on Twitter hours ago, describing the plans that they have for the game going forward. November will mostly consist of quality of life improvements and fixes to the game so as to improve player experiences across the board. This is followed by something more substantial in December, where solo progression is to be added to the game, alongside additional cards that can be used to customize character decks, a seasonal event, and a “Ridden Practice Area”, presumably meant to give players the ability to practice using the special Ridden that they are able to control in Swarm Mode.
Cleaners, the future is lookin' bright! Here's a roadmap of what's to come for Fort Hope. #Back4Blood pic.twitter.com/IHCvGqZXO0
— Back 4 Blood (@back4blood) November 8, 2021
The bulk of the content, however, seems to be scheduled for arrival as of 2022, the free update of said year places emphasis on adding diversity and improving the game-play loop, through adding new difficulty settings, a new co-op mode, and corruption cards which adds more randomized encounters and enemy variations. The player will also have melee weapon adjustments to look forward to. Whilst the first expansion of the annual pass is set to come out with new playable characters, weapons, activities, and new enemies for players to fight against. If all other future expansions were to include such breadth of content or more, then players should have things to look forward to later down the line of 2022 for Back 4 Blood.
The addition of solo progression that the Back 4 Blood roadmap has outlined is directed towards one of the major grievances that players of the game have sent them. Playing the game in single-player mode stops players from being able to earn achievements, and does not yield any card drops which is essential for creating a good deck to deal with enemies and bosses in high-difficulty settings.
Though it is true that players have all the cards unlocked by default whilst in such mode, any effort or time spent in singleplayer lacks significant meaning, due to players not getting any value out of playing through the game on single-player, whilst the game’s focus is placed on co-op and the ability for players to grow and come up with better solutions for the numerous Ridden encounters they can expect throughout the campaign. It will be interesting to see what exactly is meant by “solo offline with campaign progression”, and whether or not Turtle Rock Studios would be able to come up with a satisfying solution that placates players who are more inclined to commit to solo play.
Back 4 Blood is available now on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series S/X, and PC via Steam and Epic Games.
