2023 Roadmap and Update:
TLDR: The next major patch, aiming for the end of March, will have three End-Game modes and the full Crafting System. This will complete the full end-to-end single player experience and so then we’ll begin testing and improving Multiplayer. Also included is a list of other planned improvements.
Summary. Now that the single-player Campaign has been launched and I’ve tackled many of the bugs and nuisances, I’ve been working on the End-Game and Crafting Systems, which are intimately related. If you’ve been following development you may have seen mention of Professions. Originally I planned to wrap all Crafting systems within different Professions which the player could choose from and improve, and would have implications for multiplayer community interactions. However since the End-Game modes and Crafting are so connected, it became apparent that I need to scrap Professions (perhaps just temporarily) and just release the entire Crafting system to all Players along with the End-game mode.
Which means I’ve shuffled up the Tentative Release Schedule (again :D) and bumped up the entire single-player experience, from the Campaign to the End-Game to Crafting to all be complete before beginning to test multiplayer. While I’m extremely eager to exterminate creatures with my friends and push the limits of wombo-combo builds, multiplayer is a whole different beast (and MUCH more expensive), so I’d at least like to have a fully flushed out end-to-end single player experience that can provide lots of replayability and long-term progression, while I start the arduous process of testing and improving my multiplayer systems.
So what’s coming up? The next major release will be three End-Game Modes and the Crafting System. (Possible campaign story spoilers ahead but I tried not to)
End-Game Mode 1: The Waves. The good old tried and true endless Waves of enemies, but I’ll try to keep it spicy by iterating through some additional mechanics. Each successful wave increases your total loot and experience given at the end (and your position on the Ladder). There’s no keys or stipulations required to enter, so if you’re short on loot, exp, or resources it’s a good way to get the ball rolling quickly. I previously had a bare-bones version of this implemented before the full Campaign was launched, but this will be a much more flushed out and complete version.
End-Game Mode 2: Freelancer. After completing the campaign, all regions will open up to you. Each region will have revamped enemies and short thematic challenges, called “Contracts”. Completing the region’s Contract grants certain loot, along with an Ingredient. In the Hub, there’ll be a new Science Station where you can mix and match Ingredients and other Items in order to recreate the Final Boss of the game with a special loot table. Defeating the Boss grants the most powerful Crafting items in the game along with the other specified Items. There are several tiers of difficulty for each region which grant scaling rewards and achievements.
End-Game Mode 3: The Gates. At the Science Station you can create a special Key which unlocks the doors to a place that not even your Handler has found a way to enter. This open-world zone will host all manner of extremely powerful creatures, none of which will take kindly to your presence. There will be a Leaderboard to track your performance, and the higher you climb the more rewards you’ll receive, including some Gates-only loot. And I’m iterating through additional mechanics to keep it spicy. For now, this mode could be considered the “Final End Game” and is intended to be the highest challenge and accomplishment.
And finally, the Crafting System. If you’ve played the game already you have a taste of how it will work with the Rerollers and Maximizers. Basically it’s all about making perfect versions of the loot you find. The new system will take this to a whole new level with Augment Combiners, Gear Modifiers, Stat Juicers, you name it! The goals with this system are two-fold:
1) Firstly it’s to make power progression more linear. What does that mean? It means that you will always have a way to incrementally improve the gear/augments you currently have. If you feel like your build is starting to fall behind as you progress, rather than hoping you get some insanely rare item that spikes your dps back up, you can instead spend some crafting resources to incrementally improve some or all of your gear/augments until you’re back in business.
2) Secondly, it's to provide a very long tail non-passive power scaling limit. In other words, since every single augment/gear you equip can be improved with crafting, that means you’ll have hundreds of slots worth of items that you can continually upgrade in order to push your build higher and higher. And it’s “non-passive” because you have to keep making decisions about how you want to craft things, e.g. what stats to combine, what augment shapes are best, etc.
Other Improvements. There are many aspects to the game I’d like to improve and polish. Some need code rewrites, some just need a lot of time and care invested, and others simply require some money thrown at them. Choosing which to work on and for how long is one of the toughest parts of game development. Here’s a list of the highest priority items that I’m aiming to accomplish within the year: (subject to change of course!)
- Performance improvements. There is still a lot of low-hanging fruit that requires a mixture of code changes and tedious art updates. It will require a lot of man-hours to achieve but it’s an important update for a lot of players.
- Tons more Augments and Gear. I have an absolutely massive spread-sheet of designed augments and items that I’m dying to implement. I’ll likely work on these in batches and release them in chunks over the coming months and years.
- Localization. I’d like to support all the major languages. This will require all three investments: code updates, money, and my time to find/hire/manage the contractors.
- Voice Acting. I’d like to have all dialogue Voice Acted in at least English. This will require a mixture of money and perhaps more costly, my time, since I’ll have to act as manager: finding and managing personnel, iterating and editing the clips, and finally implementing everything.
- Environment Art Improvement. All the regions of the game can be dramatically improved aesthetically. I stopped working on the environments once they became good enough to at least provide a setting to kill monsters, but eventually I’ll go back through every region and try to really make them shine.
- Character Creator. Even though it’s a top-down game, I’m still very keen on having a decent character creator. At some point I’ll do a major re-visit to the current creator to bring it up a few notches. I’ve got lots of ideas, I just need to invest the money and time.
- And finally I have a nice long list of player feedback on miscellaneous things I need to improve. E.g. it can often be difficult to track the player/enemies in high contrast/dark areas; more minion and enemy AI improvements, etc.
And Beyond? After the full single-player experience (campaign, end-game, and crafting) are in good shape, I’ll begin preparing and testing Multiplayer. As a reminder, the game has been built with multiplayer from the beginning. When you play in Offline Mode you’re just hosting your own local server. Many of the abilities, augments, and AI were created with multiplayer in mind so I’m as eager as anyone to get into it with my friends. We’ll start by implementing Steam/LAN multiplayer, where one person in the party acts as the Host, and then, if finances allow it, we’ll migrate to Secure Online servers.
I’m aiming to have the End-Game/Crafting patch ready for beta testing by the beginning of March, with the public launch following shortly when the bugs are exterminated. A huge Thank You to everyone who has supported the project! I hope that what it lacks in AAA polish is made up for with Heart and Soul and deep uncompromising systems. I promise to continue improving and polishing every facet of the game for years to come.