Kickstarter 3: Updates

A list of updates from the third Kickstarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/projectgorgon/project-gorgon-pc-mmo . Updates which were copies of Blog Posts have been skipped.

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Steam keys are sent! We are now in beta!

Citan, 3/22/2018

Project: Gorgon is now on Steam Early Access! Hi everyone, we've now officially ended the alpha phase of development and moved to beta. As part of that transition, the game is now playable on Steam as an Early Access title (here's a link to our page in the Steam store).

Most backer tiers included a Steam key, and we've finished emailing Steam keys to everyone that completed the Kickstarter survey. Almost all of of those emails were sent on March 13 (more than a week ago), but a few emails were sent out manually over the past few days.

Unfortunately, some email services are marking our email as a "promotion" (gmail) or just as spam (hotmail), so please check your spam/promotions/whatever mail folders for it. The email was sent by [email protected] and has the title "Project: Gorgon is now on Steam, and here's your Steam Key!"

If you can't find your email, please email us at [email protected] and we'll get your code to you. Please include the email address that your Kickstarter account is connected to, so we can look up your order. If you know how to find your Kickstarter "backer number", that's great info to include too. (If not, don't worry about it, your email address is usually enough.)

If you didn't complete the Kickstarter survey, or you filled it out with incomplete info (such as entering "I dunno" or "N/A" for your account name), we couldn't automatically prepare your order, so we'll be manually emailing you over the next week or two to ask for the info we need. You can just wait a bit for that email, or if you're antsy and want your code ASAP, email us at [email protected] and we'll get your info squared away.

How to Confirm Your Backer Reward Tier In-Game

Your special backer rewards (such as VIP time, horses, potions, etc.) are not in-game yet. Some of those rewards are almost ready while others are quite a ways away. But before we release any rewards, we'd like to ask you to double-check your account and make sure we've flagged it with the right backer tier. (Note: the email we sent you includes these instructions in a lot more detail, so please refer to it if you have trouble.)

First, use your Steam key to unlock Project: Gorgon on Steam. Then play it from Steam. The game will ask if you have an old alpha account, and you do, so enter your account info to connect your Steam account to your alpha account. That way you can access your old characters. (If you've forgotten your alpha account name, it's included in the email we sent you.)

Once you've used the Steam key and tied your alpha account to your Steam account, log into the game and bring up the Settings window. (It's the gear icon on the right side of the screen.) You should see a line labeled "Account Package:" and then the name of the package you backed. If there's no Account Package line, or if it lists the wrong package, please let us know! Email us at [email protected] and we'll get it straightened out. (Emailing that address will create a support ticket; please give us a few days to respond to it.)

We'll be adding the backer rewards during beta as soon as they're completed. For the ones that can be "used up" (such as VIP time), you'll be able to decide when you want to use it: you can save it until the official launch, or use it during beta if you prefer. We'll have more info about each reward as it becomes ready.

Beta is On!

Beta is a big milestone for us. The last big hurdle to leaving alpha was the user-interface, which just wasn't good enough and needed a complete rewrite. The rewrite was a huge undertaking, but it's done now! We still have a few UI bugs to squash and lots of features we want to add, but the new UI has been live and stable for several months now. If you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out. We've crammed a lot of features into it. (Tip: lots of things now have context menus that appear if you right-click them. So definitely right-click items, abilities, etc. to see what new options you have.)

During beta we'll be focusing more on adding content, optimizing the client, balancing everything, improving graphics, and fleshing out some of the "stub" skills that were basically just proofs-of-concept during alpha. We have a few more new combat skills in the works, too. We'll roll out updates every 2-3 weeks, just like we've done throughout alpha.

If you haven't played in a while, I encourage you to jump in and see how the game is evolving! There's a bunch of new players from Steam playing, too, so the server is pretty lively right now.

And once again, thanks for your support. I'll see you in game!

Steam Integration is Coming! How Will it Work?

Citan,2/11/2018

It’s almost time, Project: Gorgon is heading to Steam Early Access! How will it work? Click this link for more information.

Note: if you haven’t already, please be sure to visit our website for the latest updates. While you are there, you can register for the forums and join the discussion!

Introducing: the Gorgon Shop!

Citan, 7/9/2017

We would like to invite all those who are interested in checking out the Gorgon Shop to do so today! The Gorgon Shop currently consists of a limited number of packages that were originally offered in our Kickstarter Campaign. If you missed out on the chance to back Project: Gorgon, or know of someone who did, then now is your chance to back Project: Gorgon! Please note, these packages will not remain available indefinitely. If you have any questions, please email us at support(at)projectgorgon.com.

Since the Project: Gorgon Kickstarter Campaign ended, we have implemented:

• New Website and Forums;
• Multiple new zones;
• A completely new tutorial experience;
• Dozens of new skills;
• Increased skill levels;
• Complete overhaul of the power system;
• Complete overhaul of equipment bonuses;
• New Animal Forms;
• New Animal items;
• Created and implemented an Animal Town;
• Created new quest systems;
• Created New NPCS;
• Added Guilds;
• Added Guild Missions;
• Added Player Vendors;
• Added dispensers;
• Added Work Orders;
• Added the ability to drown;
• Updated many game systems and functions;
• Implemented and Updated the in-game day/night cycle.

We are currently in the process of overhauling the game graphics systems, effects, textures, lighting, and camera functionality. We have implemented such changes in the zone known as ‘Serbule’. We are also in the process of internally testing a completely redesigned and coded User Interface. These changes are just a handful of the changes that we have made and if you would like to be kept up to date then check out our blog located at https://projectgorgon.com!

Dev Update, October 11

Citan, 10/14/2016

I'll be brief this week because I'm in crunch-mode!

The hurricane came and went, and our neighborhood is now covered in leaves and fallen branches from the wind but we're otherwise unharmed. We lost some time from all the drama (power outages and such), but nothing too big.

But I did run into a more serious delay in getting this update out the door: basically, treasure sucks too much and has to be improved. This will take time.

Well, let me step back. I got the new combat systems up and running, and they work pretty well. Abilities are a little slower, solo monsters have a bit less health, Power costs and regeneration rates are revised (for instance, combat is now balanced around the idea that you have eaten a level-appropriate Meal, which now gives significant in-combat regeneration), armor stats are higher, Combat Refresh is more potent, and base ability damage is much higher. That last one is a big help in the early levels when you don't have a lot of treasure, and in general makes it more plausible to use abilities without a ton of specialized treasure for them.

It works great, time to ship it! Except... as soon as I tried to broaden the scope to apply to all skills, I had to face the fact that most treasure effects suck. We knew that already, and I've discussed it, but I was hoping to put off rewriting all the treasure until a later update just to get this one out the door. But I don't think I can postpone it, because the changes I've made actually make already-sucky treasure suckier.

As an example, there are a lot of treasure effects that give, say, a 66% chance to do something. Those effects aren’t very fun (and were scheduled for eventual replacement), but they worked okay if you had two copies of them -- odds are very good that at least one of them will activate each time. But with two-skill builds, you're much less likely to be able to fit two of each effect into your build. And a single percentage-chance effect by itself is just frustrating, especially if it does anything important (like stun or heal), or if it's on a slow reuse timer.

Another problem that was made worse by my changes is that treasure effects aren't distributed across equipment slots well. Hammer has 16 main-hand treasure effects, and only 8 effects for most other slots. This makes it pretty hard to build good two-skill gear sets with Hammer.

And a lot of treasure is just not very useful. The older skills like Sword and Fire Magic suffer the most from this, because they have effects that were added as prototypes while I was fleshing out all the things that treasure can do. Taking a good honest look at them, many are unsalvageable. Nobody wants a fire-magic buff that deals extra damage to "creatures that are inherently on fire" because there's only three or four monsters like that in the whole game, and I'm not really planning on adding tons more. So that's good tech to have, but a bad treasure effect. And when you have split-skill treasure, a single really shitty treasure effect feels more damning to the item's overall quality.

