Hey Archfriends!
We firstly wanted to say a massive THANK YOU for hanging out with us over the Multiplayer Playtest Weekend! It was the first big test of our servers, and while we'd run many tests before -- this was by far the most important one to us.
We had a whopping 4,000 people join in, with over 400 matches held just that weekend!
What an honour.
We found that the MP Playtest Weekend was incredibly useful because it not only allowed wonderful folks like yourselves to get your hands (claws?) into the game, but it also unearthed a number of sneaky issues that are now getting our immediate attention ahead of launch.
Today, we wanted to take some time to explore our learnings and our path to launch – or, even better, our Highway to Hell.
The Big 3
Tutorial/Chronicles
If you’re reading this article, it’s likely you understand just how complex Solium Infernum is. There is no game like it out there – and we’re seriously not saying that to flatter ourselves. There are so many moving parts, machinations and complex undercurrents that the tutorial is one of the most crucial elements in bringing this (beloved) game to a whole new generation of players.
The MP Playtest Weekend showed that while the tutorial was great at getting the core of the game across, it seemed to break a little too easily for our liking. New folks getting held up by bugs so early in the game – before they even understood it – it’s not ideal!
Thus, a big focus of our dev team is to ensure the tutorial (and the ensuing Chronicles) is stable.
In addition, we had a lot of feedback that there is a black box around Praetors, their importance, and what Praetor Duelling exactly is. Not only that, but thanks to your feedback, we now see how they were sitting a little awkwardly in the game’s diplomatic economy.
We’ve heard you here, and while some QoL/communication improvements around Praetors and Duelling will have to wait until post-launch, we have already implemented a bunch of minor nudges in the right direction to add a lot more clarity around our dark champions, how duelling works and bring their diplomatic value back in line.
Game Stability & Reliability
We learned a lot about the stability of our game on the MP Weekend. Which is great news, because that is literally the exact reason why we ran it!
We hit a little nest of gnarly bugs early into the Australian Saturday that prevented turn submissions – one that prevented a Victory Screen from appearing on the last turn, one that looked like the AI hadn’t submitted its turn, and one that presented the “Skip Next Sequence” button rather than “End Turn”. Eugh.
We jumped on deck over the weekend, drank a lot of coffee, and pushed a hotfix that ironed out the majority of bugs triggering those issues. Now we have all eyes on nuking them entirely ahead of launch.
While we obviously can’t and would never guarantee that the game will be completely bug free at launch (if only!) we can assure you that we have very aggressive targets for stability, take it extremely seriously and have not only some of our best minds on this, but are receiving support from our external partners ahead of launch too.
Performance
Ah yes! Performance. A great feature we rolled into the MP weekend was the ability to fry an egg on your GPU while playing Solium Infernum with your pals... We decided to pull that feature, and instead we're going to work on getting your GPUs are as chill as possible and your frame rate buttery smooth whilst playing our beautiful game.
Seriously though, gameplay bugs and multiplayer stability was the priority for us ahead of the multiplayer playtest, so the performance issues some folks experienced over the weekend, while I’m sure were alarming for you, were entirely expected for us. If you did experience that, don’t fear! Our optimisation push on the game has been long scheduled for the lead up to launch and is currently in full swing with all of your fantastic feedback regarding performance that came through over the weekend guiding us in a big way. We’re already seen huge gains, in just a week since the MP weekend went live and we’ve only just started.
As you all know, we can’t guarantee this game will run as perfectly every individual may personally expect on their own unique set up, but I can assure you that performance is a major priority for us with numerous internal and external folks on it right now, and I can confidently say you can expect the game’s performance at launch to be leagues ahead of where it has been pre-release.
This doesn’t just include lower GPU load and smoother framerates, but re-reviewed min and recommended specs, and a bunch more graphical options in the game’s settings!
Other Feedback
Comprehension Cracks
Solium Infernum is an immensely complex game. There are many little burrows where we could improve how we explain the rules – thank you so much for helping us find them! Many of these issues we have solutions slated for launch (some even implemented already!) and others will have to wait until the first couple of post-launch updates.
Areas for improvement that we have identified from your fantastic feedback are:
- End Game Phase & Victory Conditions: These need to be far more clear for newer players!
- Praetor Duelling: We don’t tutorialise (or contextually explain) this and we really should!
- Consolidation: There is a maximum consolidation limit of 9, which we literally do not explain, and when you’re consolidating tribute we don’t display your consolidation target. We’re aiming to fix both of these for launch.
- Canton Capture: In a Vendetta, the rules for capturing cantons are different. This surprises too many folks. So we’re adding a contextual tooltip on Cantons you will capture to better explain this system, and are looking into better visual feedback on the map.
- Ritual Strength & Resistance: Coming out of the weekend, it’s clear the mechanics of these particular Archfiend attributes and how they determine whether your Rituals are successful or not are far too obtuse and obscured. We intend to expose and surface these more for launch, even dedicating a part of the encyclopaedia to explaining Rituals and their underlying mechanics more thoroughly! Beyond launch we have plans to surface them even more that should tie in with Prophecy in beautifully alluring ways.
- Legion Support: We had a lot of questions on which canton your legions had to be on in order to provide support. The answer is that any friendly legion next to the canton the battle occurs on will provide support, but it’s unacceptable that it’s so confusing, so we are investigating ways we can be more clear about this. Beyond a clearer explanation in the Encylopaedia, this one’s trickier to communicate in-game and in-context than most things, so we’ll see how we go for launch.
- Tribute Quality: Again, lots of questions on what this means exactly (it’s how good the tokens you receive are when you seek them!), and why it’s important. It’s not a major priority for us, but we do feel some more clarity here for launch can only be a good thing, and luckily our senior UX/UI designer, Alex, already has a solution for this in-hand, so we’ll see how we go getting it in for launch!
Buggies Buggies Buggies!
We had many, absolutely invaluable reports on bugs that have helped us improve Solium Infernum so far, and as long as their are bugd in-game, we’re going to keep hacking away at them. (We’re Australian, so we’d like to think we’re quite experienced in dealing with bugs!)
Thanks again to everyone who jumped on and helped us across the Multiplayer Playtest Weekend. We hope you enjoyed yourself, and if you did, perhaps you could give us one last spot of help and go spread the word to all your friends! If you’d like to make more, come on over to the Discord and join in the infernal fun!
<3 Chan & LoG Crew