Three Ascension tiers are not enough
Hello,
Another four weeks are gone and now would be the time I would share all the news I have, But this time it will have to be different. There's a lot of things I can't yet share. But I'll give you some sneak peek what this is all about.
The first topic I want to touch is the future of ascension tree. In the past I only hinted a few details about this. The main reason is that I was never very sure how exactly the tree will be extrapolated. Will there be a new mechanic on tier 2 or tier 3 or both? Will there be one new type of lotus or more than 1? Will they all have different mechanics? How is the Black lotus going to come into play? How many Tiers will there be? What Scenarios will be between future tiers? What connections will there be between the scenarios? How is difficulty going to scale? Many questions are still unanswered but some had to be answered a few days back.
Originally I planned a 3 tier ascension tree. Because 3 is a nice number. There was never a reason why exactly three. After finishing a few books and spending a few days with a virtual whiteboard I came up with some ideas and realised we need one more.
Current plan (and I am 90% sure the plan will still evolve) is to separate the ascension tree into 4 tiers, each concluded by a scenario similar to the Babel tower. As you will progress through higher tiers, the hero level will continue to rise approximately ~50 levels per tier, thus leading up to level ~200. My expectation is that each tier would have roughly same game length as the first tier. However there are updates planned for the first tier as well and a potentially a number of optional 'grind' time. So this is hard to estimate.
These tiers would each introduce a new core mechanic to the game. That could be a new type of lotus awarded for different achievements. That may be a new type of problems your civilisations will have to face. That may also include transformation of existing concept into something more complex. This can be all above at once. I have specific ideas but for now I won't share any spoilers.
The fifth tier is where this vision ends. There's no specific decision for tier 5 yet. One option is the Tier 5 is not going to make it to version 1.0 and will be done later. Another option is that tier 5 will be created as a simple endless feature and will be incrementally improved over post-1.0 content updates. But for now it is outside my perspective.
In my last update I mentioned the new Dynamic technology tree. Tech tree was an ancient piece of code in the game and it was in bad need of cleanup and upgrade. The good news is that this is done and as a result I now have the following capabilities:
The bad news here that all the above are just 'options'. Whether or not I chose to use some of them or none is yet to be decided. At the moment it is not clear which features will be advantageous and which ones would end up being just an unnecessary frustration to the players. For the moment the biggest advantage is to have all those options available until an opportunity presents itself to use them as a solution to an actual problem. So for the next month's work I decided to swap to the second area of focus.
This is simple. Autonomy resource is currently very limited in use. We need to give it a significant 'face-lift'. The general idea is to follow the same logic as the Gold update had. Just do everything a little differently.
[h2]Autonomy shop[/h2]
As with Gold, Autonomy will get it's unique skills unlocked by both technology as well as by Heroes/Wonders. Those abilities will be accessible via it's own Shop screen and will use the same User interface principles - Trigger abilities and Toggle abilities.
This new concept will include existing automation skills of course. However the skills will have to go through a bit of redesign first. Additionally there's a number of policy skills that will give player more abilities at their disposal and will also make use of the population number itself (as opposed to using Workers as the sole economical unit).
As with gold, autonomy will work as a 'mana' resource to spend on abilities.
[h2]Connection to ascension tiers[/h2]
In addition to above, Autonomy is planned to be more deeply embedded into other game features. But for simplicity's sake those features will not manifest themselves until later through the game. This ties to the new planned mechanics unlocked in ascension tiers 2,3 and 4.
[h2]Theater and Library redesign[/h2]
There is no coincidence that Research and Autonomy are being redesigned together. This all stems from the need to provide a meaningful function to the workshops that specialize on these two mechanics.
Theater as is now is providing a too easy way to create trash heroes with little cost. At the same time it doesnt provide a very meaningful passive ability unless you use Autonomy skills heavily. Library is relatively OK, but doesnt provide any 'significant' mechanic for the player. So as part of the upcoming update, both of these workshops will be updated and rebalanced.