The bottom line is that I need to overhaul the treasure effects themselves in order for this plan to work well. I wanted to postpone that, but it ain't happenin', so fine... I'll do that too! So the bad news is that it will be a while yet. I'm not yet sure how long it'll take. Let's say "before Halloween".

The good news is that this is the most fun that treasure has ever been, by a LARGE margin. I've finished revising the treasure for sword, fire magic, and mentalism so far, and they are a blast. If the others follow suit, this will really be a lot of fun to build gear suits with.

So what sorts of changes am I making? Well, I've added a lot of ways for the skills to interact. I used the existing "ability categories" (like Epic Attacks) and added some new ones, like Core Attacks and Nice Attacks. Most attack-centric skills have several of these categorized abilities, and there are lots of new treasure effects that do things like: "Debilitating Blow deals +32 damage and causes your Core Attacks to deal +50 damage for 10 seconds". This effect is useful by itself -- it boosts the Core Attack in Sword, which is Many Cuts. But it also boosts the Core Attack in, say, Shield, which is Disrupting Bash. So there's some synergy to find depending on what skills you're using. There's also more effects that boost damage by type, or enhance entire classes of abilities (such as all Burst attacks) for a few seconds.

I'm also adding more treasure that applies to several abilities in the skill. This is really important for helping players make broad gear sets that aren't too specialized on one or two buttons. There's lots of new treasure effects like: "Scintillating Flame and Fire Bolts boost your Core Attack Damage and Epic Attack Damage +33 for 15 seconds". That one's a mouthful, but it has broad applicability, and while +33 doesn't sound very great, it's actually pretty potent because it stacks with itself -- Scintillating Flame has a short enough timer that you can get two uses in, let alone adding in Fire Bolts, and possibly doubling the stacks by having a second copy of the treasure effect.

I've been mostly tossing out the classic "combo" treasure effects, instead creating sort of "organic combos", like the one above. The above effect means that you should use Scintillating Flame and/or Fire Bolts before you use your Core and Epic attacks. The game doesn't have to hold your hand and give you a little GUI -- you can figure it out based on which abilities you're using.

I'm also being much more liberal with effects that significantly alter how an ability works -- changing Power costs, reuse timers, even damage types. This works in both directions -- some of the most overpowered treasure now has negative effects on the ability (such as slowing down the reuse timer). Do you want your Fire Breath to hit everybody within 5 meters? Yes, of course you do -- that's a no-brainer, it's a treasure effect that's so good you'd be dumb not to have it... but now, it also raises the Power cost and reuse time by 20%. Still a good deal? Yes -- on paper it's still a phenomenal trade-off in the player's favor -- but the down sides mean that for certain builds or playstyles, the effect isn't necessarily a no-brainer.

Using negative effects in a few places lets me fit in treasure that I was having a hard time justifying before. Stuff like the Fire Breath AoE effect is really cool and I want the game to have it, but without some down side, it's just too potent.

But most treasure effects don't have any drawbacks, of course. Instead, I've used things like cheaper Power costs and faster reuse times to give new ways to improve your abilities. Do you want your attack to do 25% more damage or have a 1-second faster reuse timer? That's going to depend on a lot of specific details. Which is good -- it means there are choices, interesting choices, and at higher level, those choices are what treasure is supposed to be about.

I'm still trying to figure out how long this work will take, but I really don't know. Each skill I've done so far has needed some new unique tricks and code tweaks to give it the distinctive flavor I want it to have. When I revised Mentalism, I ended up throwing out an ability and replacing it with an entirely new one. When I did Sword, I had to throw out almost half of the treasure, replacing it with some interesting new tricks. These older skills are probably in the worst shape, so I'm hoping that skills like Knife and Druid are going to be faster to revise, but I won't know 'til I get there.

But I'm excited about it. The changes seem to make treasure much more interesting to me. Not all of these new ideas are going to pan out, but I'm confident that enough of them will work that treasure will feel a lot more interesting.

There are lots of other fixes in this update, and Halloween is coming, so I do feel a lot of pressure to get the update out the door. But in this particular instance, I feel like treasure quality has to come first, or the other changes just won't make any sense. And I mean, it's alpha. We missed Halloween last year and did the event in November instead... and it's not really the end of the world. But I'm still optimistic that it'll be done before Halloween... I know there's Bat players waiting to reach level 60 so they can make fun of the battle chemists, who still can't level up. Don't worry bats, I've got your back. Soon. Ish.

Dev Update, September 24

Citan, 9/29/2016

This week has been a side-track week. As I tested the gear changes, it became very clear that it's much too hard to compare equipment. Part of that is intentional, of course -- each piece of gear can affect lots of different abilities in very different ways, because I *want* gear choices to be difficult! But I want them to be difficult because you can't decide which item you like better, not because you're doing lots of math in your head.

The game needs to automatically tell you how your gear affects your abilities. So I've spent most of the week working on that. This feature was planned for beta, as part of the "polishing phase", but... well, I've come to realize that it's not polish, it's necessary for basic gameplay.

However, it's not easy to implement. I have to break all the treasure effects down in new ways, add a bunch of data to abilities, and then route all this new data through new systems. It's a lot of work, but the results are pretty elegant:

This ability is augmented by several gear effects that raise Sword Base Damage, Wind Strike Damage, and Slashing Damage, and it's all been compiled into one stat. When equipment adds new functionality to the ability, like the +50% projectile evasion mod shown here, that's listed at the bottom.

This info is shown when you hover over abilities on the ability bar AND when you view abilities in the Persona window. That's important, so that you can put on a piece of gear and then see how it affects all your abilities.

These numbers also take into account every buff you have, not just your gear buffs. In the example above, Wind Strike 4 makes your next attack deal +20 damage. So after you use Wind Strike, all your abilities' damage will be displayed as being 20 higher until your next attack. This behavior can be a little surprising sometimes, but once you understand how it works, it really helps you see how buffs and debuffs are affecting you.

This effort is still underway, and I'm working nonstop to try to get it done fast, but it's basically delayed the update by a week. However, I don't think I made a bad call here: this changes how I play in a very positive way, and I think you'll like it also.

Combat Refreshes

Combat Refreshes are a bigger deal after the next update because armor restores more stuff when you use a refresh. So it's more important than ever to be able to tell if your Combat Refresh timer is up! I reimplemented it so that the client can tell when the refresh is ready. Your basic attacks will now flash with an icon (and play a sound) when your refresh is ready, and a little icon in the top-right will also show up in case you missed the blinking. Oh, and combat refreshes no longer activate if you're fully healed up and they wouldn't restore anything.

Loot Profile Changes

I've also tweaked loot so that you find more of the weapons (and off-hand items) you need, and less that you don't. If you're using Unarmed skill, you'll have a much higher chance of finding unarmed weapons, and much lower chance of finding, say, fire orbs.

This wasn't done earlier because the loot system just couldn't do it. But I added the necessary code features in the last update, so this just involved a lot of data-entry. I'm sure the ratios and percentages will need further tweaking, but it feels less frustrating now, especially at low level when you desperately need a damned sword but keep finding other weapons instead.

Monster Changes

After this rebalance update, I want to meet the design goal of you being able to fight two solo monsters at once. In the current game, fighting two monsters at once at level 50+ is unrealistic unless your gear is REALLY good. (Or you have a mesmerize effect or other crowd-control tools.)

But fortunately for players, monster AI has been buggy for a long time now -- monsters that are called for help have a very silly tendency to give up and go home when they're winning! I've intentionally left the AI alone until I could work on monster stats. But since I'm making it more plausible to solo two monsters at once, it's time to make monsters smarter too.

