Hello, Tamers, and welcome to the celebrations of what we've come to call the Golden Week! As 1.0 approaches we've decided to progressively but decisively unveil the mystery of 1.0 early on, for those on the fence about the immediate future, and for old and new players alike.
Every working day of this week we will share a post covering one of the sectors of the game that are getting improved in 1.0, or part of the new content coming with it. We recommend reaaally reading them all!
But first, a disclaimer:
Coming out of our cage and we're a tad nervous about it
We are not usually huge fans of talking about what’s coming up in future patches, and there are some good reasons for that:
- We want our players to experience surprises when they receive a new patch. We like to spoil some minor features here and there so there is some hype on what’s coming, but we believe that having surprises is important too.
- We usually iterate a lot internally — features get changed constantly until we are very close to the actual patch release. We also iterate on the planning too, pushing features to more distant patches and including things that weren’t planned for the current patch. Giving too much data publicly early on could lead to having incorrect information spread around, like what happened with our initial roadmap for Early Access.
- Getting feedback when we are not ready to receive it is usually counter-productive. Our team works best when we are either working on the patch ourselves, or dedicated exclusively to gathering and implementing your feedback. Mixing the two together doesn’t really work for us. Early feedback creates too much noise and too many things to be aware of, and could lead to even longer delays.
However, the 1.0 patch is arguably the most important patch ever for Temtem. Even taking into consideration the many reasons why we usually keep patches to ourselves, we've decided to give you a peek! You’ll get to see what's going on now, what’s coming, and how Temtem is going to change with it.
Please do keep in mind that the reasons we explained earlier still stand. That means that everything you’ll read during this week could potentially change before we actually get to the release point, and, despite our best attempts, we are most likely not going to be able to process and/or implement all of the feedback you may have about it. We truly appreciate our community: your ideas and opinions have been key in developing Temtem over the last few years, and we’re really grateful for your contribution all this time, but now we have to step on the gas and focus on carrying the game to its final step. We can't wait for you to be a part of this release, and all that’s coming after that, as well.
Also please do keep in mind that although much of these posts is written in the present tense, all these changes are planned to reach the game with version 1.0, on September 6th, at the earliest.
This said, onto the very first topic that has been revisited for 1.0:
Campaign progression
One of the key components of Temtem is its campaign. Our goal was to create a campaign that requires thinking and preparation for the matches — not something ultra-hard for the most hardcore players out there only, but instead something that requires a certain amount of implication and strategy.
We’ve been tweaking the campaign and the progression during Early Access, mostly easing the way and simplifying it. We're currently at a point where we are pretty happy with the player experience through it. However, one of the most common complaints is the number of forced NPCs you need to beat, so we're making some changes to that.
Mandatory NPCs serve a good purpose in giving us control over how the player levels up through the campaign and balancing the game's difficulty; we don’t want to overshoot this change and generate new issues for players who skip all the optional encounters. We’ve ended up revisiting every area in the game and reducing the mandatory trainers by 20%. We believe that this number helps soften the oppressive feeling of having to battle with almost every trainer you see, while still allowing us to keep a good experience and difficulty curve.
Along with this change, we’re also tweaking the experience curve in order to compensate for this 20% reduction in trainers. This will effectively mean that a player who battles every single NPC (mandatory and optional) will have an easier path, since they will now get more overall experience. We still want people to battle as many trainers as possible, but we hope that, with this change, players will have a more enjoyable time doing so.
While we were tweaking the experience formula, there was another change we wanted to make. Maybe not many of our players know, but built into the XP formula there is a modifier that reduces the experience gained on an “over-leveled” Temtem. Temtem is designed around having a full team of Tems and leveling up all of them, instead of relying on two or three over-leveled Temtem. This is an important lesson that new players need to learn, and one of the ways to teach that was precisely this modifier. However, we felt like the modifier was a bit too oppressive, so we’ve decided to reduce it by 50%. This new value means that you are still not going to be able to complete the campaign using only one or two Tems, but it will represent an overall improvement and increase in the experience gained, especially if you complete every optional encounter.
Another change related to the experience formula is a new experience bonus for those who play in Co-op. While playing on Co-op, you only use half of your Temtem during the battles, so players felt that they were “missing out” on experience for the rest of their Tems. This was especially noticeable if, instead of playing the whole campaign in Co-op, you decided to break your Co-op party and continue solo. In order to compensate for this, we’re adding a new bonus for those Tems that are left out — they will now get a small amount of experience as if they had joined the battle too.
