Skull and Bones is na een jarenlange ontwikkeling eerder dit jaar verschenen en het uiteindelijke resultaat was enigszins teleurstellend. Maar we kunnen niet ontkennen dat Ubisoft post-launch altijd veel zorg draagt voor z’n titels. Zo zit het eerste seizoen er bijna op en dit wordt opgevolgd door een tweede.

De game had wat moeite bij de release om aan de man te komen, maar verschillende kortingen, trials en meer hebben klaarblijkelijk het schip weten te keren, want Ubisoft zegt dat ze geweldige respons hebben gekregen van de community en op basis daarvan hebben ze de toekomst van de game bepaald.

Via een uitgebreid blogbericht maakt de ontwikkelaar nu bekend wat er in de pijplijn zit voor het tweede seizoen. De details hieronder op een rijtje:

SEASON 2 KEY FEATURES & IMPROVEMENTS PREVIEW

With Season 2, we’re bringing many improvements to our end game loop, adjustments to our seasonal formula and a ton of new content which we believe will address some key concerns from the community.

1. Ship Upgrades, which will allow you to upgrade your ships to improve ship stats and gain new perks.
2. Fleet Management, which will allow you to assign ships to manufactories to automatically collect pieces of eight.
3. Helm Leases, which will allow you to acquire a manufactory of your choice.
4. New PvE & Solo Game Modes
5. Balancing the costs of our Manufactories

These changes come in addition to the new content (new boss fight, new sea monster, new ship, weapons, armors and furniture) that will be introduced and communicated to you through additional dev updates and devblogs, in the upcoming days/weeks on Discord, Reddit, Social Media and our website.

SEASONAL RESET

With Season 2 right around the corner, many of you have been eager to find out what exactly is going to change when Season 1 ends.

REWARDING YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS AND PREPARING FOR SEASON 2

Our seasonal model on Skull and Bones is designed around the idea that players fight against seasonal antagonists, Sea Monsters and other Ghost Ships to protect The Helm’s smuggling activities and grow both their profit and influence in the Indian Ocean. Each new season in Skull and Bones sees the arrival of a new threat, coming to disrupt and force the Helm and its associates to adapt the way they operate and manage their trading network.

With Season 1, we deliberately took the time we needed to carefully monitor and understand your feedback and the way you engage with our game content. The learnings we gathered throughout the season helped us make the necessary adjustments and balancing to our end game economy, features, and systems. Now that Season 2 is coming, we can share more details on the full list of rewards that will be handed out to the most successful Kingpins from Season 1.

The first thing we announced during a previous livestream of The Deck was that everyone who reached the Diamond Rank on the leaderboards by the end of Season 1, would receive the cosmetic set at the beginning of Season 2. In addition, we will also be rewarding those of you who successfully and significantly grew their empire, with some of the new items coming with our Season 2 update: World Helm Leases and Ship Upgrade Parts. These two items will become key in growing your fleet of ships, acquiring the manufactories of your choice, and get a head start in shaping your empire to your strategy.

As stated above, with the end of each season, and the arrival of a new antagonist, comes significant disruption to The Helm and their smuggling operations. As a result, all players will see their ranks on the leaderboards, their manufactories, and upgrades be reset. Not all is lost however, as your efforts have been recognised by The Helm’s representative, who will trust you with new tools to re-build your empire and prove your worth as a Pirate Kingpin once again.

Last but not least, we will not be fully resetting the number of Pieces of Eight collected throughout Season 1 but applying a soft reset instead to all players who accumulated more than 300,000 Pieces of Eight. Effectively, most of you will get to keep all your Pieces of Eight in your wallet, while a few will see their balance reduced to that number.

Ubisoft zal binnenkort nog meer informatie over het tweede seizoen bekendmaken, maar de bovenstaande zaken zijn in ieder geval de belangrijkste kernpunten waarop seizoen 2 is gebouwd.