With Embers recently celebrating its 1-year anniversary, what are some thoughts regarding an expansion? What would it look like? A few questions:
1) Does the community even want an ‘expansion’ with a large amount of content/changes, or should the game continue rolling out features as it has been?
2) Should it be free, or is a paid expansion acceptable? What pricing would you like to see if so?
3) Should an expansion include the base game? (I think most people would say ‘yes’ to this one, and it would probably be more attractive to new players as well.)
4) I haven’t reached 50 yet, so I’d like to ask those who have: does the game feel somewhat ‘complete’ for a 1-50 experience? Does it need to?
5) Would the loss of development speed be worth it? (from a long-term game health perspective)
6) Would it fracture the playerbase even more when we’re already struggling with low population?
7) What would you like to see if an expansion is announced?
My thoughts:
1) I’d like to see one eventually. I’ve always enjoyed the magic of an expansion, and seeing major changes.
2) Ideally it would be free, so that everyone can experience it together. Paid might be ok too, or make it only available to subscribers for a limited time?
3) Yes
4) N/A
5) I would be ok with a development pause or slowdown. I feel like the game has been rolling out a lot of changes over the last year, and it’s probably time to focus on attracting new players. An expansion could be just the thing to help drum up interest, and (combined with advertising) serve as a soft reset to draw in players.
6) This might be a downside of an expansion. I’d hope that the level cap doesn’t increase, and it only adds a new zone + dungeon at most. There should be some cool quests though, maybe this is where the ‘epics’ squeeze in?
7) Could be used to add in more long-term features. A big one should be adding it on Steam at the same time. Yeah, Steam might get a 30% cut - but at this point they’re probably not drawing many new players through direct sales anyhow. Also, perfect time to do a big itemization pass and add in some QoL features.
Anyhow, enough of me pondering… I'd like to hear other opinions.
1) Does the community even want an ‘expansion’ with a large amount of content/changes, or should the game continue rolling out features as it has been?
2) Should it be free, or is a paid expansion acceptable? What pricing would you like to see if so?
3) Should an expansion include the base game? (I think most people would say ‘yes’ to this one, and it would probably be more attractive to new players as well.)
4) I haven’t reached 50 yet, so I’d like to ask those who have: does the game feel somewhat ‘complete’ for a 1-50 experience? Does it need to?
5) Would the loss of development speed be worth it? (from a long-term game health perspective)
6) Would it fracture the playerbase even more when we’re already struggling with low population?
7) What would you like to see if an expansion is announced?
My thoughts:
1) I’d like to see one eventually. I’ve always enjoyed the magic of an expansion, and seeing major changes.
2) Ideally it would be free, so that everyone can experience it together. Paid might be ok too, or make it only available to subscribers for a limited time?
3) Yes
4) N/A
5) I would be ok with a development pause or slowdown. I feel like the game has been rolling out a lot of changes over the last year, and it’s probably time to focus on attracting new players. An expansion could be just the thing to help drum up interest, and (combined with advertising) serve as a soft reset to draw in players.
6) This might be a downside of an expansion. I’d hope that the level cap doesn’t increase, and it only adds a new zone + dungeon at most. There should be some cool quests though, maybe this is where the ‘epics’ squeeze in?
7) Could be used to add in more long-term features. A big one should be adding it on Steam at the same time. Yeah, Steam might get a 30% cut - but at this point they’re probably not drawing many new players through direct sales anyhow. Also, perfect time to do a big itemization pass and add in some QoL features.
Anyhow, enough of me pondering… I'd like to hear other opinions.
