PTR Recap and What’s Next for Nightingale’s Online Experience
With the release of our Dedicated Server update on the Public Test Realm (PTR), we hoped to validate two things. First, that the core functionality worked as expected. Second, playing on a Dedicated Server offered a good - or even better - experience to our own hosted infrastructure.
Thanks to those of you who jumped in, we were able to do both. We spotted bugs, got useful feedback, and saw players having fun with some of our new features, like the admin panel and Monikers.
Reevaluating Online Play
With the success of the PTR test and after talking with players in our Discord AMA, we sat down as a studio to talk seriously about Nightingale’s online future.
In our last Dev Diary, we mentioned that the original vision for online play never quite came together as we had imagined. Looking at the data, many players are using our hosting infrastructure to play solo, and only a small fraction are playing in larger five or six person groups. This reality has made it hard to justify continuing to maintain the online infrastructure when we could use those resources elsewhere in development.
With that in mind, we’ve decided to migrate away from the Inflexion-hosted infrastructure and instead focus our development efforts on where players are spending their time most while ensuring you can still play Nightingale for as long as you want.
This is different from our original vision of a connected universe of realms, but the mechanics remain the same. You can still realm dive with your friends by opening portals, or establish connections to Friends realms. Those realms will just be hosted on a distributed server infrastructure rather than a centralized one. With dedicated servers now in place, players can still host games and play with friends. It’s just happening in a different way than we initially imagined.
About Online Characters
It is very important that your online characters and Realms will still be hosted by Inflexion for the foreseeable future to download. We wanted to make it easy to transition to offline play and have made them available for download in the Main Menu.
Once downloaded, you can continue playing solo, join a friend's game, or host one yourself. We've tried to make the process straightforward and will continue to listen to your feedback as we make this transition.
Introducing GPortal Hosting
To support those who want the highest quality multiplayer experience, we’ve worked with GPortal for server hosting. This is a common setup in the survival crafting genre and should make it easier for players to coordinate and play together.
We’ll keep collecting feedback on how Dedicated Servers and GPortal are working, and use that to guide future improvements.
Looking Ahead
We know this shift may not be what some players were expecting or wanting. But it's important to make changes that support the long-term health of the game and the studio.
To help answer any of your questions, we’re hosting a live Ask Me Anything session with the dev team on Tuesday, July 15 at 10:30 AM MT on our Discord.
Thanks for sticking with us. Nightingale continues to evolve, and your support helps make that possible.
The Nightingale Team