Second Wave News

Early Access Date Announcement

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Greetings Heroes of Armantia!

Since our last update with our Beta in October 2023, we’ve been hard at work on Second Wave. We had so much feedback and of course over 20,000 players who tried the game. Since then, we have seen the outcry from the community, and we feel that the game is now ready for Early Access.

What does this mean for you?
Although we originally planned to release Second Wave at the end of 2024, we realized that we needed to take more time to develop the game. As of now, our timeline is 2025, but we will keep the game in Early Access, which means that players will be able to test the game, give us direct feedback, and help shape the game with us. Second Wave’s Early Access will begin on May 30, 2024 (May 31, 2024 KST) via the Steam platform on PC.

Why Steam? What about PlayStation and Xbox?
We felt this was necessary because, unlike the other platforms, we can freely update the game without too many delays. While Steam gives us a way to push an update, especially if it’s important, it can take a few days on other platforms like PlayStation or Xbox and would typically be released on a Tuesday. That said, Early Access will be coming to both Xbox and PlayStation at a later date.

We will be doing a lot of events in Second Wave to commemorate the early access period, such as earning crystals, cosmetics, and more. But the question we have seen since our first teaser on YouTube is “What exactly has changed in Second Wave?” Without giving too much away, we’d like to give you a little insight.

For the Early Access phase of Second Wave, we have redesigned the overall look of Trestyn. The map you may have seen in the Alpha or Beta is now a memory and has been replaced with a more detailed map that fits our vision. Please keep in mind that the polishing, such as colors, textures, etc. are not yet finished.

For the full announcement, including an in-depth look at what has changed, make sure to visit our website at: https://www.playsecondwave.com/en/announcements/early-access-date-announcement/

The First Beta Test is Complete: Director's Letter

Heroes of Armantia,

Hello everyone. I'm the CEO of Challengers Games and the Producer of Second Wave, Tamura Koji.

I hope everyone is doing well with the new season and all the changes that come with it. I'm certainly not. I still haven't gotten over my cold for a month now... (cough, cough)

Well, anyway. First and foremost, I want to say thank you to everyone.

To everyone who participated in our first Beta Test from October 6th to October 16th, thank you. It's been almost four months since we first showed you our Alpha version of Second Wave on May 27th, 2023. This Alpha test was incredibly instrumental. We were able to gather some amazing feedback from the Alpha players, and it helped us steer the game in the right direction. The view on this ship during our adventure to create Second Wave was a little foggy at times, but your feedback allowed us to see more clearly and resulted in bringing some really good changes to the game.

It wasn't easy, I admit. The entire team put their heads together and we had many, many, many discussions about this feedback. We spent days analyzing player feedback, and after a pretty brutal company meeting, we were able to figure out how to incorporate your ideas and feedback into Second Wave.

This opened up a lot of good conversations for us. We realized that there were countless challenges that had come up in those discussions that we needed to deal with. I have to admit, we did our best to resolve these challenges in the best way we could with the time we had.

Yet you stuck with us and played our game.

With Second Wave, we opened our servers on three continents and three different platforms. You gave us your trust and played Second Wave with more enthusiasm than we could have ever expected.

In the 10 days that we had our beta, we were blown away by the number of people playing. There were a total of 37,442 matches.

Domination was 85% of those matches, Three-Way Battle was 9%, and Stone Grab was 6%.

The number of active players was 18,991, which we really didn't expect. There were 4,466 players playing on our US East servers, and 3,782 players on our US West servers. In Europe we had 4,400 players and in Asia we had 6,343 players.

Our goal for this Beta was to be two steps better than the Alpha we released in June. Unfortunately, it wasn't as good as I thought it would be. My team and I were disappointed with the quality of the result. It didn't meet our expectations.

During the Beta, we found a lot of problems. Matchmaking issues, connectivity problems, social bugs, frame drops, and so on. The list is quite long. We were devastated.

Before I continue, I would like to say that we truly apologize for splitting the matchmaking pool between Eastern and Western North America, which resulted in a smaller matchmaking pool. We will do our best to improve this for the next test so that we can test the game, all together, without splitting the US East and West playerbase, and maintain good latency numbers.

It feels like we didn't fully do our homework after our Alpha test. We sincerely apologize for not bringing you a smoother experience.

As I was writing this Director's Letter, all I could write was that I'm really sorry to everyone, which made it difficult to continue writing this letter for hours on end.

We apologize from the bottom of our hearts.

However, we'd like to thank those of you who enjoyed the game despite the bugs and problems.

As for the results of this Beta, rest assured that they will be used to feed the upcoming second Beta.

Starting on October 16th, we will begin to prioritize all of the technical issues we've encountered in this beta.

For our second beta test, here is a list of what we will be doing starting today.

Whether it's TCP, UDP, packet loss, or library related issues, our first and primary goal is to have NO technical issues.
Improve Domination.
Rework and refine both Three-Way Battle and Stone Grab modes to make them even more appealing and fun than they currently are.
Introducing our Training Grounds feature, Custom Matches, and Bots/AI Matches.
Refining the game controls to make them even smoother.
Finding the right solution for the lack of hit feedback. We want you to really feel the game.
Improve the sound quality.

There are many more fixes, improvements and adjustments that are part of our goals to bring to everyone, and they will be added. We are thoroughly analyzing all of our data and finding the right solutions.

Thanks to all of you who put up with our shortcomings and still had fun playing. We PROMISE to do better next time. We know you want a date for our next Beta, and what I will say is that the next Beta will be as soon as we finish our work and can bring you the game you deserve.

I have said it before, but I will say it again. I truly believe that in order for us to continue our precious developer/player relationship, we must start by keeping our promises to be and do better. So in order to continue to earn your trust and keep our relationship sacred, we will start by keeping our promise.

We will do our best. I promise.

Thank you.
Tamura Koji, CEO

Thank You For Joining Our First Beta 💖

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From October 6th to October 16th, we had our first Beta for Second Wave on PC and Xbox Series X/S. We met some amazing players. 🔥

We know the Beta was far from perfect, but THANK YOU for giving us a chance. 😭

We'll keep working on it, we promise.

We'll see you soon!✨

Beta Update: Bug Fixes #3 🛠️

Hello Heroes!

During our Beta testing, we found various issues and are working hard to resolve them.

We're pleased to announce that we've resolved a few of those issues, and are now bringing you a third update. This update does also brings rebalancing for Heroes, Game Modes and items.

For a full list of changes, please read our Patch Notes post .

Thank you ✨

Server Maintenance: Oct. 13th 17:30 ~ 22:00 (UTC)

Hello Heroes!

We have received several reports of issues with the game, such as bugs, and we have been working hard to resolve them as quickly as possible.

We're happy to announce that we've fixed some of these issues and are ready to release another update. This update will also include Hero, Game Mode, and Item rebalancing.

Once the patch list is complete, we will announce the patch notes. During the update, there will be server maintenance between the hours of Oct. 13th 17:30 ~ 22:00 (UTC)

The new patch and bug fixes will be available via the game client updates on Steam and Xbox. If you see an update for the game, please download and update the game after we begin the maintenance.

(For Steam users) Please restart your Steam to update your client.

Please note that game functions will not work properly while the server is under maintenance.

Thank you ✨