Brighter Shores Dev Post Explains Why Professions Are Tied To Episodes

A unique feature of Fen Research Ltd’s new MMORPG Brighter Shores is the separation of combat professions based on episode (or region). When a player completes an episode, they do not bring the jobs they’d been leveling into the next episode with them in order to continue the process. Instead, new professions are introduced and leveled. As players move out of Episode 1, Hopeport, into Episode 2, Hopeforest, they leave the old professions behind and pick up Scout, Woodcutter, Gatherer, and Carpenter.

This has caused a bit of confusion for players, partially because the system reset their level indicator, making it seem as though no progress had really been made. The other concern was that the time spent on leveling the original professions was wasted because they won’t be using them again. As it turns out, players will still use the Episode 1 professions as the developers plan to continue to add more things for players to do in Hopeport, where they’ll need to use the Episode 1 jobs.

The purpose behind this system is to ensure that players who have a limited amount of time to play get the same enjoyment out of the game as those who can invest several hours a day. It also addresses the issue of players potentially out-leveling newly introduced content.

One thing the devs did say they are changing in response to player concerns is how levels are shown. Now, instead of showing the level of the current job in the current episode, a player’s level will be shown as the total levels of all professions in all episodes. This way, players won’t feel like they’ve lost everything. The devs are also taking player suggestions into account, some of which have been listed in the post on Steam.

As Andrew Gower says, "please give it a chance."

On an additional note, Andrew Gower shared a post this morning outlining a few things included in today’s update. Among these are the ability to customize keybinds, clicking on the minimap to walk, and an improved quest difficulty indicator.

Today's Brighter Shores update includes:

1) You can now customise your keybinds. (from the settings panel).

2) The 'close interface' keybind now works on more interfaces.

3) You can now click on the minimap to walk (only as far as an adjacent room). And your route path is now…

— Andrew Gower (@AndrewCGower) November 8, 2024