Post-Launch Plans, Addressing Feedback

Thank you: First, I just wanted to thank everyone who downloaded Fire & Maneuver and those who purchased DLC content.

We've been keeping careful note of all of your feedback and believe it is imperative to keep a clear line of communication open with our players. We will be posting news regularly on updates and future plans. Additionally, our development team will continue working to support this game full-time until we are out of Early Access; regardless of the status of the game, we are 100% committed to polishing and fixing issues that you encounter. We will not abandon this project.

Now I'd like to address a few points we've seen brought up:

Game Monetization There has been some mixed opinions on how Fire & Maneuver is monetized. I want to make it clear that it was never our intention to make F&M feel grindy, or frustrating. The in-game currency known as merits do have a few issues that we are resolving immediately. First, players are unable to gain merits against the AI (PVE) or in custom matches, and in some cases lose merits when they lose a battle... this is not working as intended, and we want to ensure that if you are a player who plays solo that you can still experience progression. We will roll out a patch quickly to make merits earnable in PVE and stop players from losing merits or gaining no merits at all when they lose a match. Furthermore, we believe that merit gain is too low even in PVP so we will be doubling merit gain rate . In our weekend patch we will also be gifting everyone a free 3,000 merits , which should be enough for you to unlock a new faction if you've been playing some Quick Matches. Fire & Maneuver was never intended to feel like a grindy F2P game, we apologize for any frustration around that. If you are a player who wants to experience F&M completely for free, you should still have an enjoyable time and not feel pressured into buying additional factions. Finally, there was an issue with our Steam page which did not show our "standard edition bundle" which gave you all DLC for $25 USD. Instead, buying the DLC in bulk is wrongly listed as $34 USD... and we are in contact with people at Valve to get this fixed immediately. For now, use this link directly to get your discount: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/27147/Fire__Maneuver_Standard_Edition/

Learning to Play: We understand that the game can feel frustrating to play without a proper interactive tutorial. We hear you, and it's now on the top of our list to create an interactive tutorial as well as producing an entire video series on all different aspects/mechanics on the game. We've also made sure to correct the issue with the unskippable video tutorial and unskippable tutorial battle and will have both of these be optional in a patch coming out today! Apologies for that.

If you are unsure how to play and did skip the tutorial, you can always rewatch it here:

Bugs & UI: We've been recording all gameplay and matchmaking bugs and have a clear plan to tackle these issues as soon as possible. I do not want to overwork the team so we will begin ironing things out this Monday (the 18th). Expect another patch with fixes and free new maps for you play on in only a week. UI will also get updated with more clarity on movement, facing directions, and additional tooltips. Throughout July we will continue improving the user interface and user experience to make sure the game is clear and enjoyable.

AI: AI is still a big work-in-progress and is currently locked to the "Very Easy" setting. Now that our AI developer has finished our map editor (which we want to release to you guys as soon we can) he can begin making massive improvements to the AI. As a veteran of strategy games myself, I think that a competent AI is the most important thing in a strategy game, even one geared toward multiplayer. Our campaign AI is nearly finished, which means we can begin developing a multiplayer system for campaigns.

Graphics & Optimization We've heard some comments about the art style in game lacking cohesion between 2d sprite soldiers and 3d buildings. We are going to look into applying a shader on 3d objects to give them a more "drawn" style. This is our first ever big game project so getting things unified stylistically is still something we're learning and working on improving. For optimization, it is surprising how taxing the 2d sprites can be- they are being constantly updated from every viewable angle (each sprite is drawn in 8 different angles) and in some battles there are thousands of these soldiers. We have an extensive list of ways we are going to massively optimize the game, but these changes will take us several weeks to implement. That said, optimization is another task on the top of our list, and once completed, we can increase game sizes up to 3v3s for massive battles!

New Features Before we begin adding new features to the game it is important to us to polish and correct any issues listed above. With that said, we still want to make sure a steady stream of free content is released on a regular basis to keep things interesting. A new cosmetic system which allows you to dress your animal avatars in historical outfits is on the way, Patrons who supported the game early will also get unique cosmetics for their avatars. New maps will be added each and every month up to full release including historical battles for the American Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, Crimean War, Italian Wars of Unification, and Austro-Prussian War. At this time we are not considering adding additional factions however until all issues have been addressed, but once the game is more stable we will work on adding new nations!

Conclusion: Thank you again for all your feedback, we've are receptive to all criticism. Our goal first and foremost is to make an enjoyable game, profit will always come second to your satisfaction. This was one of the primary reasons we wanted our game to be free-to-play. Updates will come out regularly, our small team of developers are extremely talented and are committed to making constant improvements.

Best, Griffin Johnsen, Fire & Maneuver Project Director