Hello Champions!
Time flies and here we are again, one month later, with a new general update about Alaloth's developmnent! When we posted this just one week after the release, we were over the moon and we were still absorbing what was happening all around us, just putting pieces togheter to plan things at the best. Since the Early Access launched, we've gathered tons of feedbacks and we've released 10 patches to improve the game [the last one yesterday, check the changelog here]. We sat down and shared the first draft of the development roadmap, and we can't wait to show you the cool things we are cooking here. The good news is that Strongholds are almost ready so even if we scheduled the update for August, this will probably happen before GamesCom and all of this will let us work properly on full Mouse & Keyboard support, that is still missing menu navigation at the mo. We've done with the new areas too for the first map update, so we are going to dress these areas asap, filling them with new NPC, quests and so on. The first round of reviews for quests is almost done and we've finalized a bunch with the latest update. Something like 20 still need a bit of refinment [final rewards, proofreading, etc.] but we'll be able to move on by the end of the next week. Weapons, armors, items will be the focus of the very first round of balancing on our dev branch, along with the in-game economy. We've just done very small changes to numbers in the past month, but it was something expected. We collected tons of data [thank you so much for this] and we had the chance to work on some tools that will be very useful for us to debug and polish the proper way. We have now a full working analytics sys telling us about every single iteration with every single in-game object/place/char and so on, so we will be able to tune things using both your feeds and data at the best. We've even created a new tool that will be available next week, dumping automatically when an issue occurs. This will save extra time on both sides, allowing us to spot problems that could be invisible in a standard run. Back to gameplay-related stuff: companions and champions will follow the first round of changes, along with skills and traits. Lot of fun ahead on the design side.
The team in full wearing our amazing armor sets. And cats. Cats everywhere.
Moving to different topics: we are working on many community-related features and we are on the hunt for a Community Manager and Mods for our Discord server [covering US timezones]. As you know, it's basically two people handling everything on our board here now, while checking all the other channels all around the web. We love the discussions we are having with players and we could say that it is way beyond our expectations, with interesting chats and super constructive feeds. The only thing that we would like to remind, as the one and only community rule, is the respect for people, both users and from the dev team. Respect is due. We are always on to discuss, and I think we can proudly say that our availability could be considered a key point for the Early Access. We really try to answer every single message on any channel but sometime it's hard so we ask you to help us with this once again. We are on Steam 24/24 but for real time iterations, Discord stays as the main point of contact, because it's the tool we use to work and the hub we are developing to develop the community itself. We are working on a super cool program to enjoy life on the server with a stand-alone economy sys, that will let you being rewarded with a few cool perks [including games, phisycal goodies and more]. A dedicated updated will be posted soon, but it was worth to mention! We'll be back with some lore-related post next week, enjoy the weekend! Oh, Alaloth has been among top grossing games on Steam in the first two weeks of July. No need to say that this has been epic. considering one year of silence, no marketing budget and a release set in nearly one month of work. Nope, we are not suddenly rich but we'll have the chance to plan things in a way that was not possible until last May, after a long period of blood and pain. You can bet we'll deliver the game we've always had in mind since the very beginning btw. GamesCom is on the way, decisions will be taken after the event. Brace yourself [again]: winter is coming!
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/919360/Alaloth_Champions_of_The_Four_Kingdoms/