Now that Wayfinder’s Echoes update is live with its new optional offline mode, the folks at Airship Syndicate have sat themselves down to talk with the community in a wide-ranging AMA on Reddit. We’ve compiled a few of the highlights!
First, Airship is “incredibly happy with the reception that the game” so far. “It has been a challenge to get some visibility for the game just due to it being a busy time of year,” Airship’s AJ LaSaracina says. “BUT if you make a good game (which we have) people will find it! So we’re confident though that with the sales we have seen, and the momentum that continues and grows each day. We’re confident we’re on the right path for release later in the year which will be a big moment.”
How can players help the game succeed? “Spread the word,” the devs suggest. The team isn’t going to go ham on marketing spend until the 1.0 release.
There are no plans for another Reward Tower (battle pass). The studio doesn’t think it makes sense given the B2P model.
The team has lots of ideas “floating around the office,” including a new harder difficulty level, hardcore mode, mythic expeditions, a new tier of mythic hunts, an expandion to rank and awakening level, and content-scaling of lower-tier content to meet level 30 toons. It’s not working on a new weapon sort-term, but it has a wish list.
The raid the team had been planning was backburnered for work on Echoes instead. “If you want the raid, make it known!”
The upcoming new Crucible region “will take you to a place handcrafted by the Architects for a very specific purpose,” and the new Wayfinder – an Arcanist, not a Monk – is apparently both extremely cheery and dangerous. Crucible is coming with the 1.0 launch. No plans for new archetypes right now are in the works, however.
Echoes has definitely changed the game’s narrative design; specifically, the devs “want to tell more character-focused stories.” Expect another chapter of the story released with Crucible.
The company continues to work on Steam Deck optimizations but not on anticheat measures right now. Mod integration is a possibility that the devs are “actively investigating.” Crossplay is still something they want to investigate also, but Wayfinder is not moving to UE5 as previously suggested. The studio says metrics show “the game is running well on 90% of machines.”
“The Character Level cap isnt planned on being increased past 30 at this time.”
Finally, the devs address monetization:
“Our philosophy going forward will be that all content goes in-game with no additional price / DLC. We don’t want to split the player base and we want to stay true to just one price. That said, development has cost and after reading all your comments and support we haven’t ruled out something like a ‘Supporter Pack’ purely of cool and fun cosmetics not tied to gameplay and showing your love for the studio and game.”
