We tried to hit every question we saw come through, but if we missed yours, don’t worry. We’ll be running monthly Q&A sessions going forward, so stay tuned to Discord and keep them coming. We’re just getting started.
01/27
> Will the scoring and tournament system be completely overhauled, or will it retain the horde/materials style from 1.0?
We're taking everything we learned from the 1.0 tournament system and applying improvements to make it more exciting overall. We're also looking deeper at ways to make tournaments more unpredictable and harder to plan around, giving players who build wide and play diverse a real shot at competing against those locked into a single strategy.
02/27
> Will there be meaningful diversity between units and gear, or will combat lean toward mirror/clone matchups?
There's going to be a meaningful amount of diversity between units and gear and how that affects combat systems and the overall meta. We're fundamentally changing how characters are designed, with an emphasis on synergistic and flavorful skills, with each one having very distinct corporation and era identities. We're also overhauling the equipment system entirely. Scaling set bonuses with far more interesting diversity than 1.0 will open up a much wider range of loadouts. Our goal is for every player to be able to make each character their own. There's a lot more in the works and we can't wait to show you.
03/27
> What is the overall style and direction of 2.0?
I'm going to answer this from an art direction and creative direction standpoint, which I think is what you're getting at. In that sense, 2.0 is a complete shift. The entire lore and story behind the game has been rewritten from the ground up, and we've built a much more robust world this time around. The story still revolves around familiar characters from 1.0, but they've all been reimagined into something new.
We took the soul of each character from 1.0, looked at how they played, how players connected with them, and what they meant to the original game, then pulled all of that forward into 2.0. Some of your favorites like Maxine, Felix, Umbranu, and Gus will feel very familiar in how they play, but with new and exciting spins on their original kits introduced by the Era and Corporation layer of depth.
From a lore perspective, each character has been tied deeply into the story. They have backgrounds, histories, desires, wants, and needs within the world we’re building. These are people in a real world trying to find their place in it and overcoming real challenges. You can feel that when you put yourself in their shoes and understand the decisions they’re making.
The overall art style has a nostalgic quality to it, somewhere in the vibe of Saturday morning cartoons: X-Men, Ninja Turtles, Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe. All those older cartoons had this gritty, lived in feel to them with some real-world ties that grounded each universe. We wanted that cartoon style because it gives us a lot of creative freedom. It lets you break the wall every now and then, lets you be fun but also tell deep stories. We want the story to be easy to follow but to also have real weight and room to expand in the future.
We really want to build an entire world around these characters, the corporations, and the museum itself. How does time travel work in our world? What are the overall motives of the corporations and museum? What makes each era special? These are the kinds of questions we’re trying to answer through the story and how players interact with it.
04/27
> What does the tech tree look like?
A bit too early to answer on this one. The second we can share more we will!
05/27
> Will version 2.0 be scalable? What happens after players complete all 8 Eras?
This is a fun question and very telling in terms of how differently we're thinking about 2.0 versus 1.0. There's an assumption here that each era is a level or a zone. It's not really like that anymore; we've turned it on its head.
In 1.0, each era was really more of a zone than an era. Greece, Brazil, US, Japan. It never truly felt like time. It felt like a place. In 2.0 we’re thinking about it completely differently. Each era has a genre to it, rather than just a defined time range. There is time in our game, but instead of saying “this era runs from year X to year Y,” it’s about treating each block of time in a stylistic way.
The Mythic Era is all about Norse mythology, gods and monsters, the Greek pantheon. It's very magic-forward; people don't understand the world yet and it leans into that.
The Gothic Era gets a lot more gritty and medieval. Think witch hunters, dark folklore, a world that feels dangerous and lived in.
The Industrial Era gives you a steampunk world of brass, steel, and iron. Machines of industry everywhere.
The Analog Era is tactile technology: cassette futurism. Technology has wires. It's got cassette tapes and floppy disks. I wouldn't call it synthwave but there will be nods to that aesthetic.
The Synthetic Era is the corporate dystopia. Technology isn't a device anymore; it's a mod. It's embedded in you. It's corporations at their maximum power. Dark neon dystopia, but blatant and out in the open.
