Hi,
In this update I would like to share my thoughts how the Early access is going to work. Basically to set your expectations of what happens, how often, how you can participate etc. It has been some time since our last meaningful update so let's get straight to business.
Early Access universe
In my last post I have shared a first version of the development roadmap for the next year. I wanted to do this as early as possible despite the amount of chaos a launch brings. Since I am now in the very first weeks into Early access I am still spending majority of time collecting new information and talking to community. And so not much actual development is being done yet.
There are suggestions flowing into Steam forum and Discord every day and there are new ideas popping up as a result. At the same time there are big and small bugs, balance issues, UX problems and exploits being reported and these need to be 'triaged' between upcoming patches, backlogs and the next content update.
So, due to the new flow of information, the development process I was using pre-launch is no longer optimal and will be slightly adjusted.
Patching - yes it will happen
Patching is a no-brainer. It will work on ad-hoc basis. In the first two weeks I managed to release 3 small patches, mostly addressing exploits and some minor improvements of user experience.
Since the inflow of suggestions is very random, the patching activity will be parallel to new feature development and I'll simply release a patch whenever enough important issues appear. As before I'll try to sneak in some small improvements if possible (especially UI tweaks).
Upcoming builds in Experimental beta branch
My current ambition is to release a Big Content Update at least once every three months. This is not a specific plan - the concrete release dates will have to be as usual synchronized with steam events and with beta testing. But roughly speaking four big releases in the next year sounds like a good frequency both for my development practices as well as for players.
Each build will be accessible to volunteer players willing to participate in experimental beta at least two weeks prior to the release of the content update (but hopefully for much longer).
The experimental branch will be setup for the first upcoming build most likely during January and I will share the password to get there.
What about those who can't run the game?
There is a small number of people who are having trouble running the game on some of their machines. Unfortunately (in so far) the issues have been largely diagnosed as compatibility of the player's software/hardware with the game framework rather than a specific game code. So the solution has so far not been any code fix in the games source-code but rather detecting the particular piece of software or driver version that causes issues. Looking at other games in the same framework we do not seem to have a higher rate of these issues, but they are still a problem that needs solution.
To speed this up a bit I have created a specific Discord thread for this purpose. While it is possible for you to report issues like this on Steam Community I would strongly recommend joining us on the discord instead, where you have a chance to troubleshoot together with other people.
Compatibility issues are very fresh so please bear with me until the community has a decent documentation on those problematic scenarios. But for the time being this is going to take up maintenance time.
Dev log every 4th Monday
Since the actual big builds frequency is going to be done in bigger updates I decided to also halve the frequency of these updates. Since some weeks will simply be consumed by ongoing support and maintenance or bug-fixing, there is not enough interesting info every 2 weeks. So from now on I will issue this update every fourth Monday instead.
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Purple Heroes big update in Q1
As declared in the past as well as in the roadmap, the fourth missing Hero faction is coming. Purple heroes will be focused on wealth accumulation and their advantage will be ability to convert wealth into everything else (potentially). For a price.
In the first big update planned for Q1 along with this purple hero faction I will also introduce new types of traits - Skill traits.
Having a Hero equipped with a Skill gives your civilization a new chargeable ability akin to Workshop abilities or Military Units (depending on whether the skill is combat or economic). Skills will be subject to progressing power, cost, cooldowns and various special mutations caused by Wonders - thus creating a whole new in-game mechanism to include in your build.
Gold is not what it used to be
Gold system is undergoing a fundamental change. This will add some desired variability to the mid/late game as well as extend some of the existing minigame on map and quests. Gold is going to be a central piece in the hero economy and warfare but will also become more constrained and a potential source of new problems.
Gold mines will be added as well as a better Metal economy. Most changes will revolve around Hero traits and their rebalance and the new Shop UI.
Shop 2.0
Shop items and the UI will be completely re-done to allow a more complex decision making in trade and also to open up some future possibilities planned to Q2 for its Map update.
With store being more flexible, gold will become more needed, but at the same time will become more difficult to produce and keep. While it is intended for gold to be the ultimate flexible resource, to actually transform it effectively will require some inventiveness from the player.
That's all I wanted to share at this point. Also I wanted to thank all of you who bought the game in the past two weeks and thus helped make the Early Access phase start with the right foot. Thank you!
I'll see you in 4 weeks on the next update,
Ondrej