We're gearing up to announce our next big milestone later this week. In the meantime, we want to keep you in the loop on what the dev team’s priorities are coming out of Closed Beta (and also give a sneak peek into what’s coming down the pipeline).
While this isn't a comprehensive list of everything we're working on, our goal is to provide visibility and let you know what to expect. We have a ton of things happening behind the scenes that we also hope to share in the coming weeks and months.
If you have thoughts, we’d love to hear from you. Join us at Tower Hour at 7:00pm PST to chat!
KEY FOCUS AREAS
STABILITY Over the last few months, we've made a lot of changes to improve stability, but there's more work we want to do to hit our goal of creating a seamless in-game experience across PC and console. We're focused on improving crash rates right now, particularly for players with AMD cards who are hit harder by this than most. We're adding extra logging so we can identify, understand, and fix these issues faster.
TEAM-COORDINATION Arkheron feels the most fun and competitive when you can actually coordinate with your team. We want communication to be easy, whether you're on voice chat or using the comms wheel. Teammates dipping early can really sour the experience, so we're adding a notification to let you know when your teammate has left so you can adapt faster.
NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE We want new players to have a real shot at getting past Arkheron's learning curve and into our core community. We've made a lot of changes to the new player experience this year, and our recent Closed Beta pointed us toward some more things we need to figure out – like guiding new players through the intended learning steps more clearly and improving our tutorial.
IMPROVING SPIRES Earlier this year, we released Spires, our 3v3 arena mode. We designed this mode to give players quick reps on combat, items and other mechanics. We're exploring ways to make Spires even better. Spires can be a great bridge to Ascension, but we also want it to feel deep enough that you can have a ton of fun even if you just want to stick with Spires.
COMBAT IMPROVEMENTS Earlier this year, we made a number of improvements to hit registration, along with some effects and animations to make combat feel snappier. Next up is improving how input cues work, along with combat-readability work to help your hits feel like they really land.
PROGRESSION As players move through the learning curve toward mastery, we want that progress to be visible to you. There are a few systems that can help with this – most notably, Ranked, Cosmetic Collections and Player Profiles.
SHIPPING SOON
PROGRESSION: RANKED ASCENSION Adding support for future tests of the rating system that reflects how you're doing and how far you can climb. This system aims to raise the stakes on each match and reward mastery.
SPIRES: ENDLESS SPIRES Instead of capping out at 10 floors, you'll be able to keep climbing as conditions get harder. Highest climbs earn bragging rights!
TEAM-COORDINATION: COMMUNICATION CLARITY We've added more options to our comms wheel for more specific communication in combat, and improved the push-to-talk experience. Calling your shots no longer has to mean an open mic.
TEAM-COORDINATION: IMPROVED LEAVER NOTIFICATIONS Lets players know a teammate has dropped instead of finding out mid-fight.
STABILITY: CRASH TRACKING We're adding better logging on our side so crashes you run into are found, understood, and fixed faster.
IN THE PIPELINE*
COMBAT: INPUT IMPROVEMENTS Tightening the gap between what you press and what happens in combat.
STABILITY: CRASH IMPROVEMENTS Tracking and fixing specific crashes, particularly ones affecting players with AMD graphics cards. Our goal is for Arkheron to be consistently stable and playable across PC and console.
PROGRESSION: PROFILES & MATCH HISTORY A record of your gameplay and achievements, with a dashboard to see it all.
NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE: TRAINING IMPROVEMENTS A clearer path for new players to follow in their first hour of Arkheron.
CUSTOMS: CUSTOM GAMES BROWSER Find active custom games inside the game client
*Many other things are in development – these are just some of the high-level things we can share right now. In the background, we're also getting ready for future updates like Early Access and Launch. We'll share more about what to expect closer to the time.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Are you making any more Eternal Item Sets? Yes, we have multiple sets in the works for future updates!
Is a PvE-only mode planned? Not at this time. We have lots of ideas for adding to the PvE experience within Arkheron's PvP experiences.
Will Arkheron be free to play? Our current plan is pay-to-play. We will share more information on this later.
Will there be a solo-queue? It's possible to queue up as a solo player and be matched with other teammates. We currently have no plans to remove teams from the experience. Solo-queue only would require a refactor of many systems to work correctly.
Will you have Oceania servers? We hope to. It's a bit of a chicken or the egg situation, where we need to have more players logging in from the region before we can open them, but we also understand that they're less likely to without dedicated servers. Before we open queues to players in Australia and New Zealand, we may be able to make these servers available in Custom Games to help grow the community in the region.
When will Arkheron launch? Our current plan is to launch before the end of 2026! However, game development is very iterative. We haven't set a date yet because we will take more time to get it right if we need to.