V Rising Interview – Mystery Surrounding Version 1.1 Keeps Increasing

Jeremy Fielding: Sorry, gotta tease you and keep it vague. I can confidently say the patch will be released in 2025, but there are a few factors that we need to shake out to give an accurate estimate, let alone an exact date. Ask us again in a few months.

Jeremy Fielding: How dreadfully mysterious! I’m afraid I can’t reveal anything yet, but we’ve been leaving some clues around in dev blogs and interviews! Sorry if we’re being kind of snakes about the details, but we don’t want to risk poisoning the well.

Jeremy Fielding: This is one situation where returning players need to give themselves a bit more credit. Except for some adjustments to the difficulty curve (some bosses were adjusted down, but some were adjusted up) that happened after the first week or two, we haven’t really touched the difficulty of the V Bloods. Players are just getting better at the game!

Jeremy Fielding: There’s a Sun Resistance stat that gives you a little bit of leeway there, but we think it’s an integral part of the Vampire fantasy and don’t want to eliminate it completely.

Funny story, though. We had a set we jokingly named the ‘Twilight Set’ that used to give full sun immunity. It never made it into the game in any sense that it was available to players through normal means, but for a while, admins could summon it on private servers. I think there still might be a way to do it. It’s got a very… strappy look if you’re into that sort of thing.

Jeremy Fielding: There were some early ideas to give ‘Vampire Familiars’ that didn’t quite pan out. If we did something like that, it would have to reinforce the Vampire fantasy and not wander too far off into other fantasies. Sometimes, keeping your game focused on what really works is a matter of restraint, so if we do add something like that, we don’t want it to feel super random, which could be really bad for immersion and communicating a clear fantasy.

One consideration was allowing you to take one of your servants with you as a sort of battle thrall, but it ended up feeling like they might often hinder boss fights that require careful attacks and decision-making. We felt it would be more frustrating than actually helpful or cool.

Jeremy Fielding: PvE raids have been a consideration since we first came up with the idea for V Rising, so I don’t think we disagree that it would be a cool feature. Well, it would be a lot of features that all add up into one cool feature, but there are problems to tackle to make it work the way we want it to.

All I can say is that it’s always on our minds, but as a feature, it does not actively have our attention right now.

Jeremy Fielding: The desire is there, sure, but this is a Vampire game! V Rising is about playing a Vampire, and we want to keep it that way. If anything, we’re constantly looking into ways to better accentuate that Vampire feeling, and we don’t want to lose focus on that.

We have considered it, don’t get me wrong. We consider pretty much everything that players ask us for, and we try to keep an open mind when it comes to development. Taking that route would be a huge task, though, you would have to reframe the game completely away from what it is, which right now is a game where you wake up as a Vampire, and your entire focus is drinking blood to gain power to overthrow Dracula.

If you were a Werewolf, a Vampire Hunter, or some kind of Gloomrot Experiment gone wrong, it would be a completely different game from top to bottom. Basically, it would be a huge task, practically a spinoff game in and of itself.

Jeremy Fielding: One of the main reasons we didn’t develop for Xbox alongside PS5 is that there are very specific optimization requirements that require separate work to meet the standard we set for ourselves in what we want to give to our players. We could only focus on one, and the PS5 is the one that worked best for us at the time.

As for whether or not we plan to release on Xbox Series S|X, that’s something we still need to evaluate in terms of if we can spare the resources to do it. Being a small studio can be tough, constantly having to fight not to spread yourself too thin.

Jeremy Fielding: We don’t really view V Rising as a game that has to maintain player interest forever, and we don’t really want you to force yourself to keep playing. If you enjoyed the experience, that’s enough for us.

Personally, I think vampires are cool as hell. I don’t view it as a limitation of our game. I view it as our strength.

Jeremy Fielding: This is a maybe! Funny you ask, it’s something we’re looking into. It’s very possible we’ll be able to make some improvements for it, and I think it would be a nice treat for people who happen to pick up a Pro.

Jeremy Fielding: Overall, it aligns pretty well! For 1.1 we decided to take an approach of adding content into the late-to-middle portion of the game that overall improves the experience of the game’s journey and adds in more content for the people who love our game. We’re really taking 1.1 as an opportunity to expand on the things about V Rising that our players love. We want to do it, of course, but we also view it as a way to give back to our community for supporting us all this time.

Jeremy Fielding: Reviews should probably be used to give an honest review of a game that is reflective of the merits of the gameplay.