So I've fixed AI bugs, nerfed monsters, buffed ability damage, and increased survivability features, all with the goal of making this fight-two-monsters-at-once thing a reality. I'm also taking into account that players will have a more diverse set of gear after the update because of the enforced two-skill split. And I'm also taking into account that monsters above level 45 or so were just too tough -- they'd gotten too far out of whack. It required way too much gear grinding to even fight solo monsters your level. Which is stupid. So I'll fix it.

(I'm not focusing on group monsters right now... I'll probably make some broad changes to tone them down a bit, but I'm not planning to do much with them in this update. That also means things like taunt management and rage control will probably continue to be out of whack for a while longer... but we'll get there.)

This Involves a LOT of Changes!

If the changes I've described sound self-contained and easy to test, then I haven't done a good job of describing them. I'm even more inundated with spreadsheets than I was last week. But I'm liking where it's headed. I've delayed this humungous rebalancing for a long time for various technical reasons, but now is the time.

I need to set some expectations, though. After this update, the game should be easier for mid- and high-level players to solo, NOT harder, as some forum commenters seem to expect. But due to time constraints, I'm not able to test every ability and treasure effect. I'm making formulaic changes to just about everything, and playtesting several skills at several level ranges, and the rest will be untested.

There will probably be skills that are unplayably weak at certain level ranges, and some treasure will probably be insanely overpowered, and so on. But I've been planning for this update for a long time, and the "hotfix" tech that was added a while back is specifically designed with this problem in mind. I can change just about every ability, treasure, and monster stat without requiring you to download a new client every time, and the server downtime to apply the hotfixes is less than 5 minutes.

So I'll need your help in finding problem areas, but then I'll be able to fix things (or at least, band-aid things) very quickly. I expect there will be several hotfixes the first week or two after the update.

More To Come

I know this dev-post hasn't gone into too many technical details or answered too many questions, but that's sort of a reflection of where my mind is this week: most of the week has been spent feverishly adapting game data so that it displays right in the client. And I'm still working on that right now! I'll have another update for you soon with some more specifics of how these changes work.

Dev Update, September 15

Citan, 9/18/2016

This week's update is even more nuts-and-bolts than last week's update! This is a status report about how I'm implementing the upcoming combat changes I talked about last week. You can safely skip this one, especially if you're a new player or just not interested in the gritty details. (And if you are interested and you haven’t read last week’s update yet, you should do that first!)

Implementation of these changes is going well so far, but there's still a lot to do, and a lot still needs to be figured out. Please remember that everything in this post is subject to change, and in fact some of it will probably have changed by next week's blog post. In other words, this is a status update, not a finished design!

Changes to Combat Refresh

Last week I talked a little about Power management. One of the ways that I'm giving players more Power after the update is by increasing the potency of Combat Refreshes, which are triggered by using any basic attack. But I'm also slowing down how often you can get combat refreshes from every 10 seconds to every 15 seconds. The main reason for this is so that you have fewer "mandatory" times when you need to use your basic attack. Since I'm trying to promote using both ability bars in combat, I want it to be "un-optimal" to use the basic attack too often, so there's more time to fit in other abilities. So the basic Combat Refresh has been buffed so that it gives back more Power.

But the biggest boost to Combat Refresh actually comes from your armor type. Every piece of armor fits into one of four categories: cloth, leather, metal, and organic. Cloth armor gives you bonus Power when you use a Combat Refresh. Leather gives bonus Health and Power. Metal gives bonus Armor, and Organic gives some of everything. (These are the same as what's live now, except that I swapped cloth and leather.)

In the next update, the potency of these effects are MUCH more dramatic, so your choice of armor type has a lot more meaning. If you wear a full suit of metal armor at level 60, your combat refresh will give +150 Armor. If you wear a full suit of cloth armor, your combat refresh will give +72 Power. If you mix and match armor types, you get results somewhere in the middle. (Those numbers are placeholders to give you an idea of how it works ... I'm sure they'll change dramatically as I play-test.)

Making 'High-Power-Cost Skill' a Meaningful Thing

The changes to armor can help answer a tricky design question: how can a skill have high Power costs? The Hammer and Fire Magic skills are the best examples here: they're supposed to deal more damage while costing significantly more Power. But if everybody gets basically the same amount of Power, then these skills are either overpowered or unusable, because you either have enough Power or you don't.

By giving cloth and leather armor significantly more Power-recovery than metal and organic armor, players have a way to adapt to the higher costs of these skills -- without being forced into wearing specific armor types.

In the next update, Power recovery will be a bit over-high to make transitioning easier, so I don't expect people to see this as a pressing issue immediately. But as we tamp down the Power costs in future updates, armor types should become more relevant.

... And Related Armor Changes

In order to make these numbers work out in any semblance of balance, I also had to adjust the amount of Max Armor given by different armor types. Metal armor gives more Max Armor than before. Cloth gives less Max Armor than before. Leather is about the same. Organic gives slightly more.

Right now there aren't too many types of armor at each level range, but that's just an alpha content issue -- as we add more armor suits, this choice will become another avenue of customization.

These changes to armor are a big increase to survivability, which is good if I want combat to last longer. But in fact the changes are so large right now that it's hard for me to playtest, because monsters haven't been adjusted to compensate yet. Even though I nerfed a ton of ability reset timers and added new gear-splitting requirements, the armor buffs vastly overshadow those changes, leaving me feeling far more powerful than before. Which wasn't the intention! So there's still lots of adjustments to make this week.

Changes to Food

Since my last blog post, I've come to feel that the "food issue" needs to be addressed now rather than later. If food is going to be an important part of every player's game experience, now is a great time to make that happen, since I'm looking for places to give players more Power! But just making food "work better" isn't enough, because players won't know to use it.

Right now the game does a poor job of managing food expectations. At low level you can pretty much get by without food, while at higher level it becomes more and more annoying to go without it ... but players don't necessarily even realize what's wrong, because they've been playing without food for a long time and it doesn't occur to them that it matters now.

Part of the fix is to make food feel more necessary, right from level 1. In the next update, players lose their innate out-of-combat Health and Power regeneration. You'll regain almost nothing unless you have food in your system. And we'll reinforce the importance of food with icons and warning messages, so players know they're "doing it wrong" if they go without food.

That's the "stick", but there needs to be a "carrot" too -- food isn't seen as an attractive tool for a lot of reasons, some of which I need to address (and some of which will work themselves out, I think, when more players are online).

First, I no longer expect you to have both a Food and a Drink active to get optimal benefits. Instead, both food and drink are considered "Meals", and all of them have beefed-up stats. They don't stack with each other, so you can just eat or drink one thing. The stats on food and drink are different, but they're all in the same ballpark.

All meals now restore both Health and Power. They restore very large amounts while out of combat, and smaller but meaningful amounts during combat (right now the best meal gives +20 Power every 5 seconds during combat ... I'm sure that will change as I play with it more, but that gives you an idea).

Snacks are being tweaked to have a more practical -- and understandable -- role. There are two kinds of snacks: instant ones like Bacon, which now just give you instant healing of Health and/or Power, and buffing ones that give very potent regeneration buffs, but only last for a few minutes. So snacks are things you might take into a dungeon with you, optional tools in your arsenal.

I'm also playing with the notion of a "food slot", an inventory slot that holds a stack of food. This lets the game auto-consume food from that slot whenever the previous food wears off. EQ2 has this, and it worked pretty well, but in Gorgon that design would make leveling up Gourmand kind of awkward if you can't just eat any food whenever you want ... so I dunno if I'm sold on the food slot yet.

Oh, and speaking of Gourmand...

Changes to Gourmand

The food changes are also the best time to revise the Gourmand skill, which hasn't been very successful so far. Currently, Gourmand gives out all kinds of bonuses, but they're hard to calculate, hard to tell when they apply, and most problematically, they sneak up on you. At level 1 you go, "Ha ha, a Gourmand skill? Whatever." And you may just keep ignoring the skill because it doesn't seem important ... but at high level, the bonuses are a big deal! I need to telegraph that better.

