"We rarely hit the spot with the first attempt and prefer listening to our players' feedback to improve what we've released." Interview with Trove developer

Recently, I was able to send some questions to Henrik, the Product Lead of Trove, to talk about the years-long journey. How does a game stick around for a decade? What plans do they have for the future? And how do they adapt to an ever-changing gaming landscape?

Thanks to Henrik for taking the time to answer some questions. Without further ado, here are their responses:

Matt Buckley: If you don’t mind, could you please introduce yourself to our audience? Who are you, and what is your role on the team? How long have you been working on Trove?

Henrik: Hi, I’m Henrik, the Product Lead of Trove, which is similar to a Game Director in common game industry terms. During my work life, I’ve touched on Trove for roughly half a decade now, but it’s only for about a year that I’ve been in this current position.

MB: Congratulations to Trove on ten years! Not many other games, let alone free-to-play MMORPGs, can say that they’ve been around that long. These days, it feels nearly impossible for a new live-service title to stick around for even a year. What do you think led to Trove’s long-term success over the years? Do you have a secret sauce?

H: Looking at the game market in general, we see that most players are loyal to their IPs and prefer playing the titles or successors that they grew up with. It feels similar to coming home when you start playing after a long day, knowing what you can expect while still being challenged and surprised.

I’d argue that it’s the same for Trove, and when you are running through Dungeons or Delves and get into this fight, flight, and find flow, it feels relaxing and challenging at the same time. So, when you are talking about the secret sauce, I think that is the core of it.

MB: What have been some of the most difficult challenges you’ve experienced with Trove? What have been the best moments or highlights?

H: It shouldn’t come as a surprise that we have a solid amount of technology and tools that have aged with Trove. It’s not visible from the outside, but we spend a good amount of time keeping our systems up-to-date and ensuring that our tools are working well. Generations of operating systems and technology have come and gone during Trove’s lifetime, meaning a lot of changes and transitions to accommodate those in our backend.

One of the best moments from my point of view actually happened during the last weeks. We worked for quite some time on moving to new servers, and the move properly improved Trove's performance. Since then, we’ve received a lot of positive feedback about Trove’s playability, and we are really happy to see that our hard work actually made such a difference. Though I can hear some of our players already mentioning that there is still some work to be done, rest assured that we are continuing to improve Trove’s overall stability and performance.

MB: Most players might expect a game to remain relatively the same after so many years. However, from what I’ve read, the team listens to community feedback and implements changes regularly, such as the updated tutorial at the end of last year. Do you think Trove will ever be perfect? Or will you be constantly on the lookout for ways to improve? Is there anything you guys nailed right from the start that hasn’t needed any changes?

H: We are very lucky to have an amazing game like Trove. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, has a good-feeling core gameplay, and offers all of us players as developers an opportunity to explore, grow, and develop. Trove touches so many genres, settings, and modern pop culture elements that we have a great basis for new and challenging ideas.

Will it ever be perfect? No, there is no real perfection. The longer you play any game, the higher the chance you’ll find something that is bugging you. Perfection is a goal to strive for, but that cannot ultimately be reached.

We rarely hit the spot with the first attempt and prefer listening to our players’ feedback to improve what we’ve released. Surely, not everything can be realized, and sometimes small-looking changes have quite some implications on the code or the workflows, but we try our hardest, and I think this is as perfect as we can get.

MB: While on the topic, with a game that’s been around for so long, it can be intimidating to jump into a game where other players might have a multiple-year-long headstart. How do you think about making the game accessible for new players?

H: This is one of the most challenging parts for us as developers, but there is good news. Trove is supposed to spark fun, and it’s not comparable to highly competitive FPS or battle royale games. Sure, we have leaderboards and the competitive game mode Bomber Royale, but they aren’t the core of the game. Trove’s gameplay, as it was designed, is to play with others. You can join Clubs and start building great worlds, or you can decide on a more independent experience and create a cute Cornerstone where players can visit you.

MB: To celebrate the anniversary, Trove’s annual Sunfest is going on right now. Can you talk about how you decided to make this Sunfest stand out from past events?

H: Trove’s birthday is special for us, and this year we decided to celebrate it for a whole month. Sunfest is twice as long as a typical event, and if you take a close look, it is actually split into three events in one. In addition, whoever plays through the Sunfest event will gain a collection of “Yaba-Nata” Pinatas, and each one will grant a raffle ticket for a special, extremely rare mount called the “Yabaki.” It’s never been sold, and to my knowledge, has only been handed out on one occasion in the past. The amazing thing is that each Pinata in Trove grants up to eight players a small number of resources, and we are happy to see that in this year’s Sunfest, players are meeting for Pinata parties and even sending each other birthday presents.

MB: Do you ever see potential for a sequel to Trove, or do you envision a future where the team continues to update the current game instead?

H: We have been asked about a sequel to Trove, and we have been talking internally about a sequel to Trove, but this doesn’t mean that we have a specific plan to develop a sequel to Trove, yet. The short- and medium-term plans all evolve around Trove and new features we’d like to implement. We have lots of ideas, and our focus is on horizontal content that can be experienced by all players, while catering to our loyal long-term players as much as the new players that are just beginning their journey.

MB: I’ve seen comments online from players who have been playing this game for years, growing up alongside it. Have you noticed any shifts in the player base as the years have passed? Do they still enjoy the same mechanics, or have the players' wants changed over time?

H: When it comes to the general player demographics, it is amazing to see that we are still attractive to a young audience and regularly see new players play alongside our Trove Veterans.

What has been noticeable is that fewer players are reading quest texts or task descriptions. We are even actively adapting to this new playstyle. Also, I mentioned that we occasionally reference modern pop culture, which is always changing, and sometimes we need to check if we are in the right era with our jokes.

MB: I’m sure you’re familiar with all the game’s classes, but do you have a favorite? Have any of them been particularly challenging or interesting to implement or improve?

H: I am actually not sure if I have a favorite class, but there are some I really like. As a big Sci-Fi fan, I’m having a great time with the Neon Ninja and I am always amazed when visiting Neon City as Biome. When it comes to a successful playstyle, I’m more of a fan of running around with the Solarion. My Phoenix protects me, and I have better chances to stay alive when doing ranged damage. But I started with a Candy Barbarian and am still often running around with it. Sadly, it’s the melee classes that are currently having a tougher time. Though if you have seen our livestream, you’ll have noticed that we are working on a new system that will provide melee classes with some extra survivability.

MB: Is there any direction you would like to see Trove go in the future? Any new content or mechanics you’d like to see added over the next ten years?

H: We have a collection of ideas, and they could potentially already fill the development pipeline for the next 10 years. There’s so much in-game content that requires new, meaningful features, and we sometimes have a hard time deciding which we start with first.

But I have to ask: How often have we seen developers promising roadmaps and then leaving us disappointed? I’ve been playing games for more than 30 years, and the worst game experiences I had were the ones where my expectations were built up so high that the actual moment I played the game... it felt underwhelming. And it wasn’t always just a bad realization of the announced feature. I made my own feature in my head and expected the devs to realize it the way I imagined it. That never turns out well. Next to expectations, we are living in a fast-paced world. We love pop culture, and we would like to stay connected with the present. Having plans for several years appears to us as counterintuitive, as we’d be imprisoned in expectation management and would have to explain a lot.

What I can say is that we are regularly talking about biomes, classes, game modes, and meaningful features that give existing content an additional layer of complexity and optimizations for players to start playing. None of this has a due date, but this is the content we are focusing on.