devlog

About the important changes that are coming to Fhacktions

As everyone knows, Fhacktions is a work in progress. It is the first time in the world that Geolocation, MOBA, RPG and persistent world battles have been combined. The unconditional support of our expert players, as well as the new ones, allows us to discover the things that work well, or bad, or should be improved in the game, to make it a pleasant experience for as many people as possible, of different regions, cultures, ages, or customs.

So far we had two important features from Google, which have brought, in the first instance, 120,000 installations, and in the second instance, 150,000. Thanks to this, we have identified technical problems, translation needs, and we have heard all kinds of voices commenting, reviewing, and rating our game. Based on the collaboration of all we have responded with numerous changes and improvements in a year and a half since the beta was launched, and we continue doing it every day, with biweekly or monthly updates, depending on the complexity of the changes.

Sometimes it is not easy to measure the repercussions of the changes, although we study all the possibilities, and, sometimes, they come out better than expected, as well as other times we realize that an idea seemed good, but in practice, It was not, and forced us to give it a twist to the issue to correct what has been changed. Anyway it is our obligation to keep making changes, tests, and experiments, sometimes thinking “out of the box”, so that the game evolves into directions that make it more attractive, fun, and better. Many changes that were seemingly unacceptable by players in the past, by testing them and making some adjustments, became the fundamental basis of what Fhacktions is today. Other times don’t. That is why every change concerns us, obviously, but at the same time we can not stop doing them out of fear. If they went well, congratulations, and if not, we can only review and correct them again.

It is important to bear in mind that the reality of the development of Fhacktions, at present, is the following:

– The cost of maintaining a team of 10 people continuously working on a product, is very high, as well as servers around the world that are active and are needed to play.
– The base of players that we currently have (below 10,000 players monthly), is small, and in many countries there are not enough players to make it fun.
– Current players spend little or nothing in the game, and therefore, they do not generate enough income to cover the costs of the development team. Having little player base, advertising is not enough for it either.
– New players feel unable to play against old factions, and that, coupled with the intricacies of the game, scares them away. We have interviewed players from all over the world to understand their way of thinking, and most of those who leave the game is because it seems complicated, or can not win or conquer, or do not understand the game well, or fail to join the community and have an active faction.
– We have had meetings with numerous experts, investors, and publishers, who have indicated a series of necessary improvements to make the game more attractive, and that, if implemented and work well, could make them interested in investing in it and be able to continue with the project. We have also hired international experts who are helping us to redesign the game to improve the overall experience and make it more attractive and more likely to generate revenue.

With this in mind, we have gotten the support of Google, Apple, and Huawei, to make a great worldwide feature of the next version of the game, which will be ready in JANUARY, 2019. This momentum is the last chance we have that Fhacktions be a success, so that we can continue with its development and future support. The numbers of the last feature were very good, in terms of retention and daily sessions, but we have the obligation to improve onboarding, accessibility to new players, and monetization, to be able to get investment and generate income that sustains the company. That is why we have to make important changes, otherwise we will repeat the last experience, which has still not been enough to reach the point we need, and if we do not achieve that success, the continuity of the project will be threatened.

The objectives of this version are:
– Simplify rules to make it easier to understand what happens in the game
– Improve monetization with new options that allow spending money in the game
– Change the economy of the game so that the generation of resources depends on what one does daily in the game, and not on servers conquered long ago
– Reduce the time of conquest battles so that less hardcore players can still play it
– Avoid practices that make the battle lengthen unnecessarily or stop being fun
– Generate community more quickly in countries where there are few players
– Improve graphics and interface, including the arena
– Optimize the game to make it work better on more devices, consume less battery, etc.

To achieve all this, a lot of changes in the game have been designed. Some of these changes may seem like they may not work, if they are seen as a unique change, but we believe that the mix of several of them will bring a completely different experience, which in the end, will be better for everyone.

It is also important to understand that the update that will be launched shortly is the first half of this series of changes. That is why the experience may not be the best now, because we still have pending changes that will rebalance the entire game. We do not want to wait to have everything together to launch it because it will be too big an update, and there are a series of improvements that we have to take out and test, to be able to polish them in the two months that remain before the launch. After this great change that comes in the short term, we will try to polish the other pending details weekly or biweekly, based on the feedback and experience of the players, in addition to continuing with the roadmap already established.

WE WISH each of you to try this new version, without preconceptions, and explore the new experience. Then, critically evaluate the things that got better and worse, and present them to us so we can try to improve them before January. This is a joint effort between developers and the community, to have a new game that can survive over time. If we do not make a radical change in the gameplay, we will not have the necessary player base to cover the company, which works with private investment and needs to generate resources from 2019 in order to continue.

Keeping this in mind, some of the things that are changed in the Current Version about to be launched:
– New battle arena. Includes banners and new camera.
– The battle lobby is now inside the battle, it does not return to the main menu.
– New battle lobby: simplifies several current rules of battle access, the lobby is part of the arena itself and is not on the menu.
– Viewer mode in conquest battle
– Change in the economy: VC is used for in-store purchases. Power is used to enter the battle and for remote attacks. Power is purchased with VC.
– Battle of conquest will now have respawn, instead of getting back to the menu. The respawn has cost in power.
– Bots respaw also in conquest
– Wearing servers is only for the first time a checkpoint is won
– Battle of conquest ends when the 5 towers are conquered, it is no longer necessary to kill all the players.
– Hacker and Faction icons. They are displayed in all places where the hacker or faction interacts
– Aesthetic changes to make compatible with iPhone X and other cell phones that added the bar to the screen.
– Servers wear 1% daily
– Informative improvements in Push notifications
– Battle log improvements
– Bug Fixes.

There is a major change in the economy that is halfway there. It will be in this or the next version depending on the development time: The servers will no longer generate money automatically like now. They will only expand your maximum PC capacity. The money will be generated with in game actions, specifically playing conquest games or QB. At the end of the battle it will give you VC as a prize, based on the experience gained. In this way active players will be rewarded, and inactive players will not accumulate resources without participating. In addition, it will avoid the current problem that the active factions throw to casual players of the same ones because they “consume resources”, moving away them of the game since they do not find place that they accept them.

Along with this will come changes in the mechanics of wear (on the court and off the court), and many more.

Year-end version:
– Restoring servers from list of servers, remotely
– Change of wear performance in battle
– New striker character improved aesthetically and optimized in performance and polygon count (maybe you will also reach the Gunner in the same way)
– Improvements in functioning of new InitX factions
– Improvements and new items in the store
– Avoid first load of assets in the onboarding, putting them in the APK from the beginning. This implies double download from Google. It will improve access to the game in general to make it faster for everyone.
– Add the possibility of inviting friends by FB to join the game, reward you for each friend added.
– Tier D servers are end of battle prize
– See hacker icon on map
– Fast battles with option that are only human without bots
– Numerous small changes in interface and others based on your analysis

2019:
– Achievements and trophies
– Single player campaign (story mode)
– Optimized Fixer
– Guardian
– Blackout as an AI controlled faction that also plays against humanity
– Others

Those mentioned are just some of the changes we have worked on, and we will continue working. We have many other news that will come in the coming months. We hope they understand and have patience with them, give positive feedback that allows real improvements in the game, and based on them provide a memorable experience for new players who join the next feature, as well as veterans.

We are very grateful for the trip we have been developing together for a year and a half, full of achievements, surprises, successes, mistakes, and above all the desire to show the quality of a Paraguayan entertainment product to the world, which has nothing to envy foreign superproductions. With your support, we will continue to do so.

The Posibillian Tech team