Divergence: Year Zero
A Letter To All Our Friends and Supporters
The upside is that through developing Year Zero, we made advances to Divergence's core systems that we wouldn't have been able to otherwise such as the ability to create, customize and maintain vehicles of all types, in addition to domesticating and riding creature mounts. These, like all of Divergence's features, are things we can simply pick-up and continue to build off of if and when circumstances change.
Contrary to public belief, this doesn't mean we're "Selling off" Divergence: Year Zero or Divergence: Online to anyone as our colleagues and competitors have done and in fact the game servers will remain online pretty much 24/7 for anyone who wants to play. We just don't want anyone new coming to this page, thinking that because this game looks, sounds, and appears to be a funded and regularly-updated game that it is, buying it and then getting pissed-off when they find out it isn't. Trust me when I say that we wish very much it were, but it isn't and the powers that be have made it clear that will not change.
For now, both Divergence games will be re-labelled as Exploration games since that is something they do very well, which we hope will give new players a better idea of what they can expect, without expecting more than exists.
For us, we'll still be around on our Discord and Facebook for any and all who want to reach out with a positive word to say. Most of our days are spent consulting and building games and products for other developers and entrepreneurs out there so it's likely that you'll occasionally hear about something new we're involved with. Who knows, maybe in time that stuff will lead to a revival of our dream; Divergence. Only the future will tell. For now, hopefully we'll see you around and best wishes.
30% Price Drop Incoming
Ever since January, we'd started getting more and more interest from other studios willing to hire us as consultants to basically "teach them how to do what we did". As you can imagine, we rebuffed the vast majority of these and resolved to continue our goals of using the franchise as the means of self-funding development.
Six-months later the writing was on the wall that while some players were racking up an obscene 800+ hours spent on our little Early-Access game, and while technically it was a commercial success and made back more than the cost of development, that amount was simply just under what we needed to expand the team to a usable size and finish the game.
So we launched Year Zero to a similar result; Success at paying itself off but very meager gains. We made progress, lots of it over the last ten months, but the truth is that continuing at the pace it's going would take years to get where we wanted to go, and simply isn't good enough.
The remedy is that we decided to indeed open the door to a few opportunities who've shown interest in trading our experience for critical resources that we can then turn around and use to fuel Divergence.
As a result, we also made the decision to go ahead and reduce the retail cost of both games by a whopping 30% across the board. The decision comes mostly as a result of the fact that, since these two games together already don't represent a substantial percentage of our income, why not go ahead and make the cost of entry more appealing to newcomers while both games are in Early Access.
Divergence brings a lot of crazy features to the scene. It's still one of if not the best resource harvesting and crafting MMOs that exists, but until it's combat in both PVP and PVE are implemented the way we originally intended them to be, we just don't want players thinking that we've deemed it "good enough".
So that's all of it. We're in the midst of some pretty big developments with regards to upcoming features and fixing bugs, so we hope this decision will make everyone feel better about coming onboard and helping us continue to design our MMO experience the way it should be.
Halloween Event LIVE
Our event centers around a ghost town. An actual ghost-town I mean. Scattered around this town are several pages to a cryptic book. Finding and assembling these pages into chapters, then the chapters into the full book grants the player the ability to exchange that tome for any of several new quest rewards.
Among these rewards are an Ennie costume, two new Halloween-themed crystals for discordance blades and a new hilt called the "Brimstone" hilt which generates a hellfire-infused blade.
Make sure you craft and bring ammunition that causes EM damage though as the ghosts inhabiting this region can only be damaged by electro-magnetic ammo! For those using an AK this ammo is dubbed "Spangler" 7.62 ammo in your crafting tool. Kudos to anyone old enough to get the reference ;)
The Phoenix
Now I know how Weird Al must've felt finally launching UHF at the same time as Indiana Jones, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and Lethal Weapon 2; A sapling among the redwoods as it were.
But it didn't end Weird Al, and it won't end us.
