Welcome to this year’s first State of the Game post! 2019 was a year of ups and downs for us. We love Disney Heroes and put a lot into making it the best mobile RPG. We launched Invasion, lots of great new heroes, and more, but we also made some mistakes.
We come into 2020 looking forward to a new year and a new focus on working with our players. We had our first Dev Q&A Corner last year! Because we felt it was so valuable, we’ll be doing these on a quarterly basis. The next one is scheduled for late February. Part of that is also writing these State of the Game posts quarterly.
Some of the things we learned from last dev chat:
- We need to do a better job closing the gap between casual and serious players/payers.
- Some hero power creep is okay, but we need to watch out for heroes who are truly OP.
- Some game modes are getting a bit stale:
- Either too easy, too boring and/or the rewards are falling behind.
- We need to make sure we keep bugs and event issues as infrequent as possible, and squash them as fast as possible when they do pop up.
- This is more important to most players than new development.
- The friend system, especially missions, need a revamp in a big way.
- You love the story, and would love a way to re-read it.
We want to address all of the points mentioned above and more in the coming year. Our biggest challenge currently is what order to tackle them in.
With 1.15 through 1.15.4’s release in December and February, we’ve addressed a fair number already:
- Began to address player gaps with more stamina, improved Trials rewards.
- Global Release of Red Skills.
- Improved Invasion rewards.
- Added the ability to make custom Invasions (which we debuted recently)
- Made disconnects in Guild War less painful.
- Adding new difficulty levels in Heist.
Moving forward in 1.16 we want to tackle:
- Releasing Arena & Coliseum Challenger Seasons.
- Adding new difficulty levels in Creep Surge.
- Global Release of Diamond Quest.
- Adding new Guild Perks to help maxed out guilds.
In 1.17 we’re planning to:
- Introduce an updated Creep Surge:
- We’re working on an “endless” version where your guild can decide how much they want to do and get more rewards for it!
- No more choosing a number of waves that’s too easy or too hard.
- Expand our collections and cosmetics in a fun new way (more to come)
- Improve the selection of heroes available at the start of the game for new players.
Now, plans always change and features can take longer than estimated. New things can also come up that take precedence, so this isn’t set in stone. We normally don’t share this much detail on our roadmap, but it seems like everyone would appreciate it, so we’re trying it out!
In addition to our feature roadmap, we have a great lineup of heroes coming this year. We have some new characters planned that tie into movies releases, and we’re also reaching back into the Disney archives for both old favorites and a few surprises.
We hope you enjoy this sneak peek at the upcoming few months of 2020. We’re excited for the year and look forward to your feedback now and in the next dev chat. In an effort to keep incorporating player feedback, we’re going to be creating a section of the forums for invited top Guild Leaders. We want to collect targeted feedback on features that are still in development. We are planning to have this new section of the forums up and running next week.