Talking about the endgame experience farming, we’re also going to tweak the defeated experience that is given by Temtem present in Tuwai’s shrines, which are the main place to farm for EXP. We’re increasing the amount of experience they grant by 50%. With this change and the previously talked ones, the total experience gained with these Tems should be around ~80% more than before.
Last but not least, we’re also reducing the amount of dialogue for a good amount of NPC Tamers. We’ve been revisiting the dialogue lines in the battle path and moving those lines to the dialogue path you enter when you speak to them again after beating them. This should also further help make the campaign more enjoyable, while also leaving the option to go through all the dialogue for people who enjoy it.
Upcoming changes to the Luma economy
Lumas are one of the most important features in Temtem, especially for PvE players, and a huge patch like this couldn’t leave them untouched. But first, some background!
Ever since the beginning of Temtem's development, we envisioned Lumas as a rare and exceptional thing that should only be available for the most dedicated players. We’ve tweaked the values related to Lumas multiple times in order to maintain that vision and keep them as an “achievement” for dedication. Even with all these tweaks, Lumas aren’t really that rare, and our current data shows that, out of the players who have completed the campaign, almost 60% have at least one Luma Temtem.
On the other hand, Lumas have been one of the key components that have caused frustration among the player base because most players don’t share our vision for Lumas and believe they should be more widely available. Since one of the objectives for 1.0 is to increase our player's enjoyment and overall make things more available, we’ve decided to make some changes to Luma-related mechanics.
Firstly, we’re increasing the base rate for lumas from 1/10.000 to 1/7.500. This represents a 33% boost on Luma odds and should affect every Luma-related mechanic (radars, Saipark, etc). We’re also changing the stat distribution for Lumas, upping them from a minimum of 20 SVs to 25 SVs. We've also included the SPD in this minimum, effectively removing the “speed curse” for Lumas. With the inclusion of Telomere Bugs (the name is pretty telling, but you'll learn more about this later down the week!) we believe this will no longer be necessary.
One of the most accessible ways to obtain a Luma is using a radar. With 1.0 you will be able to obtain radars in a much more direct way, one we won't be spoiling today (see you on Thursday!). For now enjoy all these changes and tweaks we’re also doing to radars in order to improve the experience while using them:
- Radars will now always find unevolved forms. This way we can ensure you’ll get the whole line as Luma if you decide to evolve it later (if you want to).
- Every species of Temtem will now have the same spawn rate (100%) while using the radar. This effectively means radar-spawned Tems will now appear quickly and constantly, no matter the species. No more waiting for those 5% rare Tems!
- Radars will no longer have expiration dates — you will be able to keep them in your inventory forever and use them whenever you want.
- We’re reducing the number of encounters per radar from 400 to 300, effectively removing the first 100 encounters so you won’t need that many encounters before getting a Luma bonus. From now on, every encounter of a Radar will have a bonus of some sort.
- With this reduction, you will now be able to break the radar from the first encounter. You’ll have to keep this in mind!
- Last, since radars will be purchasable (like we said, you'll find out where on Thursday), we’re removing them from the Dojo Leaders loot.
There is another issue we are trying to solve for Temtem 1.0 regarding Lumas, specifically regarding non-OT Lumas (Lumas caught by one trainer and then traded to another). As you know, the Telomere Hotfixes that are used to perfect a Luma cannot be used on non-OT Lumas, so the value of non-perfected Lumas has been decaying over time.
We’re introducing a new item, called Soulbinder, which will “bind” a Temtem to its current owner, removing the ability to trade them anymore but allowing Telomere Hotfixes to be used on them. This item will be available for purchase on a new location we'll be talking about later down the week. After reading multiple suggestions from the community on how to tackle this issue, we believe this one is the most fitting for Temtem, and that it will both help the Luma market and better the player’s possibilities to obtain a perfect Luma.
We hope all these changes improve the overall experience of getting a Luma. We believe it will make a huge impact on the Luma availability, and while we are losing a bit of the exclusivity we originally envisioned for Lumas, we are not too worried about that… we'll always have Dark Lumas, right?
That's it for today, but we will be back tomorrow for a chat on the Competitive scene and what's coming to it! See you there!