Here comes the second edition of our Kartuga Dev Letter! About three months after the first one, we would like to take the opportunity to once again address the fast growing Kartuga crowd to share our plans regarding current and future development.

We’ve surely come a long way since March, and many issues we promised to address in the last letter have been tackled:

• Matchmaking has improved quite a bit, due to changes to the system, and the much needed increase of player numbers
• A full-blown options menu and customizable controls have been implemented
• The ongoing work on the servers’ stability has already yielded results, but we are aware that there’s still room for improvement
• As you may have noticed, we have included test versions of the Domination maps to gather your feedback regarding which version you like better – feel free to still provide us with your feedback!

We are very happy about now being able to offer more language versions, and about being able to admit more and more players to the game. Of course we’ve also been monitoring the server performance in order to ensure smooth gameplay for the constantly increasing player numbers – we are aware that there are some problems at the moment, and we will make sure to fix them as soon as possible.

Current Development

Besides continuing to work on the issues already addressed, we are also working on some things that have been suggested by players – we’re always grateful for your suggestions, ideas, and your criticism. PvP is a cornerstone of Kartuga, and we are striving to continuously improve it in order to be able to provide a great multiplayer experience. Currently, these new features are what keeps us busy:

• AFK (away-from-keyboard) detection: nobody likes players who join a match and then don’t play to only harvest the gold; this is why we’re working on implementing an AFK detection mechanism that will prevent matches with players who do not confirm that they’re ready eventually kick players who do not actively play, and lets a queued player join instead
• Rankings: when playing with friends, comparing yourself to their performance is always fun – this is why we’re working on a feature to instantly show your ranking next to those of your pals!
• A new map for Domination is in the making – check out this first draft!

Check out this new Domination map, which is currently in development!

Check out the minimap of the new Kartuga Domination map!

An Outlook on the Future

One thing we will definitely work on is the redesign of the towers: we want to make them look even more beautiful. Furthermore, the new look will make them more distinguishable, providing you with a better user experience because you’ll immediately see what kind of tower you’re dealing with.

This is a first draft of what the different towers might look like in the future

Of course we will also continue to work on the client’s stability and performance, and we’re constantly in contact with the guys over at Unity.

Finally, we’d like to improve the visual feedback regarding your level progress by showing what your new level unlocked: what items are now available, and what other nifty stuff can you now get? Of course you’d want to see what your new level unlocks!

We are working hard to improve the game, and would like to thank you for playing and for continuing to provide your feedback!

Sincerely,

The Kartuga Developers

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Feel free to discuss about this letter at the Kartuga forum!

Now that I have told to you so much about the design, the different ship classes and quests in the world of Kartuga, I will this time take care of one of the key points of the game Pirates: The PvP! And we start by introducing Domination:

As you probably already know, you can choose between the Kartuga PvP modes “Domination” and “Destruction.” In both cases, two teams of four compete against each other – this is where the similarities between these two modes already end. First, I would like to bring you closer to the Domination mode here. One thing I can already tell you, however: Groups that don’t play as teams won’t stand a chance, no matter what level they already achieved!

Once you have queued for the Domination mode, the matchmaking system will look for suitable opponents. Shortly after, you find yourself on a special multiplayer map. On this map, five ghost ships are distributed, which players have to take control of in order to win. Two of these points are located in the vicinity of your starting position, two close by your opponents and one ghost ship is exactly in the middle of the map. If you are close by one of these ghost ships, a progress bar will start filling. If it completely fills itself without you being disturbed by an opponent, you have taken over the point for your team. Then your score ticker is steadily rising. The more ghost ships are in your possession, the faster your score will increase. It is always a pleasure to see when your team has taken all five ships and the points display almost rolls over – check it out in the video! Once you have reached 2500 points, the game is won and you get some team and also personal statistics. A game usually lasts about 10-15 minutes.

That’s the theory. In practice, the relatively simple gameplay of Domination, however, turns out to be guaranteed fun. You have to constantly be aware of the map in order not to miss any attempt to conquer the enemy. At the same time you also have to try to exert pressure on the opposing team by holding your points and constantly pushing for theirs.What me and a lot of other players already learned the hard way: If you do not play together as a team, you have no chance of succeeding, even if single players of your team are are superior to the enemy. battles therefore show the great balancing of the three classes : Teams who cleverly cooperate can provide excellent support for each other and defend key points of the map effectively. If your group has rather fast and maneuverable ships you can constantly show up in different places of the map, attack, steal points and retreat, and avoid direct confrontations. Or a heavily armored protector intercepts the damage aimed at the weaker engineers who then again support him with repair drones. Even higher-level opponents can’t do anything against teamwork and interaction between the classes, unless their team is also working together. So you see, there are a lot of tactics and ways you can be successful in Domination mode.

