State of Forge: An update from our Product Head!

Hey everyone,

It’s been a few months since my last update, so I thought it was high time to catch you up on what's coming next.

As many of you know, we're just about to start what we’re calling a "community sprint" — our first of two this year focused solely on your suggestions. Nearly every idea submitted through the forums and now Discord is transformed into a ticket and added to our backlog.

Our in-house Community Managers and Product Managers sift through these and they've compiled a solid list you have voted on last week. Thanks for all the votes, we intend to tackle as many as we can. Each time we iterate on a feature, we'll revisit this backlog to see if we can integrate any of your suggestions, along with our own, ensuring a steady stream of community-inspired updates make their way into the game.

Recently, we launched Quantum Incursions, and unfortunately, it introduced several bugs that weren't detected on our Beta server. We're as surprised as you were and are actively working to resolve these issues. We're also preparing to introduce a second raid, the Iron Age, and we'll be implementing some quality-of-life enhancements to make this feature more accessible. Additionally, we're looking into better ways to display reward information.

We've just started developing the first version of Historical Allies, where “heroes” can be assigned to buildings to provide boosts and bonuses. This will initially be a minimum viable product, deliberately so. Just like with Quantum Incursions, we want to observe how you interact with the feature before expanding it.

This approach prevents the issues we've encountered before, where features are used in unexpected ways, disrupting balance and design. More importantly, it allows us to develop features in a way that aligns with your playstyle(s). It also allows us to develop and refine more features more quickly.

Both Quantum Incursions and Historical Allies will introduce new reward opportunities, helping to manage the power creep currently observed in the game. This is crucial for maintaining the game's sustainability.

In addition to these features, we're focusing on improving the Great Buildings to ensure they remain competitive with Event Buildings. We won't overhaul the system entirely, but we are committed to making more buildings relevant.

We've also started enhancing the user experience. The first improvement was the "assemble all" function in the inventory. We're now working on streamlining the process of collecting multiple generic rewards, which I find particularly frustrating. Upcoming updates will also include improvements to army management, which will undergo A/B testing to ensure they don't negatively affect gameplay. Moreover, we're planning to introduce a flat building mode in the coming months. All these changes are aimed at improving the overall feel of the game and reducing the number of frustrating tasks.

There is much more that we already discussed last time: the next Space Age, GEX and GBG improvements. And to announce it here first for the first half of 2025, we will add a proper and scalable *%il$ $&. G*$%d, with a proper competitive design that we can build upon for years to come.

Stay tuned for more updates, and thank you for being such an active and passionate community. Your input is invaluable as we continue to evolve and improve the game.

Matt
Product Head, Forge of Empires

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