Hello everyone,
last 40 days we have been working hard on a new world and now know that it wasn't easy as expected - that's also why there were almost no updates about planned change. All energy was invested into the preparation, debug, testing and new changes.
There were several iterations before we found a suitable final result for the game, so it meets all the requirements and bring as little as possible compromises.
Old world (let's call it "Legacy") is really big and basic shape resembles two islands - boundaries are made of water. The priority during creation of this legacy world was to secure a big oversight and truly dense flora with many trees. Gradually, the concept began to show a poor possibilities to optimize, ability to add more content into the game and especially the overall gameplay. Big world with only one biome (European forest) and repeating flora is boring over time and limiting the development of the game. Given size and generation logic of the world began to show his rather large drawbacks than benefits.
More than 90% of the players never left the starting location and moved only within a radius of a few hundred meters around the starting tower (even players who have recorded more than 100 hours of game time). Legacy world itself doesn't give incentives to its exploration and discovery. That is really a shame when the world is already so large and unnecessarily detracts from the performance and blocks the development of content. But it is logical and there is no reason to wonder if it is all basically the same thing - it becomes boring and slow game does not force players to do research or to motivate his actions to more distant locations.
The new world is built on the basis of these knowledge and experience, even though from the beginning will not be filled with massive content, but will not restrict us from adding any new content in future.
Legacy world bound hands us a lot in developing the game. More and more we ran into limitations and need to resolve problems to do something that cannot be done easily - because the concept of the game was always slightly modified and adjusted according to the requirement of the players over time (especially if the game is in the early access).
So we had to make a big decision and cancel the Legacy world and create new foundation stone for the game. This whole decision was complicated by one of our rule and this is do no wipe players' content. Unfortunately, this change is not possible without wipe in timely manner. As we touched wipe topic so explain it more. Wipe will be related only to houses and objects placed on the ground in the world - simply:
Character and content of the inventory - will not be wiped.
Houses and constructed objects - will be deleted, but you'll get all raw materials back into your inventory.
So you can start with the old character and all your items in your inventory, but you lose your houses and buildings - we know it's annoying, but other solutions are impossible - we are so sorry. On the other hand, we'll try at least to save all your raw materials and ease building itself in the new world (more about that later in the next announcement).
A fundamental limitation of Legacy world:
1) Too big world
2) Poorly defined AI and pathfinding - unsustainable in such a big world without significant shortcomings causing performance and other issues.
3) Restrictions on adding content - although we have an anomaly, but the basic world became boring space.
4) No motivation to leave the starting zone.
5) Adding content that lack logic with the original concept and we are so throwing obstacles in the way of the future development of the game.
6) Too big initial focus on supervision and megalomaniacal world.
7) Hard to add static POIs or other content thanks to players' objects all over the world.
8) Backdrop of the world was limitation caused by prepared teraforming that was planned to be added one day.
9) And much more...
So what will new world bring, and what are these changes for the good?
1) The aim was to maintain or even improve the visual impression of the game - so the changes will not be drastic at first sight - at second glance yes.
2) The entire world will have a smaller base - about one half - but still it takes about hour to get to other end.
3) The boundaries of the world are made of mountains. In the Legacy world, it was water.
4) Decreased the number of large masses of water - the basis of new world are much smaller ponds, but only one large lake in the center of the map.
5) The world is more rugged and more fun for exploration and still it is very easy to get lost.
6) Sidewalks/paths were added - which are used to determine the basic movement throughout the world (but not serve as an accurate route from one place to another - only assist in orientation).
7) New World has a much better AI pathfinding and movement.
8) World contains 4 biomes (instead of one in the Legacy world): Mountain Forest, Grassland, Desert (rather badlands) and Jungle.
9) Thanks to these biomes it's possible to add more animals into the game and not be limited solely to anomalies.
10) Entrances to anomalies and POI have fixed places where it's possible to enter or visit them - a lot of players have had a problem with their randomness.
11) A simple option to expand the world in the future.
12) More interesting places in the world.
Smaller outline innovations and changes in the gameplay, that will come with the new world:
1) Bonuses for progress in generation - such as passive skill points, points for enabling recipes (old characters -> each character will get appropriate number of points depending on achieved generation).
2) Recipes "Blueprints" will continue to be found around the world or in anomalies, but they could be learned with points (if you will miss specific recipe it's nothing easier than purchasing it with generation points).
3) Possibility to build a house from prepared templates (suitable for players who do not have the nerves or the time to design a house from A to Z).
4) Change in interaction with the environment and the entire core of some game elements.
5) Change the logic of construction and occupation of the land (more later).
6) Option to occupy territory and expose mining station here (more later)
7) And much more - but this is about future announcement as development progress.
Major disadvantages of the new world:
Wipe on some things.
Canceling planned teraforming on the terrain.
Shorter vision
Smaller water areas (but will compensate with other worlds + anomalies).Inability to cut down trees * (EDIT: Possibility to cut down trees in a game eventually remains).
Teraformation:
We had to reject and cancel planned teraformation of the terrain (even when it was working good in our internal tests).
Instead, we plan to add teraformation in slightly different form and the ability to add blocks pseudo terrain (possibility to create a flat plane for the house - more later).
EDIT: Possibility to cut down trees in a game eventually remains!
Cutting trees canceled - what?
Yes it is true - cutting trees and their disappearance from the world is probably even bigger compromise than wipe of data . It had to happen with regard to the world changes and all the bugs associated with this (not so much about flying the trees in the air etc.) But most of the data affair and demands for data and performance (which we needed elsewhere).
There are two reasons why the game needs cutting trees:
1) Raw tree log for players (100% of the players)
Solution: A new style of construction will need a lot of wood - this will ensure mining stations (over time you will not have to worry about the supply of logs). From the start, although you have to obtain wood by hand, but only until you can secure the supply of raw materials through the stations. Either way, you will still be able to find and get the wood you need for specific purposes(for example, oak, etc.).
2) To release the space for the plot - place for house (5% of players)
This problem is solved by better deployment of flora around the world and more areas for home building.
How will a player earn wood:
1) The logs will be acquired similarly as in legacy world - using an axe to hack out the tree (but tree will not disappear - just temporarily run out of raw material - like branches).
2) Use mining stations.
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* Edit:
Possibility to cut down trees in a game eventually remains.
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Additionally, we apologize for the late notice, but we did not want anything to discharge to the public until the final decision. Lots of us all stretched solving AI, which was really difficult and we had to have a few things to modify and customize.
We hope that you'll accept new world positively and accept its shortcomings compared to replace legacy to future content and gameplay.
And about what interests you the most - when it finally be out?
During the first days of March we will have done the world as a whole and then we move on to tuning changes in gameplay without which the game could not go out - it will not be prolonged unnecessarily (we can always add other news updates). We hope, therefore, that at the end of March (early April) would perhaps everything be ready and prepared for release.
Thanks so much for your time and patience!