Hi everyone,
We have received feedback from players about the quest progression of Enshrouded. Many of you are frustrated with the fact that it is currently mainly server-side instead of player-side. We have some good news to share.
When designing this system, we believed that the best way to enjoy Enshrouded was with a group of friends who are all working cooperatively together. However, we know that having quests completed while one player is offline might feel bad for those who feel they are missing parts of the gameplay experience.
We designed Enshrouded as a co-op game. While working on it, we envisioned one group of friends experiencing the world together—sharing bases, resources, crafting recipes, and loot.
Furthermore, we wanted players to be able to play together meaningfully with different groups of friends and on different servers. We developed a game environment where a new player could join a long-running server and jump into the same action as their friends. Skipping the “tutorial” server quests to instead learn through conversation and cooperation, uniting the group.
Our reasoning was that players shouldn’t feel forced to participate in quests. Our player base is diverse, after all. Not everyone is bound to enjoy our combat or puzzles as much as building a base or exploring. If some players in a group want to focus on building or farming, while others are going on adventures, both making meaningful progress for the group, that should be fine.
However, we are now exploring ways to implement the following options for player-based quest progression. Here’s a quick overview:
- We want to offer an option to be able to personally complete every quest.
- We want to improve the Quest Log to better communicate the state of each quest in terms of server vs personal progression.
- We have already reduced respawn timers to 30 minutes, so it is possible to defeat a boss again or to destroy a Shroud root, etc.
We currently do not have an exact timeline for the implementation of these improvements, but work on these features has already started.
One last thing on progression: we want to point out that the system as it is now will not be replaced, as many players like it as it is. Our goal with these changes is to offer players additional options to enjoy Enshrouded and its quests.
On the larger topic of group play, we wanted to specify a couple of already existing systems geared towards group experience. First off, playing in a group increases the chances that chests and bosses will contain bonus loot. There was a bug affecting this feature, which is now fixed.
Enemy strength also scales with group size. This means enemies become more challenging when facing groups, without becoming punching bags.
Finally we are always looking into further improvements, such as server rights management or allowing to have the NPCs in each of your bases.
We are excited to tell you a little more about our plans for the future soon!
Thank you all so much for your detailed feedback and support for the initial release of our game. Enshrouded has already grown so much bigger than our team could have possibly dreamed of, and we are beyond excited to continue to shape and grow the world of Embervale into the best game it can be. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, and please keep the feedback coming!
The Keen Team