WARDOGS developer admits Season 2 moved too fast

Bulkhead has admitted that WARDOGS Season 2 moved too quickly, with the developer now planning a slower update rhythm after rapid progression and an early economy reset left players frustrated. The studio says it pushed too much new content into the season while failing to spend enough time on the multiplayer fundamentals that made the game successful in the first place. ¹

Executive Producer Joe Brammer, Lead Game Designer Pete Harries, Creative Director Tim Nightingale and Technical Designer Mark Tadros discussed the rollout in a developer conversation reported by PCGamesN. The team described Season 2 as a learning experience: progression was faster than expected, the economy wipe was quickly undermined by levelling speeds, and players were left wondering how much effort was worth investing when Season 3 was being brought forward. ¹

Why Season 2 went wrong

Bulkhead expected players to progress faster than they had during Season 1, when the game and its systems were still unfamiliar. It underestimated the scale of that change, however. Nightingale said the season was too fast, while Brammer acknowledged that the team had made “a huge mistake” by trying to pack in more content instead of iterating on the underlying experience. ¹

The studio also says the early success of WARDOGS distorted its expectations. The team reacted too strongly to fears that players would run out of things to do, despite previously planning to accept a lighter content schedule during early access. The result was more features, but less time to test and refine them. Brammer said the quality dropped as the team chased quantity, while the player response to broken experience gains made the problem impossible to ignore. ¹

The pressure was made worse by the way Steam reviews affect visibility. Brammer said the studio was concerned that a slide from positive to mixed reviews would reduce the game’s reach, and that fear contributed to rushed responses and rushed content. He also stressed that the team would not ask players to change ratings they genuinely believed in, although he hopes some players will reconsider their scores if the game’s direction improves. ¹

Season 3 will slow the pace

Bulkhead is currently targeting Thursday, November 12 for Season 3, which will bring another economy reset. The studio now favours three-month seasons with a smaller mid-season update rather than the monthly refreshes it says it cannot sustain. That change should give the team more time to test systems and respond to feedback before a major update reaches players. ¹

Season 3 will also introduce limited, or “primitive”, servers designed to recreate the low-to-mid-game experience. These servers will remove power weapons and vehicles from the mix, giving players a way to play with a less aggressive progression curve while Bulkhead works on a longer-term solution. The team is also considering fuel systems and other restrictions, although it has not committed to a final answer for the game’s sandbox balance. ¹

WARDOGS is a large-scale tactical FPS from Bulkhead, built around combined-arms battles, destructible environments and up to 100 players split across three teams. Its official Steam listing positions it as an all-out warfare game where teams fight over control zones, while the store artwork shows the helicopter-led battlefield scale that Bulkhead is aiming for. ²

Our opinion

Bulkhead’s admission is more useful than another promise of constant content. Live-service games often treat a packed roadmap as proof of health, but WARDOGS’s own account suggests the opposite: an update can be full of new systems and still feel worse if the basic progression loop is not working.

The three-month plan sounds like the sensible correction. It gives the studio a clearer chance to test resets, progression and vehicle balance before asking players to commit another season of time. The primitive servers are also a practical bridge rather than a grand redesign. They will not solve every balance problem, but they could make the game’s early and mid-game less punishing while Bulkhead works out what should happen next.

The real test is whether Season 3 feels deliberate rather than merely earlier. If Bulkhead can turn this unusually candid post-launch diagnosis into a steadier rhythm, WARDOGS may yet benefit from the reset it currently needs.