An Update on the Near Future for Book of Travels
[h2]Dear Traveller,[/h2]
Before we get to the matter at hand I’d personally like to thank you on behalf of the entire team at Might and Delight for playing Book of Travels, engaging with each other on our social platforms and providing us with the invaluable feedback we need to improve and grow the game.
Now, we’ve always said that we’re going to be communicating our plans and priorities with you as they take shape and today I’m going to tell you about how they’ve changed recently.
Our original plan was, as you may know, to continually flesh out the game with content in the form of additional features, levels, character forms and more – all of it along with a flow of patches with fixes on a regular basis throughout the Early Access period that we call “Chapter Zero”.
But the truth is – and this is the part where we need to be brutally honest with ourselves – Book of Travels is nowhere near the level of polish we expected it to be at this point in its life cycle, nor where we need it to be to make it a successful product in the long term. New content tends to birth new problems for us to deal with when they get added, and for a team as small as ours it quickly becomes unsustainable.
Simply put: we need to get Book of Travels to a place where we can start building it with brick and mortar rather than putting bandaids on it. And for that to happen we need to go to the foundation.
[h2]Waging War on the Bugs[/h2]
It’s in light of this that we have decided to completely focus on fixing the game for the next few months, instead of having our attention split between fixes and new content. Of course, we realise that the fact that the game won’t see any new major content additions for an undetermined amount of time will disappoint some of you. But we also believe that any player who has invested any kind of significant playtime in the game knows as well as we do that this is what Book of Travels needs.
Last week we put out a form open for any and all of you to fill out, and in it we asked you what technical area we need to focus on getting better first. As you can see above, the majority of you want the gameplay bugs to be taken care of primarily, whereas the server stability/functionally got the most votes as a secondary objective.
This data didn’t surprise any of us, and we think that’s a good thing. It serves as a nice confirmation that the path we’re about to set out on is the right course of action. We do have the talent onboard to straighten this out, we really believe that. And with this new focus on fixing what’s wrong with the game, all hands on deck, we’re going to put everything we have into the betterment of Book of Travels. And hopefully, with that, we also secure a stable future for the world of Braided Shore.
That is pretty much everything that I wanted to tell you for now. While this new, aggressive campaign of ours indeed does mean that the output of new content will be put on hold, rest assured that we won’t go into complete radio silence. Whenever we reach milestones you will hear from us, you will get the patch notes and we are interested in doing more forms that you can participate in further down the road. And I will be here, lurking, and forwarding your will to the powers that be. Because your input, your voice will continue to be vital for our progress.
Thank you and Best wishes,
Oliver and the team at Might and Delight
Before we get to the matter at hand I’d personally like to thank you on behalf of the entire team at Might and Delight for playing Book of Travels, engaging with each other on our social platforms and providing us with the invaluable feedback we need to improve and grow the game.
Now, we’ve always said that we’re going to be communicating our plans and priorities with you as they take shape and today I’m going to tell you about how they’ve changed recently.
Our original plan was, as you may know, to continually flesh out the game with content in the form of additional features, levels, character forms and more – all of it along with a flow of patches with fixes on a regular basis throughout the Early Access period that we call “Chapter Zero”.
But the truth is – and this is the part where we need to be brutally honest with ourselves – Book of Travels is nowhere near the level of polish we expected it to be at this point in its life cycle, nor where we need it to be to make it a successful product in the long term. New content tends to birth new problems for us to deal with when they get added, and for a team as small as ours it quickly becomes unsustainable.
Simply put: we need to get Book of Travels to a place where we can start building it with brick and mortar rather than putting bandaids on it. And for that to happen we need to go to the foundation.
[h2]Waging War on the Bugs[/h2]
It’s in light of this that we have decided to completely focus on fixing the game for the next few months, instead of having our attention split between fixes and new content. Of course, we realise that the fact that the game won’t see any new major content additions for an undetermined amount of time will disappoint some of you. But we also believe that any player who has invested any kind of significant playtime in the game knows as well as we do that this is what Book of Travels needs.
Last week we put out a form open for any and all of you to fill out, and in it we asked you what technical area we need to focus on getting better first. As you can see above, the majority of you want the gameplay bugs to be taken care of primarily, whereas the server stability/functionally got the most votes as a secondary objective.
This data didn’t surprise any of us, and we think that’s a good thing. It serves as a nice confirmation that the path we’re about to set out on is the right course of action. We do have the talent onboard to straighten this out, we really believe that. And with this new focus on fixing what’s wrong with the game, all hands on deck, we’re going to put everything we have into the betterment of Book of Travels. And hopefully, with that, we also secure a stable future for the world of Braided Shore.
That is pretty much everything that I wanted to tell you for now. While this new, aggressive campaign of ours indeed does mean that the output of new content will be put on hold, rest assured that we won’t go into complete radio silence. Whenever we reach milestones you will hear from us, you will get the patch notes and we are interested in doing more forms that you can participate in further down the road. And I will be here, lurking, and forwarding your will to the powers that be. Because your input, your voice will continue to be vital for our progress.
Thank you and Best wishes,
Oliver and the team at Might and Delight