In the next update, Gourmand boosts the duration of Meals. That's it. Every level of Gourmand increases your meal buffs by 30 seconds. So at max level (125), food will last more than twice as long. That's a much easier-to-understand benefit, and now that food is much more necessary, it's easy to see why you want Gourmand levels!

I'm also adding a Gourmand level restriction to food. If a food is more than, say, 15 levels higher than your Gourmand skill, you lack the palette to be able to appreciate the meal, so the game won't let you eat it. There are two reasons for this: first, it makes Gourmand more noticeable and helps reinforce its importance. New players will find foods that have a Gourmand requirement and realize, "Hey, I need to eventually raise my Gourmand skill... how do I do that again?"

And secondly, this makes it a little more interesting (read: challenging) to raise the skill. Previously, a newbie could buy a few high-level foods and instantly reach the 30s in the skill. Now they will need to be a little more picky about finding new things to eat.

This plan might need other adjustments if players end up getting "stuck" leveling it because it gets too hard... we'll see how it goes.

Transitioning Existing Gear

Last week I talked about how the combat changes are going to affect gear and how I want to help players switch gear without too much pain. Here's the preliminary plan for how we're going to handle existing gear:

When you log in after the update, any equipment you have that doesn't meet the split-skill requirements described in the last update post will become Legacy, meaning it will keep working for 30 days.

There will be a new NPC who can help you adjust these Legacy items so they stop being Legacy. Basically, you'll be able to turn any non-generic treasure effects on your item into Generic effects, for free, until the skill numbers are even (or close enough).

Two important notes: when calculating whether an item becomes Legacy, the item's Augmentation (if any) will be ignored. And items with an odd number of effects will, of course, have to be imbalanced toward one skill or the other. Those two scenarios won't make existing items become Legacy.

Transmutation will also be adjusted so that if you turn a Generic effect into a skill-specific effect, it won't pick just any random skill. It will always pick one of the two skills on the item -- and if one skill has fewer effects than the other, that one will get picked, so the item will always continue to be "balanced". (Again, any Augmentations will be ignored for this calculation.)

The actual algorithm is much more complicated because there are a lot of special cases. And I haven't even begun implementing this yet, so I'm not sure how intuitive the whole thing will be. But that's the tentative plan right now.

Brainstorming Dark Geology

One of the ideas I tossed around in last week’s blog post was the idea of a new support skill – call it Warding Magic – that could make any pet tankier and might be a useful support skill for necromancy and Animal Handling. There have been some great suggestions in this direction on the forums and in game and more ideas here are very welcome!

However, it's tricky to get the right breadth for a skill. A skill needs to be broad enough to support a dozen different abilities and 40+ different treasure effects! And if those abilities are too different in effect, it's too hard to use the skill for any particular purpose. But if the abilities are too narrow, it's too dull (and often too easy to gear for). One useful technique is to think in terms of abilities: what specific abilities would the skill have? If I can brainstorm a dozen abilities for a skill without it ending up being a jack-of-all-trades skill, that's a good sign.

I've been thinking about this on and off, and this may be the place to resurrect 'Dark Geology', a skill that got dropped from the game's design. Thematically, it's basically "earth magic" -- shielding, earthen walls, some rock-throwing, that sort of thing. When I tried it before, it just wasn't deep enough: there wasn't enough for the skill to do. (And then I stole some of its abilities when I was implementing Ice Magic later on.)

But if I pull the Battle Chemistry golem out of BC and give it to this new skill, things might synch up better. Dark Geology has wards and the programmable golem pet, while Battle Chemistry focuses on explosive burst effects and a more complex Mutation system.

This is just an idea I'm floating around in the back of the brain while I work on other things -- I mention it to get your feedback and ideas! Battle Chemistry is too broad right now, so narrowing its scope is something I need to do in one way or another. But again, these changes probably won't happen in the next update, as there's too much else to do.

Questions and Suggestions

The forum response to last week’s blog post was great -- so much discussion! I wanted to take the time in this blog post to answer a few questions and suggestions from the forums:

RE: Necromancy Pets -- I really like some of the ideas I saw regarding pet management. Some of the proposed ideas about directly helping your pets build aggro are interesting, and will probably find their way into the game in the form of treasure effects.

I'm playing with pets -- both necromancy and AH pets -- more as I playtest the other changes, and hope to make some quality-of-life improvements as I go. As well as a few bug fixes.

RE: Necromancy “No-Pet” Builds -- For the "non-pet" builds, I want to warn that the skill may feel fairly different after the update. Most importantly, Life Steal now has a 10 second cooldown instead of 5 seconds. Life Steal is still an impressive ability, but it needed toning down, and this is a good opportunity to adjust it.

I don't feel like a "pet-less tank" necromancy build necessarily needs to be viable. If it can fit in, cool, but the pets are really the core of the skill, and that needs to be the main way to use the skill.

RE: Getting Rid of Base Damage Boosts -- I have to admit that while playtesting dual-skill builds, it's pretty annoying trying to find gear that has both base-damage effects on it. But this kind of problem is exactly the sort of thing I intended Augmentation for: "fixing" items that are missing a crucial effect. So I don't think this is a deal-breaking issue. And when there's hundreds of players online, this design could finally create a bit of a market for commonly-needed Augments, too, so that players stop feeling like they have to level up all the Augment skills themselves.

But on the other hand... those base-damage boost effects are boring precisely because they feel mandatory. On the third hand, if they were removed they'd need to be replaced by something else -- I can't just remove them from every slot without making several skills' effects tables too thin. And I don't have any idea about what to replace them with.

I've been considering just lowering their stats so that they become less "mandatory". So at level 60 it would give, say, Base Damage +15% instead of +35%. But would that still be considered a "mandatory" effect? I kinda think it would, but I'd like your opinion there.

I'll be playing more with treasure effects this week, and I'll try a few ideas out. One idea is to have Base Damage only show up on one slot instead of two. That would be easier to replace than removing it from both slots. And that would also give me room to make some items' base-stats better, for instance, giving non-magical swords more inherent Sword Base Damage Boost.

Hip-Deep in Changes

As you can see from the all-over-the-place notes, I'm hip-deep in changes to all kinds of systems, and still trying different things out. I hope to get a lot of the more nebulous things figured out this week, then spend next week playtesting more, as well as coding up transition tools and other changes (like tweaking the tutorial to emphasize food more). But that's my optimistic schedule... we'll see how it goes, and I'll update you next week!

Dev Update, September 6

Citan, 9/6/2016

It's almost time for another round of alpha chaos! The next game update will focus on ability and treasure revisions. I have some big goals I want to achieve with these changes. They're broad changes that will affect how combat plays at every level, which means they'll cause a chain-reaction of other changes -- monster stats, XP curves, and more will have to be adjusted to compensate. So it's going to take a few more weeks before I'm ready to put the update up.

I know that there are some major imbalances between skills right now, but skill balance isn't my main goal with this update. My immediate goals are:

• Making two-skill builds a reality by splitting treasure effects on gear between skills.
• Slowing down the reset time of abilities to increase the number of abilities you use in combat.
• Easing the problems with power management so you can actually afford to use more abilities in combat.
• Helping players switch gear to get feedback and metrics on these changes sooner rather than later.

Making Two-Skill Builds a Reality

My biggest goal with these changes is to make players think in terms of BOTH of their combat skills. In other words, I don't want people to think of themselves as a sword fighter, but rather a sword + mentalism character. This duality needs to matter all the time, in basically every fight, and especially when choosing equipment.

When it comes to choosing gear, players tend to focus on just one of their skills. They do this for a very practical reason: it's way more powerful. By putting as many treasure effects on as few abilities as possible, you maximize both your damage-per-second and your damage-per-Power-spent. I've tried to push players toward two-skill builds in the past with various small incentives, but there's no incentive that can overcome the HUGE combat benefits of having 30+ treasure effects for only four or five abilities. As long as that's a possibility, players will want to do that – it just makes sense.

