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Hello everyone. It's been approximately two months since the release of the Beta/Early Access version of Pirate Souls. We had some issues during the first weeks, but we are glad to say that we overcame most of them. Login On the day of the release, the only way to play the game was by using an Hitspark (Nin Online) account. It was a bit confusing as people were expecting to use a Pirate Souls account or a steam one. We decided to add an option to create an account using Pirate Souls website and the use of the Hitspark one is now optional. Our plan is to make so that all players have a Pirate Souls account as first login method so if there is an issue with Hitspark login, they will not be affected. Tutorial and Early Game We had a lot of complains about the tutorial being "bare bones". The lack of guidance once outside of the Formation Center was not giving purpose to new players to continue playing. To make things more obvious, we added explicit icons to important locations and tutorial cards to important steps of the game. We also changed some early level quests and added a new low-level item, so the leveling process is more fun. Some new players were discouraged by higher levels being real pirates and killing on sight. As an open world PvP game, this is something to expect. However, it doesn't match our vision of the game as we want Pirate Souls to be more about team PvP and exploration. Someone starting the game doesn't have the chance to form a team nor to explore. Quitting the game without seeing all what it has to offer is a bit sad. To bypass that issue, we introduced Peace Mode, a white flag disabling all kinds of PvP, so players can progress through their journey without being constantly killed. Rubber banding Some players were having rubber banding/lag issues that was making the game unenjoyable. After a lot of tests and resolution tentative, we finally found out what was causing that issue and the game is now much smoother running with high ping players. Crashes Period During approximately one week, a lot of players experienced some crashes. Those were caused by some rework we did to how assets (items, sounds, music, etc.) are loaded in the game. We wanted to fix micro freezes some players were experiencing when playing the game. Unfortunately, the tests we did were not complete enough to detect all the possible crashes. To apologize, we increased experience rates by 15 % for one day. We understood our mistake and next time, we will make sure to test with a small group of players first before pushing any major updates. Main Focus Our main focus is to increase the player’s retention before expending Pirate Souls Universe. We did a lot of updates having that in mind. The most notable ones are probably the ones regarding the early game experience, but we also pushed some updates for high-level players. The Marines's Fortress war event is the best example of that. It introduced a way to use achievements to gain more stats. It also made it possible to trade keys for higher tier keys or some reputation. Providing more long-term objectives. Another vision we have for the game is for it to be a team game about hanging out with friends, exploring, finding treasures, and doing bosses together. Just like a pirate crew or a marine division would do. The first big update we did was the introduction of the higher-level boss Sauro. Who can only be fought by players on a crew. Near Future Roadmap Automated events. Improve maps. Smoke fruit. New weapons. New cosmetics. Long Term Road Map. Ship system. New Islands. Thanks for playing Pirate Souls, your support does mean a lot to us! We will continue to work in order to make this a nice free to play game without pay to win mechanisms!

Last year has been a rich year for Pirate Souls. In July, we released the alpha version of the game and the community answered to the call. Thanks to them, we found major bugs and improved the game experience. In October, the alpha was finally stable and we decided to focus on the beta. With all the progress we have done, we are glad to announce that we target this summer for the beta release. NEW FEATURES The beta will add new maps, quests, bosses, techniques and features. One of the features we are the most excited about is the crew alliance one. With crew alliance, pirates will be able to join their forces to compete against the marines. Marines will have a global organization, which is like one big alliance. Some of the features we were considering for the beta may not be done in time if we want to release it this year. As we were progressing on the game, we realized that the boat navigation system will be a big challenge. We don't know if it will be done for this summer, but we will try to. pirateSoulsGrappleSystem.mp4 pirateSoulsMarineFortressEntrance2.mp4 IMPROVEMENTS DONE The beta does more than expanding Pirate Souls' universe. It also improves what is already existing. For example, NPCs logic has been improved. They can now cast projectiles in 360 degrees and fighting them is more intuitive as they give hint on when and how they will attack. Techniques’ logic has also been improved. We now have more freedom over what kind of technique we can create. For example, the leopard Soul Fruit Claws Strike technique now moves forward the player and then cast the attack. This is just one little example of what we made possible. We cannot wait to show you more! pirateSoulsLeopardDashSkill.mp4 The alpha version of Pirate Souls is still available. Thanks for your time, Shenmue Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Jan 7th, 2022 on indieDB