Know Before You Buy
Aloha!
This document aims to offer more insights into the current state of Fractured Veil for those considering its Early Access purchase. We promised transparency and this is our way of showing our commitment to it.
Being in the Early Access phase, Fractured Veil is a game that is still undergoing significant development, therefore we have several tasks ahead of us before achieving a complete release. After careful consideration, we decided to welcome new players following the completion of our Unreal Engine 5 upgrade, enhancements in performance, and the attainment of a stage where the product is enjoyable.
Community feedback is at the core of the development process, and that’s why having an active player base sending suggestions and bug reports while playing the game is crucial during the Early Access phase.
We are aware that the broader Steam Community will play our game differently compared to the way our Kickstarter Backers did, resulting in very different feedback and data than before, with some new features getting reprioritized over others. More importantly, the influx of new players will make servers thrive, giving us a better idea of how the community engages with the game world when there is a lot going on.
[h2]What is included in the first release of Fractured Veil?[/h2]
As reported in our Steam Early Access notes:
[h2]So, what are the biggest pain points according to the devs and the testers?[/h2]
[h2]What is Paddle Creek Games doing to address all of the above?[/h2]
Game development is unpredictable and incredibly hard. We had our set of challenges but we have found that being transparent and keeping an open communication to our community has helped. We delayed Fractured Veil more times than we wanted, but with each delay, our community has only shown extreme respect and support. For that, we couldn’t be happier.
So, answering the question:
[/h2]
We still have tons to do and we are just at the beginning of our journey together.
We sincerely hope this document has proven our commitment to transparency, cleared some doubts, and possibly contributed to making an informed decision when it comes to buying Fractured Veil in Early Access.
If you still have some other questions, please feel free to ask in our Discord Server.
See you in our Tropical Paradise!
- Paddle Creek Games
This document aims to offer more insights into the current state of Fractured Veil for those considering its Early Access purchase. We promised transparency and this is our way of showing our commitment to it.
Being in the Early Access phase, Fractured Veil is a game that is still undergoing significant development, therefore we have several tasks ahead of us before achieving a complete release. After careful consideration, we decided to welcome new players following the completion of our Unreal Engine 5 upgrade, enhancements in performance, and the attainment of a stage where the product is enjoyable.
Community feedback is at the core of the development process, and that’s why having an active player base sending suggestions and bug reports while playing the game is crucial during the Early Access phase.
We are aware that the broader Steam Community will play our game differently compared to the way our Kickstarter Backers did, resulting in very different feedback and data than before, with some new features getting reprioritized over others. More importantly, the influx of new players will make servers thrive, giving us a better idea of how the community engages with the game world when there is a lot going on.
[h2]What is included in the first release of Fractured Veil?[/h2]
As reported in our Steam Early Access notes:
- In-depth base building and tiered crafting system
- Land Claiming System (Totems) and PvE-Only Zones.
- Mutant siege system with base destruction
- Dungeons ranging from narrow to open spaces
- Harvesting, Hunting, Scavenging to eat, drink and survive
- Day/Night Cycle with Dynamic Weather
- Hawaiian Weapons, Tools, Clothing, Armor and Items
- RPG-inspired Player Progression with Talents, Abilities and Skills
- Open world featuring 64 square kilometer map based on the topography of Maui
- Complex yet intuitive Character Customization worthy of any role-player
- Basic implementation of Fishing.
- Our 24/7 Live-Streaming AI Drone.
[h2]So, what are the biggest pain points according to the devs and the testers?[/h2]
- While we did an entire audio system long ago, this unfortunately broke during the engine upgrade. Environments will feel quieter than we want.
- We have recently hired a dedicated Sound Designer who will do significant work to improve on this.
[h3]Animations[/h3] - There is a lot to be done on the animation front. We will work on improving the current animations, however animating new assets like weapons, armor and items will have priority.
[h3]Performance[/h3] - We did a big series of performance improvements since we upgraded to Unreal Engine 5.1, making the game run on a wide range of recent graphic cards, targeting a GTX 1070 as the absolute minimum specs for 1080p Low @ 30fps.
- We still have some stutters in some areas, especially when loading new zones, these will be improved over time.
- The game will soon be upgraded to Unreal Engine 5.3, which has a series of features that should help us significantly improve the current performance of the game.
[h3] Lack of Base Defenses[/h3] - While we do have some spike/metal barricades that can make it harder for raiders to loot your base, we don’t really have systems to defend it while offline. We will partner with our community to find some solutions to base defenses and we’ll share more when the time comes. Until then, the best place to build a long-term base would be a PvE Area.
- Expect a dedicated update about this in the future where we talk about our plans for base defense systems.
