1. SPS Accounts:
    Do you find yourself coming back time after time? Do you appreciate the ongoing hard work to keep this community focused and successful in its mission? Please consider supporting us by upgrading to an SPS Account. Besides the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from supporting a good cause, you'll also get a significant number of ever-expanding perks and benefits on the site and the forums. Click here to find out more.
    Dismiss Notice
Dismiss Notice
You are currently viewing Boards o' Magick as a guest, but you can register an account here. Registration is fast, easy and free. Once registered you will have access to search the forums, create and respond to threads, PM other members, upload screenshots and access many other features unavailable to guests.

BoM cultivates a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. We have been aiming for quality over quantity with our forums from their inception, and believe that this distinction is truly tangible and valued by our members. We'd love to have you join us today!

(If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you've forgotten your username or password, click here.)

Praey for the Gods - Closed Beta Out

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by RPGWatch, Dec 13, 2018.

  1. RPGWatch

    RPGWatch Watching... ★ SPS Account Holder

    Joined:
    Jul 28, 2010
    Messages:
    30,191
    Likes Received:
    30
    [​IMG]The latest newsletter for Praey for the Gods announces that closed beta is underway and the plans for early access and beyond. Screenshots at the link.

    [​IMG]

    Hello to all of our backers and newsletter readers!
    Progress on PFTG has been going great! PAX West feels like it happened ages ago, but I think it's important to let you know that it went very well for us. We expected a couple of people to show up to the booth, maybe 100 people max, but were shocked to find that our our booth was PACKED.

    It was amazing to meet face to face with our backers and show them the game they made possible with their pledges. It was also awesome introducing the game to people that had never heard of it before. Coming back from PAX, we were incredibly pumped up to dive back into development and get Closed Beta out to our backers.

    Yup, you heard me Closed Beta is OUT;)

    Seriously, Closed Beta is out!?
    Yes! We've been in Closed Beta now for about a month, so those that have backed us at "Legion Edition" or higher have had their Closed Beta keys sent out. If you backed those tiers but haven't seen your key arrive, be sure to contact us.

    Awesome! How's it going?
    Closed Beta is going very well with much of the feedback being overwhelmingly positive. Of course, there have been critiques and suggestions too, with many of them aligning with our to-do list. We're also fixing a number of bugs and making positive gains with performance as we lead up to our initial PC launch.

    To better manage feedback, we broke the Closed Beta into 2 phases. We are calling them CB1 and CB2. Each consists of a subset of content that will lead up to our initial PC launch which will contain all the digital content we set out to do during our Kickstarter. We're currently in CB1 and will be in CB2 before years end.

    [...]

    Is the game coming out Dec 2018 still?
    Short answer? No.

    We looked at our schedule and while we could kill ourselves to get it out by year's end, it made more sense to stay in Closed Beta longer to make sure the game is solid and ready for our backers. That may disappoint some but the good news is the in-game Kickstarter content is finished. We only have a couple of things left that we want to tweak prior to launch, but there's still a lot more stuff we hope to work on post launch.

    Yes, we want to add MORE content.
    Remember those stretch goals we had? There were a couple goals we were unable to hit in our Kickstarter campaign and we still really want to do those. Also, we created some new content like Champions, and puzzles during development which we want to expand on. We went back and forth on how exactly to do this, considered a number of options, and the one that made the most sense to us as a small team was going to Early Access to add the extra content while we worked on consoles.

    Before you roll your eyes we'd like to explain our reasoning.

    Initial PC Release

    Our plan is to release into Early Access with all the game content we achieved in our Kickstarter campaign. This means the 5 bosses are done and fully playable, along with cutscenes, open world exploration, minions, puzzles, and all the additional Kickstarter Backer Content. It's a fully playable game that is exactly what you backed us for when we started on this journey. However, we love working on this game and our engine and tools have come leaps and bounds since we started development. This is allowing us to develop faster and better and it feels silly to stop development on the game when we've just hit our stride. While Chien is working on getting the game further optimized and certified for PS4/Xbox One, Tim and I will add what additional stretch goal content we can prior to a final launch on consoles. We found this to be a win/win for both PC backers and console backers as PC backers will get the game as well as additional content over time and console backers will have some fresh content and a somewhat spoiler free conclusion to the game.

    What additional stretch goal content would we be planning?
    To be clear, additional content would depend on the sales we get when we launch on PC. However, we'd like at least one more boss, flesh out crafting, add more puzzles, have a perma-death mode as an option, and a bit bigger final conclusion to the game. Honestly, I like to think of it like an epilogue at the end of a book.

    We want to reiterate the stuff you backed will be available at launch. We're simply initially releasing into Early Access to see if we can add more content before we launch on consoles. Yes, we could do a big ol' super duper day one launch but let's be honest we're 3 people and that kind of stuff terrifies us. We'd rather release newer content in waves, continue to expand our community and listen to your feedback along the way. We felt Early Access fits this approach and we watched our friends on Grim Dawn and Subnautica create fantastic games using this development method. We like the consistent development we've been doing since Closed Alpha and going this route feels like the proper next step.

    OK soooo when?
    Obviously, we want to give a firm date and based on our current feedback from Closed Beta and Closed Beta 2 we're hoping mid/end of January. However, looking at our track record let's stick with Q1 2019 just to be safe.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 14, 2018
Sorcerer's Place is a project run entirely by fans and for fans. Maintaining Sorcerer's Place and a stable environment for all our hosted sites requires a substantial amount of our time and funds on a regular basis, so please consider supporting us to keep the site up & running smoothly. Thank you!

Sorcerers.net is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products on amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.