[Dev Blog] Sharing relics in multiplayer mode
Hello, this is Wonho Son.
Anvil’s Early Access / Game Preview date has been confirmed for Dec. 2 and is approaching fast. While this news is super exciting, there is a lot to prepare, so I am both worried and excited. Today, I will be discussing the relic sharing system that many people have given feedback about.
The idea of sharing relics in multiplayer started with the intention of giving a way for players to communicate with each other.
If there isn’t anything information to convey in multiplayer mode, there would be few reasons for communication. By sharing relics, I hoped people would communicate in different ways.
In the first playtest, both the positive and negative sides of sharing relics were found.
The positive aspect was that in teams that had good communication, the relic sharing system acted as a means of collaboration. Players shared relics, discussed who would be best to take a certain relic, and were considerate of other players’ situations.
In other teams, however, the same features were the source of the problems. Without any communication, one player would rush to the vaults and buy all the good relics while the other user stacked up gold without the means to use them, making the game less enjoyable.
The development team contemplated on the two opposite results. We had three demo tests after the first, and to cut to the results, we felt that our intentions were good, but our method of bringing it to the game had problems. Sharing relics became an obstacle to players creating their personal builds, which led people to play in restricted freedom and made the gameplay boring instead of making the game more fun. Instead of making multiplayer mode feel like a collaboration, players felt that they were obstructed by teammates.
After much discussion, we decided to make the relics in the vaults exclusive to each player. One thing that’s a shame is that too much time passed before making this decision, which has led to the relics being shared between players for the Early Access version.
Making relics exclusive to each player isn’t just about disabling the share feature but came with considerations for technical modifications as well as the balance between characters. This was more than what the development team expected so instead of risking releasing the game in an unstable state which can lead to bugs, we thought it’d be wiser to thoroughly test the feature and update the game later.
After Early Access, many aspects of Anvil will continue to change.
If you have any good ideas, please share!
The development team is always taking note of all your feedback.
Thank you.