Skull and Bones will launch on Steam on August 22, the same day as the Season 3 launch, bringing adventures on the high seas to even more players on PC. In addition to a new invading sea lord on the Indian Ocean, new features, world events, and a refreshed Smuggler Pass, a significant number of mouse-and-keyboard improvements will be implemented.
Ubisoft News spoke to development team members including Lead Gameplay Programmer Yi-Xun Neo, Senior Lead UI Artist Alexandr Yantchuk, UX Designer Jonathan Debray, Senior Technical Director of UI Pascal Lavallieres, UI Artist Warren Goh, Project Manager Samuel Soh, Junior Development Tester Shafique Mohamed, and Junior Gameplay Programmer Solomon Tan. Together, they shared their insights about why they made the updates and how the patch will improve Skull and Bones for mouse-and-keyboard players.
Why did you decide to update mouse and keyboard now?
We're always looking to improve our PC experience as a whole. With the upcoming release of Skull and Bones on Steam, we wanted to revisit the keyboard-and-mouse user controls, as many aspects of it were initially based on the controller. Our goal here was to make the game feel more "PC" when using keyboard and mouse.
Our ongoing goal is to create a more seamless Skull and Bones experience for our PC players. With this round of improvements, playing Skull and Bones on PC with a mouse and keyboard will start feeling much more natural to the PC gamer, with more optimized controls, including double-click functionality, dragging and scrolling improvements with the mouse on the map, visually specialized widgets, and more.
How did you decide which features to update? How important was community feedback when making those decisions?
We're all gamers at heart, so the first thing we did was put ourselves in the shoes of a PC player and play the game on keyboard and mouse. While playing, we identified four main areas to tackle: map navigation, the shortcut bar, inventory management, and specific key binds. From these four segments, we identified key changes that would significantly improve the overall keyboard-and-mouse experience.
Can you talk about the process behind some of these updates?
As one example, one of the items we noticed early in the process was that the key for disembarking from the ship to land was [S], which is not usually an "interact" button for a PC player. Typically, this would be [F] or [E] instead. However, [F] was already taken up by the action of plundering and trading with settlements.
This led us to create separate entries in the key bind selection menu for disembarking and interaction with settlements, as well as identifying other entries that could also be amended. Players can also edit the new default key bindings as they see fit.
Which of the updates are you most proud of?
The new shortcut bar, for sure. Compared to its original iteration, the way it is displayed now is much more consistent with the expected PC gaming experience. While revisiting shortcut bars, we also identified the potential to include more quality-of-life features by adding the ability to switch between different sets of shortcuts. Initially slated for a PC-only feature, it will also be added to other platforms as well.
Will you continue to monitor PC players' experiences and update the game accordingly?
This is an iterative process, and not the end of the improvements we intend to make to Skull and Bones' PC experience. Once these changes go live, we'll be actively monitoring feedback while continuing to work closely with our community to see what other refinements PC players would like to see in the game.
We also have the Insider Program, which has been running since 2022, and will continue into future seasons. This is where our players can have early access to new content in our game, and work closely with the development team to provide feedback. If you're interested, you can sign up via our website: https://www.skullandbonesgame.com/insider-program.
Full Update List
Selection States and Behaviors
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Hovering over an item will no longer select it by default. Mouse-and-keyboard players can now left-click to select the item and scroll tooltip details (without performing a mouse navigation from item grid to tooltip)
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Removed the concept of switching between inventories in the warehouse. Now, hovering over the item will contextually switch to the active inventory
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Interacting with items, such as bringing up the actions menu, can now be done by right-clicking
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Double-clicking on a hovered item will perform the first action in the actions menu (such as consume, discard, or transfer an item)
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Improved overall visuals for clarity
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Improved visual clarity for when an element is clickable or not
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Improved scroll bar visuals
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Reduced opacity of the button prompt in the objective tracker in cases where it cannot be triggered
Ease of Use in Menus
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Ship loadouts (including Weapons, Armor, Furniture, and Cosmetics) now use horizontal tabs instead of vertical tabs, allowing mouse-and-keyboard players to switch between tabs by simply hovering over the category icon
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When an action menu is shown, clicking anywhere outside of the action menu will close it
Key Binds
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Decoupled settlement interaction and disembarking button-remapping options - each of them can now be separately bound
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Supported [Hold] options for most [Press] keys that can be rebound
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Added a shortcut to directly access Journal [J] by default
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Rebound toaster notification keys for [F1] and [F2] by default
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Rebound cancellation of rebinding keys to [Hold][Esc] by default
Map Navigation
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Zooming in/out on the map will now be based on the mouse cursor location, not the middle of the screen
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Zooming in/out of the map with the mouse wheel is now possible when the Journal is open
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Dragging the map with a mouse now retains the mouse cursor and follows a 1:1 ratio, allowing the screen distance moved by the map to correspond to the equal amount of screen distance moved by the mouse
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While dragging the map with a mouse, the mouse movement is clamped to the edge of the map
Mouse and Keyboard Exclusive UI
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A new horizontal "action bar" is shown instead of the "action wheel" in the HUD when in mouse-and-keyboard control scheme
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Switch quickly between three different action bars with the mouse wheel, with a total of 12 quick action slots. Note: players using a controller can also switch the different action wheels by pressing and holding DPAD UP/DOWN buttons
To celebrate Skull and Bones' Steam launch, the game will be available for up to 60% off from August 22 - September 4.
Skull and Bones is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Amazon Luna, and PC via Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games Store, and is now available to wishlist on Steam ahead of its August 22 release. The Skull and Bones Premium Edition, which includes the premium bonus pack, extra missions, and a Smuggler Pass token in addition to the base game, is also included with a Ubisoft+ Premium subscription
