ArkCo News - 7/4/14

Hey ArkCoNauts! It’s that time of the year, and the fireworks are most definitely flying here at Handyman! The Summer Sale was crazy for us, and we’re so grateful for all of the support! Thanks to you guys, we are able now to do something we’ve needed for a long time: looking to hire a new programmer. This will be absolutely wonderful for the team, the game, and the future of the company! So again, we want to thank everyone for helping vote for us on the community choice! We are so very excited, and hope to be introducing a new team member to all of you in the near future! Speaking of community, today also kicks off our summer event, and rumor has it that unidentified spacecrafts have been sighted around the forums. What could this mean? Stop by and sign up to get in on the action! http://edgeofspace.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/1616-signup-and-about-the-game/ On the development side, everyone is anxiously awaiting the new patch that will bring those missing critters back and really populate the world with lots of activity. Along with this comes another major milestone for Edge of Space, the introduction of true character progression to the game. We’re excited to get the community’s feedback on this, and see how it plays for everyone. The system is going to allow you to acquire research points that will be allocated to various types of research. This will unlock new schematics for that area of research expertise. There will be multiple ways to gain those points, and in some cases you will be able to control where the points are allocated. We will be giving much more detail on this once the patch rolls out. Along with this exciting news, we do want to give you all a heads up that a character wipe will be required for this patch. Old characters would not be able to fall properly in line with the new progression, which would cause quite a few major issues. To prevent this, we feel the wipe is the better option. On the bright side, it will allow you to experience the new content first hand, and be able to give us your thoughts on it. We definitely did not want you guys to be blindsided by this, and wanted to give you a chance to back up characters if desired, or to opt out of updating your game if you’re not ready to dive into the new content. It’s part of the development process and we’re really fortunate and glad you’re a part of it! Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next time for ArkCo News!