Post by fallen on Mar 16, 2015 20:19:49 GMT -5
I am fielding a very high volume of questions about Episode 4 at this point, so I wanted to publicly share our plan for its development / release cycle.
The episodic content for Heroes of Steel has been created and released in chunks so that we could release the content faster. If we had waited to release the game until all of the game's story content was finished ... well, E4 is not out yet -- so we still wouldn't have released the game! Of course, this causes some issues when you get stuck waiting for the next chunk of content.
The "holding pen" before E4 is especially small and cramped and there are a lot of heroes piling up in it.
We have now completed our roadmap for E3, reaching the total planned dungeon count of 32 and making it tied for the largest episode.
So, now it is on to E4.
Blah blah fallen, get to the plan already!!!
To alleviate the already extended wait for groups in the holding pen, we are going to release E4 as soon as possible. That means the initial release of E4 will be quite small, possibly less than 5 dungeons. However, it will include the ability to return to parts of the world that you've previously visited and also access the newly minted E3 subquests.
For the groups that have been stuck the longest, this will be a welcome relief.
I hope everyone will be understanding of the small E4 release, but with the promise of forthcoming expansions, as we have done with all of the Episodes.
While we may weather some backlask on the release, I care more about the quality of life of those players who are emailing me daily asking for escape hatches.
Freedom is coming, and it will taste like ... kind of like iron
The episodic content for Heroes of Steel has been created and released in chunks so that we could release the content faster. If we had waited to release the game until all of the game's story content was finished ... well, E4 is not out yet -- so we still wouldn't have released the game! Of course, this causes some issues when you get stuck waiting for the next chunk of content.
The "holding pen" before E4 is especially small and cramped and there are a lot of heroes piling up in it.
We have now completed our roadmap for E3, reaching the total planned dungeon count of 32 and making it tied for the largest episode.
So, now it is on to E4.
Blah blah fallen, get to the plan already!!!
To alleviate the already extended wait for groups in the holding pen, we are going to release E4 as soon as possible. That means the initial release of E4 will be quite small, possibly less than 5 dungeons. However, it will include the ability to return to parts of the world that you've previously visited and also access the newly minted E3 subquests.
For the groups that have been stuck the longest, this will be a welcome relief.
I hope everyone will be understanding of the small E4 release, but with the promise of forthcoming expansions, as we have done with all of the Episodes.
While we may weather some backlask on the release, I care more about the quality of life of those players who are emailing me daily asking for escape hatches.
Freedom is coming, and it will taste like ... kind of like iron
Thanks for the update, Andrew. I'm one of the lucky ones who have stopped playing HOS in order to get hooked on CK, so when I get back to HOS, I still have all of E3 to play! 
