Hello Champions
It has been a while since we've published our first development roadmap and it is time to update it! As we announced last week, we have done with mouse & keyboard and tested the new features for a while. We had a bit of regression on the way but it was pretty normal, considering that we had to rework the UI entirely. We don't expect major bugs but in case, poke us as usual and we'll try to fix everything at the speed of light. In general, we have to say that we have been faster than what we've originally predicted and of course even if we have decided to stick with the original plan we've drafted, lot of new ideas have been discussed by the team, following your feed and new inputs from new partners willing to jump in and help us with the development. The result is that the contents that we are going to put in will be way more than the originally predicted ones and we hope this would be just one more proof of the effort we are putting in our work, to make Alaloth the great game we've always had in mind. We spent some time data at hand in the last month, checking other games available on the market as well and putting together a few numbers. We can say that Alaloth is currently the biggest RPG game on the market in terms of contents, considering the size of the world, the number of locations and NPC we have and so on. Proud of this! Let's go with some more info for you all!
17 patches released so far [we promised: no slow down], a major update with strongholds in and the very first round of balancing. Two months and half. We would say that these could be considered good numbers and we are happy of the results achieved in this 60+ days. The game sold very well in July, always considering that we've been forced to launch during a special sale and summer is the worst season to launch a game. But hey, no problem, big things ahead. As we said many times, no need to underline that bug fixing, new contents, balancing etc. will be on-going till the end and so, plans may change moving on with the development. By now, we've always delivered way more contents than originally scheduled and we are going like this if possible: it's our baby, it has to be your fav RPG for a long time!
FULL SUPPORT FOR MOUSE & KEYBOARD
Here we are. We started with just partial support for M&K and yes, we knew you hated us. We updated the game introducing some improvements and we promised full support for September. We've finally added mouse pointer support: cursor can be used both to interact with UI elements and to lock enemies while in a Fighting Area. We have added support for navigating item lists using the scroll wheel and all now works properly. Hope to get people waiting for this back on board and hope to get some thumbs-up from people that were rightfully criticizing us at the beginning [but again: we've been forced to go like this, running out of time for the release]
GRIFFINS AND SHIPS
Nope, we are not introducing fast travel, no worries! Simply, each race has a unique character doing unique things [Forgeback, The Red Mage, Nohrged-Kin...] and elves have Kellis, which is way more a char created for everyone [no spoilers but you know]. We thought that would have been cool to introduce something to balance things a bit and Griffin Riders will be available very soon! The Riders will allow elven champions to travel in Larastir riding a griffin, avoiding random encounters and saving precious time while searching for the shards. Only elven champions could be able to use them and only after proving their strenght in battle. The Riders' HQ can be found in Edhenen and it is one of the first new indoor location we are going to add to each city in the future updates. Ships will be available for all instead, just paying money to one of the various organizations connecting ports of The Sea of Solitude. On boarding will be possible in Baystone and Rockstarn and routes will connect these cities with Na'Sharak, the port of Vhoken-Mahl. This is just a first step to set-up new coastal cities and areas in the bottom part of the map that will be developed soon with super cool FA and POI we are going to share asap!
NEW FIGHTING AREAS AND BOSS FIGHTS
Easy as it is. We are working on new FA and boss fights to increase the number of unique fights you are going to have during your run. We are focusing on areas bringing in a bit of puzzling and Indiana Jones-like sections and all of this will come along with a bunch of new mobs we are working on right now. Design in progress but of course we are building up everything to keep a good balance in terms of options for each kingdoms so if we are going with 4 new FA and 4 new boss fights, everything will be splitted among kingdoms as usual. Sligthly postponed dragon fights in our schedule. They are not appearing in the new roadmap but as for anything else: we can suddendly patch the game and you can find dragons in. It really depends on iterations on the way.
COMPANIONS, CHAMPIONS, PERMADEATH
We are slowly iterating every single item, char, mob in the game. Companions and champions are one of the prio as well and we are going to rework them shortly. We think that the first bunch of fixes for companions has been useful, having the chance to bring back them in action if wounded. We are on numbers now, customizing them by lore, increasing poise for chars like Khoran or making dex-focused chars like Vaden or Zian way more lethal. Same for the others, of course. Champions are prio as well, aiming to create unique duels with each of the 40 warriors available, to increase difficulty in Competitive Mode. A lot of people is asking about difficulty settings and we are on this. Permadeath will be introduced soon and we are thinking about a way to offer new challenges as requested.
ARENA, NEW TRAITS, CRAFTING, ALCHEMY
Arena Mode is going to happen. First of all, we are adding The Bleeding of Hashak in-game. It will be the first available arena to test stuff, using the location as part of the campaign. Hashak will be sligthly modified and the arena will be available at given conditions, considering that it is an orcish environment connected by lore with The Hunt and other major celebrations in Baga. The Arena Mode will follow and will be a stand-alone mode of course. Going to give more details as soon as we'll have details to share for the first iteration! We are adding 12 new traits to customize your char as well. Customization is one of the most requested feature and we are starting with this but new stuff will pop-up in the future [can't say anything now about BG-like portraits but hey!]. Crafting will change: new blueprints will be available and the process will be simplified a bit, changing specs of crafting materials, their availability and prices. Alchemy will be available, giving champions the chance to create potions.
Warm-up here...
...die here
MISC
By the end of the year we are hopefully going to have the full picture for the future of the company and the future of the brand. The end of the year is even the deadline set to have the final round of balancing, using the next months to go through every system. Achieving this, we could focus on new massive features we have in mind and you've asked for. By now, it's a slow process that forces us to constantly iterate even with small changes happening. With the right numbers in place, we'll be able to work on new stuff with solid foundations and in a faster way, starting to consider all the ideas you've sent and all the proposals we are evaluating internally. No worries, we are not revolutioning the whole thing just to put in random stuff because they have been requested. We are not going to turn the game into an online game or such. We hope to develop our community more and more, to work using a partecipative design flow, as we've always wanted. If you want to help now, just talk about the game on socials, share your experience, point people to our Steam page or Discord server and if you enjoy the game, drop a review here. It really helps at this stage! Write soon
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/919360/Alaloth_Champions_of_The_Four_Kingdoms/