Last month we gave some insight into an upcoming focus for our dev teams this quarter- revitalizing the Kingdom Merge system.
We looped the community into these changes very early in our development process because we wanted to be upfront about what it could mean for you. To be clear, we do not intend to halt all merges for older kingdoms. We will however be taking extra care to look at population size and how we schedule merges throughout the day to ensure the smoothest experience possible in the meantime.
With that said, let’s update you on the progress since our last announcement, now that we’ve evaluated more of our options!
The ultimate goal here is to make sure our kingdom merge system can handle the gigantic merge populations we now have (shout out to you all for shattering the expectations of the team who initially designed this system years ago- Thank you so much for playing our game!) We’re also excited to be taking on this work because it means we’ll get to address other, long-standing complaints with the old process.
Exile
In the past, we have handled inactive keeps by removing them from the combat map after enough time. This was chosen because it allows players to return at any point and pick up where they left off, but can become an obstacle when attempting to merge because we must carry over all the inactive keeps
So we are looking to design an Exile system that can run at all times, retain these useful aspects, and positively impact Kingdom Merges. In the process, we want to bring some added benefits to active players too. This includes surfacing the number of days inactive to Allegiance members and safely removing exiled players from Allegiance structures when possible.
We are working through some new challenges here, including making sure we don’t radically overturn Allegiances due to a few inactive members, and finding the sweet spot for what we define as inactive. We have been surveying players as a way to help answer these questions.
Repatriation
Repatriation is the opposite side of Exile. If you return after a long break, we want to make sure that’s a smooth transition.
We’re working through how to make sure you end up on the proper kingdom if it’s been merged in your absence, as well as how we communicate what happened while you were gone and set you up for success.
Work In Progress
Keep in mind, this is a window into work that is still very much in progress. When working on existing systems, that old framework can throw some unforeseen hurdles, and things can change before release.
The entire rework will likely wrap up in early 2021, but we expect to continue releasing pieces as they are ready, some prior to the overall project completion date.
To recap:
- We will continue to run safe merges with the current system.
- New improvements will be implemented through the end of the year and early 2021.
- We are looking forward to getting some other useful things out of this work.
We hope this was a useful look into the process! We plan to share more updates as the work continues, and will post information about our next merge pairings later in November.
Thank you for playing Game of Thrones: Conquest!