Wow.
What a whirlwind of a week. As you all know, Towerborne is out in the wild and many of you are experiencing the first iteration of a game that we've been working on for several years now. When we set out to make Towerborne, our plan from the beginning was always built around going into Early Access so that we could give you a chance to play, to give feedback, and to help us make this game the best it can be.
So far it's gone well and we could not be more excited and more thankful to you, our Founders. However, there's so much more to be done, and we would like to take a moment and talk to you about what's been happening so far and what we have coming up in the immediate future. So, buckle up my pango-punching people, and let's jump in!
Stability and Login Issues
First off, let's address some of the bumps in the road. As you know, launching a living game is always filled with its fair share of unexpected surprises. And right on cue, we've had some issues that we've been hot-fixing, including some login issues and crashes. We think we've hit the majority of the most serious ones, but we have some more fixes coming up in the next week, and we will continue to be aggressive in squashing any issues that prevent you from logging in and just enjoying the game. If you do encounter issues, we encourage you to file a support ticket!
Matchmaking
While the majority of the game has been very well received by you, one area where Towerborne has fallen short is in how we handle matchmaking. Right now players can only matchmake on Venture tiles, and even then, the matchmaking system has been... well... inconsistent. I wish we could blame the gobos for this one, but sadly, this is something we need to address. We've been looking at the data and we're seeing that in the first 48-hours of release, the majority of you were not able to successfully find a group.
Our original design goal was to create a game where players could "Push Button, Receive Party", and throughout the development process, that had been our intent. As the game grew and we developed the World Map and continued to improve the player progression experience, we discovered that the original matchmaking design didn't work with the way players were actually playing the game. In short, we had created too many "buckets" for players to try and find groups, which meant that nobody was able to find a group!
For the start of Early Access, we decided to turn off matchmaking for all Discovery tiles and only leave it on for the larger Venture tiles. After you jumped into the game we watched the data and realized that even that wasn't working out very well. So, on the evening (Pacific Time) of the 12th, we pushed a server update that should improve matchmaking a bit, but won't truly solve the issue.
We are acutely aware that "getting into a group and playing with others" is not hitting the mark, and thus, with the feedback we've already received from you, we have prioritized the development and deployment of a Party Finder system that should allow players to more easily find others to play with.
Unfortunately, this is not a small task and it will take several weeks to build, test, and release, but it has been moved to our number one priority. Over time, after the Party Finder has been released, we will continue to expand on our matchmaking system and make it easier to group with others.
As we go forward, connecting players will continue to be one of our top priorities. Please bear with us as we work to get this right for you!
Keybinding
We also hear you about keybindings. We are working to get a stopgap solution in place soon that should offer players the ability to rebind their keyboard keys by editing a file, and a later release will actually fully implement it within the Towerborne client. I know it's not glamorous, but we need to improve our support for keyboard and mouse players as soon as we humanly can. I apologize for not having that support to begin with, it was an oversight on my part as we were prioritizing work for the Early Access release.
I do not have an ETA for these updates, other than, SOON™
Talking About the Wipe
One topic that has come up quite a bit is the fact that we will need to do a single progression wipe. I would like to take this moment to provide some clarity around this topic and let you know why we need to do them and what they will affect.
First and foremost, allow me to clearly state the following:
Under NO circumstances will we EVER wipe any of your Cosmetics, Emotes, Stickers, or other cash-related items.
This means all of your Founder's Pack items and any cosmetic-related items you received from a Curio will not be touched.
Things that WILL get wiped:
- Class Progress
- Weapons, Gear, and Aspects
- Spirit Dust
- Map Progress
- My Smile Because I Wish We Didn't Have to Do This
So, now the real question is, "Why would you do such a silly thing?"
Well, the short version of that answer is because we are still expanding the progression and economy systems of Towerborne.
I saw someone on Discord state that we should not have released the Class system if it wasn't done yet, and they were frustrated that this wasn't what the Class system would look like after we updated it.
On the surface, that's absolutely a fair frustration! But please, allow me to reassure you that the Class system you see in the game right now is merely the foundation of what we are building and planning to release in a few months time. You will still select the Class you like, you will earn XP (albeit perhaps at a different pace), and you will level up, BUT, there will be much more ADDED to the system–it's not a "to-the-ground" rework.
