Hello. This is Brown Dust 2 PD Jun-hee Lee.
Today, I would like to share the news for the new Character Pack, the direction for the second half of the year update, and the development team's thoughts on the survey.
This note will also include information on the content announced through today's stream and other stuff we couldn't share due to time constraints.
New Character Pack: Contract Wars
It's the moment you've been waiting for! The Character Pack is getting an update!
The 7th Character Pack's theme is "Contract Wars," depicting characters in office life.
The following is the overall lore of Contract Wars:
In the Carta City, the background setting, all contracts are signed in a unique method called "Contract Wars."
Each sales employee of a company must compete against others to win a contract.
In this city, Seir, a new salesperson of a large company named Ghenar Industry
will need to survive in the war with her colleagues.
At first, she is timid and lacks confidence, but with help from her co-workers,
she learns how to become an adept worker in the company.
Stay tuned for Seir's adorable and admirable adventure!
New Seasonal Event: Carta War Z
Next, we have news about the new seasonal event.
On the night of the dark and grim city of Carta, where the Contract War is ongoing,
there will be a seasonal event titled Carta War Z.
Carta War Z is a story about a vindictive seller of zombie virus vaccine.
He goes around deliberately spreading a zombie virus in the city because his request to sell the vaccine was denied.
Seir and others try to locate the seller responsible for the zombie plague to get the vaccine,
but it turns out Luvencia has a phobia of zombies.
To add insult to injury, Seir's friends get bitten by zombies one by one and are separated.
Will Luvencia overcome her fear of zombies and find the vaccine to save the city as well as her friends?
Dive into the seasonal event story to find out!
New Fiend Hunter Boss: Abomination
Meet Abomination, a zombie who was once a normal human but gained incredible power and physique through a strange drug.
Abomination will appear as a new Fiend Hunter Boss.
It is a monster with Light property and wields powerful multi-hit attacks.
New Characters & Costumes
A total of 4 characters will be available in the Contract Wars:
Seir and Nebris, the new sales employees, and Luvencia and Michaela, the sales managers.
You can also see the company employee costumes you've been all waiting for.
New Employee Seir
The employee costume for Seir who has just joined the company.
She is holding dearly onto her special umbrella gun to protect herself from incoming shots.
Her skill set is about granting buffs to her allies when hit by enemies.
Seal Snatcher Luvencia
The employee costume of Luvencia, a sales manager leading her team with a wild and tough demeanor.
Carrying the tradition of always being on a vehicle since Brown Dust 1,
Luvencia will be added as a physical damage dealer with Darkness property.
She also has a skill set that matches her appearance of holding a shotgun.
Queen of Signatures Michaela
The employee costume of Michaela, a lover of serious firepower with a serene smile on her face.
While Luvencia has a tough demeanor, Michaela leads her team with experience, wisdom, and a laid-back attitude.
Like her swimsuit costume, this one has a certain weakness,
but that weakness is made up by the raw firepower she showcases as a magic damage dealer.
New Employee Nebris
The employee costume of Nebris, who makes others let their guard down with her playful and mischievous smile.
Like Seir, she is a newcomer to the company, yet her skillful and relaxed atmosphere
makes one wonder if she is truly a beginner in her career. Similar to other costumes, Nebris's costume is designed to be a damage dealer with Wind property.
She has the mechanics to produce more firepower in certain conditions.
Nebris will also have a pickup in December with special content.
As there are many fans who love Nebris, we are making sure the preparations are going smoothly. We assume many of you will be pleased with our results.
The details will be provided later, so please bear with us for a little more.
November Pickup Information
Re-Release Planned Seasonal Events
Until the 1.5-Year Anniversary update in December, November will have 3 re-released seasonal events.
First, the summer seasonal event Click! Click! Summer will be re-released.
Just like the previous Berserker seasonal event, there will be only 1 week of hunting period without the preparation period. You can get 2 weeks' worth of rewards.
We will make sure to provide the Fiend Hunter event without any issues.
The second seasonal event is MARRY ME!
This is a story about the adorable Refithea in a fairy tale world.
When this event comes out, the Pure White Blessing Refithea pickup with a wedding dress will be re-released.
Finally, FIREWORKS MEMORIES, out on the Half Anniversary of last year's winter will be re-released,
as well as the Nightmare Winter event pack that was released in the same period.
This is a story about Eclipse and Celia in bunny girl costumes, which was beloved by many. Diana and Rou show off their charming look as well.
Nightmare Eclipse and Masquerade Celia costumes will be re-released for pickup on the 1.5-Year Anniversary, so please wait just a bit longer.
The next section will be about improvements implemented after the October 31st update.
Tower of Salvation Improvement
Here are the improvements for the Tower of Salvation.