So it's time for a bit more direct approach: the effects on all looted and crafted gear will always be evenly split between your two skills. There will be no such thing as "single-skill gear" anymore. (Players can still use Augments to add any effect they want to their gear, which means that at high level you won't actually have a perfectly 50/50 split, but it'll be a lot closer than it is now.)

I've already implemented this change locally and it does definitely push you to think more strategically about your second skill. It makes you look for ways to synergize your skills that you would never have bothered with before. I like the result so far ... but there are some problems. Some of the problems will be pretty easy to fix. For instance, some skills have very different treasure-effect distributions than others. Mentalism has more top-quality head-slot effects than main-hand-slot effects, which ramps up the difficulty in finding an "ideal" mentalism helmet, since now only half the effects on a helmet will be for Mentalism. But those sorts of details are easy enough to address -- some immediately, and some in future iterations as we discover the problems.

Support Skills for Two-Skill Builds

Some problems with this new system are easy to fix... and then there are harder problems. An example of a big problem area is tanking with Necromancy. Currently if you want to use Necromancy pets in a group-tanking role, it's not really that viable to split up your gear between two skills. If you want to be a top-notch necromancer tank, you need a LOT of necromancy gear. I did that on purpose. If it didn't take much gear for Necromancy to be a top-tier tank, then the two-skill tank combos like Staff+Shield would be dumb by comparison. So in the current game, being a tanky necro requires about as much gear as being a Staff+Shield tank. (Well, balance problems with individual abilities and treasure effects blur the lines a lot ... but you get the idea of the intent.)

Since I want players to think in terms of TWO skills, the obvious solution is that there needs to be a second skill that can make Necromancy pets more tanky. Typical tanking skills like Shield are not useful for Necromancy tanks. So maybe we need a new skill here, let's call it Warding Magic: a skill that can make any pet more tanky. (Making the skill work on all pets is convenient because Animal Handling tanks have the exact same problem ... I'm just using Necromancy as an example.) Or maybe I can add variant abilities or sub-skills to an existing skill.

I'm not sure what the best answer is there, but it's something I'm thinking about. The solutions for these harder problems will probably have to wait until a future update for a robust fix. I can't make every necessary change all at once or it'll take many months to get the update out the door, and I need feedback and bug-reporting to happen as quickly as possible. So I'll make what changes I can easily make for the next update, and then with your help and feedback we’ll iterate on skills that need more dramatic changes.

Longer Cooldowns

Another fundamental fix I need to make is to increase the reset time of abilities. This ties directly into making both of your combat skills important: if you can complete the fight by pressing just a few combat abilities – because they are off of cooldown and available to use over and over – it's always going to make more sense to have all your abilities come from the same skill. By slowing down the reset times, it becomes more likely that you can fit in some abilities from your other skill.

Long story short, I'm slowing down the reset timers on many abilities. 5-second abilities will mostly become 7-second or 8-second abilities; 7-second abilities become 10-second, and so on. This obviously will change combat a LOT, and the changes will cascade everywhere -- monsters, treasure, XP curves, treasure-effects. These will be some weird times, but after a few iterations, the eventual result will be more-fun combat.

This also helps address a boringness problem. It might be more powerful to make just a few abilities really strong, but it's more boring to play ... and that's a warning sign. In MMO design, ideally the "right" way to play shouldn't also be the "boring" way to play.

Power Management

Another issue on my radar is Power management. This is an area where I wish I had more time to play the game myself, because I don't feel like I fully understand where the problems are. With the skills I use most when testing, I don't really have major Power management problems at level 60. And when I do data analysis, I see that a slight majority of level 60 players also have no trouble with Power: they finish most combats with a lot of their Power remaining. In a few cases players basically have infinite Power and can fight forever without stopping.

But on the other hand, many players report having a LOT of trouble with Power management. And this is where it gets kind of nebulous for me. Some skills are just harder to manage Power for than others, and some abilities and treasure effects are out of whack ... but in other cases, I can only guess at what's wrong. More players complain of Power problems during the 40-50 level range than the 50-60 range, which might mean that level 40 players aren't finding gear that eases their power management problems ... or it might mean that the monsters are just too tough in that range. If players feel they have to focus entirely on DPS gear, they don't have room to include Power management gear. Or maybe it's something else. It's not really obvious what the problems are just by looking at metrics. So this is something I'd like more input on. Especially if you've come "out the other side", going from being Power-starved to having plenty of Power, I want to know: what happened to change your Power needs?

In the next update I'm planning to be more generous with Power pretty much across the board. That's because the changes mentioned above -- longer cooldowns, more diffusely-spread gear effects -- will require you to use more abilities to finish a fight, which means you need more Power than before. So I'll be boosting the variables I have handy -- Power costs of abilities, power restoration of treasure effects, the potency of consumables, the impact of Combat Refresh. In the very short term, I'd rather you have too much Power than too little Power, because the other changes in the next update will cause enough chaos on their own. But as we keep iterating, Power is a big thing I'm working on and worrying about.

The other Power-related thing I need to do is get players to use food and drink all the time. Power costs are based on the idea that you start each fight with most of your Power, and food and drink are how you recover your resources quickly between fights. But when I do data analysis, I can see that most players don't use food or drink routinely, even if they often run out of Power mid-fight. The reasons for this are numerous and complicated, and this isn't something I'll be able to "fix" with a magic wand, but it's something I want to work on in future iterations.

Helping Players Switch Gear

I'm still working on the best way to deal with existing gear. On the one hand, I need to get all existing single-skill equipment out of the game, and the easiest way to do that is to mark gear as Legacy if it has too many effects from a single skill. But that will be kinda stressful on alpha testers, because you'll need to replace all your loot within a month. On the other hand, due to the ability-timer changes, you'll probably want to revise your gear sooner than later anyway. And I need to get the gear change underway ASAP so that I can start getting useful metrics of how the new system works.

So I want to do some sort of event or special activity that can make it easier to replace or alter your existing gear. But the ideas off the top of my head are either too good (you get too much free loot) or are too targeted (a "trade in your gear" event really benefits long-term players with hoards of gear more than it does mid-level players). I'll be thinking about this carefully over the next couple of weeks, and your ideas are welcome too. Hopefully together we'll come up with something to make the transition a bit easier without devolving into "loot piñatas for everyone" ... although that isn't the worst thing to happen in alpha, anyway.

Other Stuff in The Next Update

Beyond the above "big picture" combat changes, I'm also trying to fit in as many medium-sized combat changes as I can. Since you'll want new gear anyway, I'd prefer you not to need yet ANOTHER set of new gear in the next couple of updates after this one. But it will depend on the complexity of each change. Some will be easy enough to add to this update, and some will have to wait.

I'll talk about more combat-related changes next time. I should also mention that the next game update has more than just these combat changes in it ... and I'll cover some of that stuff soon too!

Here Come Weekly Updates!

Citan, 8/30/2016

Hi guys! I hope that those of you interested in the game's development have been following the progress on our forums and blog (to the level that your interest dictates, anyway). I haven't done Kickstarter updates for several reasons, but the main reason is that I hate getting excessive status-update emails from Kickstarter projects.

I've backed a lot of projects, and they all send me emails, and mostly they're pointless "things are still happening" emails, and I hate them. Hate. Them. And every time I do an update like this one, it sends out an email. There's no way for me to avoid it...

... except there is. It turns out that at some point, Kickstarter added the ability to disable email notifications for updates. So that changes things! I can post my weekly status-update blog posts here without spamming your inboxes! And starting next week, that's what I'll do.

Upcoming "Status Update" Posts

This update will fill you in on the big-picture stuff, and then starting next week, the updates will be more mundane "here's what I did this week" posts -- the same ones I post to the blog.

