Q3 2016 Schedule Update

[From a forum post by Starr “Darkstarr” Long]

Greetings Avatars,

As we have stated previously, our goal is to once-per-quarter post an updated schedule for our monthly releases. Even though these goals will likely change somewhat as we react to feedback, we feel it is important to provide you an updated roadmap periodically.

Our goal continues to be to deliver our backers content each and every month so that we can get feedback and use it to iterate improvements. This continues to benefit the game, with sweeping changes, like the switch over to use-based advancement. Meeting that monthly goal is our highest priority, but we require flexibility in our deliverables in order to meet that goal. As you have seen in previous releases, sometimes we push things out, but we also often pull new things in.

The third quarter of 2016 starts with the Final Wipe and Lot Selection and then moves on to steadily progressing through the list of features and content promised during our Kickstarter.

As always, all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change as we adjust our designs based on direct feedback from you, our backers.

RELEASE 32, July 28, 2016

• Final Wipe: Please note that if you have been waiting to convert your purchases to store credits, these will be your FINAL three chances to do so as long as you do NOT claim your rewards at the bank. There will be three windows the week of release to convert your purchases to store credit. These windows will be on Monday, Wednesday, and then finally on the day of release, Thursday. This will work exactly as it has in previous releases.
• Lot Selection: Starting at 11:00 CDT players can begin selecting lots in the game in order of their lot selection group. You can view your lot selection group on your account page.
• Story: The Love Path will get a major polish pass with a special focus on NPC behaviors in Soltown and Ardoris. Greater Brittany will be finished with the addition of the final neighborhood of Brittany Estates, a plush area composed mostly of City sized lots. Additionally several NPC towns, including Spite, that are currently clones will be replaced with original scenes.
• New User Experience Polish: Continued polish passes will be done on the Tutorials, hints, and starting scenes with special focus on the Isle of Storms and Bloodriver.
• Service Hardening: We will continue a series of passes through the client, authentication, and server to harden the service for security and customer service. Special attention will be paid to the Patcher.
• Player Towns & Player Housing: Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game. New variations on the town templates may also appear.
• Performance: Major efforts will be done to optimize performance.  This will include frame rate improvements, load time improvements, and memory footprint improvements.
• Multiplayer Economic Balance: A pass will be made through creature loot bundles, merchant pricing, property taxes, public vendor fees, harvesting rates, agriculture growth, crafting recipe ingredient amounts, and other factors to begin establishing an equilibrium for the multiplayer economy
• Multiplayer Combat Balance: A pass will be made through combat skills, creature stats, player stats, advancement rates, zone difficulties, and other values to establish an equilibrium for multiplayer combat.
• Crafting: More enchantments and more masterwork modifiers will come online. Most decorations will be removed from NPC merchants and moved to recipes for crafters. Additionally several homes will be craftable for the first time.
• Character: A polish pass will be completed through all the hair styles.

RELEASE 33, August 25, 2016

• Story: The polish pass through the Love Path of the story will continue with special focus on NPC behaviors in the town of Spite. Brittany NPCs will also get a behavior improvement pass. Additionally several NPC towns that are currently clones will be replaced with original scenes.
• New User Experience Polish: Continued polish passes will be done on the Tutorials, hints, and starting scenes with special focus on Highvale.
• Player Towns & Player Housing: Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game. New variations on the town templates may also appear. Additionally the Lot Deed Lottery system for in game purchase of Lot Deeds will come online.
• Offline Mode Combat Balance: A pass will be made through the game to adjust combat balance for play in offline mode with companions.
• Offline Mode: Patching and Reward delivery for Offline Mode become available to players using this mode to play.
• Crafting: Cooking and the Food System will expand with more recipes and more functionality including more food buffs.
• Creatures: We will begin a major polish pass through our creatures.

RELEASE 34, September 29, 2016

• Story:  A final polish pass will be completed through the Love Path of the story and we will begin a polish pass on the Courage Path. Aerie and Resolute NPCs will also get a behavior improvement pass. Additionally several NPC towns that are currently clones will be replaced with original scenes.
• Player Towns & Player Housing: Player-Owned Towns that have locked submission forms will appear in the game. New variations on the town templates may also appear.
• Offline Economy: The economy in offline mode will be tuned to be better balanced for single player. NPC merchants will buy player crafted items at a profit to the player for instance. Additionally pledge and add-on store items will be available from NPC merchants for purchase with in-game gold.
• Crafting: Recipes will become teachable (much like emotes). Agriculture will get a polish pass and some new content.
• Creatures: We will continue a major polish pass through our creatures.
• Roving Encounters: Potential encounters (wandering merchants, monsters, etc.) will appear on the overworld for players to engage (or avoid).

We continue to be incredibly thankful for the support we receive from this amazing community. While the funding you provide makes all of this possible, it pales in comparison with the faith you have in us, the feedback you provide us, and the content you are making for everyone to enjoy. We are humbly grateful, and we cannot wait to see you again in New Britannia!

Before I go, I wanted to include an excerpt from my original post about our Early Release Schedule that is important to set the framework for our ongoing schedule:

As a crowd funded and crowd sourced project, we feel it is incredibly important that we provide our backers with information and access well before game studios would normally do so in a traditional development model. Traditionally, the players are given information and access only after the development team has already decided exactly how things will be done, and at times, even after it has already been implemented. By the time the public normally has access to the product, there is usually no time to meaningfully react to the public feedback.

Shroud of the Avatar is different than the traditional model, as we intend to offer our backers extremely early access to information and even the game itself. With that said, we also want to be very careful that we only provide access to portions of the game when they are ready for a wider range of feedback. If we can play it internally and we know it is not ready, then there is nothing to be gained by having a wider audience come to the same conclusion. In fact, it could be quite damaging to do so.

Our strategy over the next few months is to provide you with focused and iterative releases of content. Your feedback during these releases will be critical to making the final product the best it can be, and we appreciate that you are all so willing to devote your time to helping us. With each release, we will have specific tests we will ask you all to make. As we get closer, we will send instructions on how to download, install, report bugs, etc. After each release we will review the results and reevaluate the plan including the duration of availability of each release. Please note that game data will be wiped periodically during early access.

It is important to note that all dates, durations, and deliverables are subject to change.

Sincerely,
Starr Long
Executive Producer
Shroud of the Avatar