Hey Harbingers,

Milo here! Last week, I asked players on our Discord server[discord.gg] to fill out a "What’s your playstyle” survey.

Those who participated in the survey assisted me in gathering data on your individual playstyles to determine which are the most and least popular. This information will help me refine development priorities and better tailor the experience. Plus, it’ll be exciting to see the final results together!

To start, let’s take a look at the data summary!


Necromancy took the lead by a longshot! Necromancy is one of the largest skill trees in the game with plenty of passive skills as well, which likely contributes to why it’s the winner for the most-used skill tree. Of course, Necromancy is also just a popular magic type in general, so that also can play into the results. People like summoner styles, after all!

The next three trees under Necromancy are all melee trees, which each have a decent number of skills and passives within them. There’s still room for more skills and passives within those trees, but this indicates that the trees are in a relatively good state and that those trees are fun to play currently.

The main part that I want to focus on in this graph is the lower half. So, from “Spears” downward.
This data tells me what trees are one or more of the following: The skills in the trees aren’t fun, the skill tree isn't expansive enough, or the tree just isn’t as popular as others.
My goal for The Bloodline has always been to allow players to play the exact class they want to play as. So, to me, the result of “the skill tree isn’t as popular as the others” doesn’t play a huge role towards if the skill tree will be expanded or not – just the priority it takes. So, don’t worry, those of you who love using a staff or a shield with aeromancy – This doesn’t mean I won’t be focusing on those skill trees. Quite the opposite! This tells me those trees need more love and attention.

Some expectations going into the survey was that the newer, smaller skill trees like staves, aeromancy, vampirism would all be low on the ranking – which they were. These trees have few skills and passives, which of course would result in them being used less than others.

What surprised me was that bow & crossbow was so low on the ranking! Same with daggers – I expected that one to be near the top.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each category now!


Unarmed, One-Handed and Two-Handed weapons dominate melee skill trees. Again, these trees are well fleshed out with a decent number of passives within them. However, the outlier that I see here are Daggers. This tree is much lower than the others and has a good number of skills and passives within it! This can suggest that perhaps the daggers' skills themselves aren’t as fun to use as the other skill trees, or that daggers themselves just aren’t as popular, which I don’t think is the case. I do think that the games weak stealth system also plays into this – dagger builds are typically used by stealth characters and, let's be honest, The Bloodline doesn’t have a great stealth system in place (yet!)

Shields being the lowest of the melee trees isn’t quite surprising – it's more of a passive and defensive piece of gear and the skill tree is somewhat limited in its skill selection. I would love to bump shields up to where spears are in usage – perhaps by allowing players to use shields with more weapon types or even when unarmed, as well as adding more shield skills to the tree.

Next, let’s take a look at magic!


I believe magic is the backbone of The Bloodline and shows my mentality for the games’ development. "If it’s fun, it gets added."
With so many magic trees, it’s difficult to find time to make skills for all of them - ideally, every magic skill tree will be as expansive as Necromancy someday. This chart should help me focus my efforts into skill trees that need it.

We see much more of an even (disregarding Necromancy) spread between magic types here, which makes me super happy. Blood Magic, Druidism, Arcane and Electromancy are all super close in ranking with Geomancy and Cryomancy not too far behind.
As mentioned before, Necromancy is one of the largest and most fleshed-out skill trees in the game. The next largest magic tree is pyromancy, both on the graph and in-game.
Seeing that many of the other trees are so close to one another in ranking, this leads me to believe that they each have their own identity and feel at least somewhat fun to use – they just need a bit more love and attention to bring them up to the level that Pyromancy and Necromancy are at.

Lastly, we have the smallest category – ranged.


This is the most balanced of the categories – likely in part due to the small selection. What surprised me most about this one is that nearly 26% of those who participated in the survey don’t even touch ranged weapons. This could be due to a few factors – maybe they just use ranged magic, nullifying the need for a ranged weapon. Or, maybe (and in my opinion, more likely), players find the ranged skills difficult to use. Whether this is due to the forced camera change for some skills or maybe difficulty aiming while pressing the skill button, they’re valid reasons to not use ranged skills. Another factor to consider is the limited skill bar. Most enemies tend to get up close pretty quick, and having your precious few skill slots taken up by ranged skills can be a dealbreaker!

This had led me to brainstorm what I can do to alleviate the need to pick-and-choose skills for your limited skill bar. I’ve come up with a couple ideas, which I hope to get feedback on from the community:

• Dynamic Skill Bar
  Your skill bar was actively swap depending on what weapon you have equipped. This would allow you to have a full skill set for every single weapon class. Example: You enter an area, weapon sheathed. Your skill bar would be set to an “out of combat” skill bar. You equip your 1H sword and your skill bar automatically swaps to your 1H skills. You see a goblin in the distance, so you swap to your bow and your skill bar swaps to your bow skills.
  
  
• Radial Skill Bar Loadouts
  Similar to the dynamic skill bar, but not automatic. The player can have many skill loadouts, allowing them to actively swap between them as they desire.

And, finally...


Unsurprisingly, mining, running and jumping all take the top 3 spots by a long shot!
This, of course, was expected. All players run and all players jump – and who doesn’t like mining? Although I did expect wood cutting to be closer to the top 3. The big drop between jumping and woodcutting was somewhat surprising.

With many of the crafting skills being low, this tells me that that aspect of the game needs to be improved. Adding more interesting and unique content to the crafting types would of course help. I also think having small guilds focused on the crafting types would help make it more interesting and allow for more world-building and roleplaying opportunities. Perhaps the small guilds could offer crafting recipes, unique quests, etc. - it’s really just a matter of improving what is already in place rather than completely revamping it.


Thank you to everyone who took part in the survey! So many of you participated, and – as I’ve already mentioned – your responses will be incredibly helpful in improving your experience in The Bloodline!

For those who couldn’t take part, feel free to leave your comments on the topic here: the 505 Pulse team will help me gather your feedback and integrate it with the survey results. 💪

Harbingers,

A new hotfix patch is available now to address some of the latest issues you reported!

• Fixed issue with smelting and weaponsmithing menu locking up if you click “auto craft” without enough resources. (Auto craft button no longer available for smelting)
  
• Fixed issue where leveling up could sometimes block skill book interaction
  
• Fixed issue with the gathering minigame not ending properly if the player doesn’t click at all during the minigame