FAQ

[Ninah]

Here's a FAQ to explain some game design decisions our team took and answer a few common questions.

We believe most games now follow the same path, and we wanted to do some creative and unique things. Here, I will explain why we made decisions that might sound "odd" to some players.

Release Date

When will the game be released?

🕛 We know many of you are eager to know an ETA on when the game will be released. However, this is not an easy task for any game developer company (not even for AAA). We have a lot of content ready, but there is still much work to be done.

We want to release a game filled with content, especially since it's an MMORPG designed for long-term play. We don't want to launch the game as quickly as possible, we want to release it with plenty of features for the players. We are working hard and aiming for a release around mid-2025.❤️

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2454980/

Heroes X Own character

Can I create my own character?

When we first started creating the game, we had two paths. Both of then are awesome, and can work very well, but we had to choose.

Option 1: Let the player create and customize his own character.

The good thing about this option is because you can create a character how ever you like, be yourself or be who you wanna be. The thing is, when the game is 3d, you can do hair, armor, accessories, and with the model, it will follow any animation you may do, so, you can have a complex customization.

However in 2d pixel art games, thats not the case, we need to draw every frame, from every angle, for every accessory, hair, armor. And thats awesome and can be done, but only if the animations are simple and generic.

Option 2: Doesn't let the player customize the character, and have heroes instead of classes.

In this option you still have skins and color variations, but you don't have your gear showing or a custom hairstyle. Its something like Brawl Stars, League of Legends, Overwatch, that you have the heroes and their skins.

The awesome thing about this option is that you can do a lot of different classes that you normally dont see in RPGs. Usually you only see a few classes such as (mage, knight, archer etc). In Drakantos, for example, Yuki is a Kitsune with Ice Powers, Reya is an magic warrior that fights with a spear and lightning, Iris is a illusionist, etc.. and we already have 20 heroes and planning to release more.

We can do a lot of different heroes with a much more deep gameplay, with custom animations for every attack, each hero have its own stance, combos, victory poses, death animations, emotes, role in the story and even voice acting, competitive pvp with counter picking and different comps, etc. Those things are only possible because we have heroes instead of classes.

If you see other 2d pixel art that have a lot of cool animation, you will not see "character creation", or things like that. Giving a few examples: classic Mortal Kombat, Sea of Stars, Chrono Trigger, Punch Club, Katana Zero, Kof or classic Street Fighter.

Conclusion: Both options are awesome and can work, but we had to choose and the option TWO was the one we wanted. We think it opens a lot of possibilities and its more creative, we already have pixel art games that you have your own character but with simple animations, but a 2d with the traits we are trying to do, is very unique. 🙂

Orbs, Artifacts and Relics

Each hero will have its own talent tree, so can we customize our build?

Each hero has its own abilities that you unlock as you level up and upgrade then as you like. You don't have a talent tree. However, we have other systems that we find more interesting and match the game better than talent trees.

In Drakantos we have the Orbs and Artifacts.

🔮 Orbs are rare items that you can get that change what your ability does. Sometimes just doing things differently or with an extra, and sometimes even completely changing the ability to a new one.

The Orb does basically what a skill three would do, but the thing is, because its a item, you have things to go after in the endgame and look for new builds in rare drops. Not only that, but we can launch new orbs in each update, meaning that even an old hero that you like can get new skills and different builds or mechanics after his release.

💥 Artifacts: You can have 2 artifacts in each hero. They are unlocked in your account and can be used in almost any hero.

Some will have restrictions to use depending on the faction, element, or even some are exclusive for certain heroes.

We plan on doing a vast range of artifacts, some common that you can get in simple quests, and some exclusive to each boss of the game. For example any hero can get a gorgon head from the gorgon boss as an active artifact and use it to petrify enemies, as an undead you can get an common artifact from crypts that summons a bunch of skeletons to help you in the fight, as an elf you can get a nature wind shield that can protect you for a short time, etc.

💫 Relics: You have 2 relics slots, they will grant powerful passives for your heroes, and some can change a lot their gameplay. Like artificats, this system will offer another kind of horizontal progression of your account, once unlocked, you can use it in any hero.

Conclusion
It means you can have two more active abilities and two passives, so you can discover builds and change them as you like for each content. And like orbs we can also release more in new updates. 😄

Open World and Adventurers' Guild

Is Drakantos a MMORPG?

We've seen many people asking whether the game is an MMORPG or a co-op ARPG. In short, yes, it's an MMORPG, but it's definitely different from the conventional ones. We didn't follow the traditional formula and created something more unique. We're trying to combine the best aspects of an open world with the best of dungeon crawlers. We explained the gameplay here.

Monetization

How will the game's monetization work?

We are not exactly sure about the monetization, our team is studying what players want and games do.

At the moment, we have in mind a subscription model to sustain the live service and updates, but we are always open to discussing new ideas. 👍

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Thank you all for reading. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to reach out to us on our Discord.👋

https://discord.gg/drakantos