The Demo has been released, and the public has had their first chance to explore Saiadha. We had a great Insider’s program (special thanks to all our insiders), but the day the Demo released we had more players than every Insider wave put together. It’s been so well received (and useful for us) that we are discussing extending it.
You have already played over 70,000 games, with a little over 80% of them as the Kin of Sheredyn. The results are biased here because the tutorial starts you as the Kin.
Your feedback has been incredibly valuable. In game development it’s not hard to make a list of 500 good things to do, the hard part is deciding what are the 100 that will get done for the next update. Sometimes your feedback tells us that something we thought wasn’t high priority actually is, and sometimes you surprise us with something that wasn’t on our radar at all. We are very appreciative.
There are way too many great comments to go through them all, both critical and supportive. Both types are valuable. Like:
“I need more time! More turns! Just one more!”
“Cities being impassible terrain during combat can severely limit the size and pass-ability of a battle field. Combined with other impassible terrain and the built in turn limit it can completely stall out combat. With how durable units are with the shield mechanics it significantly over values choke points and even allows specific city building to create chock points that make cities all but immune to capture.”
“Hello, I'd really like if the game got a lot more flavor text and especially art for the anomalies, and maybe even terrain like it did in the first game.”
“I miss things like the quest victory, shared victory and economic victory. Also i am sad the necromancers and the broken lords are back and my favourite factions (drakken and cultist) seem to be gone.”
We can’t reply to all of them, but we do read all of them.
Survey Results
We aren’t totally data driven, the reasons and specific feedback matters a lot. But in this case, it’s clear that many players weren’t satisfied with Diplomacy. Diplomacy becomes hard to evaluate in the first 90 turns, but even with that, it indicates there is an issue here that isn’t clicking with players.
Fortresses also have a larger Neutral rating than we would like. There are a few friction points around them that we are looking at, the chief one being that the way they fully heal after a battle ends in a Draw (especially if you get that Blackhammer tyrant with the high Armor).
Onboarding is also an issue. It’s something we have been working hard on, and the tutorial is doing great work. But more is required. Asking the player to build 2 Quarries but not given them a way to easily see what a Quarry is confusing and frustrating.
Hotfixes and Bugs
Thank you to everyone who has reported bugs. As I write this, the first hotfix has gone out, and we are preparing the second. We put a lot of work into stability, and we were pleased with the results, but we continue to work on it.
Game Challenge – Welcome to the Necrodome
Speaking of bugs if you want an interesting game switch to a Pangea map on the largest map size and fill up all the player slots with Necrophage players (I played Aspects in my game but this would be a good Kin game too). It makes for a combat heavy game where the next threat is only a few turns away. Good luck!
What’s Next?
Early Access is a month away. We are going through all of your feedback to make sure it’s as solid as possible as well as working on all the systems that weren’t included in the demo. Those looking for other victory options, more factions to play as and against and to be able to play all the way to the end of the game will find it in the Early Access.
This is a highlight of what we are working on for Early Access:
Removal of the turn limit.
Addition of the narrative victory options.
Addition of the Necrophage faction.
Addition of the Last Lords faction.
Addition of the [REDACTED] faction.
Release of the Jailer.
Removal of bugs.
Addition of new bugs.Hero equipment balancing.
Hero Skill balancing.
Improved game setup.
Balanced Mercenary costs.
When you click locate on an objective it will no longer unselect the army.
Improved AI behavior for not “storing moves” to jump on the player after you move.
Improved AI behavior for not using its speed to grab curiosities/opportunities before the human player has time to act.
Updated starting locations to place the AI further from human players.
AI personality improvements to make them more distinct from each other.
Removing the Diplomatic ribbon when its redundant. It doesn’t need to scroll out to tell you the Aspects want to offer you a Research Treaty when you will see that when you click the turn button to open their request. Plus, it gets in the way.
Dungeons no longer insta-heal after a battle, they will heal over time.
Improve the Dialog panel so it’s clear who is speaking.
Improve gridlines so they are more visible.
Lighting changes to attempt to make sure the game is readable without losing the richness of the world (this is very tricky to get right).
We are looking into some people that are seeing episodes of blurriness which we think are related to temporal anti-aliasing at low framerates. Stay tuned for updates, but we are working on it and special thanks to those submitting information to help isolate this.
Improved hero camera on the equipment screen.
Improve feedback during Sieges.
When a city is captured the population is halved and the city gains an “Occupation” status which lower yields. This doesn’t occur if the city is taken back by its original owner.
Add a cooldown for treaty requests from the AI.
Improved AI trade requests and demands (not asking for resources you don’t have).
Unjustified wars will negatively affect other Public Opinion.
Remove War Fatigue. This is creating a double punishment with the other penalties for war, as well as putting people in a death spiral when they are in wars they can’t get out of.
Note… We remain very flexible during game development. One of the above issues may end up being a bad idea or be move difficult than we are expecting. Or a new issue may come up that we pull devs for and end up dropping something from the above in response.
BUT, Early Access is not the final game. It is still a game in active development, a game that needs feedback and iteration. If you want the best possible version of the game you will want to wait for release (let’s hope sales doesn’t real these messages). But if you want to help provide feedback and see the game as it changes, please join.
- Derek