Nightingale CEO “not satisfied” with launch as player count plummets

3.5

Nightingale is one of the prettiest survival games I’ve seen, yet its launch via Steam Early Access has been met with a rather tepid response from players. Released just over two weeks ago on Tuesday February 20, the Nightingale player count has fallen to just over one fifth of its launch peak, while Steam reviews sit at a ‘mixed’ 61%. Inflexion Games CEO Aaryn Flynn says he is “not satisfied” with parts of the launch, saying, “there’s much more to do.”

Flynn, a former long-time BioWare general manager who worked on the games including Dragon Age: Origins, starts his message to the Nightingale community with a “heartfelt thank you to all of you for your patience and support” in the weeks following the launch of the new survival game. “While we’re happy with some elements of our launch,” he continues, “we’re not satisfied with a number of others.”

Among the issues Flynn lists are disruptions to the Nightingale server status that have left some unable to play solo or join in with Nightingale multiplayer sessions, “confusing or missing features for core systems like crafting,” and “important updates to combat.” However, he says that “there’s much more to do, and we wanted to share our next round of most important updates with you.”

For the short-term, Flynn says the priorities include reducing connection issues, an option to skip the tutorial, improvements to the farming loop, and an option to auto stack items to storage. There are also fixes for ingot crafting exploits and additional gameplay balance changes in the works – though there’s not yet any word on whether these will affect the best Nightingale weapons.

In what it lists as the “medium-term,” the team is planning the promised Nightingale offline mode, the ability to queue up crafting and to craft from storage, updates to questlines, new building components and projectile weapons, additional NPC functionality, and improved enemy AI and behavior. Beyond that, it’s also working on new biomes, weapons, enemies, and Nightingale realm cards.

“Rest assured the team has been working very hard on these areas and more,” Flynn says in closing, “and we look forward to sharing specifics on these updates with you very soon. Until then, happy adventuring in the Faewilds.”