We have so much we want to add to what we've built, and in order to do that, we need everyone to be able to start the Class progress over again and experience the new additions we've made. Our focus is to give you even MORE control over your class, to have the levels REALLY mean something and be impactful. We cannot do this without a reset.
That's just the beginning. Over the course of Early Access, we also want to improve the Forge and introduce more options for you to modify and/or enhance your gear and weapons. We want that to tie into a more robust economy.
All these things require us to reset the game.
For that, please accept my sincerest and most humble apologies. It is NEVER our intention to hurt or harm your experience in Towerborne. We've been VERY open about the need to do this in every interview we've done and in the Early Access description on our Steam page.
Please know that as of today, we only have two (2) wipes planned: One (1) to introduce the improved Class system, and one (1) to kick off the full, official 1.0 release of Towerborne–at which time the game will go fully free-to-play.
I hope that you will still want to participate in this Early Access phase, because everything you're doing in the game and the feedback you're giving us is helping us build the best possible game for our 1.0 release. We cannot do this without you, and we can't wait for you to see the updates we have planned and your participation during this phase will ensure that we get it right the first time.
Content
With that out of the way, let's talk content! Who doesn't love content? Maybe the gobos, but that's not our problem!
Right now the game is released with content that will take a player up to Danger Level 4. For most players, that should be about 30 - 40 hours of content at an average pace. For some players, that was ~9 hours of content. Look, I'm not really surprised that some people burned through content at that pace, but it's always a thing of beauty to watch unfold in real time.
One thing that we're keeping an eye on is HOW you are all engaging with the content. We are preparing another drop of content, but based on how you all play, we may shuffle some things around and re-tune some of the content we're prepping. We want to keep adding fun stuff into the game, and we'd like to experiment with the World Map and the content we're making. But what's the point of being in Early Access if we aren't going to get your thoughts on these things? So, something I want to put forward to you, the community, are 2 questions–and we'll post a poll on Discord - both are directly linked below.
QUESTION 1
While we work on bigger content, we can push a small update that would convert several Discovery tiles into a repeatable tile. We can put one (or more) in each Danger Level and you can activate them to get a random Discovery mission of that Biome type (so, if it's on a Grasslands tile, you would get a random Grasslands Discovery mission). Is this something you would like us to do?
- Oh HECK yes!
- I don't care
- No, please stay focused on the larger content updates
QUESTION 2
If you answered "Yes" above, we can turn on matchmaking for these tiles. Now, be aware that the matchmaking would work exactly like the Venture matchmaking, which means that even with the improvements we've made, there's a high chance that you would not be matched with another player. Knowing this, would you like us to enable matchmaking on these special tiles?
- YES, PLEASE, YES!
- I don't care
- No, I'm a lone wolf and I fight better when the odds are against me
Regardless of your answers, we will remain focused on implementing the next Danger Level, and you can expect to see that launch SOON™.
Roadmap
NotReallyAJedi, my dude, you keep saying this awful word, "SOON™" this isn't really a date we can work with here. When are you actually going to release updates? WHERE'S OUR ROADMAP!?!
My gracious gobo gobsmackers, we hear you, and we are working on getting a roadmap put together to share with you. As you might imagine, the past week has been a little bit hectic, and most of our resources have been dedicated to getting this game up, stable, and cruising along. Our wonderful Executive Producer, Sarah, and I are working with the team to finalize the larger framework of the roadmap and we will be sharing that within the first month.
Thank You
Again, please allow us, Stoic, to extend our deepest and most heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who have taken the time to support us. Towerborne is an endeavor of love and passion and is one that we want to continue to build alongside you.
We are committed to hearing your feedback and improving this game day-in and day-out. It's been a bit of a hectic start, but as we settle into the routine of development, we hope that you'll continue to enjoy the superior warclub because that's obviously the best wea... uh... what I meant to say is that we hope that you will continue to enjoy the world of Towerborne!
From the bottom of our hearts,
Thank you.
Daniel McLaren
aka, NotReallyAJedi
Towerborne Game Director