¿Por qué acceso anticipado?

“While the game is fully playable and delivers an awesome experience, it's short of the ambitious vision the lead developer has. Our beta testers have been invaluable in not only providing feature testing and feedback, but in reassuring us that Stone Story RPG is a great game on the right track to being even greater! The roadmap moving forward is well defined and we look forward to collaborating with our players as we introduce more features, like extra boss phases, unique weapons, difficulty levels, and more.

One particular aspect of Stone Story that we want to polish and refine is user-generated content. There are several systems and mechanics in place that aim to foster a healthy environment of player discourse and content sharing. Early Access gives us the opportunity (and the audience!) to effectively tweak those pipelines and ensure that our players will have access to the right tools in the right place.”

¿Cuánto tiempo va a estar este juego en acceso anticipado aproximadamente?

“We expect to be in Early Access for about one year.”

¿Qué tan diferente será la versión completa de la versión de acceso anticipado?

“The main area for development relates to players who love the game and would like to keep playing for a long time. This is sometimes referred to as the 'elder' game. Currently, your goals run out at about 1 month of play. In addition to small improvements on several fronts, the final version of Stone Story will stay fun and interesting for much longer. There is also a layer of user-generated content that needs expanding.

Here are some features and mechanics you can expect over the next year of development:

• More Levels of Difficulty - We want Stone Story to be a game that challenges you! By adding more levels of difficulty we give players more space to create their own objectives and increase the game's long-term value.
  
• More Boss Phases - Going hand in hand with more levels of difficulty, additional boss phases will create deeper, more exciting encounters that fully explore what Stone Story's big bads have to offer.
  
• More Items - Stone Story RPG is all about loot! Right now, there's a nice spread of items you can gain from adventuring and crafting, but we all know that having more options is strictly a good thing. Items like whips, bardiches, and a variety of shields will find their way into your treasure chests and recipes as Early Access development progresses.
  
• More Unique Items - Where common items might focus more on raw power, unique items unlock special abilities that contribute to deeper tactical decisions and opportunities for theorycrafting and overcoming challenges in creative ways. For example, the Bashing Shield can be used to narrow the melee gap and stun multiple enemies, while the Boomerang can stun them from afar and keep the range advantage.
  
• An Expanded Quest System - We have some exciting ideas in the works for the Quest System. The core idea behind it is to provide additional content that can layer onto existing locations, rewarding players while expanding the story and world design. The more ambitious part of the expanded Quest System lies in user-generated content: we plan to create a framework for players to build their own stories and share them with each other.
  
• More Commands for Stonescript - Currently, Stone Story features an in-game scripting language called "Stonescript", which players can use to automate and optimize gameplay. Additional commands will mean more strategic possibilities open up!

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¿Cuál es el estado actual de la versión de acceso anticipado?

“The primary story arc is done and the game is running well. If you are dashing from one game to the next, then Stone Story currently delivers a solid 8 hours of fun. However, if you really enjoy the experience and would like to stay, there is a ton of replay value, with different strategies to explore, interesting boss designs and 11 levels of difficulty per location.”

¿El precio del juego será diferente durante y después del acceso anticipado?

“There are no plans to change pricing between Early Access and normal release.”

¿Cómo tienes planeado involucrar a la comunidad en tu proceso de desarrollo?

“We currently engage with the community through our Discord server and regularly discuss design decisions, with the occasional live stream when there is something visually engaging under development. Often there is an A/B decision and it's great to have players democratically vote on those. We plan to continue this process through the Early Access as we add new flagship features, refine current systems and make balance decisions. Our goal is to make the game perfect, and to do that we need players.”