Dev Diary №3
Hi everyone, I'm Eroizek, and this is the third post of our Developer Diary. Today we will review the current state of Shadow Fight 3 and the latest changes and their impact on the game's future.
Last year was full of experiments and search for the best ways to develop Shadow Fight 3. We tested new ideas, analyzed the results, and collected your feedback.
You can find out more about our work over the past year in our previous digest dedicated to the 6th anniversary of the game, and now let's get started!
Ending 2023
Faction Wars became the biggest update at the end of the last year. They were originally intended to be a completely new part of the game, becoming one of its main parts along with the Main Story and Void.
Let's find out what went wrong! The problems of Faction Wars today can be categorized into several main points.
Overall feeling
The first implementation of the FW was planned to be soft. We probed the ground by observing how you accept the new mode, interact with it, and what is most important to you. This allowed us to understand what we wanted it to be in the future.
Unfortunately, the mode turned out to be too soft, which made it monotonous and quite boring. There was no point in capturing specific territories, the choice of faction and the outcome of battles had little impact.
By the end of the summer, there will be two FW updates. The first one will be aimed at improving the reward system for participation and contribution to battles for a chosen faction. Choosing a battlefield and winning the battle there will become much more meaningful.
The second one will focus on the social aspect and team interaction, allowing you to show off more brightly on the battlefield!
Problems with duels
For the past 6 years, Duels have been reworked many times. There was little competitive aspect to them, and battles for the Top 100 didn't offer decent rewards for the time spent.
We had planned for the Arena of Fame to be a place in the game where each of you could show off your skills, but problems with unfair players and matchmaking made it impossible to properly reward participants.
What we are planning to do about this? With the release of the update, game protection and foul play detection have been improved. Punishments for rule violations are now more severe.
Next week you'll be treated to a new ranking system that will give you a more meaningful approach to winning rankings and provide decent rewards, also it won’t be toxic to new players.
There are plans to update the League system and bring it back in a new form along with social activities.
Update 1.36.0
In this update we focused on the technical part of Shadow Fight 3.
We improved protection, foul play detection, and optimization.
We added various tools that will allow you to be better prepared for future updates.
From now on, you can play several lucky boards, their appearance and UI are also improved.
Active set display in Raid Lobby
After set system rework, understanding your Raid allies’ equipment will help you fight Void Bosses more effectively. At the start, this function will be available to a part of players as a part of the testing process. After thorough testing is complete, which may take a couple of weeks, this feature will become available to all players.
Set Spheres and Emporium became an important part of your character’s development, so we decided to highlight the related booster packs with their unique appearance!
Current plans
While one part of the team is working on the 2.0.0 update - Clans (Guilds), we want to focus on updates to the two main modes: Void and Faction Wars, fixing long-standing but important issues and improving the UX component of the game.
Our plans include several directions of development.
Story
In 6 years, the world of Shadow Fight 3 has come a long way.
Numerous tools have been created in it, each helping to tell the story of the world. Some of them laid the foundation - the Main Story.
Others - Events, Adventures, Journal, Notes - supplemented it, helping to tell more localized but no less deep stories.
Last year, we added two new large-scale tools, the Void and Faction Wars, which will stand on the same level as the Main Story.
The main storyline takes you along the hero's journey, from humble beginnings in a Legion war camp to the uncharted depths of the underside of the world, but Void and Faction Wars will tell other stories. Some will be larger than any you may have previously encountered in the Shadow Fight universe. Others will be more localized, centered around individual characters and their role in the world, allowing for a deeper understanding of not only the characters of the present, but also of the past.
The biggest challenge for us was combining these three areas into a single, cohesive gaming experience that would be equally engaging both at the beginning of the journey and at its culmination.
That's why creating the story of Void requires so much attention and time. Many of you have already been able to get in touch with it in the Battle of the Laws adventure. We look forward to fully immersing you in the first chapter of the mysterious Void, revealing new facets of the world.
Events
Events have long been an integral part of the Shadow Fight 3 universe, offering players new challenges and rewards every week. Over the past year, we've done a lot of experimentation with story delivery and reward mechanisms. We received active feedback from you, which helps us better understand and fix the flaws in the new system
In upcoming event updates, we plan to focus on three key aspects of events:
Event difficulty: Each event should offer different levels of difficulty that allow players with different skills and abilities to find the right level of challenge, enjoy the game, and achieve their goals.
