There’s something new again The settlers. After Ubisoft revealed with the first beta in January what had changed in the development game after a long period of complete blackout, a period of silence was immediately heralded.
And the reason was obvious this time. The beta of The Settlers was an absolute disaster – and that’s no exaggeration. Because not only did we at GameStar have to draw a more than sobering conclusion, the beta testers were also extremely disappointed by the new direction of their beloved settler.
This did not go unnoticed by Ubisoft, the publisher postponed the strategy game indefinitely and it has been silent since then. But now, for the first time, what the development team has achieved has been discussed in a new blog post on the currently active test server.
The Settlers (2022) – View Screenshots
That’s what the new post is about
As early as May, the Ubisoft Düsseldorf team announced that a test server would be set up for a closed group of people. Different versions of The Settlers are to be tested here again and again and the players can give regular feedback. Over 1000 players are said to have access to this server so far and 500 more are planned soon.
According to the blog entry, there have been 3 major updates in the months since the test server was launched. This is said to have implemented a lot of changes, usually based on tester feedback. The following changes are mentioned:
- The economy has been overhauled.
- The combat system has been overhauled.
- Improved the rush situation on the skirmish maps.
- New maps have been added.
- New tutorials have been created.
- The cost of buildings has been adjusted.
- There were changes to the production chains.
- Maps, settlements and units have been graphically improved.
- Special places were created for each map, which should give the maps their own identity.
- A lobby for playing against friends has been set up.
- There is now a single player save system.
- The user interface has been improved.
- It is now possible to customize keyboard shortcuts yourself.
- Game balance, AI and bugs will be permanently revised.
The plan is to collect much more feedback in the future and to invite more people to test. How long the team plans to continue development in this way remains unknown.
What does that say about The Settlers?
The Settlers was surprisingly conceptually immature in January’s playable beta. The game was supposed to be an RTS, but it didn’t offer any long-term challenge and all in all it played pretty slow to boring. But there was more criticism. Many fans were actually looking forward to the fact that The Settlers will once again be a real development game in which the focus is on building your own settlement.
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That was also originally planned for the new settler, at least as long as the series inventor Volker Wertich was still involved. However, he left the project at some point between the postponement in summer 2020 and the re-announcement in January 2022. During this time, Siedler got a new coat of paint and was now more RTS than a building game.
Based on the current development priorities, it can be seen that this path will be retained. So Ubisoft seems to focus on making The Settlers entertaining as an RTS. There was also criticism of the small pool of cards without random elements. It seems that the maps are still non-randomly generated. So the team optimizes the current version and doesn’t throw the whole concept overboard again.
What do you think of the current course of development? Are you optimistic or have you already given up all hopes? Feel free to discuss in the comments!