The Atomic Era is retrofuturism, and it's kind of a stylistic pivot. If the Synthetic Era is corporate overreach, the Atomic Era is the re-leveling of corporation versus personal power. Technology is your friend here, not embedded inside you. This is robotics; this is the friendly helper. It's also when corporations realize they overstepped. Things come to a head in the Synthetic Era, and the Atomic Era is the aftermath. Unchecked power isn't sustainable, and people push back.
The Post-Atomic Era is where everything that's been building finally breaks. All the corporations, all the consequences, all the choices, they all come to a head. The world is turned upside down and we're in a post-apocalyptic landscape. What exactly happened is part of the story. It's very much a "fuck around and find out" era.
The Eighth Era is [REDACTED]
On scalability specifically: we’re working with a story-based campaign structure rather than a difficulty ladder. Instead of easy, medium, and hard, you’re playing through campaigns broken into acts. In the beginning each act will have seven chapters and each chapter will have seven stages.
The philosophy of acts, chapters, and stages means we can add content wherever we want. We can drop a new stage, add a chapter, create a micro-story for an event, or launch a full expansion. We’re not locked into regions anymore. From a scalability perspective, it’s fairly infinite allowing us to delve into specific eras and locations.
06/27
> Will major Quality of Life improvements from the roadmap be present at launch?
One of the biggest wins of bringing development fully in-house is that we can move extremely fast. We heard every quality of life feedback from 1.0 loud and clear, and rebuilding from the ground up means we get to tackle all of it head on. New story, new systems, new UI, and none of the old limitations holding us back. We're genuinely excited about what that means for the player experience in 2.0.
07/27
> What are the key similarities and differences between 1.0 and 2.0?
It's a fun question because holistically 2.0 is an homage to 1.0. A lot of the features you know from 1.0 are still here, just spun and shaped to fit the new direction. There's plenty you'll recognize. We're not throwing the entire baby out with the bathwater.
2.0 is really taking everything 1.0 established and expanding it as much as possible while making it more interesting, more fun, and deeper overall. We’re adding a lot more features and content for players to engage with across different gaming styles.
08/27
> Will there be a more gender-balanced roster, including stronger male archetypes?
Looking at the art direction going forward, and based on some of the characters we've already shared on the
website and in recent
blog posts, you'll see a lot more coming soon. The art direction overall is extremely different this time around. One of the things I wanted going into 2.0 was characters that feel grittier and more exciting. It's a balance between the cartoon elements and making them feel like they've actually walked through the world.
The original art direction was very low poly and kind of fun and whimsical. This one is going to be a lot more grounded in reality, at least a cartoon reality. That’s going to let us create characters with a lot more depth. They have jobs, lives, histories, and eras they were established in. A character from the Gothic Era is going to feel different from a character from the Atomic Era. A character working for Apex Ordinance Systems is going to feel different from one working for Deltapath Distribution.
We’re focused on building out a roster that is well balanced with gender, aesthetic, and design across the board. One thing we haven’t really talked about yet is that the original game had a lot of humanoid animals. We’ve dialed that back substantially. There are now two primary organic groups: Humans and Chimerans. Humans are non-mutated. Chimerans are humans who have been mutated through incidents or experimentation. Then there are mechanical units, which is a broad description covering robotic and humanoid robot characters. MARK-IV from the original game is a good example of that category.
Next week we will show the evolution of Umbranu from original 1.0 concept to her Atomic Era // BlackVault Capital Character design.
09/27
> Will Umbranu and Young Min return?
Yes, they can return. A good rule of thumb for all original 1.0 players is that every character who had a collectible coin tied to them in the original game is coming back. Maxine will be back. Felix will be back. If a character didn't have a coin tied to them, they've been re-skinned in a way I think you're going to find fun. We'll cover more of that in a future blog post. I'll just leave you with one word: cloning.
10/27
> Will players have more options to mod and personalize characters?
Characters are going to have a lot more depth and a lot more potential for personalization to your play style. That covers both how a character plays, how they level up, and how they can be customized with skins. There's a lot more coming here, including the ability to tie collectible coins to your team loadouts in ways that can affect how characters function.