Soon we will tell you more about PvP in Kartuga and we will also introduce the second mode, Destruction, in the near future. Maybe I can still share a few tricks with you =)

Fellow pirates!

Here comes the changelog for today’s minor update! Most importantly, we have added the new boosts. The team boost is not yet implemented, but it will follow at a later point of time. Please note that these are subject to change.

We changed the boosts to this new structure to provide you with the choice of getting exactly the boost you need – if it’s experience you’d like to boost, why pay more for a boost that affects gold if that is not what you’re after? The boosts were too powerful before, so we split them into this new structure, and furthermore reduced the price a bit – this way, you can get exactly what you want, for an affordable price.

This is the new structure and pricing for the various boosts:

Let us know what you think about the new structure – we believe that every pirate can now purchase one or more boosts, exactly tailored to their need.

Furthermore, we fixed one issue that could cause the quest tracker to be blocked by PvP – that should now be resolved.

Head over to the forum to discuss these changes with other Kartuga players, and be sure to leave your feedback either here or on the forum!

Wow, when I first saw the changelog for the current Kartuga update, I was totally stunned: So many cool new features and improvements to the game design – I could not wait until the new version would go online. Now it’s finally here and I can’t decide what to tell you first. Let’s start with the new reward system: From now on you will be rewarded for regular play. To do this you will receive a little more gold and experience points every day for your respective first PvP victory. On the fifth day you will not only get more gold and experience points, but in addition, also 30 gems! Great news for those, who regularly roam the oceans of Kartuga and love to fight against human players. Speaking of fighting against human players: the matchmaking has once again been improved and the level of each player character will now more important than. As a result, the battles are more balanced and unfair teams belong to the past!

But those of you who prefer to fight against NPCs can also look forward to the update: If you found loot in the past that required a significantly higher level than you had and thus was virtually unusable, this will now change with the new update. The loot from NPCs will be no more two levels higher than your own character level and thus clearly useful. So you no longer need to clog your inventory by items that you can only after you leveled up several times. Also the minimap has now been improved. This informs you about the level of NPC aggression, so that you can see at first glance which area you maybe you should avoid and which one provides safe passage. How often did I escape with an almost destroyed ship from a battle, only to cluelessly sail in front of a hostile pirates’ guns … This now belongs to the past, thanks to the improved map overview!
You can already see, we’re working hard on almost all areas of Kartuga, and the changes described above are only a tiny part of the whole update. The complete changelog can be found here.

So, thank you once again for your great support and extremely useful feedback to us. Only because of this we are able to further improve the game and add new features. Stay tuned, we see ourselves on the high seas!

Ahoy Pirates,

We were so excited when we officially started Kartuga’s Closed Beta at the end of February, and the first players started exploring the oceans. Since then, our development team has continued to work diligently on the game and incorporated new features, improved existing ones and applied lots of minor bug fixes. All this would not have been possible without your active support! Whether in blog comments, on Facebook or on the official forum, you have always given us useful feedback, brought forth new ideas and reported bugs in the game. For this, we want to thank the entire community of Kartuga!

Let’s talk about the update we just published – In short: It resets all server data. For you, this means that all of your characters start at level 1 again, With an emptied inventory and your current rank being deleted. Crucial to this decision was mainly the idea of fairness: Many of you have already played one or more characters extensively, reached a high level and obtained powerful items. Furthermore, from now on, you’ll be able to purchase gems, which was also not possible before. Therefore, it would be unfair to all new players who were not yet lucky and couldn’t participate in the closed beta. In addition, some of the changes that we now made, were much easier to implement for the programmers, because of the reset.

Your login information, social contacts and friends lists remain, of course, so that you can get back to normal immediately after the reset. In addition, I can promise you that this will be the only time we reset the server and your characters. Everything that you earn from now will remain! Therefore – Anchors Away! From now on, it counts!

A computer game is a very complex thing with many different parts. Starting with a general idea of what kind of game it should be, the game designer thinks about what could be fun and what not. After many discussions, ideas and preparations, the programmers will create the first playable version of the game. They are the guys who write the code and make sure that there are no bugs which would destroy all the fun. Sound designers create the background music as well as the sound effects with the goal of an appealing atmosphere.

