Launch Week Recap: Fireside Chats w/ Sicarius

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Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Launch Week Recap: Fireside Chats w/ Sicarius

Post by Sic » November 27th, 2018, 1:09 am

It has officially been two weeks since launch, and boy have we had a great turn out. I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone, from the community to our talented development team, for their outstanding hard work and efforts over the course of these past few months and, more importantly, these last fourteen days.

In the past fourteen days, we have published over 56 patches to the live server; that’s four patches a day. Our map team has been working day and night to fix reported map issues, and we’ve been working diligently to adjust and expand spawns daily. We hope that we have shown that we’re committed to providing the most stable, fun, feature-rich and professional ran role-playing shard to date. Now that we’ve had a little time to breathe and wrap up our launch development cleanup, we now look forward to the future of our project and what it means to you all.

Story Development and Rollout

The story of Requiem is something we hold near and dear to our hearts, from the exploits of the lowly adventurer in the First Province, all the way to the shenanigans of the Resolve and our favorite Warbishop, Naum Alexandrov. We’d like to share our vision of what Requiem is and will be as it relates to the story, both from a big picture and “boots on the ground” vision.

Our design philosophy when it comes to the story of Requiem is split into two equally important halves; the macro and the micro. The macro of Requiem is considered to be our world-changing and defining elements of the story; stuff that is happening in Vitaveus proper that is directly related to our main storyline. This also can be distilled down more readily apparent and visible elements, such as what’s going on in the First Province with the major actors of our story, such as the Venerated Inquisition. The macro of Requiem will be something that we will begin focusing on now that launch has been successful, and will be evident through the use of official storyline releases in the form of additions to the main plot novella, newspaper releases in game, and of course shard-wide plots and events that will help translate just exactly what we have in store with the setting of the First Province and just why it’s so damn important. Macro elements of the story are things that our entire staff will be involved in, and will serve to shape the identity of the First Province in many ways, including new dungeon releases, new plot elements, new NPCs and spawns, and even in some cases, new game mechanics.

The other half of our story design philosophy is that of the micro; the stuff that happens solely in the First Province, and is often spurred as a reaction to actions taken by players. The micro of Requiem will be ramping up here in the coming weeks, and will be evident in a few different ways; elements of various Factions paying a visit to the First Province for reasons all their own, different groups represented by spawns and the like doing their own things, Verse opportunities; the list goes on. Micro elements are often handled by individual GMs whom, like all of you, seek to make their mark in the game world by interacting and responding to what you are all getting yourselves in to.

Mechanic Development and Rollout

While we work to finish polishing up our release build, we will also be working on the development of two large additions to our game and world. The Faction system from Beta will be making a return in ways that will make the system a lot more accessible to players by refocusing it upon a guild-level rather than a Faction level. In time, guilds will be able to claim and defend valuable resources around the map, recruit and outfit sell swords, claim regions of the map, be issued guild quests by the staff, and ultimately declare war upon other entities in the game.

From a story standpoint, the revised Faction system will also become a mechanical means to help the staff in their macro and micro lore endeavors by allowing them to play the game in a competitive nature versus player guilds. Our vision for this system is to give our staff and players the tools to truly shape the First Province in ways we could only dream about before; imagine allying yourself with a contingent of the Holy Legion in order to liberate a mining camp from the grips of the Foundry, only to be foiled by the Inquisition. By instilling a mechanical set of restrictions and rules upon our micro story elements, we will be able to weave a dynamic and ever-evolving story that is shaped directly by the actions of our players. Couple all of this with our new pioneering system and, well, you can see where we’re heading.

Our second major addition to the shard is something we’ve hinted at over the years but haven’t really delved into much since Act III; the Torment. The Torment and all of it’s fixings will be making it’s triumphant return to the world of Requiem, and with it, a new element of survival. Helping to destroy the Blacklands of the First Province can be truly rewarding, but as with anything in Requiem, rewards come with risk; mutations of all walks of life are spawned by the scourge, and of course, mortality is always at hand when dealing with the single greatest threat mankind has dealt with to date.

The Road Forward

So, what can we all expect from here? Development of our refined Faction system has already taken place, and will enter private testing mode within the next week or two. As we work out all the bugs and issues that we have to account for with the launch build of Requiem and as it relates to this monolithic system, our staff will be focusing upon the important stuff of the shard; its’ story. As we begin to paint the picture of who, what, why, where and how into the day to day life of the First Province, things will begin to make a lot more sense as to where we plan to go with all of this. Our first priorities now that we’ve survived launch are to provide to the community the who, why and how’s of our immediate predicament; what the hell is going on in the Fort Preasidium area, who the main actors are, and pressing play on the main plot and picking back up where we left off. These next coming weeks will be all about defining the immediate situations in-game, while also publishing our other lore elements to the website, and bestowing upon our players all the knowledge they need to truly help breathe life into the game.

From the macro end of things, players can expect the full prologue of the Act V story to be posted in parts over the next two weeks. Additionally, the rest of the story novella will be published along with all other extraneous lore tidbits we have left from the data loss of July. On the micro side of things, you can start expecting to see some interesting stuff happening in and around the province. Following our in-game development meeting this week, our GM staff will begin seeding the world with their own elements, from introducing new Verses to the game world, to holding mini-events, to introducing new NPCs and more.

Documentation and Guides

We are working diligently to get as much information as we possibly can written up and added to the website in-between everything else we’re doing. To help facilitate this lofty endeavor, we will be announcing compensation schedules for players whom wish to help contribute to the construction of what will eventually become a Requiem Game Wiki. Stay tuned for an announcement about this later this week.

Donations and Support

Finally, we’ve received a lot of questions and requests to help support the shard through donations. I cannot express how humbling it is to receive so much positive feedback about the shard and how people can help keep it running; you all are what keeps us invested in the project, and the outpouring of support has been amazing thus far. We have operated this project for over ten years out of our own expenses, and have declined to accept donations until we had a solid and dependable game that could stand on its own. In addition, we’ve lacked a method to compensate our generous community that would adequately recognize their gracious contributions while also staying true to our tenants of avoiding, at all costs, introducing “pay to win” attributes to a project we’ve worked so hard to make.

We had originally intended to use our Legacy system, of which is made up of purely cosmetic and utility things, such as new character slots, as a method to reward players whom donated to our project. With the interest that has been shown so far with people wanting to donate and help support Requiem, I feel compelled to add more features to this system as a huge thank you to the community. Development will be put in to adding new categories of decoration items to the Legacy system and expanding its five-fold, allowing us to offer more cosmetic and decoration items to the player base through this system. And, of course, I’d be remiss in not pointing out that we will 100% retain the original vision of this system and keep allowing players to accumulate Legacy points at the current rate despite any reward schedule. Development of this system will be concluded within 48 hours, and we’ll open up donations for the first time in the history of Requiem.

Closing Words

I sincerely want to thank everyone that is part of this community, because you guys are our greatest and most treasured asset. Requiem is nothing without its’ players, both new and old alike, and I am absolutely humbled by the support, positive feedback and enthusiasm shown over these past two weeks. We’ve witnessed some pretty crazy stuff in-game already, and seeing the maturity of our players as it related to dealing with these situations is humbling. You guys have been our inspiration and our motivation, and we hope to spend a lot of time with you all writing the end of this crazy story that is Requiem.

- Head Admin Sicarius

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