In Divergence's 300 years of lore, I've had more than a few people ask me what the emblem means and where it comes from. They're curious as to why the emblem for the game appears to be the emblem of one of our three factions; VRTek. Does that imply favoritism?
In the lore (which we'd love to have the time to actually be able to freaking expose players to), it's referred to by most as the "Pasare de Foc". Translated into English, it essentially means "Bird of Fire"; The Phoenix.
In Divergence, Omicron is a civilization based on scientific advancement, federated and democratic rights for all. Darius Conrad (Conrad in Year Zero) is based on improvement through "The Bottom Line", meaning through (economic) growth. Viconye Ritek (Viconye in Year Zero) is a society based on personal reinvention through adversity in all things, which is why it takes the image of the phoenix as it's sigil. It requires no advertisement, no description, no words. It simply means, "Rise From The Ashes. Right Now. You son of a bitch".
To me. That's what it means, to me.
In the story, characters liken to all sorts of permutated variation on the same theme. "Viconye" is commonly known to be synonymous with "Perseverance" or "Endurance", etc.
You can see why we chose this emblem to represent the game. Games. Both games.
Five months ago, Divergence didn't have horses. Three months ago, it didn't have vehicles. Last month it didn't have cooking and fishing. Regardless of when sales are up and when sales are down, it has always maintained to be "better than it was the month before", and that's simply what we're going to resolve to maintain at any cost until the game(s) is/are at a state we feel comfortable "fulling launching".
Honestly, Year Zero will probably be launched first by virtue of the fact that it's less complicated. Divergence: Online, to do it the way we want to do it, requires completion and refining of systems requisite for things such as our military-synthetics (AKA Mechs) and the like that Year Zero doesn't depend on.
Over the next several weeks, you're going to notice these changes taking place. Things that look like crap will look a lot less like crap. We're adding new areas, new weapons and weapon types, and as soon as we're able (and this depends entirely on sales and our ability to pay for help) combat and mobs will be polished, polished, and polished even more.
And so without further ado; Our Roadmap:
Base Building Made Easier!
Since the tutorial videos were made previously for Divergence: Online, some people are having a bit of difficulty drawing the connection between "base building" and "hoppers" described in the Housing tut video. For this reason, we've renamed the "hopper" menu in the crafting schematics panel to "Hopper / Base" to make it easier to understand.
Bases now require wood (and will benefit from the strength of the wood species used) and will show correctly.
Bases are unlocked through the Artisan profession (Large bases requiring Architect) and Cabins require Scout.
What's the difference?
The major difference is that "Bases" contain only a basic starting tent, whereas cabins are pre-built structures common to other survival games. It comes down to which you prefer; Starting from scratch or making a pre-built structure and filling it with your goodies.
Of course, you can make your own cabin out of parts in the design of your choosing as well! These parts are unlocked through Scout as well and will be in the "Wooden and Wooden Cabin" categories.
FREE GUNS AND PANTS FOR ALL!
While some tutorials are still missing and we're still working to spawn loot in the various locations of the world, we've decided to very simply start giving out game items to anyone and everyone who wants them free of charge.
It's absolutely true that this isn't a "typical zombie apocalypse game" and as such, people logging in expecting the typical mechanics of "walk around naked, find pants, run from zombies until you can find a stick" simply do not apply.
This is a big system that allows for big features but the straight dope is that it's definitely hard to "learn how to do it on your own". In an ideal world, we'd have a ton of NPCs hanging out in the newbie zone whom players can interact with to learn how to play our game, but it's going to take us time to get that stuff going and in the meantime, we'd rather people just have fun rather than become frustrated, so for the next seven days, anyone who buys Year Zero can simply log in, ask for stuff, and we'll set them up with a handful of equipment to get their ass out of the starting zone and exploring :)
Thanks a ton for all your support during this period and please don't hesitate to join us on Discord and Facebook!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/276794666025857/
Discord: https://discord.gg/2kmSRPj