I won't spam those to your Kickstarter inboxes... but if you want to receive those as email, you can opt in to receiving the blog-post versions as email. Just visit http://projectgorgon.com/blog and click "Subscribe to Blog".

Big-Picture Stuff

Assuming you haven't read any of the blog or forum posts since the last KS update, let me get you up to date real fast.

Game development is still happening at full speed. There's been 1 or 2 large game updates every month, as well as small "hotfixes" after each update to fix the inevitable bugs. P:G remains my full-time job (and the part-time job of several others). It's my full-time passion, too, and I pretty much spend all my waking hours working on it. I'm proud of how the game is shaping up. There's a long way to go, but it's improving noticeably each month.

We aren't on Steam Early Access yet. We finished all the tasks that were a bottleneck as described in the previous KS updates, but the game still felt too unpolished and confusing. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and all that... so we've left the game in free-to-play open access mode while we continue to make improvements.

You can still log in and play using the account you made during Kickstarter, or create a new free account and try out the new newbie experience. (That's the "island" newbie experience which replaced the "cave" newbie experience.) If you've been waiting for your Steam keys, don't worry, you didn't miss anything -- as explained above, we aren't on Steam Early Access yet.

Developer Info Round-Up

Earlier this month we did an epic blog post that tries to gather everything we've talked about in the forums and blogs for the past eight months (and longer!) to give you the full insight into where the game is headed.

Unfortunately, even though it's consolidated and heavily abbreviated, it's still too long to post as a Kickstarter update. So I'm going to direct you to the blog instead. It's a long read, but full of interesting stuff.

Seriously, please go read this! It will answer all the questions you might have... and answer questions you didn't know you had:

"Official Release" Schedule

We are six to eight months behind the original schedule for "official release" of the game. Most of the Kickstarter rewards are supposed to be delivered by the end of 2016, and I still expect those rewards to be delivered on time. However, the game will be in Steam Early Access at that point, not in "official Steam release."

In some ways the difference is just semantics, because players will be able to buy and play the game like any other game. But we will still consider the game to be in "beta" at that point, and high-level content won't all be finished. The game will need a long beta period, so I expect it won't be "officially launched" until late 2017.

However, it will be pretty great by the end of 2016... just not finished.

Other Recent Game Additions

Finally, here's a few of the things that have been added to the game recently:

• Druid emergencies that require all druids to come to the aid of nature
• Synchronized dancing that rewards players for coordinated performance
• New NPCs that give out random task quests every hour
• Revisions to animal handling, including tameable bears
• Flower Arrangement skill
• Knife Fighting skill
• Player Work Orders, where players can request items from other players (think a sort of "reverse auction house": "I will pay 5000 for X")
• New content for animal-form players, including the Survival Instincts skill, more additions to Animal Town, and also hats
• The rakshasa capital city of Rahu
• New flight forms for druids
• A new way to augment equipment called Shamanic Infusion
• Vendor stalls, where players can hire an NPC to sell their items for them
• And much, much more.

Starting next week I'll be posting status updates covering each weeks' development in sometimes-painful levels of detail. So... see you next week!

(test post)

Citan, 8/30/2016

(This was a test to make sure that I could post updates without sending email notifications. And it worked!)

December Catch-Up

Citan, 12/19/2015

Hi guys, Eric here. Long time no talk! We've been busily toiling away, and I wanted to update you on where we're at.

What happened to the timeline?

According to the previous update, we should have launched on Steam by now. We did most of the integration for Steam, and sent out the surveys to get your account info... and then realized we were jumping the gun a little.

The Steam early access launch is probably our last major opportunity to earn money to improve our art. (The Kickstarter money is more than enough to get the game to the finish line, but $75k can only buy so much art, no matter how cleverly we spend it. So the Steam launch will help determine how good the game can look.)

I decided it didn't make sense to launch on Steam quite yet -- first, I want to make sure the game gives the best first impression it can.

To that end, we've created an all new tutorial area, because lots of people told us that our old tutorial cave was distractingly ugly. The new tutorial is outdoors, on an island. The island is in-game now, so if you're interested in seeing it, just hop in and make a new character. We're still tweaking graphics, fixing bugs, and adding music, but you can get a pretty good idea of what the island will be like.

Now that the tutorial island is in-game, we're much closer to being ready to go live on Steam. But there's one other big thing I want to finish first (aside from the technical requirements for Steam launch): a new level 60 content area.

Why would we wait for high-level content? Well, we all know that an MMO is more fun when there's lots of players in the game, so I'm hoping to attract a bunch of you back in-game with new content right around the time of the Steam launch.

Recent Game Updates

The new tutorial island isn't the only thing we've added recently... not by a long shot. Here's some highlights of other changes since the last Kickstarter update:

Halloween: our Halloween update included a new Giant Bat animal form. Giant Bat form is a disease that was spread by the infectious bite of special Halloween monsters.

Now that the event has ended, if you want to try out giant bat form, your best bet is to find a player who's still a bat and ask them to bite you until you get infected!

Speaking of holidays, we're also working on a small Christmas update for next week. It's nothing fancy this year because we're so busy with other stuff, but the NPCs would be upset if they weren't able to give gifts to their friends at holiday time.

Work Orders: these are a new way to earn money while practicing craft skills. There are job boards in each area which periodically update with simple crafting tasks, such as "deliver 10 oak dowels to Fitz the Boatman."

These work orders help give a bit of direction to people who are overwhelmed by the sheer number of skills they could be working on. They can also introduce you to new skills you hadn't seen yet.

These work orders are made by NPCs, but we're working on a similar system which will let players make work orders for other players to fill.

Belt change: this one was a bit controversial on the forums: we've changed the role of belts entirely. During the Kickstarter, belts determined the skills that your random loot buffed. For instance, if you wore a Sword and Mentalism belt, you'd tend to find gear with powers for those two skills. Belts aren't used for that anymore. Instead the game just looks at which skills you have active, and (usually) gives you items for those skills.

This is a big benefit to newbies who struggled to get the belt they needed, and it's also a win for people who want to use skill combinations that didn't have a belt before. But it's a nerf to high level players who liked to use their best skills to farm gear for their weaker skills -- you can't do that anymore. You have to actually use the skills in order to find gear for them.

While this is an annoying change if you're used to the old system, I think it's actually a good thing in the long run. And we've added some new tools for high level players, to help offset that pain:

New Loot-Altering Skills: there's a new skill called Transmutation which I expect most players will want to learn when they're in their level 50s. It lets you randomly re-roll some of the effects on your treasure, so you can tweak almost-perfect items into perfect ones.

"Augmentation" was an old system that was completely changed. It now lets you extract powers from junk items and then inject those powers into other gear. The process is time-consuming and expensive, so augmentation is more of a dedicated crafting profession rather than something we expect every player to do. (Crafters can sell you augments which you can apply to your gear.)

Combat Refreshes: we're making lots of changes, both large and small, to combat. One of the most recent changes is the "Combat Refresh" feature. Your basic abilities (like Sword Slash or Punch) no longer cost Power to use, and they periodically trigger a Combat Refresh -- a small heal.

We're still experimenting with this feature and it's likely to change a lot in the coming months, but it already accomplishes the goal of making the game a little more forgiving for newbies.

Level 60 Skills: most combat skills can now be raised to level 60, with just a few more skills yet to be upgraded. As we raise the level cap we also flesh out the treasure tables for that skill, which means we've also added hundreds of new treasure effects, and revised hundreds of old ones to be more interesting.

When the game launches, combat skills will go all the way to 125, so level 60 is just a midway point in your character's journey. But the work we're doing now paves the way for us to add the rest of the levels in a more smooth and orderly fashion.

Those are some of the bigger changes. We've also been adding content, fixing tons of bugs, and making lots of smaller improvements.

What's the new timeline?

