Temtem News

Welcome everyone to day two of us literally spoiling the full launch version of Temtem during an entire working week! Today we approach the Competitive and PvP scene of the game. But first, another disclaimer:

Day 1 post, as well as most of what we will be sharing in the upcoming days, is planned to launch right with 1.0, on September 6th. However, the competitive changes posted here today, as well as tomorrow's post, are likely to be released during the “launch window” instead. What does that mean? Well, even though we’re currently working on all these updates, it is possible that the new features described today and tomorrow will not be ready for the first day of 1.0. Instead, they might drop a couple (or more) of weeks later in an additional patch.

The 1.0 patch is going to need extra time in the last certification process before release, so we still aren’t sure how much we will be able to fit in there. We’re including them in this extraordinary week of news because we consider them part of the “1.0 content”, so to speak. What are a couple of weeks in the grand scheme of things, anyway?

Let's dig in!




For us, the competitive part of Temtem has always been one of its key components, and we want to expand and promote it further. We’ve been very conservative in terms of changes to the competitive landscape (both in terms of balance and in terms of features) during our Early Access phase because we wanted to have the majority of the team focused on finishing the content, and the complete roster of Tems included.
However, this all changes in 1.0, so let us explain the upcoming changes and how we are going to increase our focus on this aspect.


[h2]Temtem Showdown[/h2]

Temtem Showdown is an in-game battle “simulator” that allows you to participate in ranked battles without actually working towards building the teams (capturing the tems, breeding and training them, etc).

Having a battle simulator allows players to access the competitive ladder instantly and gives them more tools to freely explore and test new teams, builds or strategies. Ever since the inception of Temtem we’ve tried to facilitate access to competitive battles without going too far (like having the ranked ladder auto-escalate stats and levels), but it hasn't been enough. Our players have been demanding easier access to the competitive scene (or suggesting that we remove all barriers altogether), but we’ve been torn because of how that would impact the PvE progression.

We decided to create the Temtem Showdown game mode and release it with 1.0, or close to it (remember this will likely drop during the launch window!). Showdown will be included as part of the game and its usability will be fused with the ranked competitive ladder. With Showdown you will be able to “edit” your team to your preference without having to train your Tems. You will also be able to select the SVs and TVs you want, the move sets, etc. These Showdown squads will only be available for ranked and friendly competitive matches — you won’t be able to use them for other game content (Dojo rematches, in-game tournaments, Dojo Wars, etc). This will ensure that hard-trained Tems still have their place in the game while allowing for a much more dynamic experience in PvP.

Lastly, even though the ranked ladder will use Showdown teams, you will still be able to participate with your “regular” squad. Showcase squads and regular squads cannot be mixed together. You can still showcase and flex your Luma team and your hard-earned, traditionally-trained Tems.




[h2]Ranked v2[/h2]

When we talk about “Ranked v2” we talk about a series of improvements and changes planned for the ranked format, which will enhance the experience and make it more rewarding. These changes include:

• The ranked format will be divided into seasons (that will go along with the seasonal Tamer Pass, explained tomorrow!). These seasons will impact how ranked matches are played. Balance patches will arrive at the start of each season and the goal is to maintain the meta untouched during an ongoing season.
  
• Hiding the TMR in-game. We’ve seen complaints about how seeing your TMR fluctuate creates a lot of pressure, so we're considering hiding it. The TMR will still be visible while using the API, so the most dedicated users will still be able to check it using third-party tools.
  
• We want to make some tweaks to the TMR formula. One of the things we want to do is tweak the amount of TMR lost against a lower TMR player (you shouldn’t be matched against one in the first place, but that’s another problem). We also plan to increase the TMR gains so the difference between a good player and a regular one is higher.
  
• We’re also considering adding TMR decay, although we don’t know if it is going to be needed with the season format. At the end of the season, everyone will have their TMR reset to a new, lower value (which will depend a bit on their previous TMR).
  