They are based on the suggestions provided by the players in the last survey.
First, we have artifact combining.
You can combine 2 artifacts based on the set pattern and obtain 1 higher-grade artifact.
Second, the artifact codex.
You can check the codex for all artifacts on the Tower of Salvation entrance screen.
Third, we have new artifacts.
20 new artifacts will be added.
The Tower of Salvation will go through one season with the aforementioned improvements applied before being incorporated fully as regular-season content.
World Buffs Improvement
Next is the news on world buffs.
Previously, a world buff was selected based on various factors, including the pickup period and Fiend Hunter's property.
However, it was difficult to maintain a precise rotation due to being inflexible in various situations, including fitting update content for the season and schedule delays.
As a result, players had a hard time preparing for world buff properties, such as needing to have relevant Magic Crystals.
When the world buff did not grant a property buff on your favorite characters, they would be less effective, making it harder to form a team for battles.
To address this issue, we have turned off the world buff for the time being.
However, considering the possibility of increased difficulty for high scores in Evil Castle, the world buff effect will still be applied in Evil Castle.
The world buff applied to the Evil Castle will not be based on a rotation for properties and will increase damage for all properties.
UI Improvement for Consecutive Gameplay in Packs
We will have an update for the "Carry Out Quick Quest" function, which lets you quickly go through the greater difficulties of the pack's main quest.
When you enter the pack after clearing the normal difficulty of the main quest, you can select the hard difficulty to enable the "Carry Out Quick Quest" button.
When you enter through the "Carry Out Quick Quest" button, field movement quests are automatically completed, and story effects are omitted.
You can complete the difficulty by only clearing battle quests yourself.
Battle Damage UI Improvement
The battle UI will be improved to let players check battle situations more intuitively.
- The total damage from a single attack will be displayed.
- The critical hit effect will have enhanced visibility.
Character Filter Addition
The menus that did not have the character filters will now have them enabled.
- Fiend Hunter > Team Formation
- Last Night > Replace
- Battle Preparation > Replace Companion
- Home Screen > Cutscene Effect, Costume Illustration
Next, we will talk about the direction for future updates.
After going through this survey result and opinions from the community,
as well as discussions between the development team and business team, we have reached our direction moving forward.
First, we will take a look at the update status for the past 500 days (about 17 months).
14 packs have been updated in total: 6 Story Packs, 4 Character Packs, and 4 Event Packs.
Also, ever since the introduction of the seasonal event system at the end of last year,
13 seasonal events with story elements were updated.
New content (Fiend Hunter, Last Night, Tower of Salvation, and Guild Raid) has been updated since September last year.
For new growth elements, we have Potential, Engraving, and Awakening.
Earlier this year, many voiced their concerns over the lack of content.
Recently, however, we've turned our focus more toward players' fatigue trying to play the newly added content and boosting their character growth.
As such, we believe our key mission is to reduce the fatigue you feel and increase the quality of the game content.
We plan to let the main content go through a 4-week cycle with different endgame content every week.
We will consistently review each piece of content to provide a novel experience and guaranteed entertainment.
We will not add content with extreme difficulties or growth elements in the near future.
In fact, we plan to focus on packs, characters, seasonal event stories, and mini-games.
We originally planned to update 1 pack each month,
but with the introduction of the seasonal event system in the latter half of 2023, packs are updated every 6 to 8 weeks.
As many users are fond of pack updates, we plan to increase their frequency next year.
We believe stories should have more volume for seasonal events to replace pack updates.
Therefore, starting with the 1.5-year anniversary, the volume of stories surrounding seasonal events will greatly increase.
Meanwhile, we showcase mini-games through field quests of the current seasonal event.
We hope to provide mini-games with more volume for your greater excitement.
We are also preparing content that can make characters more appealing through interactions and individual stories,
while maintaining quality control for illustrations and cutscenes endeared by so many players.
Nebris, who was mentioned earlier, will be the first character to benefit from such content.
The direction we are planning to take can be summarized as the following:
Providing high-quality and entertaining content that is not mandatory.
This is the motto we plan to stick to for future content as well.
Here are some bits we got from the survey.
*The survey results from the 500th Day Celebration live broadcast will be shared in a separate post.
Q. Which characters' skill cutscenes do you like from the summer season update? (Select all that apply/leave blank if none)
First, this is the result of skill cutscene preference for characters who received an update in the summer.
We thought Morpeah would take first place because of how well she was received by players.
However, Teresse was the one who reached the top, with Morpeah and Eclipse following closely behind as second and third.
Of course, we believe all characters were excellent in their respective scenes.
Q. Which characters from the summer season update are the most fun and effective in battle? (Select all that apply/leave blank if none)
Next is the preference for the battle performance.
Teresse and Morpeah are at the top with a slight difference.