If things go well, we'll have the new level 60 area ready in early January, and be ready to launch on Steam in late January or early February.

We'll play it by ear based on feedback, though -- if we decide some other things should get done before we launch on Steam, we'll just reorganize the schedule a bit.

More News Soon

Sorry for the long time between Kickstarter updates! We're very active on the game's forum, but we haven't done a good job posting here. I'll try to send you updates more regularly.

In fact, Ryan and/or I will send out another update soon -- we've both got more exciting stuff to talk about.

As always, you are more than welcome to hop into the game and see where we're at! You can log in via the same process used during the Kickstarter. (We haven't changed any of that yet.) If you've forgotten how to get started, grab the launcher at projectgorgon.com.

And if you want the nitty-gritty details of each game update, you can find those on the forums at projectgorgon.com too.

Post-Kickstarter Time Table

Citan, 8/28/2015

Here's The Plan Hi backers! Thanks again for the great show of support during the Kickstarter! We're already working hard setting up the foundations for what's to come. The time table is a bit confusing (and a little different from what we'd talked about earlier), so let me walk you through it:

Right now: the game continues to be open for anyone to play. Feel free to jump in any time!

Within a week: if you pledged at the $25 reward or higher, you'll receive a survey email from Kickstarter which asks you for your Project: Gorgon account name (among other things). When we have that, we'll be able to tie your Kickstarter and Project: Gorgon accounts together so that you get the appropriate rewards.

Mid September (2-3 weeks from now): we will close the server to everyone except people who pledged in the Kickstarter. (Behind the scenes, we'll begin transitioning everything to Steam authentication at this point.)

Late October: the game will be available on Steam early access. You'll be emailed a Steam key (or keys, depending on which tier you pledged), and we'll have a process to help you transfer your Gorgon account to Steam. After this point, you will need Steam installed in order to log into the game.

Beyond that: we'll be focusing on improving the game! Judging by previous experience, we expect to have game updates 1-3 times per month.

We'll also have a couple of game updates during the transition period, including new game features, new content, balance, etc. We have an update planned for early next week, in fact. (See below.)

FAQ

Here's answers to a few questions that we've been asked:

"I didn't pledge in the Kickstarter, but I want to be able to play during the transition period [before the game is for sale on Steam early access]. How can I do that?"

We'll have a way, but we're working on the details. It may be as simple as sending the money to our business PayPal account... not sure yet!

Only basic purchases will be available this way -- the high-end Kickstarter packages are unlikely to be offered. (We'd like to offer all the packages forever, but it's just too much bookkeeping for our tiny team!)

"I pledged at $10 and didn't realize that doesn't give me alpha access. Can I upgrade my pledge?"

Yes, we'll have a method to let you do that, similar to the above-mentioned late-buy plan. We're still working out the details.

"Will there be time when I can't play?"

If you pledged at $25 or higher you'll be able to play from now until forever. The exact login steps will change as we transition to Steam, but we'll keep you in the loop on what you need to do.

There may be a day of server downtime when we "flip the switch" and completely move to Steam authentication, but it won't be terribly long.

"I hate Steam. How can I keep playing without it?"

Unfortunately in the short term there won't be a way to play without Steam authentication. I expect to have a non-Steam login method later on, but first things first: we need to get the Steam login working, and working well!

Next Game Update Coming Soon!

Even during the transition process, we'll keep updating the game every couple of weeks. In fact, the next game update will happen in a few days! It's mainly a technical update with lots of important fixes, optimizations, and improvements:

This update will have a "preview" version of Guilds. It focuses on just the basics: a guild chat tab, a 'message of the day', member management, etc. We've rewritten the movement system to fix all the bugs where players get stuck in the geometry of the world. We've also fixed all the known ways that players can slip through walls (accidentally or otherwise!) We also have memory optimizations, graphics fixes, server speed-ups, and lots of miscellaneous bug fixes. Thanks again everybody. We hope you'll keep playing during the transition, and we hope you'll keep giving us feedback on what's good and what's bad.

We'll update you again soon!

Let’s sprint through the Kickstarter finish line together!

Citan, 8/22/2015

We have nearly 1,050 unique backers and have risen over $61,000! As this moment, we have just less than 43 hours remaining as the Kickstarter campaign will officially end Sunday at 9:00PM PST.

It’s been a wonderful ride; now let’s sprint through the finish line together! You can help us sprint through the virtual finish line by posting about the Project Gorgon Kickstarter campaign on your social media pages and by telling your friends!

Those stretch goals were such nice shiny rewards, but remember: the more money that we raise the more money we will have to implement and improve game features! That said, we are not against nice shiny rewards, so we are going to have an unofficial official stretch goal of $65,000. The incentive is two-fold: an in-game party pack that you can use to help us celebrate in-game as the Kickstarter campaign closes on Sunday and some headroom in order to ensure that the Vampire Curse stretch goal doesn’t fall below the $60,000 threshold due to failed transactions.

Let’s do this, and remember it’s only the beginning. We have a long road ahead, but we look forward to completing the adventure together!

Stretch Goals: Soundtrack, Advanced Guild Features, New Animal Form, and the curse of the Vampire!

Citan,

$45,000 Project Gorgon Soundtrack

Project Gorgon features a unique soundtrack composed by the immensely talented Conor Brace who has worked with clients such as Rooster Teeth, Nickelodeon, D7 Games, Game Salad, and many others. Conor understands the thematic elements that are required to fully immerse players into the world of Project Gorgon and he will be working to complete a full soundtrack for the game!

Everyone who pledges at the Adventurer level,or higher, will receive a digital copy of the Project Gorgon soundtrack! There are already 13 unique tracks, and that number will only continue to grow as development continues.

$50,000 Advanced Guild Features

We have plans to implement a basic guild system, but if we achieve this stretch goal we will be able to add all the unusual systems that we have been hoping for!

The advanced guild features include, but are not limited to:

• The ability to have unique behavior requirements such as: humans only, no vegetarians, no plate mail, or even an all cow guild!

• An optional system to create a unique “hardcore” guild that allows unique features and benefits. For example, you could have a special death penalty where a guild member couldn’t respawn until a member of the guild resurrects him or her.

•Guild Vendor. Guilds can set up an NPC vendor, in town, that allows members to sell items to the public.

• Guilds will be able to discover the secrets of ritual magic. There are a lot of secrets awaiting discovery, but some of that magic includes: the ability to teleport and bring members together quickly, rituals of the mind that let you communicate through time and space, the ability to access the guild vault from remote locations, and the ability to summon your guilds unique “mascot” pet.

• Guild Levels. Guilds will be able to complete special tasks to enhance the prestige of their guild. As a guild levels, they will be able to unlock rituals, increase guild storage space, and discover special challenges and rewards.

Backers at the Patron level, or higher, will receive a special voucher to create their guild for free, bypassing the requirements for signatures and fees. Those at the Lord Commander level, or higher, will be among the first to register their guild name!

$55,000 a Completely New and Unique Animal Form

If we achieve this stretch goal, we will add a completely new and unique animal form! This will be a full featured animal form with unique abilities specific to its characteristics. The exact form will be a surprise, and we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet! There are many possibilities, perhaps a psychic mantis or maybe not even an “animal” at all? Only time will tell.

$60,000 Unlocking the ancient curse of the Vampire

There are many curses in the world of Project Gorgon, but perhaps not many as intriguing as the ancient curse of the Vampire. A curse much like Lycanthropy, the player will have access to greater power but will also carry a heavy burden. The night can be a powerful ally, but the day can be your worst enemy.

Player Race: the Fae.

Citan, 8/9/2015

The Fae are an immortal race that originate from the realm of Fae. They have the ability to glide through the air with the use of their wings and levitation magic. Those Fae who truly embrace their heritage can master full flight. Their alien biology allows them to gain additional benefits from food and potions, but they are fragile and more vulnerable to injury when compared to some of the tougher races. The Fae have spent an uncountable number of years interacting with magic and this special interaction has allowed them to master certain magical combat techniques that no other can.

