☕Tomo’s Teatime(◡‿◡) #11

Tomo's Teatime - Shall We Talk? Hello, Heroes of Bermesiah! It's time for Tomo's Teatime. Today I wanted to talk about the final stages of development for the Solene Continent, as well as future updates we have in store. It'll be a little longer than usual, but I hope you'll stick around to the end.

◼︎ Finishing the Development of the Solene Continent

The Solene Continent was a huge challenge for the development team. More than anything, we wanted the Solene update to be something more than "just a new dungeon added", but a new reason to play GrandChase. I think every person has their own way of enjoying games. Some people like getting stronger, some enjoy PVP, and others like the characters and worldbuilding it has to offer. From those, we believe that the “love for the story and characters” leaves a lasting impact. Although not everyone considers the story important, we hope that one day even those players may feel, “I want to go on an adventure with these characters.” We also put a great deal of thought into the dungeon gameplay experience. Something we realized during this development period was that the process of acquiring items should feel like a "fun and rewarding experience". We will continue improving the game so that repeated play does not feel overly burdensome or like a chore. We also came to realize that as more mechanics and strategy elements are added to each dungeon, repeated play can become increasingly tiring. Moving forward, we are looking for ways to reduce that fatigue while still preserving the fun and excitement that make an action game enjoyable. Master Difficulty was also a new attempt born from that process. Many players enjoyed the thrill of taking on higher levels of difficulty, and we hope to continue expanding this kind of content little by little going forward. Alongside this, we also continued working on reducing the burden of excessive repetitive play through improvements such as the Tower of Disappearance update, removing the Kricktria restrictions, and unifying Demon Cores in Hero Dungeons. Improving long-standing inconveniences like card fusion and registration, as well as the shared inventory, was also a very important task for us. We know there is still much room for improvement, and we sincerely thank everyone who has supported us and shared their feedback. We will continue striving to deliver even more enjoyable experiences going forward.

◼︎ About the Use of AI

We are fully aware that players have shared a wide range of opinions regarding the use of AI-directed effects in recent cutscene animations and music videos. First, I’d like to clarify that all core creative work, such as character design, illustration, and coloring, was done entirely by our artists. AI was only used experimentally for certain visual effects and presentation elements. That being said, we understand that many players felt concerned or uncomfortable about this, and we have given the feedback a great deal of thought ourselves. Many of the concerns raised were completely understandable, and the related elements have since been removed from the game. As for the music video, it was a project that had been in preparation for a long time, so we decided to carry it through to completion. However, looking back now, we feel that showing the actual production process or hand-drawn sketches may have conveyed more sincerity than relying on flashy technology. Going forward, we will continue to place the highest value on the work and creativity of our artists