Dear players,
It's the first month of 2014 and we hope you all survived the New Year parties and well rested as we go into the new year.
We want to use this day to present to you the new Community Report which will be different than the previous ones. Since another year is over we want to seize the occasion and take a look back at what has happened in 2013 before giving a short overview about our plans for 2014. It is getting more and more important for us to keep you in the loop and to share our plans, our thoughts and the reasons for what we are doing with you so that you understand our decisions, have time to write feedback and help us with the development of our great game!
Recap of 2013
2013 was an exciting year. The West 2.0 is nothing new anymore, we got used to the new graphics, to the new interface and all the new features but 2.0 wasn't the end of our plans for The West. Last year we changed core mechanics of the game, did a lot of balancing improvements and added cool new features. Of course we also did some bad decisions, had to adjust, rework or even put back some features after going through your feedback but that's totally normal and how it should work. We do listen to your feedback and we want to take the right decisions based on what you recommend whenever possible.
The first big update in 2013 was to version 2.03 which brought many little improvements like the Video Ads, the "collect all" feature on the market or the job progress bar on the map, right above the character. The core features of 2.03 were many chat improvements and the map markers. Especially the chat as it is now a very complex and well working tool that even though it was controversially discussed in the beginning is liked and used a lot more now.
Probably the biggest change last year came with version 2.04: The job system change. We collected a lot of feedback on our planned changes for the job system, introduced different concepts to you and tested different versions of the system on the Beta servers before coming up with a good compromise solution that works pretty well now (We will change the rewards of the 15 sec jobs soon though). From 2.04 on there were only three job durations to choose: 15 seconds, 10 minutes and 1 hour. Active and especially new low level players can quickly progress by doing the 15 seconds jobs without having long breaks in the game flow while players who don't want to click every few minutes still have an option to bridge the time with 1 hour jobs.
Also in this update we introduced the notebook and the quest tracker which is now a feature that no one wants to miss anymore. Instant crafting, a new login bonus and a big rebalancing of crafting, quests and many more core elements made 2.04 to one of the most important updates of 2013 and one of the updates that brought the game a huge step forward. Because we don't want to lose any players anymore just because they didn't log in for a couple of weeks we also deactivated the inactivity deletion of characters with 2.04.
With 2.06 we implemented the Blackboard for easier town joining which we thought and still think is a very important and useful feature that we want to improve further in early 2014. Furthermore a new tutorial made it into the game that we now know converts a good number of more newly registered players into long-time players and therefore was for us and for the game another very important step last year. Many town forum improvements and other small features rounded 2.06 up.
2.07 was the last big update in 2013 and brought a big content boost into the game. Not only 280 new items were implemented but also existing items were rebalanced so that the item progression in the game is, after having added manually balanced items over the past 5 years, is now smooth.
Furthermore a new friends bar was implemented that allows to quickly access your town members, alliance members and friends, see their progress and send messages to them. The feedback on the friendsbar wasn't only positive in the beginning so that we adjusted it and implemented many community wishes and we still want to work on it and consider your feedback to improve the bar even more where possible.
Another big thing was the events in 2013. There were three big events for Easter, Independence Day and the Oktoberfest and many more small events like on St. Patrick's Day, Valentines Day, Towel Day and many others that brought limited special content into the game and gave variety to the normal update schedule. We like the idea of having events in the game and want to keep doing this in 2014 but will analyze the past events and go through your feedback again to see what we can improve to make them better for you.
But 2013 was also the year of quests. We started implementing the first parts of the Main Story, tens of other new quest lines and many many more are prepared already and are just waiting for their activation date. We received a lot of positive feedback on the new quests and especially on the Main Story and definitely plan to keep going this was in 2014 and implement many many more quest lines for you.
Plans for 2014
There is a lot more we plan for 2014 than more quests and improvements to the Blackboard, balancing and our ingame events. Our team is currently working on a Roadmap after all Community Managers of the 20 different language versions went through all of your ideas on the forum. We sorted them and filtered out the ~100 best ideas which we are now internally discussing to see which of them we can implement next year. We will try to bring as many of them into the game as possible because this is one of our main focus points in 2014 but of course we have our own ideas that we want to implement too.
You know two big things that will come with 2014 already. The level cap raise and the Multiplayer Instances. The level cap raise is almost finished and is currently being tested internally. It will come to the Public Beta worlds very soon and we are looking forward to your feedback. This will be the first big update in 2014 and we are very excited already.
The Multiplayer Instances are a completely new feature that takes a lot of time and requires a lot of new code to be written but you could see the first map on InnoGames TV already and we are making good progress. So hopefully you can test the instances soon too. We are of course planning to create many more maps for the MPIs.
Furthermore we want to take a deeper look into Speed/Event worlds that run a lot faster and have a clear goal from the beginning. Also we want to keep working on our new interactive duel system, on fort battle and crafting improvements and many more stuff that we will show you as soon as the Roadmap is final. Our plan is to present you the Roadmap as soon as it is finished and discuss all the features with you so that we can collect your feedback right from the beginning and answer your questions to give you a look on the whole picture.
That's all from Joony for now. We are looking forward to this year as it will be exciting, so we hope you all stay with us on this great journey. As usual, we'd love your feedback (remember: constructive and respectful), so head over to the update review forum!
