Dev Blog: July 12, 2023

Hi there! I'm srand (Sandra), co-lead developer on Project: Gorgon along with my husband Citan (Eric). Way, way back in the day I worked on Asheron's Call 1 as a coder and a producer; on Project: Gorgon I've done a little bit of everything except art.

Today I want to talk a bit about our big Summer Sale and why I'm to blame, plus a bit about what's (probably!) coming in the near future.

The Big Summer Sale

Steam's big Summer Sale has started, and Project: Gorgon is on sale for 75% off. That's just $10! Even better, we're extending Steam's sale with one of our own right afterwards -- so this discount will be available from June 29 to July 27.

Why such a big discount? Because we want to get more people playing Project: Gorgon, obviously! We know that price can be a sticking point for some players, so $10 makes the game accessible for more potential players. We've talked a bit before about why a higher game population is a good thing: more people online means more data for better balancing, more and better bug reports, and a more vibrant and living world. A larger population also means more money to expand the team. And that's where I come into it.

As Citan mentioned in the last dev blog, I'm undergoing chemotherapy for cancer (liposarcoma). Chemo has helped me enormously, and I'll be continuing with it for the foreseeable future. This kinda sucks -- not just because chemo sucks and I am extremely sick of it, but because while I'm doing chemo I can't work very much. I had expected to be back to full-time development by now, but side effects have largely kept me sidelined. It's so frustrating when you want to work and you can't! All the medical appointments and procedures take up a lot Citan's time, too.

So we're down a dev and it's slowing everything down. (Including this dev blog; this was supposed to be posted a week ago!) To be blunt, more people means more money means we can pay another developer to pick up the slack for me. Our last sale went really well and allowed us to work with the indomitable Nick -- the engineer responsible for most of the last year-plus of QoL (Quality of Life) improvements. Imagine what we can do with another Nick!

But we need your help to make this happen. At $10, Project: Gorgon is a great deal -- so if you have friends who haven't given us a try, this may be the time! Even if you don't, you can still help out: review the game on Steam if you haven't, participate in the VIP Challenge, or just log in to hang out and enjoy some of the many events and special rewards during the sale. We have hands down the best MMO community I've ever seen. You make the world feel alive and welcoming. You are our best outreach!

With your help, we can make this sale hugely successful, grow our community, grow our team, and continue to push forward with development at a faster pace. (And I can stop feeling guilty that Statehelm was delayed again.)

Speaking of development ...

Focus on the Future

We often get asked if Project: Gorgon has a development roadmap. We do have a general layout of what we have planned and in what general order, but we don't try to give detailed timelines. We often need to shift things around to account for what resources we have available at the moment, especially now, and I don't want to disappoint anyone when their favorite upcoming feature gets shifted further out. What we can share, though, are some of our priorities for the near future.

Balance is a big priority for us right now. Recently, Citan made some major changes to XP and crafted equipment -- these were painful nerfs, but they were unfortunately necessary. You'll be pleased to know that the most dramatic change is over, and we're now able to dig into the details. There will be a lot more changes to come, but after this point the buffs will outnumber the nerfs. This focus on balance, and specifically on getting to a place where we can find the fun in all the skills, continues to be a big priority for us.

As balance comes together, we'll be able to launch the next phase of content: the city of Statehelm, jewel of Alharth and capital of the Council Lands! More importantly, Statehelm is the home of the level 90 trainers. Along with Statehelm will come Vidaria, an outdoor hunting zone filled with content for level 90-100 plus several new high-level dungeons. A couple more outdoor zones will follow that, each with their own set of dungeons, but those come after Statehelm.

Statehelm is our biggest immediate focus, but somewhere in there we want to launch playable orcs, with their own newbie area and mechanics, similar to fairies. Other items on the mid-range radar are housing and guild housing in Statehelm, more Animal Husbandry species with Genetics, some new high-level crafting skills like baking, and a bunch more guild quests. That's just a sampling!

In addition, we are continuing to focus on quality of life improvements. We're taking a serious look at what keeps people from playing, what they bounce off of, what frustrates and confuses them, what parts of the game they hate. Reducing this friction is a big priority for us!

One small change we made recently was adding new camera modes and shortcut key defaults that are similar to other popular games. We want to make new players feel more at home with the controls so they can hit the ground running. We'll be adding controller support as well, although that will take a bit longer.

But friction doesn't just come from the UI -- some gameplay elements, like transmutation and inventory management, can cause real headaches for players. In a recent update we made major changes to transmutation to help players get geared up faster, and we opened up inventory more at lower levels. In fact, some of the rewards from the VIP Challenge include bonus inventory -- for all players, not just VIPs.

These are hardly the only points of friction, of course, and we'll continue to identify and bang away on the rough spots. In fact, I want to take the opportunity here to say "Thank you!" to everyone who shares their thoughts and suggestions with us. Your feedback is essential to making this work! Seriously, I can't say that enough.

This isn't a comprehensive list of development tasks, and it's not meant to be. But hopefully it gives you a bit of insight into some of the major new developments we have in the pipeline.