Ship of Heroes is set for launch in Q2 of this year, but first the team at Heroic Games Corporation is recapping the major updates of 2024, from fully voiced NPC dialogue, quality of life changes, upgraded raids, and much more.
One of the first major achievements last year was a series of improvements to visual effects and animations. Fights had to look cool and powersets to be more consistent with color and style, so that you can tell what kind of powers you're looking at even from a distance. They reviewed every combat effect in the game and upgraded the ones that needed some extra polish. After that, every combat animation in the game got a review, including subtle differences between male and female characters, and gave all those a big round of polish and improvements, including expanded and new animations where needed to support new content.
Some of that big work included a massive raid system upgrade, including to individual raids, and a number of system additions and improvements to help run and join raids. This included a raid GUI, accommodating teams and raid leaders and additional expansion of the raiding system. Raiding surveys got hundreds of responses the team drew on for many changes. The sidekicking system that temporarily boosts team members to make sure everyone can contribute to the end result. There’s also difficulty scaling based on team size.
In addition to all the new and upgraded systems, individual raids also got a bunch of improvements. There are two raids currently in the works that the team is planning to add as free expansions after the launch: New California and Mothership.
Accomplishments in 2024 include fully voiced NPC dialogue for a touch of extra realism and effect. You can still read text if you want, or sit back and enjoy the scene. The character creator also got a number of big improvements, and there will be a special mission that appears at the end of character creation. you can accept it then or later. This mystery mission is story focused, and called “Training Mishap”. It's designed to get you right into the game.
There's more in the full recap, including the work that they're doing in these final months before Ship of Heroes launches, to get things sorted. One of the highlights there is that they are working on a better test server.
