(If you don't want to wait for your game to update naturally, right-click on the game in your library, go to Properties, go to Local Files, and then click Verify Integrity of Game Files to force the update.) This is a big one--some might even say it's a 'table flip'. Development of Guild Quest has been very game-jam-style, in retrospect. We move really fast getting features in with very quick timelines, which is great, but it also means we never get a chance to think over what we already have and address larger issues. http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/26698808/54c8a1dd6dc128ddb25a73fdd1468c4e3664cd13.jpg We've known we've had general pacing issues for a while, but kept putting it off because we 'didn't have the time'. We haven't properly dug into our progress analytics for a bit, and when we did it a few weeks ago it called out a very big flaw: people were moving to Ashfield instead of Westacre, and then hitting a wall, and then bouncing off the game forever. And it was a pretty drastic amount of people. We want to try and get MORE people deeper into the islands so that spending the dev time to make more zones makes sense. Which means we had to set out on restructuring how the game progresses. What started as a "We'll just remove some of the progress options" turned into "Actually the old map is a huge issue and gives no sense of progression and branching paths make no sense." Which created a whole HOST of knock-on effects. We've heard for months that people felt really weird when they reached Bayport and defeated the first boss and path and...nothing happened. So we wanted to fix that too. Having dangling paths that lead nowhere is weird (THAT SAID, we still have some dangling paths until we make the bonus zones.) We've heard people ask for more info in a zone for how much money and XP they're earning so we wanted to address that. And then we started just diving into OTHER long-standing issues, like players talking about how an...
(If you don't want to wait for your game to update naturally, right-click on the game in your library, go to Properties, go to Local Files, and then click Verify Integrity of Game Files to force the update.) This is a big one--some might even say it's a 'table flip'. Development of Guild Quest has been very game-jam-style, in retrospect. We move really fast getting features in with very quick timelines, which is great, but it also means we never get a chance to think over what we already have and address larger issues. http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/26698808/54c8a1dd6dc128ddb25a73fdd1468c4e3664cd13.jpg We've known we've had general pacing issues for a while, but kept putting it off because we 'didn't have the time'. We haven't properly dug into our progress analytics for a bit, and when we did it a few weeks ago it called out a very big flaw: people were moving to Ashfield instead of Westacre, and then hitting a wall, and then bouncing off the game forever. And it was a pretty drastic amount of people. We want to try and get MORE people deeper into the islands so that spending the dev time to make more zones makes sense. Which means we had to set out on restructuring how the game progresses. What started as a "We'll just remove some of the progress options" turned into "Actually the old map is a huge issue and gives no sense of progression and branching paths make no sense." Which created a whole HOST of knock-on effects. We've heard for months that people felt really weird when they reached Bayport and defeated the first boss and path and...nothing happened. So we wanted to fix that too. Having dangling paths that lead nowhere is weird (THAT SAID, we still have some dangling paths until we make the bonus zones.) We've heard people ask for more info in a zone for how much money and XP they're earning so we wanted to address that. And then we started just diving into OTHER long-standing issues, like players talking about how an...
UPDATEAugust 24th! Still working on the update, I'm afraid. Apologies, y'all, but this is turning out to be a lot larger than we had originally anticipated! There's turning out to be a lot of knock-on effects that we need to fix before we can release. Basically it started as a "Hey our data is showing that the majority of people are going to the wrong/hard islands first, getting stuck, and leaving the game forever" so we wanted to address the way the map works and your route through the world. And that's basically turned into a reballance of every area, and changing how prestige works. It's dug up a lot of our long-term deeper issues with the game, and we want to actually try and fix them instead of paving over them. Here's a look at the new world map, though! (All the same areas, in a different order, and on different layouts, for the most part.) http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/26698808/5fb09be3ac8884b057a96697b6b5df90cc62ab59.jpg The bonus islands are...probably not going to happen at launch of this update (since we're already so late), but we'll see! Again, really sorry that we don't have anything to play yet, but it's a really big update! UPDATE August 17th! I was hoping to unveil the new game balance this week. It’s not ready yet, so we’re going TWO weeks without an update, which is a first for us on Steam. But less nodes meant more rebalance, and we discovered some serious issues that we should probably fix which has led to a new world map, new island flow, and new balance to every single island. This won't solve end-game issues and people who are just out of content, but I'm hoping this will help make NEW content faster. But first I need to get through all the existing content. This also doesn't involve us using the new 3D-looking maps I showed last week. ANYWAY, apologies for another boring week. The three of us are heads down, and hopeful we’re making good steps forward with taking this extra time. Fingers crossed we'l...
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