[h3]Dungeons[/h3] - Our current iteration of Dungeons is more of a demo of what has to come, we have tons planned for them and still much to do. Some are playable from start to finish (Like Sewers and Caves) and others are just partially implemented (Mines).
- Currently, Dungeons are shared worlds. Later we will work on instanced Dungeons.
[h3]Lack of Social Features[/h3] - We unfortunately underdelivered on this aspect. At the beginning of Early Access we won’t have any Steam Friend List implementation and it won’t be possible to queue together.
- If you and your friends are on the same Veil (server), you may invite each other to an in-game party, play together, give them permission to your base and Totem, and quest together.
- To play together with your friends, make sure to select the same region and server in the main menu. If you are currently playing on a server different from your friends, you may change the server from the Veil Travel Station inside the Thorcon. More information is in the FAQs on our Discord.
[h3]Lack of Story Quests[/h3] - While we have a lot of lore written for the game and are currently working on implementing docs and collectables, we don’t have a full story questline yet.
- We will implement different quest types along the way, but most of those are planned for the final release of the game. As development continues, you will hear more about this.
- If you want to read more about the game lore, visit our website.
[h3] Kickstarter Rewards and DLC Skins[/h3] - We are still working on this. When we implement skins, it will be via Steam DLCs. We are not planning on having paid skins, but we will have some exclusive cosmetics as rewards.
- Some Kickstarter Benefits like the Shrine of Missing and Pet Pictures are already in-game.
[h3] PvP Balance[/h3] - PvP did not play a major factor in the game development before Early Access. We know it’s a big aspect of the game that many are excited about, so it is fair to say that changes will happen.
- We will likely work with the most dedicated community members to make sure we get proper feedback on everything PvP including Balancing, raiding, hit registration, and so on.
[h3]Frequency of Updates[/h3] - We know many would love us to do even more updates. Paddle Creek Games is a very small team, with a very limited amount of resources.
- We hope to continue increasing the size of our team as the game grows, delivering bigger and better updates over time.
- Our current plan is to deliver at least one update each month.
[h3] Voice Chat[/h3] - For the longest time, our testers have had the option to use voice chat in-game. This wasn’t working the way we wanted and never reached a quality that was satisfactory to us, not to mention being heavy on performance.
- We have decided to remove this feature for the time being.
[h3] Overall Feel[/h3] - The game will have bugs, and we are going to list them in the patch notes. We can’t list every single bug in there and we encourage everyone to join our discord and use /report to share their findings with us.
- The game will have some degree of quirks. From the character creator to some animations, hitboxes and overall feel. These are parts of the game we will constantly improve on as we keep developing Fractured Veil.
[h3]Audio / Music[/h3]
[h2]What is Paddle Creek Games doing to address all of the above?[/h2]
Game development is unpredictable and incredibly hard. We had our set of challenges but we have found that being transparent and keeping an open communication to our community has helped. We delayed Fractured Veil more times than we wanted, but with each delay, our community has only shown extreme respect and support. For that, we couldn’t be happier.
So, answering the question:
- Keep working on the features listed in our roadmap[/h3]
- This is only the first public build of Fractured Veil and the team is hard at work to implement more features and fixes to the game
- You can find our updated roadmap in its dedicated article here
[h3] - Keeping the transparency high[/h3]
- No NDA Approach - Everyone is free to talk about everything.
- Frequent Dev Blogs and updates.
- Open conversations via Discord and Socials.
[h3] - Staying Humble[/h3]
- We are really trying our best to show precisely what we are building.
- Under-promise and (possibly) over-deliver.
[h3] - Growing our team[/h3]
- We intend to make our team bigger.
- Our resources are not infinite, we are indie, and the speed at which we grow will mainly depend on how Fractured Veil will perform over the first year.
[h3] - Partnering with our community[/h3]
- Focus groups to gather feedback on specific topics.
- Form more partnerships and collaborations with even more Content Creators.
- Grow the number of Ambassadors and Community volunteers.
- Frequent Feedback Surveys to gather insights on what’s important to our players.
[h3] - Setting the expectations right[/h3]
- While we can’t guarantee much, we want the community to understand our broader vision for Fractured Veil.
- We are committed to updating you on all the latest features coming to the game with regular communications and articles on the state of the development!
[h3]
[/h2]
We still have tons to do and we are just at the beginning of our journey together.
We sincerely hope this document has proven our commitment to transparency, cleared some doubts, and possibly contributed to making an informed decision when it comes to buying Fractured Veil in Early Access.
If you still have some other questions, please feel free to ask in our Discord Server.
See you in our Tropical Paradise!
- Paddle Creek Games