Two Years Since the Early Access Started!
Greeting Mistwalkers,
Two years it has been since the start of our Early Access on Steam! That was fun, but it was also a lot of work. You may not be aware of that, but Virtys is basically two, sometimes three, game developers with one artist. For a team of this size, we can consider that it went pretty well!
During these two years, the game evolved quite a lot. In the first year of the EA we had to work a lot on our technology to have the game more stable until we got to a point at the end of 2022 that we considered the engine solid enough to make our official release. We also added two platforms to the game and, with the help of the community, translated the game to two new languages.
We would like to give a big thank to all Portal Pioneer that are still around after all these times. Even if it's only to come back from time to time to check out what is new or to give us your opinion on community topic (or even just to remind us to have a miłego dnia). Your support has been very important to us!
So, what are we up to? Well, if you are following us on Discord or the Steam Community Forum you already know that we are currently reworking core elements of the game to make it more sustainable. We started the refactoring with an open discussion with our players to get as much feedback as we could.
The most obvious problem with the game seems to be the fact that our current game shop cannot sustain the game, we need to create a more appealing offer. This will have us move away from cosmetics and offer more options to improve the game progression for new players and add conveniences for long-time players. We should be able to show the changes to the game shop soon in a play test.
The second part of our refactoring will be about the grinding part of the game. We will try to target the most obvious problems and change some of the requirements. The game is about character progression, we won’t be able to change that, but there are ways to make it more balanced.
There are also parts of the game that we did not really like. The PVP arena is one of those systems. These arenas will be removed, and the Mists region will be included in the main storyline with Leonidas. Other features like the delete character will be added for players that want to restart the game. We are also working on clarity of the game concept as it was something that was mentioned often.
Our discussion with the community had brought us to the possibility of far deeper changes like removing the universality of the character (meaning you need to raise every skill). As much as we today consider that it was not the best choice from the start, we don’t have yet a way to remove this problem (well, problem for some players) without having to restart the whole game. This means that this concept is likely to stay until our next game.
On the other hand, one of the topics that was also brought to us by the player and that we now consider very important is the fact that after a very rich start in the game the player reaches some kind of empty middle game with only ”grind gates” to do. We were way too much focused on player introduction and then on improving the endgame. The result was that we left a hole in the middle. For us, it means that as soon as the big features for the refactoring are done, we need to go back to mid game content and give you more adventures with Sorka, Leonidas and all the colorful characters already existing in the game that just stopped giving you meaningful quests to do way too early. We come to think that this hole in the middle amplifies all the other problems because the balance between pure progression and storytelling is lost.
For now, let’s celebrate our two years of Mist Legacy with you sharing what you like most about the game so we can also see the bright side of this game that a few folks created just because doing games is what they like the most.
Bests,
Two years it has been since the start of our Early Access on Steam! That was fun, but it was also a lot of work. You may not be aware of that, but Virtys is basically two, sometimes three, game developers with one artist. For a team of this size, we can consider that it went pretty well!
During these two years, the game evolved quite a lot. In the first year of the EA we had to work a lot on our technology to have the game more stable until we got to a point at the end of 2022 that we considered the engine solid enough to make our official release. We also added two platforms to the game and, with the help of the community, translated the game to two new languages.
We would like to give a big thank to all Portal Pioneer that are still around after all these times. Even if it's only to come back from time to time to check out what is new or to give us your opinion on community topic (or even just to remind us to have a miłego dnia). Your support has been very important to us!
So, what are we up to? Well, if you are following us on Discord or the Steam Community Forum you already know that we are currently reworking core elements of the game to make it more sustainable. We started the refactoring with an open discussion with our players to get as much feedback as we could.
The most obvious problem with the game seems to be the fact that our current game shop cannot sustain the game, we need to create a more appealing offer. This will have us move away from cosmetics and offer more options to improve the game progression for new players and add conveniences for long-time players. We should be able to show the changes to the game shop soon in a play test.
The second part of our refactoring will be about the grinding part of the game. We will try to target the most obvious problems and change some of the requirements. The game is about character progression, we won’t be able to change that, but there are ways to make it more balanced.
There are also parts of the game that we did not really like. The PVP arena is one of those systems. These arenas will be removed, and the Mists region will be included in the main storyline with Leonidas. Other features like the delete character will be added for players that want to restart the game. We are also working on clarity of the game concept as it was something that was mentioned often.
Our discussion with the community had brought us to the possibility of far deeper changes like removing the universality of the character (meaning you need to raise every skill). As much as we today consider that it was not the best choice from the start, we don’t have yet a way to remove this problem (well, problem for some players) without having to restart the whole game. This means that this concept is likely to stay until our next game.
On the other hand, one of the topics that was also brought to us by the player and that we now consider very important is the fact that after a very rich start in the game the player reaches some kind of empty middle game with only ”grind gates” to do. We were way too much focused on player introduction and then on improving the endgame. The result was that we left a hole in the middle. For us, it means that as soon as the big features for the refactoring are done, we need to go back to mid game content and give you more adventures with Sorka, Leonidas and all the colorful characters already existing in the game that just stopped giving you meaningful quests to do way too early. We come to think that this hole in the middle amplifies all the other problems because the balance between pure progression and storytelling is lost.
For now, let’s celebrate our two years of Mist Legacy with you sharing what you like most about the game so we can also see the bright side of this game that a few folks created just because doing games is what they like the most.
Bests,