Rewards worth time spent: Right now, rewards don't always compensate the time spent in an event. The time you need to invest in the events should correlate to the difficulty of the event and the amount of effort you put in it.
Clarity of goals: The paths to achieve goals in events should be clear.
Some events have become too complex, leading to difficulty in finding the best ways to accomplish goals, preventing you from enjoying the events.
Equipment
Equipment in Shadow Fight 3 includes styles, items, rarities, perks, special moves and sets, actually allowing each player to find their unique fighting style.
Last year, we began to experiment extensively with the combat system, encountering both successes and some challenges.
Fight system manageability. We sought to improve the manageability of fights by revising the damage mechanics. The introduction of set levels brought many new modifiers, which necessitated more precise control over the dynamics and duration of fights.
One of these experiments was the boss equipped with the Perfect Surface Servant set, which allowed you to better appreciate the combat capabilities of your character and the new sets.
Dynamism. The introduction of set leveling opened up new possibilities for customization of playstyle.
Interesting abilities! Memorable skills! Flurries of blows! That was the idea. Did it work? Almost.
With each set level, we tried to give you a new layer of gameplay, improving strengths or compensating for weaknesses.
Some weak sets have become very strong, and some strong sets have become more balanced.
We love how you find new uses for sets, and we will try to make them more interesting and unique.
We will try not only to introduce new sets but also to rework old sets if they are no longer relevant to the current state of the game, such as the Warmonger set.
Clarity. Greater freedom entails greater responsibility. The deeper and more complex the combat system, the less clear it becomes.
Previously, you only had to look at your attack score to understand your effectiveness in combat. Now the number of characteristics and bonuses that affect combat has become too large to fully understand your character's effectiveness.
We considered various options to solve this problem, and one of the first steps was the set descriptions. In them, we tried to describe their complex mechanics as accurately and clearly as possible, giving you insight into the effectiveness of your set in combat.
Thanks to your feedback, the following changes are planned for the next updates:
- Descriptions of all characteristics will be unified
- Set descriptions will become simpler and easier to understand
- Your character stats window will appear, allowing you to better understand your character's current strengths and weaknesses.
- Indication in combat will be improved, including visual effects of different states.
Obtaining equipment. The problem of getting equipment in the game deserves special attention. Shadow Fight 3 has a lot of different items, and sometimes it can be difficult to figure out how to get the right item or how to improve it. This is most relevant to both individual items and new sets, which are difficult to obtain through normal means.
We are planning to implement a new system in the coming months that will help you know better how to get the new items in the game, and how to improve them. We want to make this process as clear and understandable as possible.
This is especially important now since the frequency of introducing new sets is approaching one per month, so without a clear and concise system it could lead to confusion and we want to avoid that.
UX
In recent updates, we've been actively working on improving the user experience.
Starting with redesigning the in-game lobby, adding a helmet hide option, filters in inventory, a Collections tab for customization, and more.
In the current update, we're bringing several significant changes, including the updated lucky board UI, improvements to the Faction Wars map and Raid lobby UI.
In each update, we will include changes that will help improve your experience of interacting with the game and make it more comfortable. So what's next for us this year?
We mentioned this improvement in the previous digest, in the upcoming updates it will help you more conveniently track your goals during the fight.
The mail system will be the centerpiece for many future updates, providing a more convenient way to collect rewards, gifts, and getting other important notifications.
The new equipment coloring system will give you complete freedom in choosing colors for your outfit thanks to the color palette feature.
The in-game survey system will help us get your feedback in a more solid way, which is crucial for the further development of the game. Your opinion will help us understand what aspects of the game need to be improved or changed.
At the moment, the Inventory and Store do not keep up with the pace of development of other aspects of the game. Their current state often becomes an obstacle to implementing new features or reworking old ones. A comprehensive update of the Store and Inventory is still planned for the second half of the year.
Raids
Last year, the second Void Island was introduced, which brought a new boss, Magmarion.
Magmarion was different from the opponents you faced in the first island. Fighting him was more complex, challenging, and interesting, but at times it seemed too confusing and this fight’s phases were not always clear.
Although we've been focused on Faction Wars and reworking sets, the final stage of development is underway for the last boss of the second island, Himmelstein.
Fighting this upcoming boss will give you a unique experience never before seen in the game, allowing you to not only show off your combat skills but also your wits.
Along with this, Magmarion is planned to be reworked and new levels will be added for the bosses of the first island, which will offer you new challenges with new rewards! And with the third island… a new Void Story will be introduced, so no spoilers for now!