• We’re adding ranks and subranks in order to “replace” the no-longer-visible TMR. Think of Gold I, Gold II, Silver I, etc. (we’re open to suggestions for cooler names!). These ranks will be distributed based on percentile population at the start of each season, so we will always try to keep the same distribution no matter how many players are playing.
  
• We’re also going to add a “Legend” rank (again, accepting suggestions for the name) which only the top percentile (1%) of players will reach. This rank will have an internal ladder in which you will see your relative place amongst other Legend players, so for example the third-best player (in terms of TMR) would be Legend #3.
  
• We’re adding Feathers (and what's that you might be wondering? You will know soon) as a reward for ranked wins, along with the current rewards for Pansuns. Since we’re going to try to increase the maximum possible TMR rank, the idea is that the Pansun rewards increase with it too. These rewards will now be based on your TMR, instead of your opponent’s TMR.
  
• We’re also adding seasonal rewards. At the end of the season, and depending on your performance during it, you will get some exclusive cosmetic rewards that won’t be obtainable any other way.
  
• And finally, we’re also adding two daily and two weekly competitive quests which will grant users extra Feathers and Pansuns when doing them.
  

We believe all these changes are going to improve ranked matches substantially, but we’ll be checking through the release window and adjusting accordingly.


[h2]Dedicated balance team[/h2]

Up until now, balance has been something that we’ve been doing and maintaining in-between tasks. Instead of having people focusing on it regularly, some of our current team members have been dedicating hours sporadically.

We need to have time to prepare seasonal patches, review matches data, analytics, feedback, etc, so continuing to manage those during our "free" time is unsustainable and a disservice to the competitive environment of the game. With the 1.0 release, we want to be able to have more robust balance changes.

We’ve also talked about including some key community members as “helpers” so the balance team has extra input on certain topics that they could consider more risky or delicate. We already have some names at the top of our minds, and we’ve made some early approaches to discuss it already, but there is a lot of bureaucracy involved so when the team has enough time we will be moving forward with it in a definitive manner. We just wanted to reassure you that this is still planned and a priority to us.


[h2]Crema-run tournaments[/h2]

We love seeing community tournaments thrive. We’ve decided it is time to support the tournament scene even further by creating and organizing our own.

Since we don’t have any real experience with this, we want to start slowly and see where it leads. To ensure we're off to a great start, we hired a dedicated member of the community as our Esports Manager – someone who has run several tournaments and has a good understanding of the Temtem competitive scene. We’re also going to allocate a budget in order to incentivize the tournaments with cash prizes and we are entertaining the possibility of doing on-site tournaments (in Spain for now).

We are still in the very early stages of designing this, but we have loads of ideas and we’re eager to start working on them. Once again, the competitive scene is very important for us and for the future of Temtem, so we want to expand and promote it as much as we are able to.




[h2]Other planned improvements[/h2]

Regardless of whether you consider these competitive improvements or just improvements to the grind in general, here's a couple more ideas we have right now and would like to implement at some point in the future:

First, a TV blender that will ease the process of giving enhancer fruits to Tems. The current process can be a tad tedious because you have to use each individual item one by one, and it can take a while to fully power up one single Tem, not to mention there's room for mistakes and accidents. This blender will let you choose and use a handful of fruits per try, and you'll get a preview of the resulting TVs of that blend. Even if the resulting concoction would just equal those fruits individually, it's sure to make everything much quicker! We are not sure whether this will make it into launch day, launch window, or even later. We're just sharing our brains early on.


Secondly, we're planning a system of sorts that will let you drop your Tems someplace, pay a fee and have them train automatically while they are there. Sort of a training alternative to the Breeding Center. There is a place in-game dedicated to this already, but it's very far from functional. Since this is a lot of work, we're not even considering the launch window for this. It will be added to the game at an indefinite point in the future. We'll tell you more as we progress with it!




That's it for day 2! See you tomorrow to share some insight on the Premium Store and the Tamer Pass. Have fun and Temtem up!

