View attachment 4212
Hello everyone!
There’s been a lot of chatter and questions about what’s next with MCC Island, so I thought it was about time to share some information on what’s coming!
Overall, the launch of MCC Island’s Closed Beta has been a surprising success; we saw A LOT more players enter the island than we expected! I’m genuinely surprised by how consistent the player counts have been, counting the fact that we haven’t really been releasing any major content, and the doors are still closed!
I will say that the paid options of access massively helped out in paying back some of the development costs, so I want to extend an extra thank you to everybody who has helped in funding by purchasing any of the tickets :) (and, of course, you’ll keep the ranks, founder cosmetics and gems that you got
from the paid tickets into open beta and beyond.)
📅 So when is Open Beta?
To release Open Beta, there’s a small list of things we need to overhaul to ensure that our progression systems and economy are in a good place for us to be able to release more content, including new games and other fun features (Did someone say “Fishing system please”??)!
We’ve been working on many things in secret since the release of Closed Beta, and I think it’s finally time we start talking about it!
With this in mind, we estimate that Open Beta is only a few more months away. 🙂
🏝️ What does the Open Beta mean for MCC Island?
View attachment 4213
Anyone can play! Open Beta opens the Island gates fully, meaning you won’t need an invite or fast pass to access the Island any longer.
We released the Closed Beta to better understand what players enjoyed out of MCC Island and to see if our current economy and progression systems work. We learned a lot, and we’re now overhauling a lot of internal systems to set it up in a way that we are scaling into the future. Because of this, Closed Beta means that we’ll see a progression wipe of people’s cosmetics, stats, currencies, etc.
Once we begin Open Beta, this is us saying “We’re happy with our base systems”, and from then on, there will never be any progression wipes in this way ever again. You’ll accrue and keep everything you obtain.
Our 1.0 (Release) will eventually come to end the Open Beta phase, and there isn’t really a massive difference between the two, except that 1.0 means “Okay, we’ve released all the content/systems that we originally intended for MCC Island’s experience, and now we’re moving on to working on bonus stuff!”. No wipes, or anything like that, just a big exciting patch and a celebration! 🙂
💃 What’s coming for Open Beta?
We’re working on A LOT. So here’s a bit of a breakdown of
SOME of the stuff to expect:
🎮 Games
With the Open Beta release, you can expect us to always be working on and releasing new games and content. This is everything we’ve been prepping for, it just didn’t make sense to go ham with new content during a closed state of the server.
We’ve currently got two new games in development that we aim to release shortly after the Open Beta goes live (Well, like, we’re still discussing whether we should release one of the games WITH Open Beta or wait two weeks AFTER the Open Beta release, you know… to stagger it out a bit, keep things exciting…).
One is a unique and unannounced game, which I would best describe as a casual PvP experience, and the other?
It’s Parkour Warrior. Yep. You heard that.
PARKOUR WARRIOR.
View attachment 4216
Parkour Warrior will be an interesting one, as it’ll sort of take the form of three different mini-modes to help with the replay-ability and ensure you’re getting a varied parkour experience (I’m like, really excited about one of those modes lol, it’s gonna be sweatyyy).
Of course, as Parkour Warrior’s core is now built on randomly generated courses, this opens up the option for us to take community submissions of parkour puzzles! We’ll announce this submission process soon, so look out for that if you wish to get involved and credited within the game itself 🙂
After these two games are released, we’re
really looking forward to bringing more games like Meltdown, Survival Games and MAYBE Ace Race?? (I don’t know, we’re still discussing how best to port Ace Race to MCCI while ensuring it doesn’t get stale too fast). There are a ton more games we’ve got planned, too, including unique ones, but not going to share too much on those yet!
Oh, and don’t forget the systems we’re planning to eventually bring in, like the apartment system (player housing), private/custom game lobbies, the fishing system, and so many more!
🏆 Progression changes
For Open Beta, we’re making significant changes to
Cosmetics,
Faction Levelling,
Questing,
Achievements, and
Game Tokens, and also introducing some new systems, including
The Battlepass,
Milestones, and
Scavenging.
✨ Cosmetics
View attachment 4217
Let’s start with the simple change for cosmetics, two things for Open Beta:
Firstly, cosmetic variants will no longer require owning the base cosmetic in order to use them. All cosmetics are just “cosmetics” now, with no distinction between “variant” and “base”. Cosmetics will still be grouped together in the wardrobe, but it doesn’t matter which cosmetic of a group you unlock first; you’ll always be able to use it.
