Your feedback and how it shapes the game
Characters
It was important to us to find out how important characters, factions, and ships truly are to the fans of Homeworld, and we received a ton of awesome feedback - some of it expected, and some pleasantly surprising!
- We all know Karan S'jet is an integral part of the Homeworld flavor, so instead we wanted to look at what faction identity means to you. The good guys won out, with the Hiigarans, Bentusi, and Progenitors coming out on top far ahead of the pirates, and even the Taiidan. We believe this shows us just how important the role of emotional connection is, and it's something we want to focus on further with the hope that we can re-create that same unique connection you have built with the Bentusi and Hiigarans alike.
- More surprisingly, it appears that ships are just as important to you as characters, with the Mothership coming a close second to Karan for most important narrative elements.
- What with the visual immersion of Homeworld being so exciting for you, as well as your love for the ships, we've been busy creating amazing new ship designs that will build a strong sense of character and identity.
Story
Homeworld's story has always been its bread and butter, but we wanted to get a better idea of what this means to you. The survey responses were a great help - not only to clarify our direction, but to inspire us the way Homeworld has inspired all of you.
- We believed that the narrative was absolutely integral to the franchise - and you overwhelmingly agreed. The single-player experience is something we always planned to focus heavily on, and it gives us huge confidence to hear and read this is what you want too. What makes this comforting from a production perspective is that prioritizing single-player has always been the case for Homeworld development.
- We have been looking closely at previous Homeworld games to really get an idea of the core elements that make it so unique. We also asked you what the most important themes were in the franchise, and the top answers were: exploration, redemption, and exodus. We agree, and we are working hard to craft a narrative that really speaks to the true Homeworld experience - and to all of you.
- As part of the survey, we asked you what narrative elements spoke to you the most. Among the top were monoliths, which told us that you found environmental storytelling to be not only exciting, but a fundamental part of the Homeworld experience. We aim to take this franchise further than ever before, and we're excited to share that we've been busy building massive interactable environments using monoliths that will truly immerse you in the universe and the story.
Gameplay
We wanted to get an idea of how the gameplay in Homeworld spoke to you. As a non-traditional, 3D RTS, the game doesn't mirror many others - and we feel it's important to know what drives your wish to keep playing.
- We were curious to see how important certain gameplay features were to your experiences - and what we found was a love of strategic and thoughtful playstyles, such as salvaging and cloaking. We’re thrilled to hear that, because we’re working on several super exciting features that are too early to discuss in detail today, but we know you’re going to love!
- As we push interaction with the environment further, we are realising the amazing gameplay implications this has. Combined with the ballistics system we are building, it will offer the player even more strategic options in gameplay, as they use the environment itself to take cover and hide or gain an advantageous position over their enemy. We are also exploring new ways to navigate through the 3D environment using object-relative movement. For example: Click the underside of an asteroid and your ships will position beneath it. Click on the top-side and that’s where they’ll take cover. It should unlock new tactics while still feeling intuitive on the mouse.
- As mentioned earlier, your feedback on the importance of single-player experience and story is loud and clear. We want to be clear too: Our first priority is making an amazing Homeworld single-player experience. While we are focused on the core campaign, we are also looking at what that means for multiplayer. We believe that by crafting an alternate game mode we can bring the game to new levels. As such, we have been exploring how best to bring this experience to you. We have some exciting ideas in the works that we’ll talk about later in development!
Wrapping up
There’s a lot more to this survey than what we’re sharing today. The rest we plan to discuss alongside meaningful updates to the game itself. Speaking of which, we plan to share updates with you once a quarter for the remainder of the game’s development. Things will probably pick up in pace during the final year ahead of the game’s release, but for now we need to spend most of our time heads-down and building the foundation of Homeworld 3. Please leave your thoughts and feedback on the post below. We’ll have more to share in 2020. Have a great holiday! This is Fleet Command, signing off.