New World Map, New Balance, New New
(If you don't want to wait for your game to update naturally, right-click on the game in your library, go to Properties, go to Local Files, and then click Verify Integrity of Game Files to force the update.) This is a big one--some might even say it's a 'table flip'. Development
(If you don't want to wait for your game to update naturally, right-click on the game in your library, go to Properties, go to Local Files, and then click Verify Integrity of Game Files to force the update.)
This is a big one--some might even say it's a 'table flip'. Development of Guild Quest has been very game-jam-style, in retrospect. We move really fast getting features in with very quick timelines, which is great, but it also means we never get a chance to think over what we already have and address larger issues.
We've known we've had general pacing issues for a while, but kept putting it off because we 'didn't have the time'. We haven't properly dug into our progress analytics for a bit, and when we did it a few weeks ago it called out a very big flaw: people were moving to Ashfield instead of Westacre, and then hitting a wall, and then bouncing off the game forever. And it was a pretty drastic amount of people.
We want to try and get MORE people deeper into the islands so that spending the dev time to make more zones makes sense. Which means we had to set out on restructuring how the game progresses.
What started as a "We'll just remove some of the progress options" turned into "Actually the old map is a huge issue and gives no sense of progression and branching paths make no sense." Which created a whole HOST of knock-on effects.
We've heard for months that people felt really weird when they reached Bayport and defeated the first boss and path and...nothing happened. So we wanted to fix that too. Having dangling paths that lead nowhere is weird (THAT SAID, we still have some dangling paths until we make the bonus zones.)
We've heard people ask for more info in a zone for how much money and XP they're earning so we wanted to address that.
And then we started just diving into OTHER long-standing issues, like players talking about how annoying/boring rebuilding and prestiging is, so we wanted to address THAT too.
A New Map Screen!
Balance Changes
Zone Changes
Prestige Changes
Lots of big changes!! Apologies to anyone who's angry about this, but we had to make some tough calls. Sadly only a fraction of the starting audience is making it to even the fifth zone right now, so we need to try and figure out how to get more people deeper into the game. We've also been hearing a lot of people mentioning these issues that we're (hopefully) addressing with this update. Scary changes, but hopefully for the better in the long run!
EDIT
Totally forgot that we had made some changes to cards weeks ago, but then had never launched the changes and ended up forgetting about them completely. Really sorry about that!
So we ended up nerfing Common cards, since they could get updated to ridiculous levels. Those values are now pulled down to hopefully more manageable levels. You might see some of your Common cards featuring lower values now.
We also upped the cost of cards when you go past level 10, so the amount of cards you need will keep increasing. THIS MIGHT MEAN that some of you who had upgraded a card will lose a level because you don't actually own enough cards for the new cost. Sorry about that! But it should also help to keep values from getting ludicrous too fast.
HOTFIX 3:20PM