TLDR
TFD is not shutting down. The director had a meeting last year with management about the issue of player retention and put in place a plan to remedy the situation.
Next dev live on April 14th for the April update.
Addressing the Article
Director Joo saw people feeling anxious and wanted to discuss this with the community rather than remaining silent despite not having any presentation visuals available. Director Joo saw the article and is motivated to provide high impact and develop a more engaging game. Already, there was a meeting held with management late last year and a plan was developed to remedy the situation. The plan titled “Completing The Game” has 3 phases.
“Completing The Game”
Phase 1
Overhauling core game structure and loops. Work is underway and will be completed by season 4 summer update.
Phase 2
Improving the games accessibility, improving the story and improving new player experience to feel the fun of TFD to stick with the game.
Phase 3
Build upon the foundation and make TFD what they intended.
Why are we bring this up now? The director wanted to be more prepared and was worried about disappointing fans if they failed to meet the timeline but thought the game cancellation anxiety was worse than the potential disappointment.
Onslaught Mode
Gameplay will be shown during the dev live. The skins in the image displayed won’t be in the beta but will come out in May. Gameplay consists of defending the dimension anchor from rushing Vulgus. Players can use turrets in offensive and defensive modes to assist them. The battle consists of ten rounds and changes zones every 3 rounds. The final round is against an abyss boss.
Extreme Intercept Battles
Players can set the difficulty of battles by giving buffs to the colossus and by giving players penalties. Rewards will be dependent on the buffs given and penalties taken and consist of ancestor modules and ancestor weapons (blueprints? parts?) after the season 4 update.. There will also be a leaderboard.
Season 4
- Will have a mega dungeon with the final battle against Karel. A new dungeon/mode with new visual effects and an experience not seen before in TFD.
- Trial mode that will select random descendant abilities.
- New mode where the player becomes the colossus but development is too early to share more.
Other
Focus on endgame and more content. The main problem is there is not a lot to do. Director states they want to make challenging content and rewards that follow that content.
The director acknowledged the Sharen rework focused in the wrong direction and skill build up did not jive well with other descendants. Also noted the nerf in synchronization values was not the right direction. They plan to increase Sharen’s synchronization values. The new outlook focuses on no build-up skills and synchronization. They will proceed with this new outlook for Valby and Bunny when updating them. They are working on Viessa and Harris updates and will not require build-up.
Serena got a buff from Kings Guard Lance but, they have no plans for a nerf. Instead, most other descendants will receive an increase in base shield and health. They will also increase synchronization for descendants and move towards boosting other descendants rather than nerfing Serena. They will then give the game new modes to accommodate the board increase in performance.
April 9th update will address issues with rewards.
Q&A
- An update is coming to allow for player trading when players are not logged in. No dates yet when this is coming.
- Director noted that after dev lives, feedback is gathered and given to the dev team.
- In-game surveys (Someone asked but, I missed how they responded) per users comment below, they will have an in-game survey for the Onslaught mode beta in April.
- Director clarified the TFD dev team will make nerfs when needed. (The director had to then respond to something on his computer which was interesting.)
- Update coming to cameras in Albion and effects update in April.
- After Viessa in May, Valby and Bunny will be worked on.
- (Lol the director clarified this question) After the final battle with Karel the game is not ending. A new story will begin.
- (STOP with this lol) Director (AGAIN) clarified skins that sold for a limited time can NOT return. Any other skins can return (which is a majority at this point) and it’s just a matter of planning for that.
- Dev team will prepare new modes to shake up the existing loop for players. The devs want a challenge in the game and are working on a roadmap for this.
- Spawn motions will be added to photo mode.
- Revealed Raven and Ult Esiemo.
- Dev team will look into new male descendants as well.
- Director understands the problem is contend and players don’t feel the need to participate in the content.
- While making new descendents is important, new content is a priority. Though it sounded like they are striving for a better balance between these two.
- (Lol responded to this) Where is the producer? He had a lot of meetings and was busy.
- Ultimate Hailey is after Raven.
- An update to the option to turn off visual effects of party and players.
- Director acknowledges content is too low and things to do is too low. More content is being prepared.
- Fix for chat filters coming in the April patch.
- Why was the current version on the top left corner? This was put in temporarily to track optimization and issues.
- Looking into the restored relic screen shaking.
- Director acknowledges TFD had a big launch and player numbers fell off after. Though, there is a stable daily player base.
- “Endless content” will be in part addressed with Extreme mode intercept battles.
- Dev live on April 14th for April update.
Long write-up but, I tried my best to get all the details. If I missed anything, add to the comments and I will look for any edits I need to make.
