Dev Update #21 - Survey #4 Insights

Hey Everyone!

We’re back from our quiet week… kind of! Malcs is (allegedly) away this week, which means you’re stuck with me 😈 This is another pretty low-key post as we work away on our next set of content, so we wanted to take a look back at the most recent survey today.

👀Alpha Survey #4 is now closed!

As of today, Survey #4 is no longer accepting new submissions. We’ll be taking more time over the next week or so to properly digest the feedback, but we’ve already picked out a few key learnings based on the results.

• There was a lot of feedback regarding the GP cost of Animals in Ranching, as well as the grain upkeep requirements for Chicken & Pigs. While there were plans to introduce many bonuses in the future alongside new Skills to drastically help, the feedback has helped the team realise the balance methodology of Ranching needs to change. This adjustment is currently underway and will be released as an update soon.

• Ranching progression itself seems to be in a pretty good spot - while some of you felt it was either slightly too slow or slightly too fast, the distribution of opinions there is pretty close to what we want to see. We’ll continue to monitor this as you all progress into later stages of the Skill.

• The new Cooking recipes and the updates to Farming have gone down very well - most of you seem to agree that they’re positive changes. There was some feedback regarding some recipe costs and item rates. We’ll be looking at those and making adjustments accordingly.

• We also asked you where you’d like to see us focus our efforts in future updates (outside of the primary content like new skills and Combat). The clear leader here was New Content for Existing Skills, with QOL, UI and Balancing updates trailing behind.

• We also see all the feedback regarding other aspects of the game! Even though they aren’t specifically mentioned above, just know that we see them and noting it all down.

🏋️ What the team have been working on 

Here’s what we've been working on since our last post!

Development

Malcs:

• Reworked some mechanics of Hunting based on prototype playtesting.

• Started working on release UI for Hunting.

• Planned and added new animals for Ranching ready for the next major update.

• Worked on more major UI updates, due to release in the next Major Update.

• Started working on Bank Quality of Life features. Features such as Sorting, Bank Tags, sharable bank configurations, auto-placeholder etc are finished. More QoL to still implement though!

• Reworked balance methodology for Ranching, and have made major pending changes to the cost of the Skill based on feedback from the survey.

Coolrox:

• Finalising many of the  Combat systems. Modifiers, equipment, and any word you can think of that relates to stats - he’s working on all of it. Nearing completion!

• Added combat area/dungeon selection.

• He’s also been working on the various parts we’ll need to visually represent combat - positioning for sprites, scenes and backgrounds, stat displays, etc.

• Began working on Combat effects system. This is pretty similar to how MI1 handles it, but will be a lot simpler in terms of the data to define attacks (while adding support for the new mechanics).

Game Design

Prat:

• Still focused on our next set of skills - Hunting, Beastcrafting, and Thieving.

• All of these skills are pretty solidly fleshed out, so most of the work is still on testing and refining the individual mechanics, XP numbers, rewards, interactions, etc.

Artwork

Tapi:

• Still focused on Hunting! We’ve got almost all of the animal art for Hunting completed now - check out some of the recent additions!

Conclusion

That’s all for this week! We have an enormous amount of content in the pipeline at the moment, and we can’t wait to get it in your hands! In the meantime, we’ll be chatting and reading all your feedback and suggestions (excellent and… otherwise…) over on Discord! See you there 👋

- Althalus