It seems Teresse was picked for her performance and Morpeah for her new source of fun through her new gimmick.
Q. Share your thoughts on the Engraving and Awakening system.
Next are the players' thoughts about Engraving and Awakening.
Many said they would like to have more options to get the materials for Engraving and Awakening, and the development team is considering such options as well.
Q. How do you feel about Engraving and Awakening materials being available at the Golden Thread Shop or Powder of Hope Shop?
The next survey was the most talked-about issue in the community.
Overall, the largest number of players thought the materials should be sold both at the Golden Thread Shop and the Powder of Hope Shop.
26% of global users and 28% of Korean users thought both the materials should be taken off from both shops.
Q. How do you feel about including growth-related currency (Tear of Goddess, Torch, Engraving, Awakening materials, etc.) in packages or paid products?
This has also been a heated topic for the community members.
As a game's business model is something that cannot be taken lightly, we thought it would be best to hear what global users really think.
The survey results show that the largest number favored having the materials sold at the shops all the time. Meanwhile, 83% of players wanted to let the shops sell the materials regardless of being limited or not.
Since heated discussions had gone on regarding this issue in the Korean community, we checked Korea's data separately. Around 82% of Korean players wanted to let the shops sell the materials.
Upon observing this issue, I looked up the comments I made in previous streams.
I once talked about how Potential, Engraving, and Awakening were not added to create a new business model or force users to spend more.
They were added to let players experience the fun of allowing their characters to keep growing.
I believe some players must have thought that Tears of Goddess or currencies for Engraving and Awakening could only be obtained by using in-game currencies
and would never be added as a new business model.
I understand that is how many of you may have interpreted my idea, and I apologize for not making my point clear.
Here is my opinion as to what I think are overt P2W mechanics. I give you my idea on this topic to prevent further misunderstanding.
You can obtain a certain growth currency only by paying real money,
or you can purchase that currency endlessly and become stronger without limits by paying money.
In my opinion, these 2 instances constitute forced P2W mechanics.
I believe it is within acceptable range to have these products offered in the Golden Thread Shop or Powder of Hope Shop while being able to obtain more from in-game currencies.
I also think it is acceptable to provide the products by including them in certain packages during limited periods.
Of course, this does not mean the shops will provide even more materials or add new products right away.
As for selling key in-game currencies such as Tears of Goddess or materials for Engraving and Awakening,
we will carefully review our options based on the survey results.
If you think we are letting out packages too frequently or setting the prices too high, giving a P2W impression, let us know any time.
As for packages, including growth currencies, we will design them
by considering the circumstances of various players and offering them at the most acceptable level possible.
We agree that the issue can be confusing and force users to have an unpleasant experience,
and we will make sure to address this issue when coming up with new products.
Q. Share any additional thoughts on the Guild Raid (open-ended question).
We have gathered the common opinions from players all around the world.
Many pointed out the issue of "free riders."
We initially refrained from making the Guild Raid too challenging
by not making rankings and only providing limited information.
However, players who have spent an extensive amount of time clearing the Guild Raid
expressed the difficulty in managing guild members due to insufficient information being provided.
So, for the first improvement, we made the entire contribution rate available, allowing players to share information on the Guild Raid to some extent.
There were other opinions as well: UX improvements, difficulty in understanding the rules, lowered difficulty for the raid, and so on. We believe they are all valid concerns.
We will look into your voices and continue to improve this content.
Q. Tell us what you'd like to see in the future (Open-ended question).
What surprised us from seeing the opinions of global users is this:
players from different parts of the world all came up with similar issues, and they were not entirely different from the direction thought by the development team.
As mentioned earlier, we will focus on characters and stories the most.
We do not plan to add growth elements in the near future. Of course, UX improvements will be offered to you continuously.
As for requests to provide stable service without bugs, we apologize for the issue and make sure to take better care of our services.
As many of you wished for a wider variety of paid packages, we will come up with reasonable package combinations.
We will come up with more content-filled events and continue communicating with you through various channels, just like what we are doing right now today.
We are also planning to have more merchandise, so stay tuned.
That is it for today.
It was nice seeing you after so long. I also had so much fun having a heartfelt conversation in the stream.
I've been feeling exhausted working hard from this August's summer update to the collaboration event. However, the stream made me feel invigorated, seeing how you really love this game and offered insightful opinions.
I think we will meet again in the 1.5-Year Anniversary stream. I'm confident you'll all be fascinated by the content we're preparing, so keep your heads up for the event.
With that, we will wrap up today's notes with a gift.
[Developer Notes Gifts]
- 600 Dia
- 40 Cooked Rice
※ You can collect your Developer Notes Gifts from your Mailbox until October 28th, 2024 (Monday).
Thank you.
