Hello everyone,
We've got important news to share regarding the multiplayer update, please take a moment to read our message from the EKO SOFTWARE and Nacon teams:
IMPORTANT NOTICE
As we approach our multiplayer update, we wanted to share a few things ahead of time.
As you may know, we’re still working on multiplayer stability and addressing various related bugs. Despite the improvements made over the past few months and our daily QA efforts, we have concerns about the current stability and the new issues that are discovered over time.
At the same time, we understand that delaying it again would only add a layer of frustration - In fact, that’s not an option! Despite our intentions to deliver the highest-quality experience possible, we also recognize that our players have already waited a long time.
❗Rest assured: the multiplayer update will still arrive on the Feb 25th.
So, how are we planning to address this?
We’ll be releasing the update on two separate branches, with a clear disclaimer that players will be accessing a version where they might experience some bugs and instability.
Default Branch: Includes all the new content, but without multiplayer features
Beta Branch: Includes all the new content + multiplayer
This way, players can experience all the new content we've added over the past few months (new skill system, reworked city progression, etc), while still having the option to opt in and play multiplayer.
This can be a feedback opportunity for those who want to help contribute to improving its stability. It will also be a way for us to gauge how often players will experience issues and which ones are the most prevalent.
When we launch the multiplayer update next week, we’ll provide detailed instructions on how to access the multiplayer branch.
A more technical explanations on what’s happening
We believe our community deserves honesty and clear explanations about the issues we’re facing. So what follows is a more technical explanation for those interested.
The City (hub) & Quest progression is handled server-side
Active gameplay (during story / hunts) use a peer-to-peer model up to 4 players
All characters are saved locally
Originally, we aimed for the City to support up to 32 players simultaneously. However, during QA, our servers struggled to handle the load reliably, resulting in random player disconnections and, in some cases, server crashes.
To ensure stability and a smoother experience, we’ve reduced the maximum number of simultaneous players in the City to 16.
Basically, here the current issues we’re facing:
In the City, players can experience desync and occasional disconnections, scaling with the number of players.
Regarding active gameplay they’re generally stable when progressing through story or endgame quests with 2 players. However, as more players join, up to 4, we start seeing desync and occasional disconnections.
Closing thoughts
We thrive on trust and transparency, so we genuinely want to handle this ethically. That’s why we made it a priority to give you a proper explanation of the current state of where multiplayer is at.
We’ll continue working on multiplayer stability toward the 1.0 launch scheduled for March 16th. We’re confident that you’ll be pleased with the results!
We don’t say it enough, but we’re truly grateful for the support the game has received over the past year and for the trust you’ve placed in us. We hope the upcoming update will give our players plenty of reasons to revisit Dragonkin, and of course, we warmly welcome all the new hunters !
Until then, head on over to our Discord to join our community and give feedback on the upcoming patch!
Thank you, everyone!
- The EKO SOFTWARE & Nacon teams
Discord: https://discord.gg/9FWumu7gCa