Project Gorgon Questions & Answers Town Hall on Sunday 8/9/2015

Citan, 8/6/2015

Project Gorgon Town Hall Meeting

Time: Sunday 8/9/2015 United States: 8:00PM EST Other Countries: GMT -4:00

What: You bring the questions and we will have statements resembling responses! In all seriousness, this is a great opportunity for fans, backers, and the media to ask questions related to Project Gorgon and our Kickstarter Campaign.

Where: The event will be hosted on the Project Gorgon TeamSpeak Server with the required connection information posted below. In order to participate in this meeting, you’ll need to download the TeamSpeak client from their official website. If you are media, please choose a username that represents your website.

Server Address: 108.174.62.146:10019 Channel: Town Hall Meeting

Ever dream of playing as a Cow? Probably not, but now you can!

Citan, 8/5/2015

We are often asked about the origins of the player cow and how it became a prominent player choice. It was originally a boss curse, so if you fell in battle against Maronesa (the cow boss) you would be cursed to live as a cow until you returned to lift the curse. We noticed, pretty quickly, that players were not returning to lift the curse and more and more players decided to play it as their full time character. We started to receive numerous requests to expand upon the cow’s abilities and features and that’s when we decided to make it into a full-fledged experience. Now we have several different animal experiences that players can enjoy and we will be adding more! What animal would you like to play as?

New Stretch Goals: Player Instrument Expansion and the Bard!

Citan, 8/4/2015

We have officially passed our first stretch goal of $25,000! Thanks everyone for your continued support. Because of your support, we have officially added two additional stretch goals; the first is a player instrument expansion and the second is a new player skill: the Bard!

As a reminder, we have added two new reward levels: the Contributor +1 and the Lord Commander. Make sure you check them out! Lastly, we ask that you please continue to spread the word about Project Gorgon and our campaign as all those social media posts have really made a difference. If you are a part of a community that could be interested in Project Gorgon, a simple post could make a big difference.

$35,000 Player Instrument Expansion

We have 6 instruments planned, each with six short music loops that can be combined in any order. But if we hit this stretch goal, we'll add a second "song" that's completely different from the first, consisting of six new music loops for every instrument. We'll also add a seventh unique instrument, and we will work on allowing animal forms to participate in the fun!

$40,000 New Player Skill: the Bard!

The Bard is part psychologist, part performer, and all charisma. Bards can inspire allies to momentary bursts of outrageous heroism, use their improvisational skills to change the tide of the battle, and use song to soothe wounded souls. It works great with other skills: combine the Bard skill with the already-existing Mentalism skill to create a classic EQ1-style "buffing bard", or combine with Psychology to create an exceptional crowd-controller.

New Reward Levels: Contributor +1 and Lord Commander

Citan, 8/3/2015

Based on feedback, we have decided to add two reward levels to the Project Gorgon Kickstarter Campaign: Contributor +1 and the Lord Commander. These tiers are available to all new backers, and all existing backers may upgrade where applicable.

Contributor + 1

Includes (2) Contributor level reward packages, perfect for sharing Project Gorgon with a friend! As a bonus, each account will receive an additional month of VIP membership.

Lord Commander

The Lord Commander level reward package is identical to the Lord package, but instead includes 3 years of VIP membership!

Stretch Goals: Exclusive Mount and Player Race - Dwarves!

Citan, 7/31/2015

$25,000 Stretch Goal - Unique Backer Mount

• An exclusive backer mount skin will be created and available to players once they obtain the horseback riding skill in-game. All backers at the Horseback Explorer level or higher will receive the mount as soon as available.

$30,000 Stretch Goal - Timed Exclusive Backer Character Race: Dwarves! The Dwarves are stout, dour subterranean people and Kickstarter Backers will have exclusive access to them during the alpha and beta period! Kickstarter backers below the Patron level will be able to unlock the Dwarven class through in-game objectives, while those at or above the Patron level will have them automatically unlocked once available.

The personality of Dwarves varies greatly as some are introverts, some can be a bore, and some are precision craftsmen, while others solely decide to rely on their exceptional strength. There is one thing they all have in common, they love the underground and it’s the only place they truly feel at home.

Dwarven players will be able to unlock the secrets of the ancient race, they include:

• The ability to track your position underground,
• Spells that let you hide in stone momentarily,
• A combat stance that makes you unmovable,
• Long-forgotten weapon-crafting techniques.

These secrets come with a dark side, however, for their patron god Ormorek is also the god of bitterness, self-doubt, and lost innocence. In ages past, dwarves were their own worst enemies, and players who unearth these ancient techniques will have to battle with ancient foes -- both within and without.

Initial Campaign Goal Reached!

Citan, 7/31/2015

We wanted to take a moment and thank each and every backer who made our initial campaign goal a reality! Thank you! It has been an amazing 6 days and we are looking forward to nearly 24 more. We are going to continue to roll forward and fear not, we will be posting stretch goal incentives to keep the campaign moving forward! We have so many great ideas for Project Gorgon and the more that we are able to raise the greater chance that those ideas will become reality. We ask that you please keep up the enthusiasm and continue to post about Project Gorgon and our Kickstarter Campaign as those social media posts really are making a difference. We will be posting a couple stretch goals later tonight, so make sure to check back! Thanks again for all the support, it is much appreciated.

Project Gorgon: Character Races

Citan, 7/30/2015

Special Note: We are currently approaching 90% of our funding goal! This campaign is extremely important to the future of Project Gorgon as it is funding game development in general and not just a few game features. As such, if we are able to surpass our initial goal, we will be able to expand upon current and planned game features! We have great ideas that add unique twists to many of the MMO features that you have come to enjoy, and some new ones that you have yet to experience. Please continue to make Project Gorgon a reality, a simple post on social media or simply telling your friends or coworkers about the campaign can make a huge difference!

Project Gorgon: Character Races

Project Gorgon is all about unique playing experiences shaped by the decisions of the player and it all starts with the initial choice of character race. Currently, there are 3 playable races: Elves, Humans and Rakshasa. We plan to add at least 3 more: Fae, Orc, and a TBA race. For those counting, that’s 6 playable races and that doesn’t even include the full featured permanent animal characters that you can choose to play during your in-game experience.

Since you are able to check out the Elves, Humans, and Rakshasa in-game now, we wanted to give you an early look at the Fae and Orc classes (final design is subject to change). As a side note, all classes will automatically be unlocked for the Grand Duke and above reward tiers once available!

Milestones, Stretch Goals, and a Special Note regarding the Lord reward level.

Citan, 7/28/2015

As day 4 comes to an end we just wanted to reflect on a couple amazing milestones that our Kickstarter campaign has already achieved. We have over 230 backers and have already exceeded 70% of our initial funding goal! As we move forward, we will be posting some detailed updates that talk about exciting and upcoming game features for Project Gorgon.

We have already discussed stretch goals and have a few awesome ideas that will expand the campaign and potentially offer more rewards for the higher level tiers. We would love to hear from our supporters regarding what they would like to see added as a stretch goal.You can respond here, our Facebook page, or on Twitter using the hashtag #ProjectGorgon.

Special Note: The Lord reward level will have 6 months VIP time added to the existing 12 months stated, making the total VIP subscription time 18 months. This will apply to previous and future backers.

Day 1 Support: Over 100 backers!

Citan, 7/26/2015

We just wanted to thank everyone for an incredible day 1 and day 2! We were able to surpass the 100 backer mark on day 1 and as day 2 is coming to a close we are nearing 50% of our campaign goal! Thanks for your support, it has been amazing! We have some exciting updates planned for the campaign that will share more in depth views on some major game functions like mounts, guilds, and housing. Please continue to spread the word about our campaign as it’s really making a difference!