It's the first month of 2014 and we hope you all survived the New Year parties and well rested as we go into the new year.
We want to use this day to present to you the new Community Report which will be different than the previous ones. Since another year is over we want to seize the occasion and take a look back at what has happened in 2013 before giving a short overview about our plans for 2014. It is getting more and more important for us to keep you in the loop and to share our plans, our thoughts and the reasons for what we are doing with you so that you understand our decisions, have time to write feedback and help us with the development of our great game!
Recap of 2013
2013 was an exciting year. The West 2.0 is nothing new anymore, we got used to the new graphics, to the new interface and all the new features but 2.0 wasn't the end of our plans for The West. Last year we changed core mechanics of the game, did a lot of balancing improvements and added cool new features. Of course we also did some bad decisions, had to adjust, rework or even put back some features after going through your feedback but that's totally normal and how it should work. We do listen to your feedback and we want to take the right decisions based on what you recommend whenever possible.
The first big update in 2013 was to version 2.03 which brought many little improvements like the Video Ads, the "collect all" feature on the market or the job progress bar on the map, right above the character. The core features of 2.03 were many chat improvements and the map markers. Especially the chat as it is now a very complex and well working tool that even though it was controversially discussed in the beginning is liked and used a lot more now.
Probably the biggest change last year came with version 2.04: The job system change. We collected a lot of feedback on our planned changes for the job system, introduced different concepts to you and tested different versions of the system on the Beta servers before coming up with a good compromise solution that works pretty well now (We will change the rewards of the 15 sec jobs soon though). From 2.04 on there were only three job durations to choose: 15 seconds, 10 minutes and 1 hour. Active and especially new low level players can quickly progress by doing the 15 seconds jobs without having long breaks in the game flow while players who don't want to click every few minutes still have an option to bridge the time with 1 hour jobs.
Also in this update we introduced the notebook and the quest tracker which is now a feature that no one wants to miss anymore. Instant crafting, a new login bonus and a big rebalancing of crafting, quests and many more core elements made 2.04 to one of the most important updates of 2013 and one of the updates that brought the game a huge step forward. Because we don't want to lose any players anymore just because they didn't log in for a couple of weeks we also deactivated the inactivity deletion of characters with 2.04.
With 2.06 we implemented the Blackboard for easier town joining which we thought and still think is a very important and useful feature that we want to improve further in early 2014. Furthermore a new tutorial made it into the game that we now know converts a good number of more newly registered players into long-time players and therefore was for us and for the game another very important step last year. Many town forum improvements and other small features rounded 2.06 up.
2.07 was the last big update in 2013 and brought a big content boost into the game. Not only 280 new items were implemented but also existing items were rebalanced so that the item progression in the game is, after having added manually balanced items over the past 5 years, is now smooth.
Furthermore a new friends bar was implemented that allows to quickly access your town members, alliance members and friends, see their progress and send messages to them. The feedback on the friendsbar wasn't only positive in the beginning so that we adjusted it and implemented many community wishes and we still want to work on it and consider your feedback to improve the bar even more where possible.
Another big thing was the events in 2013. There were three big events for Easter, Independence Day and the Oktoberfest and many more small events like on St. Patrick's Day, Valentines Day, Towel Day and many others that brought limited special content into the game and gave variety to the normal update schedule. We like the idea of having events in the game and want to keep doing this in 2014 but will analyze the past events and go through your feedback again to see what we can improve to make them better for you.
But 2013 was also the year of quests. We started implementing the first parts of the Main Story, tens of other new quest lines and many many more are prepared already and are just waiting for their activation date. We received a lot of positive feedback on the new quests and especially on the Main Story and definitely plan to keep going this was in 2014 and implement many many more quest lines for you.
Plans for 2014
There is a lot more we plan for 2014 than more quests and improvements to the Blackboard, balancing and our ingame events. Our team is currently working on a Roadmap after all Community Managers of the 20 different language versions went through all of your ideas on the forum. We sorted them and filtered out the ~100 best ideas which we are now internally discussing to see which of them we can implement next year. We will try to bring as many of them into the game as possible because this is one of our main focus points in 2014 but of course we have our own ideas that we want to implement too.
You know two big things that will come with 2014 already. The level cap raise and the Multiplayer Instances. The level cap raise is almost finished and is currently being tested internally. It will come to the Public Beta worlds very soon and we are looking forward to your feedback. This will be the first big update in 2014 and we are very excited already.
The Multiplayer Instances are a completely new feature that takes a lot of time and requires a lot of new code to be written but you could see the first map on InnoGames TV already and we are making good progress. So hopefully you can test the instances soon too. We are of course planning to create many more maps for the MPIs.
Furthermore we want to take a deeper look into Speed/Event worlds that run a lot faster and have a clear goal from the beginning. Also we want to keep working on our new interactive duel system, on fort battle and crafting improvements and many more stuff that we will show you as soon as the Roadmap is final. Our plan is to present you the Roadmap as soon as it is finished and discuss all the features with you so that we can collect your feedback right from the beginning and answer your questions to give you a look on the whole picture.
That's all from Joony for now. We are looking forward to this year as it will be exciting, so we hope you all stay with us on this great journey. As usual, we'd love your feedback (remember: constructive and respectful), so head over to the update review forum!