An Update On Servers and Our Roadmap
First off, thank you. What a launch. We're blown away by the turnout, and even more by how much you're enjoying the game. Here's a rundown of what happened, where we are now, and what's coming.
What Went Down At Launch
We came out of the gate severely under capacity. A handful of bugs were capping how far each individual server environment could scale, which meant far fewer of you could get in than we'd planned for. We've been on it around the clock ever since.
If you've been in our Discord, you'll have seen the steady stream of hotfixes going out at all hours. A couple of the issues we've been tackling include players losing their items, which we were able to fix within the hour, as well as players getting stuck in place, which has also been resolved.
There are still bugs, and we're not pretending otherwise, but we're actively fixing them with daily hotfixes and continuous backend work.
What We've Done About It
We've deployed six new player-facing environments, which directly increases how many of you can be online at once.
On top of that, we're raising the capacity of each individual environment, so every server holds more players than it did at launch.
Thanks to your feedback, we found a serious issue in the achievement system that was causing a lot of problems, so we've temporarily disabled it. We've identified the cause and will be switching it back on very shortly.
Honestly, we're glad this happened the way it did. Every MMO in history has had a stormy launch, and this was definitely our turn. It's forced us to rethink how we run and scale our servers, and we've already made massive improvements off the back of it, and we are definitely more prepared for the future.
Hotfixes
We have been completing hotfixes left and right since launch. Here is everything we've worked on so far:
New
Added in-quest guidance on where to find Hemlock and Copper Ore.
New portal icons for resource and drill event rooms.
Improvements
Gear tooltips now show a compare hint when applicable when holding shift.
Dungeon Finder tooltip refreshed to match the latest UI.
More variety for Proton Bots in later tiers.
Heavy Hit Relic for Drone now gives an 8% bonus.
Gecko Backpack gives fewer primary stats.
Voltgrass patches and Neo-Tilus fishing spots had their respawn timing adjusted in affected zones.
Some items clean up within guild task reward caches (seed t1 001 no longer drops).
Experience rates adjusted and improved for many abilities (notably technology should now feel easier to level up).
The skill guide now shows which fish can be found in which fishing nodes.
The relic pool for pyrosphere has been reduced slightly.
Guild tasks objectives and descriptions have been updated for better signposting.
Fixes
Gathering finish effects no longer play twice across mining, foraging, and hacking.
Cactaro Elite’s permanent AoE is avoidable again.
Farpoint now shows Pyrodillos instead of the Sandrammer encounter.
A dungeon crash after the Noxley Drill event no longer resets runs or leaves players stuck reconnecting.
Rowan now reliably appears for quest interactions, including City of Light and Shadow.
Items using Ethereal damage no longer rely on an unused impact type.
Power cores for abilities and weapons added to more drop tables for more frequent acquisition (guild tasks and dungeon chests).
Fixes to munitions manufacture and blades of trust tasks to track the correct items.
A number of incompletable guild tasks have been either fixed or removed from various task boards.
A number of cloak recipes added to the gearforge station from level 2 onwards.
Leader boards now correctly showing for all dungeon finder dungeons.
Raspberry cake can now be consumed.
Ability tracking for guild tasks improved.
Piece by piece quest items now drop more consistently from fractured dungeons.
Relic: Miningun - Recoil Brace now correctly reduces rotation speed by a percentage as opposed to stopping its rotation all together.
Players can no longer enter apartments before unlocking apartment access.
Projectile bonus behavior for the Voltscale Healer’s Pendant and Pyrosphere Ring was corrected in dungeons.
Crafting cost changes in rented apartments no longer blocks the UI.
Boss arched projectiles only damage players at the impact zone, not along their flight path.
What To Do If You Hit A Problem
Don't be afraid to reach out to support in-game with any issue you face. Our response time is running at around one minute right now, so you'll hear back fast. There's nothing we can't fix.
The Soulbound Roadmap
Our Roadmap is the guide forward from Early Access. It encompasses everything we are aiming to achieve. Check out the Roadmap here - Roadmap - Soulbound: Online - Pixel Art MMORPG
This Roadmap will be adjusted based on community feedback and what we learn during Early Access. However, the core of the Roadmap will always remain the same: more content, opportunities, and fun for our players.
What's Coming Up Next?
As an indie gaming studio, it's impossible to bring out every feature at once. It’s going to take time to achieve everything we've set our minds on. That being said, the following features are at the top of our list:
Raids
We are super excited to announce our plan for the first raid going live next week. We're seeing players already reaching the point where they can take it on, which is a brilliant sign and has come much sooner than we expected.
Language Localisation
Many players have reached out to ask for Launguage Localisation. So far, this will include Japanese, Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese, with more to come.
NPC Voiceovers
We are currently gathering voice actors to help us achieve our goal of giving a voice to as many NPCs as possible. At the moment, over 45% of the game has voiceover, and more is being added every day!
10-Player Co-Op Dungeons
We are running tests that will likely result in 10-player co-op coming to Soulbound: Online. This means party sizes can be bigger, and larger groups can tackle dungeons together.
If you've been waiting to jump in… now's the time!
Server capacity is up, and more regions are online, so you'll be able to get in and play. Thank you all for the support. We couldn't have asked for a better launch, and we're just getting started.