Secondly, to make cosmetic collecting more fun, we’re going to start rewarding Champion Score for each cosmetic owned, based on their rarity. Additional Champion Score will also be rewarded for having all chromas unlocked for each cosmetic group!
🎢 Faction Levelling
The faction levelling road is getting a complete overhaul. Instead of simple levelling roads with rewards for each level (which you’ll now see in the form of the Island Battlepass covered below), faction roads will have large rewards at every 5th level.
You’ll still see a level-up animation with each level, and the Faction XP you earn will go towards
several other systems as well as your faction. This is to keep levelling feeling rewarding.
You’ll also see a special Faction Quest at level 15, rewarding you with a unique Faction Cosmetic for completing it.
This overhaul will also introduce
Faction Prestiging. Once you reach the maximum level of the faction, a prestige challenge will unlock! Completing this difficult challenge will allow you to advance to the next prestige with that faction, unlocking a new levelling road with new rewards, a new faction quest and a fancier faction badge!
🔱 Questing
The questing system is getting several additions and changes to provide a smoother sense of progression. Instead of starting with six quest slots, you’ll now start with 3, and unlock four additional slots through the system of Questing Milestones, explained further below. Quest slots unlocked from paid ranks will remain unaffected by these changes.
Questing now has several new consumable items, including Quest Reroll Tokens, which act as additional one-time rerolls, Quest Refreshers which replace all your currently completed quests with fresh uncompleted ones, and Quest Scrolls which give you one-time quests to complete.
🎉 Milestones
Certain systems will start using Milestones, such as questing. Each milestone system has its own collection of tiered mini-challenges that level up the milestone.
The mini-challenges for each milestone system are related to your progression through that system, for example, your Questing Milestones will be levelled up as you complete more and more daily quests and quest scrolls. This will unlock access to perks for that system such as increased quest rewards, additional daily quest rerolls, etc.
🌟 Badges (Achievements overhaul)
Achievements are being renamed to badges, to better capture the feel we want for the system.
You’ll be able to collect and level up your badges in the same way as achievements worked, but badges will have much more information on them.
Badges will now cover all aspects of the server, and in addition to game badges, you’ll earn badges from things like faction levelling, milestones, Game Passes, quest completions, and much more.
You’ll also be able to pin multiple badges on your player profile, so you can show off the achievements you’re most proud of!
🎡 Game Passes (Game token overhaul)
Game tokens and token shops are being completely ripped out and are being replaced with Game Passes.
These passes will have a number of challenges tied to the game that you must complete to level up your pass. You’ll earn consumables and other helpful items as you level up, as well as unique cosmetics that are themed towards that game. For those who really like to test their skills, the pass also includes an extra difficult challenge which earns you additional exclusive cosmetics.
Game Passes are specific to each game, and will come with both a free road and a premium road, similar to a classic battlepass. This will allow us to have an unobtrusive monetization method for each game, which will help keep our games sustainable when it comes to shipping new content for them!
Unlike Battle Passes, Game Passes aren’t timed to a season and never expire. Over time, there will be multiple per game, meaning you can freely switch between them to choose which you’d like to level up at the time.
🎫 The Battlepass
Island will now feature a seasonal Battlepass with both a free and premium road, each containing a large number of consumable items and exclusive seasonal cosmetics. This pass will be progressed through the Faction XP you earn alongside your Faction levels. We’ll reveal more about the Battlepass in a future dev update.
🔨 Scavenging
Wasn’t going to mention this one yet, but I think a lot of people would love to hear about it! There’ll be a scavenging system which will allow you to exchange your duplicate cosmetics and unwanted items for a scavenged currency, which can then be spent on consumables, unique cosmetics, crafting component trades, and a brand new crafting system we’ll reveal more about in a future dev update. Okay? You loot goblins out there happy now?
🎯 Other stuff
View attachment 4225
There are a lot of other systems, content, and smaller things that I won’t mention yet, but I think I’ve explained the majority of the significant important changes that are required to be able to ship Open Beta. It’s not actually that much when you think about it, so it shouldn’t be long now. 😀
Just wanted to give a big thank you to everyone who’s been submitting feedback and to everyone who’s been discussing MCCI across things like the Reddit, Forums and the several Discords out there!
I’m super excited for Open Beta and everything that’s coming, along with the return of MC Championship Season 3! Hope you are all excited too, I think things are going to be pretty fun. 🙂
🖥️ Developer Q&A
Finally, we’ll be hosting a Q&A with some of Island’s developers tomorrow evening at 6 pm GMT in the MCC Discord, so if you’ve read this and are buzzing with questions, you know where to be!
Join the
Discord!
Speak soon!