Hello, Tamers, and welcome to the celebrations of what we've come to call the Golden Week! As 1.0 approaches we've decided to progressively but decisively unveil the mystery of 1.0 early on, for those on the fence about the immediate future, and for old and new players alike.

Every working day of this week we will share a post covering one of the sectors of the game that are getting improved in 1.0, or part of the new content coming with it. We recommend reaaally reading them all!

But first, a disclaimer:


[h2]Coming out of our cage and we're a tad nervous about it[/h2]

We are not usually huge fans of talking about what’s coming up in future patches, and there are some good reasons for that:

• We want our players to experience surprises when they receive a new patch. We like to spoil some minor features here and there so there is some hype on what’s coming, but we believe that having surprises is important too.
  
• We usually iterate a lot internally — features get changed constantly until we are very close to the actual patch release. We also iterate on the planning too, pushing features to more distant patches and including things that weren’t planned for the current patch. Giving too much data publicly early on could lead to having incorrect information spread around, like what happened with our initial roadmap for Early Access.
  
• Getting feedback when we are not ready to receive it is usually counter-productive. Our team works best when we are either working on the patch ourselves, or dedicated exclusively to gathering and implementing your feedback. Mixing the two together doesn’t really work for us. Early feedback creates too much noise and too many things to be aware of, and could lead to even longer delays.
  

However, the 1.0 patch is arguably the most important patch ever for Temtem. Even taking into consideration the many reasons why we usually keep patches to ourselves, we've decided to give you a peek! You’ll get to see what's going on now, what’s coming, and how Temtem is going to change with it.

Please do keep in mind that the reasons we explained earlier still stand. That means that everything you’ll read during this week could potentially change before we actually get to the release point, and, despite our best attempts, we are most likely not going to be able to process and/or implement all of the feedback you may have about it. We truly appreciate our community: your ideas and opinions have been key in developing Temtem over the last few years, and we’re really grateful for your contribution all this time, but now we have to step on the gas and focus on carrying the game to its final step. We can't wait for you to be a part of this release, and all that’s coming after that, as well.

Also please do keep in mind that although much of these posts is written in the present tense, all these changes are planned to reach the game with version 1.0, on September 6th, at the earliest.

This said, onto the very first topic that has been revisited for 1.0:


[h2]Campaign progression[/h2]

One of the key components of Temtem is its campaign. Our goal was to create a campaign that requires thinking and preparation for the matches — not something ultra-hard for the most hardcore players out there only, but instead something that requires a certain amount of implication and strategy.

We’ve been tweaking the campaign and the progression during Early Access, mostly easing the way and simplifying it. We're currently at a point where we are pretty happy with the player experience through it. However, one of the most common complaints is the number of forced NPCs you need to beat, so we're making some changes to that.

Mandatory NPCs serve a good purpose in giving us control over how the player levels up through the campaign and balancing the game's difficulty; we don’t want to overshoot this change and generate new issues for players who skip all the optional encounters. We’ve ended up revisiting every area in the game and reducing the mandatory trainers by 20%. We believe that this number helps soften the oppressive feeling of having to battle with almost every trainer you see, while still allowing us to keep a good experience and difficulty curve.

Along with this change, we’re also tweaking the experience curve in order to compensate for this 20% reduction in trainers. This will effectively mean that a player who battles every single NPC (mandatory and optional) will have an easier path, since they will now get more overall experience. We still want people to battle as many trainers as possible, but we hope that, with this change, players will have a more enjoyable time doing so.



While we were tweaking the experience formula, there was another change we wanted to make. Maybe not many of our players know, but built into the XP formula there is a modifier that reduces the experience gained on an “over-leveled” Temtem. Temtem is designed around having a full team of Tems and leveling up all of them, instead of relying on two or three over-leveled Temtem. This is an important lesson that new players need to learn, and one of the ways to teach that was precisely this modifier. However, we felt like the modifier was a bit too oppressive, so we’ve decided to reduce it by 50%. This new value means that you are still not going to be able to complete the campaign using only one or two Tems, but it will represent an overall improvement and increase in the experience gained, especially if you complete every optional encounter.