For me, the graphic design of a game is the most important thing, though. The game could be really good on the programming side and could have an awesome sound, but when the graphic is bad, I won´t play longer than a few minutes. That´s why I am so happy with Kartuga´s great and piraty graphic design. Our designers wanted a style between realism and fantasy. They wanted Kartuga to be a world which is absolutely plausible in itself, but the players should also be able to explore mysterious places and beautiful paradises.

The guys did indeed a great job with this, as you can see in the area trailer, for example:

With every game start, the slightly caricatured look, the bright colors and nice textures let me sink into another world. Besides that, our graphic guys were able to integrate many different graphical facets into the worlds of Kartuga. Because of the great design, I always know if I am in the oriental waters of the Empire of the Sun or shipping through mysterious Kartu. I am still fascinated by the beautiful world and sometimes I lose myself in dreams of the beautiful beaches…

We think that’s just great! Never has there been more action-packed matches in Kartuga and the game has grown a lot. Since the “Board the server Days” turned out to be really popular with you, we have decided to extend them until 29^th of april! So you still have the whole weekend to bring our server to sweat and your enemies to despair. Have fun!

Attention Kartuga Fans: From the 24th until the 26th of April we will deactivate our Kartuga Closed Beta Key System. Therefore, everyone will able to test the game without a key – simply register, or if you already have, log in and you can set sails in Kartuga’s beautiful pirate setting. This way we can test our servers the hard way and see how many players at once we can handle without performance issues. So, everybody wins: You as players can try out Kartuga before the official launch, we will gain valid info on our system’s stability.

We are also interested to see what will happen with the newly introduced rankings, when so many new players at once start the game. We noticed that some of you already appreciate the rankings very much and love to add just one more PvP-session to improve their rank. But the newbies don’t need to worry – our updated matchmaking will keep all sessions as fair as possible, with everyone having similar skills and levels of proficiency. ‘Cause the beautiful thing about Kartuga is that not only the level of yours and your teammates’ ships defines if you win or lose, but rather your abilities and the way your team cooperates. More than once I’ve experienced teams with higher overall levels loosing, because the seemingly weaker ones showed great teamwork. Well, during the “Board the Servers” days week, you can see for yourselves – have fun!

Before some time we have already published a video about the quest system of our pirate game Kartuga and exposed some information about the story:

Now it’s time to focus again on the PvP part of the game:

Cheers of victory or crushing defeat – a round of Kartuga’s domination mode can evoke a wide spectrum of emotions. Matches are often decided within the last few seconds. You’re not paying attention for one second, and the enemy team takes over a control point, shifting the odds in their favor. Sometimes I felt like biting my keyboard, because my team lost a seemingly secure victory. Exactly those situations we’d like to capture in our first Kartuga community event: We want Screenshots of your closest game results. It doesn’t matter if you were the ones that managed to snatch the victory or if you had to admit a close defeat against your opponent – what counts is the difference between the teams’ scores, which should be as low as possible. If you have a screenshot of such a result, please visit our Kartuga forum. Here you have to post your screenshot in this thread. The closest three games posted will be rewarded with diamonds: 1500 for the first place, 1000 and 750 for the respective second and third. Only conditions are: Only one screenshot per player and the game took place after april 16. Our event ends at April 26^th – so go out, play domination and take screenshots, there are diamonds waiting!

Regardless if you rather duel in heated PvP matches or like to do missions for NPCs, our pirate action game Kartuga offers both. You probably have realized by now, that some of the quests are quickly finished, and invite you to try out some of your skills, while others are longer and turn out to be part of a larger story. Those main quests; or story quests, will lead you through the five large PVE areas of Kartuga. Passing remote islands and beautiful beaches, aspiring pirates shouldn’t lose focus for their goal: The lost treasure chest of Kartuga!

According to rumor, it contains a mysterious item, which might stir the balance of power on the oceans. But be warned: searching for the treasure won’t be without danger. On several occasions, you will get caught in the crossfire between enemy factions. The Ithosian Trade League, the Empire of the Sun and Kartu Qucha are trying to get their hands on the powerful treasure. On your travels you follow the tracks of infamous pirate John Greybeard, last known owner of the chest. Further and further you’ll sail, meeting new allies and foes, experiencing wild sea battles, power struggles and vicious treason. During your wild hunt over the oceans you’ll encounter powerful elite enemies, like Robert the bloody or Gondom the Shipwrecker. In order to defeat them, the right tactic and lots of skill are vital. So, better pack lots of ammunition, equip your finest cannons, and get ready for treasure hunting!

In this Video we show you how the quest system of Kartuga works and fight against one of the elite enemies: