This was an intense week!
Hundreds of ships docked to stations and evacuated many more citizens and more than a thousand cargo crates in what was our first major alpha event.
So, how did it go?
Who participated?
Who survived? Who won?
Wait, and also... is it over? really over?
There will be new people to save!
To begin with... the end? the answer is:
no, this is not over!
This was just the first of a long series of game events.
The Evacuation Challenge will happen again, with new Station Ranks proposed and even more rewards.
Initially we planned for it to happen at the end of every month.
But with the number of games played we think people could enjoy a new pace and a new place. There are new contents we roll in every month; and we'll see if one of them could be part of a new challenge!
Evacuation?
Colonization event?
Space training challenge?
Or just let people enjoy their Christmas time?
We'll see what needs testing, and what will be fun to play!
Making our alpha more solid? Players made that happen!
The event was like a x100 intensification of our test spreads challenging the entire collection of cards.
Our collection has nearly 200 different unique cards, doubling that number for elites which have their unique stats, leading to nearly 400 different references. So far there are 125 000 cards owned by players (124 375 to be accurate) with about 400 accounts.
There are many ways to combine ships, officers, crew members, weapons, armors and... factions!
This event actually gave freedom to try any ship and deck!
Some issues, noticed very early, prevented from using equipment sets. But all other weapon and armor cards could be used. There were also objectives for nearly every faction and style of play.
What this meant was: there were plenty of tests, with a lot of content!
And also, as many reports, issues and situations to fix.
So how did it go with all that content?
As I knew there would be new issues found, I decided not to speak about it everywhere. I focused my energy on fixing, managing reports and releasing what was needed.
The point of this event was not to recruit many new players by tempting them with the nice smell of HIVE coins and boosters!
What an evil plan would that be!
OK.
Of course I definitely like that plan. :D
We'll tempt you with boosters and HIVE coins.
Definitely.
But that's not the main purpose and proposal of EXODE.
People can and will get nice rewards, but we wanted to improve our game first.
EXODE tries to be a thoroughly enjoyable game, and for this first challenge, I knew there will be alpha things. Like beasts coming from the darkest depths of Code. There were to be monsters, and wow! some came! :D
So, the exact plan was: to enjoy the game!
But also: to test it, bug track, and report issues.
For the same reasons, I did not "clog up" the blockchain with many broadcasts.
( but there will be broadcasts, oh yes, many of them to authentify rewards and merits! )
With all the information and options players get with EXODE, adding alpha bugs to the game flow is only great for alpha players who are used to some kind of 'hardcore' and can report more accurately what happens, because they know their environment.
I can use that input and react fast instead of feeling sorry if multiple new captains are having a good experience, but flawed by one, two, or many many times more bugs.
Thanks to the work done and fun had by all our alpha players, and all our new alpha players too (there were a lot of them too!), the "next challenge" will be even more solid.
Tests, yes... but also... fun!
With this challenge we also tested a new setup that we plan to reuse for next events.
And wow, it worked!
The Evacuation Challenge was a full cooperative campaign for the entire community. All captains were pushing objectives together, unlocking new rewards. Station Coriatis was the first station, and once completed, it unlocked Station Aramea, the second level.
A new structure was developed for it. It allowed dynamic conditions, objectives and medals and to customize the game environment for a given "challenge level". All these programs will be used for our next big events!
We even had secret objectives and community votes to unlock new hints about them.
Common objectives were just to evacuate successfully with any deck you could make, and get cargo and citizens out.
And some of the most special ones, such as secret objectives, were for one of them to equip a Secret Agent (one of our Epic Origin cards) and find one secret crate.
The challenge lasted a few days and allowed many captains to experience the game, to check different difficulty levels.
After that, we had our first feedback time, and implemented modifications, such as our improved crew generation and a collection of fixes.
Veni, Vidi, Vici!
459 games were played to evacuate hundreds of citizens and cargo.
332 games reached closure over the weekend and the next 2 days, all trying to succeed.
223 of these games engaged in hyperspace and warped to the new galaxy!
And 109 player ships were destroyed by aliens.
There were also dozens of Evil Bugs of Outer Space fixed.
EXODE gained a lot of activity and was made more reliable as a game. This is a huge step forward in our alpha. And is all the better for our next contents!
What is next?
In the very next days I will release our leaderboards with our top scorers.
Please be patient while I am tinkering with log scan programs to verify all game saves.
And at that exact time there will be... rewards!
- 300 HIVE will be sent to the top player!
- 200 HIVE to second place
- 100 HIVE to the third place.
I think our active captains already guess their rank! but this will be confirmed very soon once I control our logs.
In addition, for each and every captain who participated with success and made any progress to the campaign or who had issues doing so, there will be other rewards:
- 1 bound alpha booster since we completed Station Rank I!
- 1 bound alpha booster since we completed Station Rank II!
- 1 bound + 1 unbound alpha boosters since we completed Station Rank III!
- And 200 FREE EXPERIENCE which will appear soon on your accounts.
Free Experience is a game-earned, non-tradable currency that you can use to level up your cards. Because Leveling is coming as well soon. 200 Free XP means you can give it to any card you want, and 100 is enough to get to Level 2 for one card, meaning you will be able to level two of them.
In addition:
There will be some few bound Emergency Orders provided to all, the amount of which is to be determined. Emergency Orders can be used to remove cooldown on a card. This is our only consumable for now!
In addition:
Medals and Merits were earned in this challenge.
Permanent Medals?
- Medals will be awarded to each captain who participated at least once and will represent the community success for completing Rank I, Rank II, Rank III.
This will be the Evacuation Challenge Medal, and this one will be Rank III (three bronze stars) since we completed Rank III!
- Merits were earned by individual captains during this challenge. Merits were earned for each completed objective, including the Secret Objectives and top objectives of Rank III and will be represented by new medals and reward tags.
All this will be announced again with one of our december feature regarding your accounts (called the Uniform Update! ), and will be well displayed on your account page.
Did you miss the event?
Don't worry!
There will be others, and new medals as well.
You will be able to shine in Colonization Events, Space Battles and new Evacuations!
You are dismissed Pilots!
Next blog post coming in a few days!
It will share the glorious names of all our victorious pilots!
And then we'll speak of our next AMA and of colonization - our next step now!
Thanks again to all of you - you made that happen!
And if you are not a pilot? Come at any time, and you will be welcome!
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More information about EXODE can also be found on our website, our Discord, or multiple posts such as this one about our epic characters, or this trailer made by a fan, or this review or this one . A summary of latest posts and events is also here.
Also running a witness node:
You can check the post about it here and if you like what this means you can:
See you soon in eXode!
that was a lot of fun, I'm definitely more excited than ever for colonization. So much cool stuff happening already with this game. Also watching the development from up close has been really cool for someone who has never been a part of anything like that. Very cool.
What an amazing success this first contest has been - well done Captains and most of all, well done Commander!
It was fun, I look forward to the next one!
Congratulations to the commander and to all captains who made this challenge a massive success!
One great event of the many to come for sure, the challenge was intense, congrats to all the captains who participated. I think that we learned many things during these days experimenting with the builds.
This game has an amazing community, it was a lot of fun to participate! The discord server was full with life, discussions about which cards and deck to use, and helpful advise!