Another change related to the experience formula is a new experience bonus for those who play in Co-op. While playing on Co-op, you only use half of your Temtem during the battles, so players felt that they were “missing out” on experience for the rest of their Tems. This was especially noticeable if, instead of playing the whole campaign in Co-op, you decided to break your Co-op party and continue solo. In order to compensate for this, we’re adding a new bonus for those Tems that are left out — they will now get a small amount of experience as if they had joined the battle too.

Talking about the endgame experience farming, we’re also going to tweak the defeated experience that is given by Temtem present in Tuwai’s shrines, which are the main place to farm for EXP. We’re increasing the amount of experience they grant by 50%. With this change and the previously talked ones, the total experience gained with these Tems should be around ~80% more than before.

Last but not least, we’re also reducing the amount of dialogue for a good amount of NPC Tamers. We’ve been revisiting the dialogue lines in the battle path and moving those lines to the dialogue path you enter when you speak to them again after beating them. This should also further help make the campaign more enjoyable, while also leaving the option to go through all the dialogue for people who enjoy it.


[h2]Upcoming changes to the Luma economy[/h2]

Lumas are one of the most important features in Temtem, especially for PvE players, and a huge patch like this couldn’t leave them untouched. But first, some background!

Ever since the beginning of Temtem's development, we envisioned Lumas as a rare and exceptional thing that should only be available for the most dedicated players. We’ve tweaked the values related to Lumas multiple times in order to maintain that vision and keep them as an “achievement” for dedication. Even with all these tweaks, Lumas aren’t really that rare, and our current data shows that, out of the players who have completed the campaign, almost 60% have at least one Luma Temtem.

On the other hand, Lumas have been one of the key components that have caused frustration among the player base because most players don’t share our vision for Lumas and believe they should be more widely available. Since one of the objectives for 1.0 is to increase our player's enjoyment and overall make things more available, we’ve decided to make some changes to Luma-related mechanics.

Firstly, we’re increasing the base rate for lumas from 1/10.000 to 1/7.500. This represents a 33% boost on Luma odds and should affect every Luma-related mechanic (radars, Saipark, etc). We’re also changing the stat distribution for Lumas, upping them from a minimum of 20 SVs to 25 SVs. We've also included the SPD in this minimum, effectively removing the “speed curse” for Lumas. With the inclusion of Telomere Bugs (the name is pretty telling, but you'll learn more about this later down the week!) we believe this will no longer be necessary.



One of the most accessible ways to obtain a Luma is using a radar. With 1.0 you will be able to obtain radars in a much more direct way, one we won't be spoiling today (see you on Thursday!). For now enjoy all these changes and tweaks we’re also doing to radars in order to improve the experience while using them:

• Radars will now always find unevolved forms. This way we can ensure you’ll get the whole line as Luma if you decide to evolve it later (if you want to).
  
• Every species of Temtem will now have the same spawn rate (100%) while using the radar. This effectively means radar-spawned Tems will now appear quickly and constantly, no matter the species. No more waiting for those 5% rare Tems!
  
• Radars will no longer have expiration dates — you will be able to keep them in your inventory forever and use them whenever you want.
  
• We’re reducing the number of encounters per radar from 400 to 300, effectively removing the first 100 encounters so you won’t need that many encounters before getting a Luma bonus. From now on, every encounter of a Radar will have a bonus of some sort.
  
• With this reduction, you will now be able to break the radar from the first encounter. You’ll have to keep this in mind!
  
• Last, since radars will be purchasable (like we said, you'll find out where on Thursday), we’re removing them from the Dojo Leaders loot.
  

There is another issue we are trying to solve for Temtem 1.0 regarding Lumas, specifically regarding non-OT Lumas (Lumas caught by one trainer and then traded to another). As you know, the Telomere Hotfixes that are used to perfect a Luma cannot be used on non-OT Lumas, so the value of non-perfected Lumas has been decaying over time.

