Shroud of Avatar Shares Q1 and Q2 Goals

The Shroud of Avatar has shared some updates regarding their Q1 and Q2 goals for 2020.

The post begins by recapping player numbers and how many of those players actually ”stick” to the game, with 600-700 new players per week and 12% of those sticking.

“Our conclusion is that continuing to try to improve the stickiness rate with early game polish is not cost effective. It also doesn’t benefit existing players directly. Players who were with us last year saw us spending months on improving the starting experience while apologizing to existing players for not making the rest of the game better. Buying more ads is also extremely expensive and also doesn’t benefit the existing players directly.”

With that in mind, here are the summarized Q1 goals:

• Episode 2 Overworld Map: live in a real way with POTs moving in.
• Halls of Balance (HoB): This will be a primarily linear dungeon that gets progressively harder.
• Bard skill tree: This will be a new tree in the strategy section that will be music driven skills.
• Major combat balance pass: initial pass will be made in January, even more passes will be done over time based on finding from the HoB.
• Prospectors Canyon: Working title for a new mine scene.
• Custom NPC Convos: Player written branching dialog trees for NPCs using the Ink markup language. This should go live in January and continue to receive updates to allow more flexibility and options over time.
• Major loot and reward overhaul: top concerns for existing players and will be a large part of our focus for Q1 and into Q2.
• Misc: server ranking categories, second ring slot, improved deco item scaling options, Lua feature expansion, GM feature expansion
• Tiered subscription options
• Maps: restoring the more feature rich web based SOTAMap system back in place with community driven map content creation but in a faster delivery system than before
• New creatures: Big Cats, Koala Bear Pet (charity item for Australia fires), plus secret
• Party Size: Expanded party size for up to 24 players in a raid sized party along with toggle for condensed party UI.
• Verbose mode options for combat: This will give a very detailed log of combat showing behind the scenes calculations that were done to reach the final numbers.
• Attenuation: Attenuation removed after a couple of scenes receive a balance pass. For Release 74 in January, this will be changed to only attenuate players over level 100.
• Build System: Moving to a more robust build system, delivery system, and publishing practices. While this isn’t directly visible to the players the results will improve the quality of the game

Q2 goals include:

• Looking for Group system expansion
• Weather
• Quest System:
• Steam purchase options
• POT Customizatio
• Lua expansion
• Skills
• Theater system
• Port’O Bones port town
• Snowshears: story related overworld adventure
• POT Templates: Two new “High fantasy” POT
• New Home Styles:
• New Creatures: Wendigo , Yeti, plus secret.
• Find Items: Global item find to track down your misplaced items
• Pet and tamed creature improvements

Learn more here.