Expeditions: Rome - Dev Diary #17 - First Update After Release

Logic Artists posted a new update about the game reception and future plans, which include two interesting modifications to answer the most criticized points: the length and the linearity of Act 3. They confirmed the DLC too.

DevDiary 17 - First Update After Release

Ave, and welcome to another DevDiary - the first one since the glorious release of Expeditions: Rome in fact. We skipped last week due to being rather busy with the launch, but this week we are back to talk about the reception and our support plans.

It's been hugely exciting for us to finally let you all play the game we've been making for the past 3 years. We're loving the discussions on Steam and Discord, and it's been particularly fun to see you guys compare notes and gradually realise how far-reaching the effects of your decisions throughout the game can be, and how many things change depending on your choices and even your gender. We've spent a little more time than we perhaps should over the weekends watching Cringer, Bikeman, BurkeBlack, CohhCarnage, and others play Expeditions: Rome on Twitch, and chatting to their communities about the game.

All of us at Logic Artists and at THQ Nordic have been very pleased with the game's reception - the critical reception and the player reactions have both been overwhelmingly positive. There's no doubt this is the best and most successful game in the Expeditions franchise so far, as we always felt it would be. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for playing our game!

Since the release, our main priority has been to keep an eye on the reception of the game and what you're all saying about it, fix the bugs that have surfaced, and make whatever tweaks or improvements we could quickly do to improve the play experience. We've worked hard to ensure that we would be releasing a stable and polished game, and it's very gratifying to see that we haven't received all that many bug reports. As you may have noticed though, two hotfixes did go out last week to address the few major issues that popped up early on, and a more significant update is currently being tested that will fix many smaller issues and add some quality-of-life improvements overall. That update will be released as soon as we feel certain that it doesn't introduce any new problems.

[…]

More information.

Note: Twitch stream to answer questions tomorrow as usual. I expect the question of Dynasty Studios and the future of the series to pop up at some point but we'll see.

That’s it for this one! Despite the lack of DevDiary last week we had a great time hanging out with you on Twitch in our usual DevStream timeslot, playing a bit more of Rome, and answer all the questions you guys had for us. Let’s repeat the success this Wednesday, February 2nd at 1:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM GMT at http://twitch.tv/thqnordic. If you have any particularly pressing questions, please remember that you can post them as comments on this article and we will prioritise getting you some answers during the stream.

Interesting!

I haven't reached Act 3 yet. I've only just dealt with a city siege in Africa and I don't think that was the end of Act 2. So some quick improvements for that would be nice.

Some QOL would be welcome though, in particular I think they should add the option of sorting weapons & Armour by type in your inventory. Then there is the camera, which I find gets a bit wonky at times, not problematic but slightly annoying.

Another little thing, that just struck me, is that you usually get to position your praetorians before battle but you're not informed whether the first turn will be yours or the enemies. Something that obviously makes a significant difference when you notice that you have placed all your men in perfect position to become pincushions by enemy archers.

Camera with a top-down view and non-flat terrain is not easy to get right, we saw that in other games, but there's definitely room for improvement. It's bothering me most when I need to see where my sagittarius can move to reach a target.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Camera with a top-down view and non-flat terrain is not easy to get right, we saw that in other games, but there's definitely room for improvement. It's bothering me most when I need to see where my sagittarius can move to reach a target.

Yeah, that's true and I also sometimes have issues with one combatant being stuck just shaking when trying to move. Usually, when it's some character that's trying to move from an elevated position to ground level, or vice versa.

On the plus side, they will normally get loose, though it might take a minute or two.

Originally Posted by Feist
Yeah, that's true and I also sometimes have issues with one combatant being stuck just shaking when trying to move. Usually, when it's some character that's trying to move from an elevated position to ground level, or vice versa.

On the plus side, they will normally get loose, though it might take a minute or two.

I only had that once luckily, but the poor guy gave up after a few seconds. It was repeatable but I hadn't realized we could save the game during combat, so I only reported the bug with a screenshot and no saved game.

I reported 15 of them so far, all minor or cosmetics. It was possible to get the complete list the first days, but now they've blocked that so there is no way to tell how long the list is, or to see if someone else already reported a similar issue. Still, a good point for setting up a bug tracker.

I'm in Act 2 and the only significant issue I've noticed is one map where you couldn't go to a certain area during combat (which is clearly unintentional as there's javelin barrels and torches there).

As far as QoL, I would like a way to manage camp assignments / recruits without needing to run to the tents every time.

I'm glad they're making a DLC, I will definitely pick it up.

Originally Posted by daveyd
I'm in Act 2 and the only significant issue I've noticed is one map where you couldn't go to a certain area during combat (which is clearly unintentional as there's javelin barrels and torches there).

They talked about that yesterday and explained it was a recurrent design error in many places, a location surrounded by a small dip in the meshes. They were actually surprised the pathfinding was able to access most of them and that the problem only occurred occasionally.

If that's the issue, it's solved in the next patch.

The game was not without a few issues when it released but from what I've heard and experienced, it was one of the most stable games.

They confirmed they were modifying act 3 to reduce the number of mandatory sectors to 75% in order to reduce the length of the campaign, since it has apparently less story and more combat, which was felt as dragging for too long.

They're also considering a story mode with even easier combat and a reduced meta layer of legion battles, so the player can focus on the story & quest.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
They're also considering a story mode with even easier combat and a reduced meta layer of legion battles, so the player can focus on the story & quest.

I wonder what they will name the storymode as

Originally Posted by purpleblob1
I wonder what they will name the storymode as

My best guess: Cicero

Originally Posted by Redglyph
My best guess: Cicero

Lol, that would make the most sense I think.