[h2]AFK[/h2]
One of the fundamental features left out from the game on early access release day was AFK play. This is the feature that you know from Idle games, that lets you complete a lengthy projects over a real-life night. That is, when the game gets loaded next day, you are able to use that idle time the game was off to your advantage. (basically the game will check how long it was off, and then fast-forwards the game world to the future)
This feature was there for November release but was problematic and therefore has been disabled. Finally it has been turned back on and is now being thoroughly tested. I'll share more details about this when the final version is ready for beta test. Will have to also run more performance tests on lower-spec machines.
For now however let me repeat what I said back before that this AFK feature will not be a mandatory thing. I am perfectly aware that not every time you can spend time to prepare your civilization for 48 hours of complete autonomy. So there's always going to be a choice to not skip 'to the future'. The Idle play should be just one of the play styles of this game. One that you can entirely skip if you choose to.
As part of some of the changes and decisions around Research tree I had to adjust the plan a little bit. About 2 weeks of extra work (features I did not want to do at all now seem more attractive to do) was added to the last plan's version and another 2 weeks were lost mostly to being sick.
You can check the new roadmap here.
As usual I keep the original roadmap versions in separate tabs - so you can see what the plan looked like earlier.
The main outcome is that version 0.8 (new research and autonomy) will not be finished completely within Q1 and so will most likely get into beta near the end of May.
That's about it. See you next time.
Ondrej
Another four weeks are gone and now would be the time I would share all the news I have, But this time it will have to be different. There's a lot of things I can't yet share. But I'll give you some sneak peek what this is all about.
The Ascension tiers 2, 3, 4 and 5
The first topic I want to touch is the future of ascension tree. In the past I only hinted a few details about this. The main reason is that I was never very sure how exactly the tree will be extrapolated. Will there be a new mechanic on tier 2 or tier 3 or both? Will there be one new type of lotus or more than 1? Will they all have different mechanics? How is the Black lotus going to come into play? How many Tiers will there be? What Scenarios will be between future tiers? What connections will there be between the scenarios? How is difficulty going to scale? Many questions are still unanswered but some had to be answered a few days back.
Originally I planned a 3 tier ascension tree. Because 3 is a nice number. There was never a reason why exactly three. After finishing a few books and spending a few days with a virtual whiteboard I came up with some ideas and realised we need one more.
Current plan (and I am 90% sure the plan will still evolve) is to separate the ascension tree into 4 tiers, each concluded by a scenario similar to the Babel tower. As you will progress through higher tiers, the hero level will continue to rise approximately ~50 levels per tier, thus leading up to level ~200. My expectation is that each tier would have roughly same game length as the first tier. However there are updates planned for the first tier as well and a potentially a number of optional 'grind' time. So this is hard to estimate.
These tiers would each introduce a new core mechanic to the game. That could be a new type of lotus awarded for different achievements. That may be a new type of problems your civilisations will have to face. That may also include transformation of existing concept into something more complex. This can be all above at once. I have specific ideas but for now I won't share any spoilers.
The fifth tier is where this vision ends. There's no specific decision for tier 5 yet. One option is the Tier 5 is not going to make it to version 1.0 and will be done later. Another option is that tier 5 will be created as a simple endless feature and will be incrementally improved over post-1.0 content updates. But for now it is outside my perspective.
Dynamic Research
In my last update I mentioned the new Dynamic technology tree. Tech tree was an ancient piece of code in the game and it was in bad need of cleanup and upgrade. The good news is that this is done and as a result I now have the following capabilities:
- Add 'accidental' technologies to the tree on-the-fly (for instance by discovering a rare technology from a tribal village). Hello medieval penicilin.
- Can make accidental technologies permanently available (through ascensions for instance) thus creating a new meta-progress.
