We are about to start deploying Stage 3 of Totem Tribe II: Jotun closed alpha test. Update will be deployed within 1-3 days timeframe and current progress will be wiped. Here are the details about update and it's deployment. Let's start with major features.
Classical Age
The biggest thing among what has been added is whole new age with whole lot of new buildings, units, upgrades, research and so on. As we surveyed our players, we have found out it was the most desireable feature so we focused on implementing it for alpha 3.
Here are some major ones detailed:
- Iron - a new basic resource introduced in Classical Age and you will be able to mine Iron.
- Sailing - now you will be able to research and build vessels if you have town aligned next to the river or sea shore. Naval market is available to trade between port towns, additionally naval transports can be used to drop the landing party on mainland town of different continent. That's in addition to regular war ships that can attack enemy ports.
- Upgrades - now you can build a forge and upgrade your Classical Age troops. Upgrades are expensive but still a way to spend excessive resources when you have full army but want to make it a bit stronger.
- Siege - some people are not gonna like this :) You will be able to build catapults - very expensive units able to break enemy buildings.
- The Wonder of the World - let's see how much resources can you pour into this 100-level monstrosity :)
Better Payments
We were surprised how our testers supported us with donations even despite the fact that some prices were quite steep. Therefore we decided to give more value for the money to people who donate to support the game. No, we did not lower the prices :) but we have added various bonuses that will bring you extra free items and Enkord Cash in various circumstances. Here is the list of features:
- For each 30000 Enkord Cash charged as single payment you will get a special Supporter's Package with random items worth roughly 50000 plus 2 unique items called Lada's Ward which will allow you to cast uninterruptable truce for 3 days. One item is for your own use, another one to give as gift to your friend.
- When you donate money, you can automatially send out Pysanka's to your friends and alliance mates. Pysankas are small locked chests with free items too.
- For recurring spenders we are introducing Enkord Cash Club which will give you extra 10%-50% of what you charge (half of it comes in Enkord Cash, another half is in random items). That's in addition to ordinary volume bonus and volume discounts in Cash Shop!
- A deferred payment option is added. This is useful when you want to donate more than $100 and want to get larger volume discount. This way you will be able to charge several smaller payments and accept them as one big transaction.
Those things are just a few steps in the marketing department which needs to be done in order to make the game successful financially. Our current players are pretty loyal, but if we want to reach out for wider audience we need to provide better monetization offers. Another small bit - some players asked us what is their place in the top donators list, so now you can see your place in your control panel in the transactions tab.
More Game Additions
Some improvements unrelated to Classical Age announced earlier have been added as well:
- Random Monsters - we have explained them earlier.
- Jungle climate - announced earlier as well. You will be able to select tropics as your starting place, thus continents now will be able to hold 2 times more kingdoms.
Deployment Process
Here I will explain the deployment of Alpha 3 step by step:
- We have done internal tesing and decided we better push it sooner than later to current testers, because they can find the bugs much faster than we do. Therefore expect it to be deployed within 1-3 days.
- WARNING: The early Alpha 3 build will be extremely unstable and might break a game for you easily. If you want smoother experience, advised to wait a week after it will be live. It is possible that we will have to do another wipe after few days of playing, if some really bad bug will be found. Most fearless testers are welcome to try it out and report all the crazy bugs you will see :)
- EVEN BIGGER WARNING: All your progress made until now will be lost - all heroes, kingdoms, items, and so on - everyone will start from scratch. All Enkord Cash spent will be refunded though - you will be able to spend them again in alpha 3.
- This means that initially only existing testers will be able to test alpha 3. We expect them to find game breaking bugs until the next week. That way next week we will be able to fix critical ones.
- After all critical bugs will be fixed we will start inviting new testers into alpha 3. We plan to invited 2-4 times more testers that we have invited for alpha 2, but exact amount will depend on how the game will carry the extra load.
The Ugly
A lot of things didn't make it into initial launch of the Alpha 3. For example we planned to add at least 1 new quest location, but were unable to make it in time. Also we planned to start on major interface redesign, but instead only made internal technical preparations. The good thing is - hopefully we will be able to do those thins with updates to alpha 3 and they will not require another wipe and will be delivered before Alpha 4.
The Bottom Line?
Let us know what you think about all this stuff :)
