Celtic Heroes

Hi everyone,

Allow me to introduce myself - the name is Artem. I’m the current Celtic Heroes Producer and Product Owner at DECA.

You may not know me, but I do hope we get acquainted over time. I have quite a long history of experience operating LiveOps games, and CH is a dream coming true for me as an MMO junkie - I’ve lost too many hours playing WoW (when it first launched), Guild Wars 2 (still not done with the End of Dragons!), Perfect World (you have not lived a life if you weren’t a trade cat bot) and many others. It doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped or anything: Final Fantasy XIV is my second home for now (lali-ho, fellow WoLs!), and, needless to say, Celtic Heroes!

Celtic Heroes is a very interesting case of an MMORPG that has survived over this long time and continues to thrive with an amazing loyal player base (yes, that’s you!). I have nothing but respect for CH and its amazing community, and I thank you for sticking with the game.

While our amazing Community team of Six and Guardian is managing the regular communications on what’s happening with the game, I’ll try to chime in from time to time and give some insight about where we are at. I always prefer transparency, and I do hope that after reading this post you’ll have a bit more of a clear understanding of the past, present, and future of CH.

This letter might be a bit longer than what we'd usually share, but we haven't provided any significant info updates over the last few weeks. So let's dive in.

The Weight of Age

Celtic Heroes has been around for a while. A long while.

What do I mean? Celtic Heroes is a game with a history of different things, technology stack included. While gameplay and balance changes are things that could be changed over time,we are challenged to live with the technology stack that we have. Some of the things are manageable and changeable, but the scalability of the original code creates its own kinds of problems.

Refactoring systems is a major task for which we, unfortunately, don’t have the resources at this time, but we are taking baby steps to modernize the tools and systems. It affects the production directly: designing new content takes a considerable amount of time. That's why all our team asks for is your understanding and patience while we evaluate what we can do. While we focus on modernizing the tools, we’ll try to focus on the small to medium changes that can be introduced over the next several months.

Another side of the coin is the visual appeal of the game - user experience is quite outdated, and while design and tech teams are working on their respective tasks, product and art teams will slowly start working on the UI and UX of the game. We don’t plan major, critical changes, but we’ll definitely try to polish the look and feel of the game with the next few updates - obviously, taking your feedback into consideration. The goal of this is quite simple: to make the game more enjoyable to play and also to improve its standing on the market. Just like you, we want more players to join our adventures in the Celtic world, and refreshing the game is one of the first things that may prove fruitful.

Servers and operations

I guess this is where we remember server attacks and lags, but I suspect you all know this story, and I don’t have anything to add to that, aside from the fact that we have treated and will continue to treat the external threats with all seriousness.

How this case has affected the game is another story altogether: the development team had to delay some of the planned changes in the game and focus entirely on damage control and prevention of other server attacks. I want to wholeheartedly thank you all for supporting the team through those dark times. It was tough, but I do hope that now we can finally focus on improving the game itself.

With the current state of play and attacks not observed (and hopefully gone for good), we have some room for breathing and can work on the game itself. Needless to say, we are still monitoring servers and watching their health 24/7 and are additionally working on several protection scenarios should anything else happen again.

As for the future plans, we are looking into the feasibility of scalability and merging servers, if the current infrastructure allows us to do that.

Next steps

We are aiming to release a series of updates that will include some of the frequent requests from the community. The next game client update (3.13) is scheduled for the coming weeks and will introduce Clan Banks - something that the team had started working on before the server attacks and finally got to finish now. It’s currently in the latest stages of development, but we already love how it’s shaping up. Of course, the base feature will just be a canvas - we’ll be listening closely to your feedback, and will also test the waters with a beta release. More information on the feature will be shared in a separate announcement.

Another thing which will be barely noticeable to you but a considerable step forward for us is moving the game to Unity 2021 with the 3.13 game update. I can’t say much here aside from the fact that a newer engine version will allow us to do more and use better tools, hopefully improving stability.

For the next few months, we’ll be looking into your suggestions and requests as well. We are already discussing next additions to balancing classes (Ranger is one of the first to be attended), cooking and fishing, next story quests, more cosmetics, new boss and potential for new game events. In addition to that, we’re looking into how we can further expand the story in CH, but it’s still on the drawing board. Either I or our Community Team will return with more details in the future, so please stay tuned.

Just one side note, as I’m saying that we’re working hard to bring all the changes. We’re yet to confirm the timelines, but we promise to keep you posted.

Building the trust

Another goal for us is to build better communication between you and the development team, along with democratizing the approach to player relations and providing you with the best support we can. Our Player Support and Community teams are tirelessly working on updating internal policies. We do intend to be more open with you and go with every situation case by case, but allow me to stress here that we are and will always be for constructive communication and against any forms of destructive behavior and harassment.

Another measure is, naturally, working with the feedback - this letter you are reading is just a starting point in open communication that we intend to build over time. I hope I don’t have to remind you that nothing serves the cause better than constructive feedback.

Our community managers will also play a big part in building trust back up. They will be the ones sharing your feedback with the team on a daily basis and will be the first point of contact for you to reach regarding Celtic Heroes. I will be mostly sharing producer updates from time to time, but they will be sharing most of the news with you.

The Elephant in the Room

Now for the very tricky topic which you obviously had in mind when reading all of this: monetization.

It’s a tricky thing to discuss, and overall a sensitive topic to approach. In the very early DECA comms, we mentioned that currently we don’t plan to touch the monetization, and mostly upheld that word. However, as much as we are enjoying building the future of the game, we also need to support the costs of that.

The good news is that we don’t plan any dramatic changes to the overall formula of the game, but we do have plans to allow you to purchase more things from the shop in more convenient ways. We don’t intend to build any paywalls, so it mostly relates to the fact that the assortment of the sold items will increase. I promised to stay transparent with you in the beginning, and I’ll stay true to my word: we might experiment with some of the formats in the shop, but in the end, you’ll be the final judge of our efforts.

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If you are like me and have a strong dislike for walls of text, allow me to do a short version:

- We finally have time to do some work on game features and balancing
- We’re watching the servers and are prepared to act if the attacks happen again
- We’re bringing Clan Banks into the next update, along with the client transition to Unity 2021
- Team is planning more balancing changes and improving classes, fishing and cooking expansion; exploring new boss and quests opportunities
- Main obstacle is the age of the game, but we’re updating our internal tools and systems gradually; UX/UI refresh is in the plans
- We don’t plan to drastically change monetization, but we’ll experiment with the formats and contents of the shop
- We are actively listening to your feedback and appreciate your participation in building the future of CH

As a closing note, allow me to thank you once again for staying with CH and playing the game. You are the heart and soul of this game, and we respect that - your feedback and messages are what keeps us going. While most of us didn’t play CH as long as you did, we want to ask you for understanding and patience while we are trying to improve things from our side and get to know you and the game better.

See you in the game!