Version 0.1.7 was finally finished and deployed already in the closed alpha stage on Google Play store. Alpha testers will be able to start their testing on the 30th September. This will be the first alpha test that will include a selected few of the many sign ups. Unfortunately we wont be able to select everyone for the first test but hopefully we can do so in the future. All alpha testers will receive the email during this week and instructions of how to join the alpha stage and a join invite for discord chat where testers can freely communicate and give their feedback. As a thank you for showing your enthusiasm all early alpha testers in Journey Online will receive a certain amount of benefits (rare alpha stuff, that will be unique only to the tester) after the game is launched – even the testers that were not invited!
The goal of the alpha stage is to get some critical feedback about the game concepts and of course as any test to get some bug reports!
Since normally each patch takes about 2 to 3 weeks, this one was much longer and there is a good reason, for this patch I created two completely unique new concepts for the game:
– A treasure / chest system
– Adventure shadows
As the goal of the patch was to upgrade the adventure map by a big margin, both of these features are focused on exactly that. Now players will experience a much more populated world when they adventure around in the real life. Players will be stalked by shadow of existing players battling monsters around you in real world and at the same time have the ability to get awesome gear from the treasures that are everywhere in the world!
(Comparison of before and now of adventure map)
Another big change with this patch was also an upgrade to some visual aspects of battle preparations views, items, party views and so on. Before it was much harder to see whether an item was rare or legendary but with the change its much easier to notice exactly that. We still have to fix the actual item view but that will come in a later update.
(Comparison of before and now for battle preparation view)
(Comparison of before and now for item rarities)
Since this is the first developer blog lets talk about our »Team« a bit. At the moment we are a two man team that consist of me Jure Veler the creator/developer and owner of Journey Onlines and my awesome Social manager that creates all the good content for everyone on our social sites Mitja Penca.
Following the idea of what I want Journey Online to be in the future in the next few patches we will focus solely on improving the gameplay regarding the battle, abilities, visual information and communication features. So until December where we will announce when the open beta will begin there wont be any new systems like the Tower of Heroes, where an endless dungeon algorithm functions on self learning and improving/balancing the difficulty of each floor and boss. We will focus instead on key upgrades that will improve the quality of life for players.
Some examples that we intend to do until the start of Open Beta:
- Ability UI upgrade
- Daily login rewards
- Improve server stability
- Starting tutorial and helper
- Item level requirement
- More content of monsters, adventurers, maps
Now, this is not everything by a long shot! The list of our updates and key features we want to implement grows everyday and some are so awesome that its really hard to filter and prioritize them. So maybe our growing community can guide us here a bit better and tell us what they really want from us in terms of content.
Some of the key and most awesome things I can think of that I plan to implement after December are:
- Pet system (A pet system that will be linked to a battle formation and give some nifty bonuses. Yes there will be shiny and rare pets! Maybe even found in real world.)
- Profession system (Armor crafting, weapon crafting, alchemy and taming will be created here a long with many others! It will be time event based and bring in some cool new possibilities in a mobile world.)
- Ability Combos (This is probably the best thing i can think of, it will allow 2 or more adventurers from different battle formations to create awesome combos with their abilities. Example: Elven elementalist Ignite and Water gunner Explosive shot will create a column attack that Shred enemies with both fire and water properties! These combos will be activated in real time during the battle by players prompting other players to take action)
- Castle Sieges (Real world locations of castle siege systems, where players will compete to hold victory over a castle and be its lord. Doing this will give the player amazing rewards and continuous gain of bonuses and gold. However, they can always lose the castle to another better player!)
- Raid dungeons (real world dungeons that will randomly populate a difficulty level with a monster theme and be available for a limited time where all players can defeat it and when the raid is destroyed all players gain another reward)
- And many many more
Now you see why its hard to choose priorities on what to do, I hope this post gives you all some insight on what the future of Journey Online looks like.