11/27
> Will players be able to upload custom avatars?
We haven't gone too deep into this yet. I'll definitely bring it up internally and see if it makes sense for the game UI and whether it aligns with the overall look and feel of the world. Everything we implement needs to feel grounded in Aethera, so anything like this would go through that filter first.
That said, this does give me some ideas around creating a set of special avatars that could be unlocked through play in a tiered way. I’m not sure we’d go the route of letting players upload their own photos, but the ability to choose or earn special avatars is a pretty cool idea worth exploring.
12/27
> Will there be a recap or resolution of the 1.0 story, including the museum ending?
This is something we could do. If this is something folks genuinely want, I don't see why we couldn't wrap it all up and put it out there for you. Let me go to the team and see if the original lore writers would like to put something together. We're all very focused on 2.0 right now, so looking backwards can sometimes be counterproductive, but if this is something the community wants, just let us know and we'll see what we can do.
13/27
> How will 1.0 coins carry over or remain useful in 2.0?
I don't want to go too deep into the specifics of how coins work in the new game just yet. We're still dialing that in and figuring out where and how they'll be the most fun and exciting to use. We have a pretty solid direction and once we get it into testing we'll absolutely share the full philosophy.
What I can say clearly: yes, 1.0 coins will be among the most useful coins in 2.0. Players who have them are going to have an advantage going into the new game, starting off with extra power above anyone coming in completely fresh. Original coins are also going to be some of the rarest coins going forward. To be 100% clear: we are not going to reproduce any of the original coins. What we’ve minted is what we minted. What’s been distributed is what’s been distributed.
What we’ll probably do with the coins still sitting in our vault is re-slab them with a new label that ties them to a new aspect of the game. We have leftover tournament coins, team coins, and scout mission reward coins from the original game and we don’t want them sitting on a shelf forever. That’s not fun for anyone. I think it’s great that new and returning players would have the opportunity to grab older coins, but they won’t be labeled the same as the originals. I want to clearly differentiate the coins that return as artifacts from the coins originally won through hard work and play. Those original coins are special and we don’t want to do anything that devalues that experience.
14/27
> Will there be more free-to-play options that don't tie gameplay access to prize eligibility?
Yes. Free-to-play options that don't lock collectibles behind a pay-to-win wall are something we are planning. You saw this in 1.0 with the scout mission system, where players could bring back coin shards and earn scout mission coins. That system was built specifically for free-to-play players and for people who wanted to invest more time in the game and still have a shot at coins they may have missed. The whole idea was to let older coins recirculate back into the system, and we're carrying that philosophy forward.
Obviously we can’t ship coins for free to everyone in the world; I’d love to, but we want to be real about it. The idea that players can still win real-world collectibles is something we’re absolutely keeping. How exactly it’ll work we’ll share more on later, but the answer is yes. No one wants to play a game that is 100% pay-to-win with zero chance for free-to-play players to succeed. That’s not a philosophy any of us want to endorse. We want everyone, from all walks of life, to be able to enjoy the game and have a genuine shot at a collectible, especially since coins are going to tie directly into team power and how your team plays. We want all players to be able to experience that.
15/27
> Will there be restrictions to prevent a single player from sweeping multiple gold (or top) prizes in one tournament?
This is definitely top of mind for us and something we've explored internally. I don't have a direct answer yet because we're still deep in rebuilding how tournaments will work. The history of 1.0 isn't going to be the blueprint for how we do 2.0. We think 2.0 will address this in different ways that 1.0 simply didn't, and we're very aware of the player pain points here.
We don’t want every gold coin to be swept by a single individual, but we also don’t want to ruin the fun for players who are genuinely trying to earn two coins or compete hard. There’s a balance to strike, and we’re going to take it seriously. Each player has a different way they want to play and we want to respect that without letting it come at the cost of the whole community. Stay tuned; we’ll get more information out as we finalize how this is all going to work.
16/27
> Will macro use, BlueStacks, and similar third-party tools be addressed alongside APK concerns?
