Early Access 5: A Retrospect
Early Access 5 has concluded and it has become one of the most important playtests in Virtuverse history.
What Happened:
When we were planning out the roadmap of EA5, shortly after the previous test, our plans included an overhaul to the mining system, envisioned since EA3, and a radical change of how our backend systems worked for looting and item returns in general. Among many other smaller tweaks and updates, both of these changes are an important step forward toward RCE. However, in testing, the players’ experience with the new mining system has taught us a valuable lesson in user experience and how we should approach designing new features and redesigning existing ones from the ground up.
Early Access 5 backer preview test and the public test that followed it have surpassed our personal goals and have reached record player counts, so much so that the public test had server overload issues in the first hours of it. The backer test alone had about as many active players as the Early Access 4 public test. These new players have brought a fresh perspective to the game, offering many new ideas on where to take Virtuverse in the future and how to improve on the existing features.
The Things We Got Right:
With the exception of the pet system, we hit most of the goals we set ourselves. We brought data analyst experts to advise and help with the development of an independent loot result server. We successfully brought back the brand ambassador role and onboarded dedicated community members to help other players with their questions. The community goals have helped us decide where to expand the universe of Virtuverse in the future, but more in that later. And lastly, we have finished the island of Temrance.
The Things We Could Have Done Better:
While the reputation system has successfully been implemented and tested, much of the content in EA5 has been left undiscovered. Locked behind high reputation requirements, the Mercenary outpost is a hostile place very few players managed to sneak into, and none have managed to befriend. And while it is indeed meant to take a long time, gaining much of the required reputation was prevented by bugs. Speaking of…
EA5 backer preview and the public tests combined have had 282 bugs reported. 244 have been logged and positively 59 were tested, confirmed, and ready to be fixed. Many of these were patched during the playtests themselves, anything from minor visual glitches or inconsistencies to game-breaking item duplication or crashing bugs.
This is largely thanks to our bug testing team, spending most of their playtest trying to reproduce bugs reported by other players. They have provided invaluable help logging, sorting, and confirming bugs, and without them, we wouldn’t be as efficient bringing out the patches!
What’s To Come:
That being said, it is time to focus on the next playtest. In the coming days, we’ll be sitting down to discuss the plans for Early Access 6 and 7 both internally and with our backers. In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be publishing another medium blog about what to expect, and we’ll be updating the Trello board with the exact features to be seen in EA6.
As for the community goals, “Lost in Space!” has reached its goal and will bring players on an expedition to one of Stig’s moons. It will come as an expansion that we are very eager and excited to work on. A more in-depth write up of what community goals are and how they work will come soon!
From everyone on the Vituverse team — thank you for participating in Early Access 5 and being a part of the community. We’ll see you soon with more exciting news!
— Donathan & the Virtuverse Team.
