What's new, my puppers?
I've been keeping very busy this past week, between your amazing feedback and my own personal goals for Ephemeral Tale! I thought now would be a great time to give you guys some insight on the launch of the game, the issues faced, why they existed, and where we're heading in the near future. So let's start at the top, and tackle the launch:
Launch Day Blues
Any of you who played the game the first day are aware that the game launched in (quite frankly, an unacceptable) a not great state. Defending myself here is pointless, because at the end of the day, I'm asking you for your money, time, and energy-- to be honest, I truly had no clue that the game was in such a chaotic state of balance. During internal testing, there was 3 ways that I tested numbers: Level 1 with starter gear, level 25 with green gear, and max level with maxed gear. These three benchmarks were within what I felt was a certain range of tolerance. I expected that at most, players would have maybe 200 points in a given stat at level cap. But..
Y'all went bananas. Which is okay! That's my fault, and something that I should have anticipated better. Lessons learned, and all that. So, on the one hand, some players were absolutely breaking the limits of the game. This lead to an emergency patch that attempted to band-aid these issues by rubber-banding the numbers back a bit. If you were lower leveled, you'd go from say 80 points in a stat to maybe 65-- but if you had 500+? You got pulled way back to 300 some odd. But this also caused an issue: now, Scrolls of Power weren't giving enough points to offset the rubber-banding that was occurring, so even though you were receiving those points, you got none of the benefits of them. Rough day, huh?
But what about the other end of the balance scale? Well, turns out that balancing the game around your own skill level is a bad idea (who'da thunk it besides everyone that did?). So, if you were someone with patience for the rather old-school approach of "slap-em-until-they-cry," you generally persevered and came out the other end with a pile of gear with which to inflict that pain unto further generations. If not? Suddenly, the game was a frustrating, cruel, punishing experience.
And on top of all of this, you have game-stopping bugs! It's like getting kicked in the shins after stubbing your toe-- you know it'll feel better eventually, but hot damn does it sting in the moment. Thankfully, with a lot of hours clocked in the engine over the past week, I've ironed out most (if not all) of the game-breaking bugs that have been reported, save a weird zoom issue that I've failed to recreate across ~8 machines or so. So what's next, then?
The Path Forward
Despite our rocky launch, I'm still excited for the future. Heck, I might be even more excited now. You guys put Ephemeral Tale through its paces, and came out the other side with constructive feedback, ideas for future content drops, and most importantly: your passion. Normally, there exists a kind of barrier between a player base of a game, and its developer. I want that to be as small a wall as possible. You may find me holding some secrets about content I'm working on from time to time in the future, but that's because part of this relationship is that I want to surprise you. I want to make you happy. I want to bring joy to your life. If it's in the form of a cool content drop, or a neat narrative sprinkle, or whatever else may come down the line. But for the time being, let's talk about the next two weeks.
Right now, the game is in an alright state. The balance isn't where I'd like it to be, but it should be playable, if a bit less than ideal. As for more niche issues, just because there hasn't been a patch pushed to the main branch in a couple of days, doesn't mean that I've forgotten about y'all. Quite the opposite, actually! I'm currently working on the first Major Patch of Ephemeral Tale. This patch won't be completely ready for a couple of weeks, but here's the scope of the update:
- Combat overhaul
- Enemy overhaul
- Gear overhaul
- Two smaller secrets
- Expanded loot pool
Everything has been overhauled, balance wise. Started from scratch, rebuilt from the ground up for the way that you guys have engaged with the game. I've also drastically changed the testing process, as well. We've had a handful of separate players try the new version and give us feedback on the balance of the update. So far, things are going well, but there's still a lot left to change, test, rebalance, and retweak. If you're someone who bought and played Ephemeral Tale day 1, thank you so much for believing in me, supporting me, and more importantly, for believing and supporting Ephemeral Tale. If you're just jumping in now, I hope that you have fun with the current state of the game. Major Update #1 will drastically change the way the game feels, so don't worry if the game doesn't feel right quite yet. We've got a long road ahead of us. I won't go anymore into specifics quite yet about Major Update #1, but here's a sneak peek for you to close out the Pupdate:
I'll have more info on MP#1 for you in a week or so. Until then, if you have encounter any bugs or issues, feel free to report them in the usual ways (Discussion boards, email, twitter, whatever is most convenient)!
Have fun,
--Ryan