For a while I wondered whether I had stumbled across an easter egg a while ago, since I had placed a certain two notable characters as centurions of the legion…and shortly after I got a "recapture the stolen standard" mission.

Though, in hindsight, I suspect that mission is standard regardless of praetorians/centurions.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
They confirmed they were modifying act 3 to reduce the number of mandatory sectors to 75% in order to reduce the length of the campaign, since it has apparently less story and more combat, which was felt as dragging for too long.

This does sound good. I think I'm almost through Egypt now, with 9/12 regions conquered. So perhaps I'll slow down a bit and await the patch.

I've started it yesterday and… meh. Somehow can't get into it. Same with Encased. Seems I'm still spoiled by WotR and need some more time to get in the mood again.

Originally Posted by Morrandir
I've started it yesterday and… meh. Somehow can't get into it. Same with Encased. Seems I'm still spoiled by WotR and need some more time to get in the mood again.

I too found myself in bit of "Post-WotR Blues". When you have played through something so massive in so many ways, it's pretty hard to switch over to a more…"normal scope" of crpg.

Which is why I switched over to playing through "Death Stranding", to get accustomed to something completely different for awhile. I think that made the return to more regular crpgs a bit easier.

Originally Posted by Feist
For a while I wondered whether I had stumbled across an easter egg a while ago, since I had placed a certain two notable characters as centurions of the legion…and shortly after I got a "recapture the stolen standard" mission.

They included that as a mission? That's hilarious, though I'm not too surprised. Shouldn't that be at the end of act 3 though?

I only got one of the two, I saw the 2nd on the list but he went away when he saw I wasn't hiring him immediately.

Some impressions after starting act 2.

The siege at the end of act 1
- is quite long, but thankfully you can save the game during combat as before
- there is only combat, organized as a succession of combats alternating your first team and your 2nd team, which join at the finale
- very well designed, the succession makes complete sense and everything is happening in the same, big map

After the siege, there is a little discussion between the main characters, and they get back to Rome. The end of act I and the start of act II are in Rome, then they leave for the new location.

I have some mixed feelings about the part in Rome. It's not war anymore, there are a series of quests and conversations, but I felt it was uneven and didn't entirely "belong". It could be on purpose, because they're back to civilian life and maybe the devs wanted us to feel detached from a previous reality too. But I believe they didn't put as much effort as in the main quest, or had a difficult time to find interesting side-stories.

It's not true for everything, one side quest is related to a main theme that was introduced before in the game as background story of the main character; a 2nd one is an important preoccupation that is developing further, in which characters that really existed (like Cicero) play a very believable role - nicely done. A companion story which was also quickly introduced earlier seems very awkward (and frankly, quite boring) in Rome. Other little quests just seem out of place, or underdeveloped.

The parts of the city that the player can visit are beautiful, but there is very little interaction, which adds to the impression that it's all secondary to the conquests. That being said, there's not much more in Pathfinder's areas in terms of interactivity.

So in summary, there are a few brilliant though too short episodes, but I was expecting more.

I don't want to give more details to avoid spoilers, but I'm curious to hear other opinions on that.

A couple of times, companions reveal a part of their past but it's clumsy. The player (who doesn't know about their past) drives the companion's dialogue as if he/she knew this past, and the options reveal the actual bits of story. It felt like an experiment and I would rather have questioned those companions as someone else, so they could reveal their past.

It's by no means bad. They felt like negatives by contrast because there are so many other good features. And despite the little letdowns, there are very fun moments between the two acts.

Originally Posted by Feist
I too found myself in bit of "Post-WotR Blues". When you have played through something so massive in so many ways, it's pretty hard to switch over to a more…"normal scope" of crpg.



Which is why I switched over to playing through "Death Stranding", to get accustomed to something completely different for awhile. I think that made the return to more regular crpgs a bit easier.

Yeah, that's why I played Medieval Dynasty for the last weeks. That hasn't been enough apparently.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Note: Twitch stream to answer questions tomorrow as usual. I expect the question of Dynasty Studios and the future of the series to pop up at some point but we'll see.

Any interesting findings from Twitch?

Originally Posted by purpleblob1
Any interesting findings from Twitch?

I've only watched for a little while and they didn't talk about this, just the other stuff mentioned above.

I don't think they could say more right now than what they already did, in fact. If some of them have plans they won't reveal it before they're about to leave. We know they'll continue working on the support and the DLC before that, and we can see from the names on the Dynasty Studio website that people like Hans Emil (combat designer) and Fasih (lead narrative) are there, but not Jonas (co-founder, creative director & lead designer). Those are the only names I know at Logic Artists, but from the credits I see other names already at Dynasty: Juan Ortega (technical director), Ali Emek (co-founder and managing director), Sonat Ozturk (producer), Casper Hansen (technical designer), Sune Pedersen (world builder), Aidin Salsabili (3D character art), Petr Papez (lead programmer), Rikard Magnom (graphics programmer)… which doesn't seem to leave many of the original team, maybe Art Director August Hansen, the UI designer and other programmers (whose names may not be listed).

So whatever they do - whoever that is and whether they do it together or not, it could be anything and it could be a long time before we hear about them again.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Some impressions after starting act 2.

The siege at the end of act 1
- there is only combat, organized as a succession of combats alternating your first team and your 2nd team, which join at the finale

This is one thing I wish they could change a little bit. I'm really not fond of "chained battles", not in any game. After I have fought a battle, I like to go looting, to explore a little, or maybe have some conversation about the next move to make etc. etc.

Although, as you say, the fact that you can save within the battles, is a true blessing. You need to be able to leave the game at your own convienience, without having to replay 30 minutes of combat when you return.