Hi. I was wondering what will happen when the actual server is released? Do we lose our progress and inventory? I was thinking that maybe we can store our items in a chest, and that will be returned in the actual server launch? Cause a lot of people have put time and effort in the hope that their progress will be saved. Thanks for your time.
I seem to recall Tomas saying something about keeping one chest full of items, but I could be imagining things... In any case, as beta will be out for a decent while longer, actual release is quite a ways off.
You won't be able to store any progress. This includes any items or currency you have earned in beta. The economy in beta is very very unstable - you can make a fortune exporting the same type of goods over and over again at the moment. Similarly, some recipes may be too easy or too hard to make. The game currently lacks any sort of balance. For that reason, we can't allow transfer of any goods (or bank balance) into the live release. However, every beta tester will be rewarded for their time. I do not have any specifics yet, but generally, the more you have contributed to testing (and the more wealth / items you generated), the better the reward will be. For example, a tester playing for 2 days would get a small reward, whereas a very active tester with a large wealth would get substantially more. The rewards will likely be in the form of limited skins or perks - much like you would get for donating money. These rewards will be exclusive to beta-testers and won't be obtainable after release at all. So in the long run, these rewards for testing will be extremely rare, as there will be only a handful of them. An active tester might get something like a custom house servant, with dialogues and a backstory, that no other player will ever get in the future. I'm more than open to feedback on potential rewards. The team is very thankful for all the work our testers are putting in - the amount of bug reports has exceeded our wildest expestations. We want to do our best to reward those who actively help us make the server better.
Thanks for your reply Hastearms. I also thought I heard something like that, but apparently not. Thanks for the feedback Tomas. Can you expand on the skins and perks please? I was thinking for rewards for beta testers could be like different housing styles for the plots? That won't be available to people who join after the release? Or maybe labels above their characters skin, showing their role in Elpida or just saying Beta Tester or something? I know they aren't really good suggestions, so I will think about it more and ask other people to contribute too.
Housing styles are definitely a possibility. I personally call these rewards "skins". These are all the rewards that look unique, but still require the player to obtain the item ingame. This makes the reward interesting, without giving the player any gameplay advantage what so ever. These include house styles, alternate pet looks, armor color, unique house servants. As I mentioned before, they are mainly planned as donator rewards, but would also make sense in this case. We could task a builder to make a unique house style availabe only to the more active testers.
I love the house idea. Also, thanks for elaborating on skins. Because, I was going to say, you can easily steal skins using a skin stealer. I like the idea of a personal servant for each active beta tester... Here is an idea: You create a bunch of different things we can buy at the end of the beta all with different prices. Then we can go around and pick the things we can afford and pay you. It would be a good way to reward us for our hard work and time we spent earning money. Maybe even let us trade in one of our plots for something. I just think there should be some reward, because investing a lot of time in something then having it all removed isn't a good initiative to find bugs. (This would be in-game money). Some of the things could be: Special pet only for testers A special horse A personal servant (Whether servants are added or not, we still have the ability to get one in the future). Special house, though I would rather have a home more specific to my religion, eh, who knows, I may have two homes, one for vacation. Yeah, beta is in a while, but we want to know if in the months ahead, the progress we do will be for nothing. Yes, we squashed bugs, but we also gained wealth. I thought that also.
