11/20/23 | Minor Update - A Progress Update
Hey there, everyone!
Been a little while… sorry about that. It’s been quite some time since we’d sort of looped you in on what’s been going on and that’s entirely our fault. When we’d initially promoted this project, one of the fundamental priorities we’d put quite a bit of emphasis on was transparency, something we’d been lacking on a bit as of late, and for that we apologize. Following this post, we’ll be making our design intent and progress updates significantly more frequent, alongside just generally interacting within the community and trying to keep everyone in the loop with what’s been going on and where we’re headed! Admittedly, we’ve kind of missed filling everybody in.
I’m sure a lot of you are curious as to when the next big major content piece is coming out and what it’s going to be, so let’s get that out of the way first! Another of the things we’d mentioned when initially advertising the project was how Prifddinas was going to be our next major content piece and that hasn’t changed, it’s just so happened that there’s been a substantial amount of work put in front of it, courtesy of the unraveling thread pulled from the development standpoint. We’re happy to say that Prifddinas is nearly finished and is only missing a small couple of additions before it’ll be released. For those not in the know, the release of this specific region will include the Corrupted Gauntlet, Zalcano, and numerous other activities! This region will still be our first arguably major content release, however there’s still a couple of things coming before it, which leads us onto the next point…
What have we been up to? Therein lies the reference to the unraveling thread pull. A much debated topic between the team, we’d wanted to build upon the identity of timed events to not so much impede upon player agency, but to offer up alternatives for activities in a way that felt rewarding enough to partake in, but not to the degree that players felt obligated to drop everything they were doing to be there for - the precarious, equally delicate median of balance; enter: the automated tournament system. The reason we’re bringing this up was because that tournament system was the initial tug that began the unraveling of what’s become an exceptionally ambitious project and the sole focus of the main development effort the last while. Referenced ever slightly in response to a couple of member suggestions, the upcoming automated event system is an intricately and laboriously constructed foundation that serves as herald for the numerous community events to come! With the conception of this system to act as the perfectly stretched and primed canvas (an analogy aptly used in the aforementioned suggestion responses), community events need simply be conceptualized and quickly implemented (all of the logic and structure serving as the inner machinations to them has been written per this new system), something we’ll be looking to bring the community into the fold per their prerogative of being involved in! In other words, and apologies for the loooong winded paragraph, we’re bringing in a system that will introduce a ton of timed events such as bosses, unique minigames, and miscellaneous activities alongside a schedule that members will be able to follow along and join in on… one that will allow us to build upon to continue to scale out as time goes on. We’re also going to be dropping about 3 new timed events with that system on release! Whew, alright, with that over… what’s next?
Once we’re finished with that, which is actually going to be quite soon, we’re going to be revisiting the donation store and the items within. We’ve been cooking up quite a few neat ideas we think members will be excited about and will be a little more enticing for the credit investment; items that tow the line of being organically unique, but will serve to introduce some pretty drastic quality of life improvements with an understandable function and identity! As a small example, one of those items will be a farming teleport book that will consume pages on use and allow members to teleport to just about any farming region within the map instantly! Much like the Tome of Fire, members will be able to purchase and use pages on this book to top up their teleport allowance. Small, but BIG! Our biggest concern is keeping the integrity and balance of the game above all, but still expanding on the shop in a way that makes some of the contents exciting. Thankfully, in terms of development time, this will be quite quick. Just about everything we’re intending to add has already been conceptualized and implemented, so it’ll just be a matter of cleaning up the current inventory and adding in our new items. Following the donation shop overhaul, what will we be up to then? Well, that would bring us full circle back to Prifddinas! Once we’re finished with the automated system, and then the shop changes, we’ll be full steam ahead on Prifddinas to put the final bit of touches in before we’re able to launch it live!
Of course, between this main production line, we’ve been working on all kinds of neat side pieces of content and expanding upon the pre-existing ones. One of our seemingly endless ongoing discussions is “how can we improve upon what we’ve already built?”; the bane of being meticulous and perhaps overly considerate of the minor things. Within the next small update, members should expect a handful of prior suggestions to be pushed through, a new boar themed minigame (we’ll spare the exceptionally easy pun potential as Scrub was so overly generous with them in the general discussion a few days back), interface overhauls to improve upon navigation clarity, and all kinds of other miscellaneous stuff!
Sorry for the delay with everything. We promise, above all, that we’re doing our very best. Our biggest concern, and our highest priority, is quality. With a community like this, and with each of you as a part of it, you guys deserve the very best we can offer, and it’s something we’ll never fail to consider within everything we do. We may not be as fast as everyone else, but we’re in this for the long haul, and we’ll keep trying our hardest until the very end.
Hopefully this clears up a lot of stuff, but if not, please feel free to ask any of us at the top. We’re always listening.
Until next time, be seeing you~
Neox Staff
