Dev-Diary #1 "Beta Feedback and upcoming Content"
Dear Heroes!
First things first, like we already announced the official version of the Blood of Steel on Steam will be launching tomorrow at 12pm CET (10am UTC). We have been waiting for this moment for so long, and also thank you for your patience with us! In the closed beta test that successfully ended lately, you guys provided us with hundreds of suggestions and feedback. At this moment, our R&D team is optimizing and adjusting the game around the clock, striving to achieve perfection, and bring everyone a better game experience!
All of you gave so much feedback during our closed beta, and he had a lot of work to evaluate every feedback! Now we want to address the things who stated the most from all of you guys to clarify some frequently given feedback, and we also want to talk about some thoughts from our side and future plans, let’s start!
1. The average time a game lasts is too short, sometimes only lasting 2-3 minutes and the army cannot be resurrected, so there is no possibility of a comeback.
As we mentioned in the game description, Blood of Steel is a competitive battle game that simulates cold weapon warfare. In this game, what we value the most is the experience of often-changing battlefields in the cold weapon era. The length of the game is more dependent on the tactical strategy of both sides.
All-in playstyle may only take a few minutes for the end-battle to win the game, which is monotonous and tedious; but when both sides decide to take a step back and to use the strategy of cavalry scouts and harassment, the infantry will stand by to defend the archers, and catch the opponent’s minor misplays and mistakes to accumulate every bit of advantage. This would be a game of patience and detailed operation between the two opponents. It is also the battlefield atmosphere we want to catch for our players. The duration of such a game is normally about 10 minutes.
This is the time required for a player to experience the complete battle process on a real battlefield and maintain a highly tense battle rhythm. We have gone through many large-scale gameplay tests and found out that the resurrection mechanism would greatly hinder the rhythm of such battlefield experience, and would make the tactical strategy of the battlefield tend to be simple and repeated, rather than precise execution after the tactics are formulated. The feeling of immersive experience for the battlefield is also dissolved, and the overall experience doesn’t live up to our expectations. Therefore, we did not use the resurrection mechanism in the “Legion-War” mode but put it in another more suitable game mode.
For example, we put the resurrection mechanism into “Siege-Battle”. The current “Siege-Battle” mode is divided into 6v5 and 10v8 modes. Each siege-battle is divided into two stages: "Occupy Stronghold" and "Flag Battle". In the first stage, both sides mainly focused on the city wall and the two strongholds of A and B. Siege equipment such as Battering Rams, well fences, Catapults, and ladders will be put on the battlefield; the second stage takes place in the complex alleys in the city. The fight for the flag point, such repetitive fights, requires a resurrection mechanism, and the resurrection mechanism will become a positive experience in this game mode.
There are also some other game modes with resurrection mechanisms coming soon, so stay tuned and watch our social media channel for teaser ;).
2. The acquisition of heroes.
Blood of Steel is a battle game that focuses on fair competition. Every hero that the player can choose can be obtained through silver coins, one of our free in-game currency. The new account can also directly obtain 7 heroes including Ling Tong, Jeanne of Arc, and Arthur through the 7-days login event and our main task.
Besides, in the early stage, players can also quickly obtain a large number of silver coins to buy heroes through daily tasks, achievements, and battle rewards.
And above that, we are also planning various activities in the future, and through those activities, heroes can be obtained permanently. Another cool information regarding the acquisition of heroes is our upcoming “Battlepass” for Season 1, where you can unlock up to 4 legion skins and other cool items like silver coins and hero shards.
3. The balance of heroes
Balance is relative, and sometimes a small change may cause a hero to rise and become overpowered. We will pay close attention from the very beginning to the key data such as the utilization rate and winning rate of each hero backstage every week. For those heroes with too low/high winning rate or usage, we will listen to the feedback of the community and our own experience in the game to adjust and optimize to make Blood and Steel more balanced and interesting as much as possible without over-adjusting. We will also provide feedback mega-threads on Reddit for each season regarding all game aspects as well as hero balancing, and there will also be some cool rewards for those who compete in giving feedback on these threads!
4. The art performance
Blood of Steel uses a self-developed engine. At the beginning of the project, we also considered commercial engines with good art performance on the market. Although these engines have excellent graphics, they can’t achieve the same server with thousands of people, so at the beginning of the project, we decided to develop our engine, with the goal which is to achieve a relatively good image fluency and a good picture quality when thousands of people are on the same server. Through several years of hard work, we have achieved mainstream rendering technologies such as “Physical Based Rendering”, “Image-Based Lighting”, and “High-Dynamic Range” (HDR).
Since we are developing our engine while making the art design, many early-developed art models have not used the updated engine technology, we will continue to optimize and improve these old models and scenes soon.
5. New player experience
Our original intention of setting the gameplay level limit is to let everyone gradually become familiar with the gameplay and content. Moreover, the current level-up setting is relatively simple, I believe that after the game is launched, everyone will soon experience different modes and gameplays.
Regarding the question of the heroes tutorial, we have already started to add some video tutorials in the game for beginners, including their position in the army, the introduction of skills, and the actual combat display. When you get a new hero, you can watch the video tutorial first, and then enter the actual combat, I believe it will be helpful to you. Related videos can also be found on the hero info page to be watched repeatedly.
The game will be launched soon, and a lot of new content that has not been unveiled in the beta test will be coming out in the official version featuring the brand-new heroes such as Catherine and Zhuge Liang will appear soon after the official version, hoping to meet everyone's needs for different civilized forces.
In terms of gameplay, the two major game modes of “Territory-War” and “Ranked Legion-War” will also be officially opened. Let us dive deeper into both modes:
Territory war is a large-scale war that all players can join and participate in. Guildmembers can join the forces of conquerors, and each occupation of a city can increase the number of territorial battle points for their guild and increase the guild’s ranking. After the end of the season, the top guilds will receive generous rewards. Players without a guild can join the mercenary forces provided by the game system and choose to help the Han or the crusaders.
Ranking “Legion-War” is a star-pointing event that assesses the player's level. Players must continuously win in this game mode to advance the title. With the promotion of the title ranking, at the end of the season, you will receive rewards such as the limited hero skins.
In the future, we will also further innovate the gameplay and introduce interesting PVE modes such as "Mercenary World", "Luban Academy", "Blood Battle Wheat City" and so on, so stay tuned!
Epilogue
It is true that our current game is definitely not the most perfect version of Blood and steel, and there is still a long way to go before the goal of creating the most realistic medieval battlefield experience. We hope that after the game is officially launched, everyone can continue to give us feedback and suggestions on our social media channels to help us continuously improve our game experience. There will be a few more teasers before launch this Tuesday, 20th on our social media channels such as footage from our new heroes, and more so Stay tuned!
On October 20th, Steel Land will open again. We are waiting for you!
All members of the Blood of Steel Team