We are well aware of the situations that can come from BlueStacks, sideloading, and all of that. What I'll say is that 1.0 was not as robust as we needed it to be on the server side. A lot of how that game was run wasn't as strong as we would have liked. There were a lot of learnings from that first release, especially after I came on board. It was useful to see how quickly some of those issues could be identified and fixed.
In 2.0 we’re rebuilding the entire infrastructure from the ground up. I can’t comment on the specifics of this just yet, but holistically the game is going to be much more secure and much more server-authoritative than it was before. We’re building it in a strong way from the start and we’ll be able to make adjustments quickly when needed.
17/27
> Will APK sideloading be restricted to close known exploit vectors?
The blanket answer here is that we are going to do our best to close every single exploit vector we can. That covers how the game is structured, how it's built, the infrastructure behind it, and how the server communicates with the client. All of it is being improved. 1.0 had a lot of room for improvement in this area and going into 2.0 we're thinking carefully about how to close every possible gap.
18/27
> Will the rapid detection and removal system from 1.0's final phase carry forward into 2.0?
Yes. We have a very robust system for going through and identifying anomalies, and we've already tested it on some of our early builds. We have a lot more server-side tools now to look directly at accounts, identify how they're behaving, spot anomalies, and take action on them. Towards the end of 1.0 we got pretty quick at jumping on any weird account behavior, and in 2.0 it'll be even faster. We'll be able to do this live, without needing code pushes or anything like that. Our analytics and tracking are way more robust overall. Everything in this area is going to be significantly stronger.
19/27
> What are the minimum hardware requirements for 2.0?
Generally speaking, both Android and iOS have minimum requirements that we have to build around, including support for older devices. We're going to support as many devices as we possibly can while also making sure the newest hardware looks amazing. It's a balance, and we'll have the specific requirements locked down closer to launch.
The way we’ve built the art style for this game was designed to run better and feel better overall, without leaning too hard on graphic fidelity. We’re working in a 2.5D space rather than full 3D, so a lot less of the system is going to be taxed by rendering, shadows, and all that. We’re going to be able to dial up the visual quality through 2D illustration and 2.5D implementation in a way that still runs smoothly on older devices. As we get closer to launch we’ll put out a full hardware requirements list. It’s too early for specifics right now, but making sure we support as many devices as possible is absolutely top of mind.
20/27
> When and how can players sign up for beta (and alpha)?
We'll be going live with a sign-up form probably later this month. It'll be on the website and filling it out will get you onto our mailing list. That mailing list is how we'll be sending out invites to alpha and beta testing. The exact dates for when those will kick off we don't have locked down yet, mostly because we want to open the doors when it's actually ready. We don't want people in there too early or too late. The goal is for testers to come in, give feedback on real systems, and let us action on that feedback before we lock anything in.
Just stay tuned to the blog and the Discord. The second the invitation form is live, we’ll send it out. Fill it out and you’re in the queue.
21/27
> Will the Discord community remain active and supported?
Keeping the
Discord going was something we went back and forth on, but yes, we're keeping it. What we'll probably do is cut a lot of the older channels and curate it down to a focused set: general discussion, alpha and beta testing, and game features. As we release new information we'll be drawing up threads for you to give feedback in. The community will stay alive; it's just going to transition into a 2.0-focused space. A lot of it will be oriented around the development process going forward. We'll share more on how the structure will be built out as we finalize it, but that's the overall philosophy.
22/27
> Will there be a guild or faction system, and if so, how will it interact with tournaments?
These are really two different questions in my head so I'll answer them separately.
On guilds: that is 100% on our roadmap. The idea that players can form groups, share common goals, and play together is absolutely something we’re aiming for. Details are still pretty nebulous right now and it’s too early to get specific because I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep, but it is something we’re actively planning.
On factions: I think you might just be referring to guilds, but I’ll drop some lore here. In the game itself there are factions. There are eight corporations and the museum. That’s not the full picture but it’s where we’re starting. Each corporation has its own vibe and its own agenda. They’re all listed on the website on the Corps Page and you can already get a feel for how each one is positioned. Definitely check the site out regularly. I’ve been quietly updating it pretty frequently, so just check in every now and then and something new will be there.
