Producer Letter – Skyforge’s Priorities Going Forward

Last week, both the European Producer and I returned from a trip to visit the Allods team office and meet with the Skyforge development team for a week. We had a lot to discuss including the feedback & ideas we’ve received directly from the Skyforge community and from our North American & European team members. Today, I want to take a moment to share some of the outcomes of these discussions with the community.

One of the first things we discussed was the performance of Skyforge in both North America & Europe. So far, we’ve seen a huge number of players join the ranks of Immortals in Skyforge’s open beta, which we are obviously very excited about! The first few months of open beta has been great not only in terms of active players but in the ongoing feedback left by the community as well. We’ve received a vast amount of very constructive feedback, both positive and negative, which has proven to be extremely valuable to the development team.

There has been so much good feedback and ideas flowing from you and our team that the ideas and changes proposed by NA/EU are gaining more and more priority, which means they will be implemented into the game sooner than we initially anticipated. While the Russian version of Skyforge will still get new updates a little before NA/EU, this gives us just a bit more time to introduce the changes we want there and tweak them so that when we (NA/EU) get the update we receive a more polished version. There are still many changes & additions coming that are the direct result of feedback from NA & EU. That is something you should all keep in mind and be proud of. Skyforge truly has a great community!

That being said, we will not always have to wait for changes to come after they’ve arrived in Russia. We will receive some changes at the same time or even a little earlier on occasion if it makes more sense for our regions. For example, after reading all the feedback from the community regarding the Grand Prix promotion and discussing it with the dev team, beginning with the upcoming Law & Order promotion you will place higher more often so you’ll get more than 1 or 2 points per round. We’ll also have the Optimizer 1 and II (bonus Chapel items) replaced with a quantity of Victor’s Medals, and will be moving the Optimizer 1 and II into the Market for sale for Victor’s Medals right away, since there are ways to farm Victor’s Medals in-game as well as through the promotion. This gives players multiple, fair ways to get their hands on bonus chapels even after the promotion ends. These changes were made by the developers with the intent to make the promotion more open and engaging for NA and EU players.

There was so much discussed with the dev team, and much of it still in the idea/design phase, that we really can't give a ton of details at the moment. Though, we can say that some of the additions / changes may be implemented in the near future whereas other more major changes may take longer to implement into the game. Some things we can confirm that are in the works are class balance changes for PvE and PvP (some of which have already begun to be rolled out in RU), event changes/additions, more PvP modes + Rated PvP, potential changes to reduce the amount of times you have to repeat specific missions, gamepad support, and much much more. Once we have more concrete details on these changes and new features you can be sure we will share them with the community.

As the Western producers for Skyforge, we came out of these meetings feeling very confident that the development team has a good handle on what we all feel needs to be prioritized based on your feedback. The RU team stressed how much they appreciate all the critical feedback from the community and want players to keep leaving their opinions and suggestions! There are a lot of great changes coming soon to Skyforge and a lot more in the long-term development plan. So keep the feedback coming!

In short, our trip to visit the team reaffirmed how important it is that your voices as Western players and customers are being heard. The fight continues to defend Aelion and your role in that battle will continue to grow!

Aaron “Legatus” Biedma,
North American Skyforge Producer

10/12/2015