The last time I got to try out Fellowship, Arc Games’ and Chief Rebel’s upcoming co-op title that basically offers up a trinity-based MMORPG dungeon-running experience as its core gameplay loop, I found it to have a whole lot of promise even in its alpha state and one that’s been on my personal radar ever since.
Now with the game headed into open beta next week as part of February’s Steam Next Fest, I was once again invited by game director Axel Lindberg, design director Bretton Hamilton, community director Hamish Bode, and art director Andre Bostrom to see how things have progressed since then, and while the gameplay loop is still pretty much untouched, there have been some impactful adjustments since then that I think could take this one up a notch, although a few worries about the game’s design linger.
A lot of the improvements have definitely been on the UI side of things. While there are still some hideously ugly ElvUI-styled elements on screen, most of the ones that were being used in the alpha have since been replaced with Fellowship’s own style. What’s more, the game now has a feature that lets players adjust their UI elements individually, which will certainly come in handy for most MMORPG fans.
The ability to hide the built-in DPS meter won’t be available, but it is being considered, as I was told when I asked. I got the impression that my asking that question quirked a few eyebrows among the devs, as if I were some kind of cryptid for not wanting those data on my screen.
During the one dungeon that I ran with the team I was a part of, even more helpful UI elements were on display, including a mouseover tooltip in the game map to show how quickly enemies could be taken down in order to help those trying to path their way through the encounter as quickly as possible, as well as new enemy health bar color-coding that helped to indicate whether I as the tank character was maintaining threat – a particularly useful update considering I had no idea whether I was holding aggro during the last time I played.
But easily one of the best UI updates made to Fellowship is related to crowd control. The devs impressed upon me that magic damage is a big thing to watch out for in the game, especially at higher difficulty tiers, so interrupting long-windup casts is crucial to success, but anyone who has played older MMOs knows that knowing who hit an interrupt skill can be hell, especially in PUGs. In Fellowship, the pressing of a hotkey (default “V”) will paste an icon of your character (and the characters of other team members who do the same) next to an enemy health bar, which will darken and show a cooldown timer when that player has hit their interrupt skill, making it visually obvious who can interrupt a cast and who can’t.
I cannot possibly overstate how amazing this was for team cohesion and strategy. It made a foundational part of the game’s combat obvious and well-communicated, all while being a simple and elegantly executed idea. If nothing else springs up from Fellowship, I hope it’s at least this UI feature. Seriously, more MMOs – especially those that have CC – need to rip this idea off.
Of course the improvements aren’t just UI-specific. Fellowship has also changed its progression system, which now has a more sloping form of movement through the different dungeon difficulty levels that unlock as gear is earned in dungeon runs. Additionally, each harder form of the game’s dungeons automatically apply benefit and debuffing modifiers instead of forcing players to pick them out themselves.
This makes things a little more easier to understand in terms of challenge curve, particularly since getting from dungeon to dungeon is done at the central hub and not through typical main quest progression. It also means that if players can get stuck, they can get through previous dungeon runs enough times to get the gear they need to make a higher difficulty encounter easier. This did bring up the point of whether people would actually find doing repeated dungeon runs at higher tiers fun. That’s a question that the devs feel can only be legitimately answered by testing, which is what this open beta will definitely be about.
Fellowship now also has a matchmaking system in place that lets players either hop into quick play and host or find their own group. This team finder is highly customizable, letting players specify not only the dungeon they want to run but also whether or not they want a specific hero selection in the team makeup. Naturally this prompted me to ask what Chief Rebel will do when players gatekeep others from running dungeons thanks to a forced meta, which was answered with a plan to balance the pre-built heroes in such a way that nobody feels locked out; it was impressed upon me that the burden of stopping gatekeeping is on the team and its balance decisions.
As I mentioned before, the gameplay loop was the same, but that is most definitely not a bad thing! The updates to the UI all made it much easier for me to scoop up mobs, gather adds, and help lead my team from encounter to encounter. We had time enough only to fight one mid-boss and attempt the final boss, but both fights were a good time. The first boss had some pretty easy to read mechanics that mostly involved dodging AoEs of various shapes, but the second boss really flipped the script: I was no longer responsible for tanking since the boss fought anyone it wanted, but instead I had to hit a boulder around to crush piles of gold before the boss could gather them up and heal himself with each pile.
While things have progressed quite well for Fellowship between alpha and this open beta build, Chief Rebel definitely seems to feel it’s ready to open things up a lot more and get more tester data. Whether endgame dungeon runs will be varied and interesting enough can only be answered after players have gotten themselves to that level, and the devs stressed multiple times that their small size and agility makes them more capable to update and iterate on player feedback for as collaborative of an experience as possible. Considering what they’ve done in the intervening months between my last preview and now, I believe them.
Even so, I can’t ignore multiple unanswered concerns at this point. The way the party building tool works, the fact that there are leaderboards for fast clears, and the always-on DPS parser all kind of lead me to think that Fellowship is actually empowering gatekeepers, literally giving them the means to lord over those who don’t have the “right” characters, the “right” gear, or don’t take the “right” path through an instance, and all Chief Rebel is really able to do right now is loudly declare that this time will be different. Basically, nobody can know how this will shake out until players get in there, and that’s hopefully what this beta will do.
Fellowship will be entering its open beta during Steam Next Fest between February 24th and March 3rd, with the promise of early access later this year at a box price with no subscription planned. I might have some reservations about what community behavior will form, but I personally can’t wait to really dig in myself; an hour and one dungeon run is not enough to really answer my questions, but it’s definitely enough that I’m eager to try out some more later.
“Public playtesting for Fellowship via Steam will kick off on Monday, February 24 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time and end on Monday, March 3 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. For the Public Playtest, there will be a North America, Europe and Asia server available. This playtest will give players the chance to experience six heroes (two Tanks, two DPS – including a new DPS, Tariq, and two Healers) that will be in Fellowship’s diverse roster of heroes, go on dungeon runs (both Ranked Dungeons and Quick Play Dungeons), take on challenging enemies and acquire epic loot along the way. Compared to the Closed Alpha playtest back in August 2024, in addition to introducing a new DPS hero, Tariq, the Public Playtest introduces new gameplay systems, like a unique gem and item transmutation system, world and party chat, new Curses, new Gear, new Mounts, new visual element improvements and reworks of previous gameplay mechanics based on Closed Alpha player feedback.”