23/27
> What does the monetization model look like in 2.0? (Premium pass, cosmetics only, pay-to-win elements?)
Overall we think 1.0 had some solid systems in place and we're building on that. Going into 2.0 we're going wider. We'll have a classic battle pass system, cosmetics, and additional collectibles. Some of those collectibles will be available through our store and will unlock cosmetics or other rewards tied to them.
The bigger philosophy I’m building around is tying cool rewards to physical collectibles. You own the item, you own the cosmetic. That’s the idea. Limited runs are going to be real, so if you want something you’ll need to move on it.
On pay-to-win: there’s going to be a balance, same as any game. We’re going to do our best to keep it fair, but yes, you’ll be able to purchase similar things in 2.0 to what you could buy in 1.0.
We will also be implementing a gacha system with some fun and unique ties to the Eighth Era world to unlock additional characters. It’s something we went back and forth on but we think it’s going to be a really fun addition to the game overall. It’ll be accessible to both paying and free-to-play players, and don’t worry there will be plenty of opportunities for free-to-play players to earn gacha rolls!
24/27
> Will there be cross-platform support (iOS, Android, PC/browser)?
Right now iOS and Android are our targets. PC and browser are interesting but not where we're focused at this exact moment. Totally subject to change if needed, but this is going to be a mobile-first game. Tablet support will be there too, so iPad and Android tablets are covered. iOS and Android out the gate.
25/27
> How will the physical collectible rewards system work in 2.0, and will international players have access?
The collectibles system is probably the most exciting part of our monetization approach so let me expand on it a bit. When you unlock, buy, win, or receive a physical collectible through any method, you'll register it directly to your game account. That functionality is coming in the future, and yes, the ability to register older collectibles from 1.0 will be included. The philosophy is simple: if you own the item, you register it to your account, and you get the digital reward tied to it. If you have an old coin, you're going to get a digital reward in the game for it.
Now whether that reward is a character bonus, a cosmetic, or something else will depend on the specific collectible. We’ll be building out multiple types across the system.
Here’s where it gets really interesting: if you ever sell or trade your physical item, the new owner will be able to register it to their account. When they do, they gain access to whatever digital reward was tied to that collectible, and you lose access to it. The real-world item and the digital item stay connected. That’s something we’re building into a very robust system and it’s going to be a lot of fun. Hold on to your old coins. It’s going to be really exciting to register a bunch of those going into the new game fresh.
26/27
> Will there be a content roadmap or seasonal update cadence post-launch?
Launch is just the beginning for us. We have a huge roadmap and a lot of very robust systems documented that we want to build into the game over time. Right now the biggest question is figuring out what goes into launch and what comes after. What do we need now versus what can we deliver in the next wave?
There will absolutely be a roadmap and you should definitely expect regular updates. We’re aiming to deliver updates across different parts of the game on offset schedules so there’s always something new to explore and experience. With the original game running on roughly a monthly cadence, 2.0 is aiming for more frequent updates from weekly to monthly to quarterly, with overlapping elements, so there’s always something moving.
27/27
> Is there a planned approach for community feedback loops during and after beta?
As soon as we open the doors for alpha and beta, we'll get you the sign-up links within the next month. Once people are in the game and testing, there will be dedicated
Discord channels set up to collect feedback and answer questions as often as we can. We'll be doing dev Q&A sessions, like this one, and probably some live ones as well. We'll talk through the systems, what's working, what players want to see, and what we need to fix before things get locked in.
When there’s an alpha, we will be talking to you. We’ll bring all the feedback internally, look at how improvements can be made, and figure out how to structure things better based on what players are actually experiencing. Absolutely there will be feedback loops throughout the testing process.
Thanks again to everyone who participated. This community is a huge part of why we’re building 2.0 and conversations like this remind us exactly who we’re building it for. There’s a lot more coming and we genuinely can’t wait to show you. Stay locked in on Discord and the blog, sign up for the waitlist if you haven’t yet, and we’ll have more to share very soon.
