Dec 12, 2019

VtM - Coteries of New York - a huge thank you after the launch

Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York - jglowacki

Dear #vamily members, Coteries of New York has launched on PC a little more than 24 hours ago! :)

First of all, we'd like to thank everyone, who decided to buy the game. Thank you for your trust, your continuous support, kind words and great pieces of advice. A game means nothing without a community and we feel that we really found a lot of new friends, who share our love and passion for Vampire: The Masquerade.

We're humbled by all positive reviews and comments, we appreciate many of you stood for Coteries of New York in many discussions, which started since the release. Still, it would be unfair to say that everything went smoothly and everyone's happy.

Even though we're pleased with the number of copies sold, it has never been our goal to simply earn some money and forget about all else. We're Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop RPG players for many years and many of us - members of the development team - are proud members of the VtM community in Poland. We treat all of you as fellow Vampire fans, we don't see our relation as a seller-customer deal. We want to build a bond, based on the same positive emotions, known to everyone who experienced Vampire: The Masquerade game and fell in love with the setting and mood.

Therefore our goal is to be 100% transparent in communicating things and mixed user score indicates that we failed some part of the community we respect most deeply. We believe you deserve an explanation, when it comes to some stuff that you criticize and you have every right to express your negative opinions. Please let us elaborate on some stuff we noticed you talked about very often:

First of all, please be assured that we're reading every single review, every comment, every opinion, analyze every piece of advice. We hear you and we're very thankful for every voice. We do realize that despite our efforts, we didn't manage to erase every bug and couple of those devils slipped into the game. We promise that we're working as hard as possible to get rid of all of them and improve your satisfaction while playing Coteries of New York. Thank you for your patience, but also for addressing all bugs right away. We already updated the game with a small patch, aimed at erasing a few bugs. Be certain that more patches are on the way!
Some of you were surprised and confused about the price discount. Some of you saw 10%, others 30% and it was our fault that we failed to properly communicate the issue. So, the default launch discount is 10% and it lasts for a week since the release. BUT, we agreed with Valve that owners of one of our previous games, called Serial Cleaner will get a loyalty discount: 20%, which stacks up with the launch dicount and that equals 30%. The problem is that Serial Cleaner owners didn't get any notification, hence the confusion. We're really sorry for miscommunicating this, what we've seen as a pleasant surprise. At least we hope that many of you managed to make good use of the 30% discount!
Lack of Linux and Mac OS support - many of you were angry at us, because we removed the info regarding Linux and Mac OS support just before the launch and you were right. For several months the game's description promised that you'll be able to play Coteries of New York on Linux and Mac OS and in the end we didn't deliver. The reason for that is that the development process of the game took longer than expected. We had to postpone the release and fought hard to launch on December 11th. Because of that we didn't have enough time to properly test the Linux and Mac OS version. So, we had a hard decision to make: release versions we were not 100% certain of or add Linux and Mac OS support later. We decided we're gonna pick the second option and we paid for it when it comes to reviews, but we believe we still made a good choice. We'll make sure to add Linux and Mac OS as soon as possible, because we know that these versions are important to you.
Multilanguage support: Coteries of New York is only available in English and we know that with a rabid-bite novel-like game like ours, with a lot of text, many of you would love to play the game in your native languages. Still, the game is available in English only, because we couldn't afford to pay for localization before the release. We're a small indie studio and we self-publish the game. We had to choose - whether we should move money into writing, visuals and music or pay for translating more than 210 thousand words, pay for proofreading, LQA, implementation etc. We decided that the quality of the story, art and sound is more important and we decided that as soon the game will start bringing revenues, we'll immediately explore possibilities to add more languages, one after another.
Confusing description of the game: some of you criticize the description of the game on its product page. You expressed clearly that it's confusing and does not reflect precisely, what the game is like and what it is about. While writing it we thought it's fine and we never meant to lie of overpromise anything. Still, an external perspective is very precious and we thank you for the criticism. We'll adjust the description to better reflect the true nature and structure of Coteries of New York, as we don't want anyone to feel tricked or mislead!

That's all when it comes to most important things we observe appearing in reviews and comments. We hope we still deserve your amazing support. As we said before, we're open to every opinion and we treat all of them very seriously. We will work even harder to improve the quality of Coteries of New York and communication with our community.

Thank you so much for being with us! :)

Draw Distance development team members

Dec 12, 2019

Price modification and main package data update

Tactical Nexus - Oren

Price modification and main package data update

Introduction of high difficulty stage and future schedule

Hello.
We have made minor updates such as game bug fixes and balance adjustments.
About 30 days have passed since the start of sales, but finally we were able to set the price we had planned.
Sorry for the inconvenience to those who were planning to purchase the game.

The game system is unique, although it is an expensive work with multiple works,
At first, we want to sell it at a low price and let more people know the game.
For this reason, we started selling games at 85% off at first, and then lowered the price by 5% every two months.
The price will be changed in the manner of 80% Off, 75% Off, 70% Off, 65% Off ...

You can also download a free version of the main package from our site until 31 December.
If you want to experience the game, please download here.
Also,we are uploading the game videos we have created on Bilibili.
(You can jump to Bilibili account from our site).
We plan to upload videos with Chinese subtitles once a week.

The main package has 12 stages,
Among them, Poptacticallord is extremely difficult, and when you challenge with the main package Nexusmedal and Sunstone,
About 40 Sunstones are required for the Nexusstage strategy.
It takes hundreds of hours to collect this amount of Sunstone,
Also, the Poptacticallord capture alone will take about 100 hours.

Poptacticallord cheats with only the main package data is called "Human Graduation Exam" by testers.
If it's too difficult, you can purchase Chapter 3 for sale in the future and then challenge Poptacticallord.

Now, sales of Chapter-3 will start from the second half of December to around January.
The difficulty level of each work is the same as Tacticaltutorial3, or slightly difficult than Tacticaltutorial3.
However, by the time you challenge these works, you will have a lot of Nexusmedal and Sunstone,
In fact, there are works that are not so difficult.

Let's introduce the works of Chapter-3 that will be sold in the future.

Sword tacticallord
There are only two level-up bonuses: “Defense Up” and “HP Recovery”.
To clear it, you need to master BonusEquip.

Life tacticallord
The initial HP recovery rate is now 0% instead of 100%.
Pick up Life crown to get the effect of the healing item.

Limit tacticallord
The only recovery items are 20 Continental Potions in the "Storage" area.
Clear the dungeon before you run out of Continental Potion.
However, if you want to go to Nexusstage ...

Glory tacticallord
Level-up bonus is Glory system with Winner's key and Glory key
(Same as Tacticaltower G and Tacticaltower P).

Celestial tacticalcoliseum
This map cannot be returned.
Tactical Coliseum has only one enemy per room,
Players must fight by selecting the appropriate item from the weapons, items, and doors provided in each room.
(This is similar to Nexus stage of Tacticaltower G).

Celestial tacticalcoliseum is more influenced by Sunstone and Nexusmedal than other works.
Aiming for a complete clear will not be too late even after you have cleared Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.

Finally, we introduce game designer play data.
It would normally take about 1000 hours to get these items in the main package alone.
(Game designers have world-class game design capabilities.
The stage of this game is created by game designers at a frequency of once every 1-2 weeks.
For this reason, the design that `` beginnings can be conquered by beginners, but conquering becomes extremely difficult in the second half '' is utilized very well.)

(This sentence uses a translator)