This is just the beginning

Happy Saturday Patrons!

We're excited to share some early insights into a significant update we're working on, thanks to your invaluable feedback from the recent open test. Your contributions have highlighted key areas for improvement, inspiring us to reevaluate and innovate.

This update is set to enhance the next open playtest experience.

A primary focus of our enhancement is improving player onboarding. We recognize that our MOBA, with its ambitious scope and 6v6 format, presents a steep learning curve. To make the introduction smoother and more enjoyable, we're thrilled to introduce a new Game Mode!

Here's what this new mode is all about:

In the upcoming test, it's going to be a dynamic 3v3 game mode offering a different pace and style of play. – a whole new way to enjoy our game.

But that's not all. We're also designing it so it can be used to be an interactive tutorial map. This will be a fun, hands-on way for new players to get the hang of our game, picking up strategies and mechanics at their own pace.

We're really excited about these changes and we believe they'll make a big difference. Can't wait for you to dive in and see for yourself!

This new additional game mode will occur on a brand new, single lane map, where 6 total players will be put into much faster paced gameplay. The concept is to have 2 laners and 1 jungler on each team, though we still want to support 3 laners if teams so choose. Our targeted average game time for this mode is between 12 - 15 minutes, with an absolute max of 18 - 20 minutes.

The 6v6 Mode on Elysium will remain the priority and that map is also undergoing a lot of new changes and updates following the guidelines of development we have created for this 3v3 game mode, though less drastic as last time.

Why have we decided to downsize our playable game mode? Well, there are a large number of reasons but the primary ones include the Player Base, Queue Times, New Player Experience, Internal Dev Testing, and iteration speed over various aspects of the gameplay loop.

Working on a smaller game mode allows us to truly focus and polish on a lot of the features we want our larger game mode to represent.

We want to eliminate as much of the down time as possible by reducing the number of players required in queue to get into a game. This should overall reduce the queue time and let us get faster feedback while keeping players in a more fast paced gameplay.

This new game mode is meant to help players engage in Ethereal concepts without being overloaded with 12 Myths and a large scale map all at once. Here they can learn fundamental concepts that will lead them to success long term. This new map that we are creating will have serve multiple purposes outside of this specific temporary game mode. In the future, it will be used for our single player tutorial and practice tool modes. 

With the reduced size requirement of each team, we are able to internally get all the Developers into a single game and get the full experience before passing it off to players externally in open tests. We hope to be able to iterate on work internally at a much faster rate to ensure the product that goes out we can be confident in without needing to rework everything after an open test.

In the coming weeks we will share more of our intentions with the map and some of the gameplay decisions to make this game mode unique while still serving as a stepping stone to Elysium.

Thank you all for your support,

Undying Games ~~