GIVE US FEEDBACK AND HELP TO IMPROVE THE GAME EXPERIENCE
Also, if you’re so inclined, we’d be thrilled if you participated in the development process by giving us your personal feedback.
As already stated above, the Early Access will not be the final version, and it will not be for the squeamish. So you might encounter a lot of bugs! Actually, we’d appreciate it very much, if you let us know about issues you find while playing. This is why we’ll create an exclusive bug report forum, in which you’ll also find a “How-To” as well as "Known Issues" as stickies.
When logging into the private bug forum (only for Early Access players accessible from Monday evening), you’ll receive the Ultimate Adventurer Badge on your forums profile (which will be displayed in the whole Might & Magic Ubisoft forums whenever you are writing posts), as you can see in the below example from the Ubisoft forums administrator:
We kind of love it – what do you think?
Also, there will be another forum for general discussion about the Early Access Version. Everybody will be able to read it, but only Early Access players will be able to write in it. So we’d also love to receive your general feedback on the game, of course!
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Some details from us about what we’d like to know from you, what we’re aware of and what will still be fixed + what is actually already set into stone:
WHAT WE’RE AWARE OF:
We obviously have some topics in mind, we are either not yet satisfied with or features which are simply not yet implemented as the version will still be WIP (work in progress):
- The game FPS performance is not as good as it could be.
- The implementation of what we call "interactions". We have not yet implemented all the interactions we have in mind. We are lacking the small interactions granting you an attribute point, healing your party, increasing your resistance, etc.
- While we are still working on animations of some 3D models we will not finalize all of it for Early Access. To put it simple: Some animations could be better – it’s just a matter of time.
- Balancing remains still WIP.
WHAT WE’D LIKE TO KNOW FROM YOU / WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
Foremost we’d love to receive feedback on the general game flow, the balancing, the progress and the difficulty. This includes topics like: monster placement, character and combat values, signs & feedback, obvious over- or underpowered abilities/spells/skills/monsters.
Feedback about the playtime it takes an average gamer to play ACT ONE. What went well in ACT ONE in terms of immersion and what went wrong. For instance maybe the Lighthouse is great as it is but the Den of Thieves feels "boring".
Advice and suggestions on improvements based on our game´s ingredients and mechanics and last but not least, obviously bugs, which you will be able to submit here from Monday evening on.
WHAT WE ARE NOT INTERESTED IN:
The main story and the general basic game design mechanics of the game, as described in our
official game FAQ are set into stone, like:
- MMX takes place in Ashan
- MMX is mainly based upon Might & Magic IV-V
- MMX is a party-based game with 4 adventurers
- MMX has turn and tile based movement
- The grid in MMX consists of square tiles
- MMX reuses (and reworks) some of the already existing assets made available to the team by Ubisoft
So the following examples are not really helpful to us:
- Visual feedback like "It doesn´t look like Skyrim"
- I want free movement, I want ArcoMage, I want real-time combat, I want to fly, I want Sci-fi, etc.
Also, there are other features, which have to be balanced not only within the game but as well against development time and budget constraints.
WHAT WE CAN PROMISE THOUGH IS THAT WE WILL READ AND DISCUSS FEEDBACKS.
PLAYER FEEDBACK IS INSPIRING, CHALLENGING AND CRUCIAL.
Also, we are 100% aware that we cannot and will not please everyone with MMX.
As you might know, the Might & Magic series started in 1986, and spawned nine games with different gameplays. As a result there are at least three generations of fans, with a different opinion on what is a "true Might & Magic game". So we knew, doing MMX and going for the World of Xeen tile-based gameplay, we would necessarily appeal more to some fans than others.
However knowing all that, our goal is still to propose the best possible game, which can be enjoyed by all Might & Magic fans. So just give it a try!
FROM NOW UNTIL FINAL RELEASE
The game is planned to be released in Early 2014. So the time between Early Access and the full game release will be used to integrate your feedback and produce content for Act 2, 3 and 4, to work on the modding possibilities for the community as well as to polish and fix game bugs.
We’ve discussed this release goal quite a lot but in the end we all think that it is better to release a more bug fixed and polished game a little later, than rushing the release now and maybe even disappoint you guys with a buggy game and no time to work in your feedback.
So from now on, we’ll not only check the blog and all the forums, but we’ll be actively looking into the exclusive Early Access boards and we might even ask for feedback on certain topics there, too.
During the time between Pre-Release (Act 1) and official game release we’ll do our best to release several patches including new content and community feedback (i.e. balancing, bug fixes), of course.
So at this point we want to give a huge thank you to all of you who already supported us with feedback (and another big thank you in advance to all who will help us in the future). Your feedback is very valuable to us! Although we simply can’t fulfill all of your wishes, we always consider your input thoroughly.