Windward News

Arr, Captains!

Two days shy of six months on Steam! Has it really been that long? The time just flew by...

Looking back, I originally thought that Windward would be in Early Access for about two months, but listening to all of you offer awesome suggestions on how to make the game better I kept reconsidering and pushing the date back. The "date" itself has never been announced; it was always something that existed only in my head. Well, no more! It's time to draw a line in the sand: Windward will officially leave Early Access on May 12th! (although I fully expect the updates to continue well past that, so don't worry)

And now, onto the look of what happened over the last few weeks.

At the beginning of March there was PAX East. That... was an interesting experience. It started with me and a friend of mine driving from Toronto to Boston, getting stopped at the border, and basically being forced to fork over a thousand bucks just to be able to bring a few computers across. Ridiculous? Oh yes.

Once we finally made it to Boston and figured out how to navigate the city's ridiculously convoluted tunnel system, the rest of the trade show went quite well (pic 1, pic 2). I had 3-4 people helping me out with the two booths I had at the show (the other being Starlink) and both were quite packed with people of all ages, from older gamers with grey hair to young and extremely adorable ones. All in all, Windward was very well received with some players even having entire impromptu LAN parties while there! All in all, high expenses aside it was an excellent trip. I just wish I had more time to do things like this.

Well, moving onto the world of actual development, the past month has been quite busy as well. The majority of updates have been focused on balancing, polish and squashing of bugs, but I did get Windward running on NVidia Shield at 60 FPS! Shield is an Android tablet, in case you aren't familiar with it. Windward for mobiles? Quite possible, it seems.

The most obvious change for returning players will be the redesigned menu system and deeper Steam integration that allows players to open up their local games to their friends without having to host a server.

For players seeking a peaceful, relaxing experience there is now an option to create a Questing / Trading instance in the game. Much like the Combat instance type that preceded it, it allows players to create a private region hand-tailored to their current level, except that there won't be any pirates present. This makes it uniquely ideal for sailing around and earning some gold without having to fight for your life.

The functionality of the game's difficulty slider has been changed as well. Where before it was simply scaling all HP and damage, now it controls what abilities AI ships will get. Above 100% challenge AI will be able to hire allies to follow them around, for example. This way players that wish to increase the challenge can get a more interesting experience without making players handicapped in the process.

For higher level players, heroic instances have been revamped as well. While still very challenging, they can now be done by smaller teams and siege towers found there are now going to be quite a bit more effective against pirates. If you've been waiting to try them, hop onto one of the public servers and team up to give them a shot. The loot will be very worth it!

As usual, if you want to read the full list of patch notes, you can find them here.

See you on the high seas!
-ArenMook

Ahoy, Captains!

Another month of development comes to a close, and with it -- a boatload of polish! Oh yes, I went there!

So what went down this month? Well, let's look over the patch notes, shall we?

The most obvious additions of February will likely be the improved ambiance of the game with the newly animated tree cover and the NPCs that will now talk to you and each other as they sail about. Random amusing banter aside, they may give you hints that will aid your trading, ask for help when in trouble, thank you when you save them and even encourage you to stand fast when they try to save you in turn.

That said, I would say the most important addition lies in private instances. Previously when playing multiplayer the players would be often faced with a world that has already been conquered by others with little to offer to new players who wanted some action. Well, meet the new Instanced Region addition (think private random outdoor "dungeons") -- simply use the Instance button at the top left and you will be sailed away into a private region just for you (and whomever you invite to play with you). And the best part? The instance's difficulty will be hand-tailored to your level providing the optimal experience -- not too difficult, yet also not too easy.

For those on the path of exploration and sailing around, a newly added Diving Suit can be used to salvage shipwrecks found lying about. Players can now recover resources and sometimes even items while exploring. The Sojourn faction, being so uniquely suited for the nature of this work will even get experience doing so. The Diving Suit was actually a community suggestion originally brought forth on the forum.

Continuing on the path of relaxed gameplay, both trading and questing systems have been altered to better reflect distance-based demands and production. The farther away the trade commodity being produced from the town that needs it, the more it will be willing to pay for it. Similarly the farther away the quest's destination, the more the quest will offer as a reward.

Better still, for those that want to enjoy the ambiance or watch their friends play can now simply connect to the game then right-click the player's name in the newly added player list and choose to Observe them. Think "streaming video", without the streaming, or the video! Just watch your friends play in real time, offer suggestions, tips, or commentary as you see fit. And if you're not a fan of being stalked by the paparazzi, fear not! Just go /anonymous. (pro-tip: You can even observe the AI by using the /observe command)

Highly experienced captains may run into elite bosses (Pirate Lords) from time to time. Beware of those, as they will hire allies to follow them around. Speaking of experience, have you ever found the perfect Legendary (orange) item, just to leave it gathering dust as you've gained more experience? Well, now you can upgrade your items by visiting size 10 towns in regions with a higher challenge level than the item you are trying to upgrade. Beware though, doing so won't be cheap!

As usual, you can read the full list of patch notes here.

And finally, if you are coming to PAX East this year be sure to stop by booth 3248 to say hello!