October Development Review – Never play on patch day!
Another month, another blog post! Hope all of you had a fun Halloween time?
I was thinking about creating a little halloween-themed event, but figured that’s something better saved up for the open beta. Nevertheless, I ended up writing something that might be used next year, and made some changes that would allow spontaneous events in the future without requiring too much work – and then took a couple days off in order to think about the best approach for future development on the game. Really needed a proper little break!
Power Nodes are finally in the Game
Whoop whoop! Initially there were only 9 different nodes in order to enforce some early competition, but I’ve gradually been adding more every other day: at the time of writing we are at 16, with two more coming tomorrow. After a bit of a rough start they are now running very smoothly and the feedback I got so far seems fairly okay. Always remember, never (expect to) play on patch day! In the future, issues that will cause big crashes and/or rollbacks like we had this time will be spotted on the test server – thing is, right now the live environment is the test server. :D Not sure when that will change, probably some time after we launched into the open beta.
Balancing wise, I feel like the prices to upgrade nodes & outposts could be a bit higher, seeing as after one week we already got some nodes and outposts at level 5. But this might also be due to some big resource stockpiles people built up whilst waiting for more stuff to build. Some effects might also be a bit too strong overall, given that there’s 3 Guild Ticks per day. Either way, I’ll wait with price adjustments until the playtest ends and might throw in a balance change here or there as I feel fit.
Two people complained that with the changes to guild activity strength they are now forced to level different weapon types to bolster their campaign strength, but I’m fairly certain that this is just a temporary issue – more adventures and a higher level ceiling will come and remedy this to some degree. To be fair I also don’t see anything bad in leveling different weapon types, there’s a reason for why it’s possible after all, and if this change can serve as another incentive, I accidentally ended up catching two birds with one stone. :D
Funny bug befitting the month: Zombie Parties
There was a very obscure bug with the Boss encounter in the Swamps. Inside the encounter player parties are joined by some extra NPCs. If the entire player party got wiped out and the NPCs manage to finish the encounter, they will despawn and leave the whole party dead and able to proceed with the adventure until they encounter another fight! Instead of awkwardly ending the adventure after such a glorious “victory”, I’ve decided to instead raise every dead party member back to 1hp when the NPCs leave the party - a very weak heal as a parting gift. Wonder if anyone will ever report that as a bug in the future… :D
Things need to change!
I feel like I need to adjust some things in my development process in order to be more transparent & involve the community more. Here’s how:
More development updates!
First of all, I believe a monthly blog post is a bit disconnected from the open development process I want to achieve, so I’ve created a new Channel on Telegram: @TypoTalesDevDiary, where I will post daily updates about bug fixes, small changes and maybe just thoughts and plans which don’t deserve to be posted within the announcement channel. Blog posts will continue to exist for now, but may contain some copy-pasted stuff from that channel for the “let’s go over what happened last month” part. Never really enjoyed writing up these long walls of text at the end of the month, maybe this helps me a bit in the process of just writing things throughout the month. :D
Let’s get streaming!
Going forward, there will be more Developer Streams on Twitch! Starting next Tuesday (the 9th of November) at 19:00 UTC, I’ll try my best to stick to a biweekly schedule over on https://www.twitch.tv/Jacudibu. Join in if you want to hang out and chat while I add more adventures, items and other content, influenced by your direct input in the chat! The time at which future streams happen will vary a bit so everyone in every timezone can tune in eventually.
Why Twitch instead of some Livestream on Telegram or YouTube? Dunno, I don’t really like either option to be honest, but diversifying a bit away from Telegram alone doesn’t sound too bad! I’m fairly new to the whole streaming thing and just want to try it out. 🙃 The whole concept still scares me a little. But who knows, maybe I’ll get comfortable enough to also begin streaming playing some games at some point in time.
The alpha will finally end!
And finally, no more vague dates for the Playtest’s end! The final world ending event will hit on the 20th of December. Just like last time, servers won’t immediately shut down so people got some time to finish it… but there won’t be any updates afterwards and the stuff you can do will be more and more limited to the things actually leading up to said event! Players who finish it will receive an exclusive title for their profile once the Open Beta launches.
Upcoming Balance Changes
In other news, T4 stuff has been in the planning phase for some time now and it became apparent that, right now, there is an overabundance of Mana. Especially with T2 and T3 items. Therefore, I’ll reduce how much mana you get per invested skill point and adjust the mana pools equipment grants accordingly. Maybe this will also incentivize the use of mana potions a bit. :)
Stamina Notifications are in the planning phase
Yeah. One of the most requested features will finally come this month alongside a whole pile of new adventures. They will be optional (I still don’t like them :P) and default to being on.
Aaand that’s it for this month! See ya’ll over in @TypoTalesDevDiary and/or at the next blog post.