Hey everybody. Just taking a moment to check-in and update you all with the roadmap for 2020.
Please note that roadmaps are provided to give the community a sense on what we are working on and what is driving our decisions for what we are focusing on in the coming year. None of this is a promise or a guarantee. We always prioritize quality over deadlines and all dates and timelines are estimated to the best of our current ability. Many long time fans will know that we often add new things to these plans which often shifts things around a bit, so it is recommended to avoid scheduling your vacation plans around our dates.
This roadmap is subject to change at any time, but as we have done in the past, if any of this does change significantly we will post new information as we have it.
A quick recap of 2019.
2019 was a fantastic year for DST. We added four new characters to the game and we refreshed three more characters. We also had three substantial content updates with Return of them: Turn of Tides, Salty Dog and Hook Line and Inker. We also saw big updates to our holiday events Hallowed Nights, Winter's Feast and Year of the Carrat. During all of that we hit our highest player concurrency record back in April (during a free weekend) and after that craziness had stabilized we just saw our second highest concurrency last week.
For those of you who aren't super into numbers, what that means is that Don't Starve Together is still growing quite nicely. This is also a clear indicator that our plan of character refreshes, content updates and new characters has been working to help keep a healthy community and continues to keep the game interesting for new and returning players.
On that note, we're still very aware that many people want to see events like The Forge and The Gorge come back. While we are not prepared for that right now, we do understand that this is something many of you are interested in and we are still discussing ways to address this in the future.
ReForged and Re-Gorge-itated are both super good so until we have something new we want to contribute, you should check those out.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1918927570
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1938752683
Oh, and not for nothing, we took great strides in console support. We didn't always hit the mark, but most everything we can control directly has been working out quite well over the past year or so. We will continue improving console support as best we can through 2020.
What we're doing in 2020
We're going to continue with generally the same plan as last year. More character refreshes and content. However, at this time we aren't going to commit to a specific number of new characters. While the new characters were very well received and successful in selling well enough to help fund development we also don't want to add new characters just for the sake of it. With that being said we are currently in the process of creating at least one entirely new character for the future and we will have more information about them as we get closer to release.
For our update timeline, we expect that we will have something being launched at least once a month. We don't want to do more updates in a shorter period of time so we can be sure the updates are more substantial and interesting. Depending on how that lines up we may see a couple updates during some months and sometimes we may go a little past a month for the next update, but our goal is that you have something interesting to look forward too at least once a month.
Our first character refresh is a bit of a secret at the moment - but you might be able to guess. You will be seeing more info about that during the first or second week of March. For now, enjoy this small teaser from the update trailer we are working on.
Lore. Yep. I said Lore.
Something we know everybody wants is more lore. I am not going to say much more for now. But we know you want more lore. It would be smart from this point on to get back into scrutinizing things we put out for secrets. Not everything, but keep your eyes open. Not this post though. There are no secrets in this post. So scrutinizing this post would probably be a waste of your time. Probably. (But really, there is nothing to find here. You'll know when there is something to be found.)
While Maxwell enjoyed hiding little secrets for you to find and seemed to bask in your attention, Charlie has been quite content to work from the shadows, planning and patiently working to put her pieces into play. Things will become much more apparent as her plans become to take shape and she finally takes center stage.
The other stuff.
We're also going to continue doing other cool new things. We really want to work on Klei Rewards more and streaming items have been really popular so we're thinking of new and interesting things to do with these while continuing to support them throughout the year.
And finally.
We're also aware than some players would like us to make more substantial changes to the overall base game of Don't Starve Together and change things up a bit. While this is not a focus right now, we do understand this is something that is being discussed and I invite you to continue those conversations. Don't Starve Together isn't going away any time soon, so keep it coming.
All of your feedback really helps us figure out where we want to put our resources and it goes a long way in helping us decide which direction to steer the ship. You're all a huge part of the growth of DST and we couldn't have done it without you. Thanks for hanging out with us and sharing your fun stories and interesting ideas. Please keep sending us your thoughts and feedback and we'll keep trying our best to build the world of Don't Starve Together in new and interesting ways.
Have fun out there!