We’re introducing a new item, called Soulbinder, which will “bind” a Temtem to its current owner, removing the ability to trade them anymore but allowing Telomere Hotfixes to be used on them. This item will be available for purchase on a new location we'll be talking about later down the week. After reading multiple suggestions from the community on how to tackle this issue, we believe this one is the most fitting for Temtem, and that it will both help the Luma market and better the player’s possibilities to obtain a perfect Luma.

We hope all these changes improve the overall experience of getting a Luma. We believe it will make a huge impact on the Luma availability, and while we are losing a bit of the exclusivity we originally envisioned for Lumas, we are not too worried about that… we'll always have Dark Lumas, right?



That's it for today, but we will be back tomorrow for a chat on the Competitive scene and what's coming to it! See you there!

Humble Games and Crema have announced that following its successful Early Access release, version 1.0 of Temtem will arrive on consoles and PC September 6.

Upon release, players of the adventure game will be able to experience new features, such as Seasons, the final island of Archipelago, and new weekly quests.

Temtem is an MMO creature-collection game where you will seek adventure in the Airborne Archipelago alongside your Temtem squad. You can catch every Temtem, battle other tamers, customize your house, join a friend's adventure or explore the online world.

Read more

'Monster taming' is a genre larger than just Pokémon, such that I always feel a little bad drawing comparisons to the genre's dominant force when talking about other games inspired by it.

But then, just look at Temtem. It's not exactly hiding its inspirations. Temtem is undoubtedly like Pokémon, but set in a world populated by other players. After a couple of years in early access, the developers announced today that they're aiming for to hit 1.0 this September.

Read more

Tamers, rejoice! Today we celebrate that Temtem's final launch date, the day on which version 1.0 will hit digital and physical stores, has already been set:

[h3]Mark your calendars, for we have a date on September 6th, 2022![/h3]

For all of you Steam players who have accompanied us through Early Access this means the shining pinnacle of your journey with us. Although you've had plenty of time to inhabit the Airborne Archipelago, Temtem's full release comes packed with new challenges, surprises and improvements. It'll revolutionize your experience, so stay tuned for more info on it soon!

We hope you'll welcome the newcoming Tamers from other platforms with open arms, and that you'll enjoy the hustle and bustle of a busier Archipelago.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Let's get physical![/h2]
Keeping this one a surprise from you has been tough: Temtem is also launching a physical edition and a Collector's edition with the 1.0 version.

Now, we're unfortunately not launching a physical edition of the game for Steam, as it would only contain a Steam key, and being completely honest with you, our research shows they'd likely not sell. We're really sorry by any inconvenience this might cause. But! Temtem's Collector's Edition Bundle is going to fill that void.
You'll be happy to know an edition of the bundle will contain the game, while the other won't, just in case you don't need that extra key.

And what's in the bundle, you might be wondering?

✰A detailed diorama of our longtime partners, the starters.
✰A set of soft enamel pins depicting the little trio.
✰A set of Temcard replicas containing the popular Gharunder, Kinu and Shuine.
✰A set of three embroidered patches, including the Narwhal Crew pin!

You can, in fact, pre-order your Temtem Collector's Edition Bundle already, so get yours today!



Apart from the bundle, we're launching some really cool and terribly cute merch to celebrate such a special milestone! If you like plushies and tees, I'd recommend dropping by!

[h2]Deluxe fries Temtem[/h2]
Once version 1.0 reaches everywhere, all Steam players will be given the option to upgrade their Standard edition into a Deluxe edition. The Deluxe edition adds a handful of never-before-seen, exclusive cosmetics so you can walk into the Archipelago in style. More info on these cosmetics, the price of the upgrade and a first look at them will be revealed as we get closer to launch date!

[h2]Look forward to 1.0![/h2]
We will be talking about the 1.0 and everything it entails really soon, so stay tuned for that too!

We're very emotional to finally have a launch date, and we hope you're in the same boat. Thanks for being by our side all these years of Early Access, and we hope to see your faces amidst all the new players the day version 1.0 launches.

Until then, Temtem up!