As the Fight for Pandora nears its end, we find ourselves on the brink of releasing a feature that the team has been working on for the better part of two years. Needless to say, releasing it will be a big deal for us, and we know it’s a big deal for you. Oh, and speaking of big deals...
The Status of Pandora
Believe it or not, Pandora itself has gone under some intense fundamental changes as recently as two weeks ago in internal testing. As the Fight for Pandora progressed, we realized we would have a little more time to polish and iterate on the feature than we originally estimated. This is admittedly an awkward situation to place both ourselves and the players in, but we believe it worked out for the better in this case. No one is happy when a feature is delayed longer than expected, but even worse - no one is happy when a feature is released and it isn’t good or doesn’t accomplish its goal.
We had an extra week or two to sit down and do some real self evaluation.
“Is this feature really going to achieve what we need it to achieve?”
That’s a question that is routinely impossible to answer with complete certainty, but we believed there were some distinct areas where we could improve the flow of Pandora and make it really special - so we did. The results have been very promising, and you’ll soon be able to enjoy them with us.
At the time of writing this, the Fight For Pandora is about 85% complete. If current trends continue, you can expect Pandora to be released next week.
Pandora’s place in Faeria
It’s important for us to communicate what we want Pandora to be, and what you should expect from it. Pandora has multiple spaces we need it to fill in order for Faeria to appeal to and satisfy as wide an audience as possible.
Pandora should be a place where you can drop in casually in and, to put it simply, have fun. Everyone starts on an even playing field where you you can sit down, sip some tea, draft a deck, and just play. You won't be worried about making the ultimate competitive deck, you won't feel limited by your current card collection, and you won't have to worry about running into abusive, overpowered Krog decks over and over again. It will have the added bonus of providing special rewards for performing well. It will be an area that both casual and hardcore players can access easily, participate in, and enjoy together.
Pandora will be a completely separate experience from that of normal constructed play.
It’s unique. It’s surprising. If no two games of constructed Faeria are ever the same, then no two games of Pandora will ever be the same across all of the infinite universes and timelines that possibly exist. Please don’t debate me on that, it always ends up with someone folding a piece of paper and poking a pencil through it. It never makes any sense to me.
Heavy card redesigns and balance changes
One benefit of being in an Early Access period is that we can more freely make extensive alterations to the card base.
In the process of refining Pandora, we've made some heavy changes to many card designs and applied general power adjustments across the board. Some cards you are familiar with have been completely replaced both in name and core design. We want Pandora to be a place where you can draft archetypes that may not necessarily be entirely viable in normal constructed play, but can be surprisingly effective in a limited format. Many cards already existed previously or have been newly created to help make this possible. When the patch comes, we will work to provide you as detailed an explanation as possible behind each of the changes, so you can more fully understand the direction we intend to go.
It goes without saying that the changes we have implemented will also undoubtedly have a significant effect on constructed play. We’re excited to see what powerful decks players will come up with, given the brand-new toys we are slipping into the toy box.
As always, we will continue to monitor balance after these changes go live and make any changes as seem necessary.
The current state of Pandora
As mentioned above, some heavy changes have hit Pandora very recently. After the gates open, expect a month or more of improvements and revisions to the feature.
This isn't even its final form.
New Faeria artist: Vitaliy Shushko
As our art team continues to expand, placeholder art continues to disappear.
We've recently brought on Vitaliy Shushko, a friend of Andrey's (The Father of Dragons) from art college near St. Petersburg. While he works in a variety of mediums, some of his most impressive animation can be found as part of the Motion comics JAM from a few years ago. You can watch those videos here and here to get a taste of his style. You can see his upcoming art for Hunted Outlaw above as well.
The addition of each new artist speeds our progress toward filling our library with final card art. If all goes well, we should have nine new pieces of final art added to the game along with the next patch. You may have already noticed one of them in the banner image for this article...
Wait, who is that? Is it... is it him?
Could it be?
Hey, look what I found.
Top of the ladder
Due to complicated problems involving time and space, we only have the top 20 Ranked players in graphic form for you this week. However, I'll be making a post on our official boards with the full list of 30, just to remain consistent.
Edit: Done! Find it here.
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That's it for this week!
Special thanks once again to Dan for interviewing Krog and recording his kingly prose for all to read.
-Gary (@Atmaz)