- Can in theory make Unique Heroes or Wonders unlock otherwise unavailable technology
- Can end the tree with endlessly generated list of random technologies
- Can have optional branches so that you no longer have to research nearly everything every time
- Can skip certain workshop levels or units as part of 'tech rush' strategy
- Can modify existing technologies through ascensions (yes you're probably scratching your head 'how does THAT make sense')
- Can 'forbid' a technology from research
- Can block any technology branch by a 'gate' similar to how current era bosses work.
- Technology gates can be arbitrary - for instance a tech can be locked until a certain map tile is upgraded or a foreign tribe is found
- We can use a new resource to open any tech gate. A sort of a 'wild card'
- We can get make the Star Bonuses dynamic every run
- We can also replace or mix bonuses system with the gate system
The bad news here that all the above are just 'options'. Whether or not I chose to use some of them or none is yet to be decided. At the moment it is not clear which features will be advantageous and which ones would end up being just an unnecessary frustration to the players. For the moment the biggest advantage is to have all those options available until an opportunity presents itself to use them as a solution to an actual problem. So for the next month's work I decided to swap to the second area of focus.
Autonomy redesign
This is simple. Autonomy resource is currently very limited in use. We need to give it a significant 'face-lift'. The general idea is to follow the same logic as the Gold update had. Just do everything a little differently.
[h2]Autonomy shop[/h2]
As with Gold, Autonomy will get it's unique skills unlocked by both technology as well as by Heroes/Wonders. Those abilities will be accessible via it's own Shop screen and will use the same User interface principles - Trigger abilities and Toggle abilities.
This new concept will include existing automation skills of course. However the skills will have to go through a bit of redesign first. Additionally there's a number of policy skills that will give player more abilities at their disposal and will also make use of the population number itself (as opposed to using Workers as the sole economical unit).
As with gold, autonomy will work as a 'mana' resource to spend on abilities.
[h2]Connection to ascension tiers[/h2]
In addition to above, Autonomy is planned to be more deeply embedded into other game features. But for simplicity's sake those features will not manifest themselves until later through the game. This ties to the new planned mechanics unlocked in ascension tiers 2,3 and 4.
[h2]Theater and Library redesign[/h2]
There is no coincidence that Research and Autonomy are being redesigned together. This all stems from the need to provide a meaningful function to the workshops that specialize on these two mechanics.
Theater as is now is providing a too easy way to create trash heroes with little cost. At the same time it doesnt provide a very meaningful passive ability unless you use Autonomy skills heavily. Library is relatively OK, but doesnt provide any 'significant' mechanic for the player. So as part of the upcoming update, both of these workshops will be updated and rebalanced.
[h2]AFK[/h2]
One of the fundamental features left out from the game on early access release day was AFK play. This is the feature that you know from Idle games, that lets you complete a lengthy projects over a real-life night. That is, when the game gets loaded next day, you are able to use that idle time the game was off to your advantage. (basically the game will check how long it was off, and then fast-forwards the game world to the future)
This feature was there for November release but was problematic and therefore has been disabled. Finally it has been turned back on and is now being thoroughly tested. I'll share more details about this when the final version is ready for beta test. Will have to also run more performance tests on lower-spec machines.
For now however let me repeat what I said back before that this AFK feature will not be a mandatory thing. I am perfectly aware that not every time you can spend time to prepare your civilization for 48 hours of complete autonomy. So there's always going to be a choice to not skip 'to the future'. The Idle play should be just one of the play styles of this game. One that you can entirely skip if you choose to.
New Roadmap version
As part of some of the changes and decisions around Research tree I had to adjust the plan a little bit. About 2 weeks of extra work (features I did not want to do at all now seem more attractive to do) was added to the last plan's version and another 2 weeks were lost mostly to being sick.
You can check the new roadmap here.
As usual I keep the original roadmap versions in separate tabs - so you can see what the plan looked like earlier.
The main outcome is that version 0.8 (new research and autonomy) will not be finished completely within Q1 and so will most likely get into beta near the end of May.
That's about it. See you next time.
Ondrej