Thank you for playing Fist of the North Star LEGENDS ReVIVE. I’m Producer Iwamoto, and I want to start by apologizing for the long time it took to write a new Producer’s Letter. Last September we celebrated the 3rd Anniversary of LEGENDS ReVIVE. It is because to all fans and players that we were able to reach this date, and I want to extend my deepest gratitude to you.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that LEGENDS ReVIVE has treaded it’s path along with the pandemic. After the cancellation of the Tokyo Game Show stage presentation in 2019, each milestone since was unfortunately matched by another upsurge in Coronavirus cases, impeding us doing proper events. But now, on our 3rd year Anniversary, thanks to the know-how we now possess about how to carry out an event in our current situation, we were finally able to hold a proper celebration.
HOWEVER!!
A typhoon happened… It must be our destiny… And for a moment we thought we wouldn’t be able to hold the event, but we did so without a hitch, along with 23 players from all over Japan, celebrating 3 whole years. On that day I was humbled by coming into contact with our players. Their love for Fist of the North Star and their favorite characters, their sometimes stern opinions on management by the Operations Team and expectations about the future of the game and improvements that could be made all reignited a fire in me and the Operations Team as a whole.
Also on that day we were able to share the start of something we had been wanting to do since the beginning of LEGENDS ReVIVE, which is the new element of past successors of the Hokuto Shinken Style that weren’t featured in the original series. This is the advent of a new Fist of the North Star Legend directly to our Smartphone app, and I believe this amazing development wouldn’t be possible without all of our players. I may sound like I’m bragging, but I feel the power of LEGENDS ReVIVE in the way fans and players have supported it, and that has come through to all the key people involved in continuing the Fist of the North Star story starting with Hara-sensei. I’m thankful for being able to see history move. Together let’s tell the story of a new era of Fist of the North Star! I’m counting on all of you!
(There were also other announcements at the Anniversary event, but I’ll leave those for Fujita-san to share.)
Thank you all for your support of LEGENDS ReVIVE. This is Director Fujita, and on this letter I’d like to touch upon the offline event that took place on September 19th and the questions that came up in the Q&A corner.
■Will there be a schedule release for the Channeling Point updates for past fighters?
“Raoh”’s Channeling Points were made available with the October 25th update.
Next up are Hyoh and then Kaioh. After them we’ll go for a few fighters in their release order, with Thouzer, Fudo and Juza amongst others.
■Are fighters higher than the UR category going to be available?
If you mean fighters in categories such as “LR” and “SSR”, above the UR rank, I can say that we have no plans for it at the moment.
■What are some of the upcoming fighters in the future?
This was touched upon on the offline event, but we’re thinking of implementing a UR version of Heart among future fighters.
Also, Juza (Kokuoh) has also been released recently. This fighter’s abilities allow him to buff the Six Sacred Fists of Nanto which, as some people may have noticed already, indicates that another Sacred Fist of Nanto fighter will be joining just like Virtuous Gaze Yuria joined recently.
■Will there be any contents in which we could use our SR characters and lower in the future?
We want to increase the amount of Alliance Battles exclusive to SR characters and make them for 6 fighters, effectively creating a sort of separate Dojo for SR characters. That should help make these characters more valuable assets.
■Why does it take so much time to fix bugs?
First, I want to apologize for the inconveniences caused to all players.
We constantly try to act as quickly as possible, but some bugs and errors take time in identifying in terms of effects, scope, influence on the game, origins, etc.
Back in spring we brought up the strategies we would use in minimizing the number of bugs.
These range from improving our flow regarding checks, reorganizing our files in order to simplify anything that is too complicated, amongst other improvements. However, we haven’t been able to stop errors from occurring despite being on our 3rd Anniversary.
Regarding these recent errors, we’ve introduced new tools to our workflow that allow us to better understand why an error might happen or what impeded us from checking it beforehand. These tools should allow us to have more transparency on the details of our work.
This will go hand in hand with us solving any issues we manage to identify through this process and allow us to cover everything we need without having to rely exclusively on any specific staff member for different kinds of tasks.
Having had 3 years since our debut, internal systems in the game (not only the fighters) have become more complicated, so we plan to review them once more.
■How long does it take for a bug to be announced from the moment of discovery?
We try to reply to all inquiries as fast as possible. But because we cannot make any mistakes when sending out a reply, there are times in which it takes longer to identify the error and what it affects, its causes, etc.
The team will continue to work on improving the time in which we take action to any error notifications we receive.
■Customer Support has a bad attitude
There are moments in which we need to reply with ready-made phrases since we need to figure out the reason a bug might have shown up and what the conditions were.
It is also difficult for us to reply soon after an inquiry was made or for an inquiry that is being investigated at the time, so Customer Support might have no choice but to reply in a similar manner during a follow-up.
As mentioned, there are errors that we need time to investigate and arrive to a fix, but we want to shorten this time as much as we can.
Once again, I offer my apologies for the inconveniences made in these occasions.
■What’s the trigger for a bug or error to be announced or be kept unannounced?
There are times when we might get a bug report, but what’s being reported is not an error and is rather the game working as intended but the in-game explanations need to be revised to to make it fully clear.
There are also moments when the investigation of a bug takes longer until we fully understand it.
Current bugs are constantly being investigated and worked on until solved.
We are also looking into having a page dedicated to the status of work being done on specific bugs.
■Regarding future collaborations
We understand that there are both players that enjoy and look forward to future collaborations and also players who think there are too many collaborations.
While we want to be careful when considering collaborations with IPs outside of the Fist of the North Star lore, we consider that events featuring the official side stories are a way to further deliver a Fist of the North Star experience to our players.
With that said, collaboration events have been held with similar events for a while now, so we’d like to adjust them a bit more to provide a new way to enjoy them.
■I can’t get Technique Scrolls for Collaboration Fighters
To be honest, giving away scrolls has been difficult due to IP rights issues.
However, in the future we intend to add scrolls exclusive to collaboration fighters and make even past characters easier to level up.
■Amiba’s Research only builds up frustration despite the rewards not being very good
We intend to not only revise the rewards from Amiba’s Research, but also add it to the Auto Skip feature to lower any unnecessary frustration.
■Won’t you add any further UR fighters to the regular Gem Gacha?
We updated the available UR fighters to this Gacha with the August 30th update to Ver.4.0.0. However, we cannot answer as to what the pace to which new fighters will be added to the roster will be, though we’d like it to be shorter in the future.
■About future developments
Regarding future contents, we are looking into increasing the rewards of already existing features and making the leveling up of fighters somewhat easier. We’d also like to increase the number of events with a harder difficulty.
As a new event, on August 30th we added the Compassion Core and Guardian Core to be used to strengthen your teams.
One thing I want to make clear is that just because the main story of the original Manga is ending in the game, it doesn’t mean that this title’s service is coming to an end. The Hokuto Shinken style, carried each generation by one person, has successors that we would like to showcase in future events. We’ll get to see what kind of people they were, how they fought and how they lived, together with their friends and rivals. Have you ever taken the time to imagine this?
This new plot will of course take place with the participation of Hara-sensei, as well as everyone involved in the making of the original Fist of the North Star. While this new expansion is still on its initial phase, I’d like to provide updates to players once possible.
■Finally
Next year marks the 40th Anniversary of Fist of the North Star and it should be celebrated. That’s why we are aiming to show you a new face of LEGENDS ReVIVE in the coming year.
We’re moving from reliving the original story into a completely new experience! I hope you keep your expectations high for the future of LEGENDS ReVIVE!
