Hail and Well Met!
Full Release Date Planned for August 8th
We are pleased to announce that we will be coming out of Early Access into full release on August 8th!
We've had an amazing year listening to your feedback and using it to directly improve your gaming experience in Middle-earth. We feel that the time has come, however, to take the game from Early Access to Full Release.
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History
We've come a long way since August 28th of last year in how the game plays and have added a lot of content along the way. We've added 34 individual new Vault cards, two free encounters, a whole new Tutorial campaign, and a host of new features since then, not to mention a second DLC campaign. We couldn't have done this without your support and feedback.
We had originally intended to be in Early Access for only about 5 months, but when we changed over from a free to play model to a premium experience back in September based on user feedback, we also made the choice to also revamp a number of systems, overhaul the UI and add new features such as the Save system and give you additional free content along the way.
Though we have a few new items coming before the August 8th date, we feel that the time is right to make the switchover. The annoying Early Access banner will go away and we'll shake off the training wheels to support the game with new content.
What Will We Be Doing Until Full Release?
We haven't been idle since we made the big recent update to the game's UI and systems. Before we release, we intend to make the following changes:
Deck Builder Tutorial (Quest 4) Restructure
While we are very pleased with most of the new tutorial structure and how it better prepares you for the complexities and subtleties of our game, we felt that the Deck Builder Tutorial (Quest 4) just didn't hit the mark. We have a new version of this almost ready to test internally that we feel does a better job of walking you through the options of building a deck as well as reinforcing concepts like Sphere Levels and better explaining the ins and outs of deckbuilding in a more sandbox type of environment. This update will be made before we go into Full Release so we have time to do any final fixes.
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Save Game Changes
We're making some behind the hood changes to the save game system that we feel will improve that system. Currently, when you have a save game, whatever deck you were using locks out the deck from editing. You cannot change the associated deck until you either finish the saved game or opt to delete it.
We've decided to remove that restriction. When you make a save game, it will save a version of that deck with the save so that when you run a saved game, it will contain the remainder of that deck in the save. This will allow you to manipulate the associated deck separately from that saved game. However, when you run that saved session, you will still have the deck you used from the original game.
Why don't we allow you to bring the altered deck to the saved session? Since a deck lasts across an entire quest, there's no way for us to know what cards would have been used in an altered deck up to the point of the save. You are saving the state of the session as it existed at the time, so we save the deck as it existed at that time.
This will clear up some issues with both single and multiplayer save games and make it less confusing when you go to make changes to your decks.
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Bug and Stability Fixes
We have a few more bug fixes and stability enhancements we're putting into the game to reduce connection issues and fix stability further.
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Performance Enhancements
Our new technical art director has been unleashed on the game to optimize and he's found a number of ways for us to gain performance improvements. We've been busily optimizing each of the game locations as well as the card frames and UI elements and this will improve performance on all platforms.
Currently the game uses numerous dynamic lights and multiple layers within textures as well as complex shaders and particle effects. We've found a number of efficiencies that we can apply to each of these which allow us to retain the visual fidelity but improve the frame rate across the board. This will be coming before we go to full release.
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A Brand New Encounter 3
As mentioned last week, we will be releasing the free Expansion, Gundabad Awoken. This all new 4 location quest will test your heroes as they uncover the mysteries of Gundabad and its relation to Carn Dûm.
What About After Full Release?
Full Release doesn't mean we won't be further enhancing the game. We intend to continue to implement updates and make further refinements to the game as we move forward. We have numerous UI enhancements and improvements as well as new content and features that we want to take live after Full Release. We'll continue to listen to your feedback and work with you as we have since launch to improve and add to the game. We will continue to regularly update with new content as well as provide live support from our team after we go into Full Release.
Additionally, we've already announced our next campaign expansion The Witch King's Grasp, which we intend to add as DLC after we go into Full Release.
Discord
There's a fan set up and run discord channel where you can reach out and talk to fellow players and look for multiplayer friends to play with.
You can check it out here.
Twitch Stream
Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.
Our next stream will be Wednesday, June 19th. We'll be discussing upcoming content, the name change and give you some behind the scenes discussion about the changes we will be making about the stability enhancements we've done and will be doing for Full Release.
Next Update
That's all we have this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!