Hello everyone!
It’s been a while since we last talked. It has been longer than we had initially anticipated, and we truly apologize. As announced in our last blog post here, we told you all that the Potterworld 2.0 plan that had been previously presented was not going to be moving forward. Since last year, we’ve taken a careful look at plans for Potterworld 2.0 and completely redeveloped them with new ideas and systems in mind, taking into account player feedback and our experience as Game Designers, to ensure that the next update we create can work as a new foundation for Potterworld moving forward. We’re extremely eager to share more details, but perhaps “Potterworld 2.0 feels too vague for what it is that we’ll be doing moving forward. That’s why today we’re happy to announce the next update and chapter for Potterworld:
The Directium Update
Continuing our tradition of naming updates after spells, we chose Directium as it represents a guiding arrow, a change in direction, and a new path forward. We want to make sure we address many of the concerns that we’ve heard from our playerbase time and time again, and to ensure this new version of Potterworld lives up to those expectations.What is The Directium Update?
The Directium Update is our core gameplay update that will refresh all of our main features within the server, including leveling, professions, experience, mobs, magic, and quests. We’ve taken a look at all of these systems, and we’re designing our new experiences around one “North Star” - A statement we use internally to help form gameplay features. Our "North Star" for this update and all content moving forward is:What does a night of Potterworld with friends look like?
We want to design an experience that is not only immersive and delivers on the high standard we’ve set for ourselves, but also creates a gameplay ecosystem that includes greater levels of cooperation, replayability, and responsiveness for each player. We know our community is at the heart of Potterworld, and we want to make sure we continue to foster that for many years to come.
Most notably, we’ve also made the decision to put the Main Storyline (MSL) on hold, to ensure that our main focus can be on fixing many of the core structural issues that exist, so that we can then build the Main Storyline and future content releases on top of that. We know this is not what many people were hoping for, but we want to make sure we give the core experiences and systems 100% of our attention before we build new quests, especially something as expansive as the Main Storyline, on top of that.
Directium Features
We're pleased to announce that work on the Directium Update is already underway. We wanted to make sure we were making good progress on the project before we shared more details. The Directium Update is planned to include the following:Leveling and Experience Rework
We know that leveling is currently a subpar experience, resulting in players getting stuck at certain levels. We’re not only going to be taking a look at the experience being given out by all of our content, but we’re also going to be changing the entire leveling formula to make the higher levels less grindy compared to the early years.
Quest Refreshes and Repeatable Quest Additions
A lot of our Revelius quests are quite outdated, and it’s resulted in players who complete our First Year Experience being lost once they’re let out into the world, as many of the tools we developed post-Revelius, like the compass, don’t work on our old quests. We also changed our design philosophy for Quests a while back - changing how we think about Quest Objectives. Revelius Quests often had several “steps” for each objective, resulting in players getting lost. We’re committed to not only adding compass tech to all of our quests, but we’re also looking to completely rework many of our old quests - keeping the spirit of the quest the same, but reworking them to be more engaging, use more magic, and expand our world more. We're also working to develop new ways to help guide the player beyond just the Quest Compass - to ensure navigating our world is easier than ever before.
We’re also looking to examine a lot of our quests and either build upon them to create unlockable repeatable quests after the player finishes them, or turning existing quests into repeatable gameplay experiences. We’ll have more to share on this very soon!
Mob Rework
We recognize that our world mobs are a bit lackluster - they use the same few attacks, spawn in hordes, and can be easily dealt with should you find yourself on top of some rocks or a tree. It’s definitely not the same experience as fighting some of our more complex mobs. We’re looking to bring some of our experience from Gauntlets and Dungeons onto the main world, meaning our mobs will be more engaging to fight. We’ll have more to share on this in the future!
Living World Initiative
One of our core gameplay ideas heading into this was that we want to make our towns feel more alive and reactive to player choice. This means filling them not just with quests and a few shops, but a variety of little stories that you as the player can explore and not only get engaged in, but influence the outcome of. Our goal is to increase exploration and fill out our world by giving players new reasons to explore in order to find these pieces and hidden stories scattered across our map - both in towns and between them.
Professions
One of our most requested features is making a return. We’ll be re-introducing Professions, including Herbology, Monstrology, Magical Cuisine, and Potions. These items will be needed for a variety of gameplay elements - so you won’t just be making them to level up your Professions. You may need a food item to start a quest, interact with the townsfolk in the Living World Initiative, or perhaps to unlock a Dungeon. And you’ll definitely want your best food items for delving into Dungeons & Gauntlets for fighting bosses! We can’t wait to share how these are developing soon!
Reputation & Renown
We recognize that Reputation as a whole missed the mark on the level of interactivity for repeatable content that people were looking for. In Directium, we’re removing Reputation entirely to make way for a new system, Renown. Renown is focused on the player's personal relationship with the town as a whole. Instead of specific tasks, players will gain renown through Taskboards that require specific Profession items, as well as finding and completing Quests, Repeatable Quests, and Activities in the town and Living World Initiative elements around the area. Fear not, as the rewards obtained from Reputation will find a new home in this new Renown system.
Spell & Gear Rework
With everything else being reworked, we wanted to examine our Spells and Gear, as we know that Gear is an often talked-about subject in terms of not only rewards for the player, but also combat in general. We’re working to develop an entirely new system to replace Gear as a whole. Our general guidelines for this is to make it easier for new players to get into it and understand the base system, while also providing opportunities for new rewards, and ensuring that our systems have a high skill-ceiling for those that want to theory-craft and develop the best setup possible.
A Few Other Suprises!
We don’t want to spoil all of the fun, so there’s a few things we’re holding back on for now, but we’ll share more details in the future.
Directium Playtests
As we’ve said in our last blog post, we have a lot of ideas, as you can see, but we want to make sure they feel right - That is oftentimes the hardest job of a Game Designer. We don’t want to redefine the entire Potterworld experience without player input, either. To that end, we’re working towards our first public playtest of this new “ecosystem” - Meaning that you’ll experience a whole town’s worth of content together - This means new XP formulas, Mobs, Quests, Living World Initiative - all of it. We’re committed to building a great game, and that means ensuring that you as the players become much more of an integral part of the process earlier on in development.As we approach our first playtest, we’ll be sharing more information through a new blog post that specifically focuses on one specific system at a time, to allow you all to delve deeper into our systems in the leadup to the playtest.. Remember that the work we present may be incomplete and may change, but we want to begin the discussions about each core system with you.
Directium Page
We can’t wait to show you all what we have in store, and we'll have more information to share in the near future!
Game Design Leadership
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