Hey everyone!
When we originally started writing these weekly updates on our development, we were pretty worried that we may not have enough to say each week. As it turns out, in recent weeks we’ve had the exact opposite problem - with everything that’s been going on, we have had a really hard time actually getting into everything.
So, instead of getting into our idea for ammo changes (next week, I promise), let me actually take a step back and communicate what is probably the most important change we have decided on since launching the game: Embracing Player versus Element (PvE) gameplay.
When we first started development, we wanted the game to be match based. We assumed that most people would want to play with/against their friends, and that they would want to play in matches lasting about an hour or two. After running our open beta, we very quickly realised that this was not the case. Most of our testers much preferred to play single player games, and the most requested feature was coop, rather than anything furthering Player versus Player (PvP) gameplay. Consequently, we added save games to the game before launch, as well as Pirate attack waves, to give at least some singleplayer features to those who were requesting them.
After launching the game last year, we realised that the same was true for most people who had bought the game. While some players were very interested in the PvP side, the majority of players played singleplayer, and we tried to fix and add features for the singleplayer side as much as we could. Since then, we have introduced team play, and we have created a new map (not yet available to players) which is a lot more coop/PvE focused.
As stated above, we want to embrace this further. Focusing on PvE (and coop, cause we like playing together ourselves) will allow us to balance the game a lot more toward longer games (20ish hours), and to focus on creating a challenge that is a little less “balanced” for every player. This does not mean that we will entirely abandon PvP matches, but we will prioritise balancing and designing the game with PvE in mind, and maybe create a separately balanced PvP mode further down the line.
One of the most important changes we have made in this direction already is to remove the ability to purchase goods from the port. Having the ability to buy materials was a way for us to balance competitive matches so a player would be able to focus on one part of the game/economy without boxing themselves in - however, with PvE focused gameplay, having to get every bit of material you need yourself creates a much more interesting challenge, and allows coop players to specialise more, and help each other out by sending needed goods back and forth (The image today is an example of me specialising in food/farming for a game with John, who focused on mining and stone).
With this out of the way, I think that the updates of the next weeks will be a lot easier to understand in context, and I am looking forward to hearing what you think.
Until next week!