Hello there, Landmarkians!
As promised, here?s the ?roadmap? of what we?re adding to the game, and more importantly, why we?re rolling things out in the order that we?re doing them.
NOTE:There are some categories of things that we are not including in this roadmap. Stuff like new materials, new props, new biomes, new recipes and design tweaks will be rolling out continuously and aren?t part of any single milestone. You should expect to see those changes like that coming in all the time.
ALSO NOTE:The ?Phases? we describe below have almost nothing to do with whether we?re calling the game Alpha, Closed Beta, or Open Beta. Those ?label milestones? will be determined almost entirely by how comfortable we are letting new groups of people into the game. So (for example), Closed Beta might arrive in the middle of Phase Two. (Again, that?s just an example?not a plan.
And of course, everything you?re reading here is ?time approximate?. We?re aiming at the timelines, but software development is?fraught with peril. It may take longer to get things done.
But as far as big stuff, here?s the list.
What is Phase One?
Phase One is what we?re working to accomplish in the following four weeks or so.
What?s the purpose of Phase One? It?s designed to do the following:
- Let all you folks talk to each other easily. To form friends, groups, and above all to benefit from having other players around you.
- To allow and support cooperative building.
- To make building a better experience.
- To make the world bigger.
That?s it. Doesn?t sound that ambitious does it? But it is a LOT of stuff coming your way in the next few weeks. Stuff that you may not even realize you?re missing until you see this list.
Phase One includes:
Better Communication
- Claim Ratings : Bragging is fun. Getting comments and ratings from people that stop by your claim can also be fun. Having ratings lets us also add leaderboards and let the best of the creators in our community begin to surface. They?re also critical for our Player Studio presentation later on.
- Chat: We?ll be improving chat with better channels, customized tabs, and more. Why? Because if you can?t communicate easily, you might as well be playing a single-player game.
- ----We?re also adding the ability to add links in chat so that you can designate a waypoint on the map and have it show up in chat for other people to click and see.
- Key configs: Yes, you need to be able to customize your key mappings. Duh, right? It?s coming.
- Voice over Internet : Yes, many folks use Teamspeak servers (or whatever is the flavor of the month). But not everyone has a server to join, and we?ve found that forcing people to use external voice servers often fragments the community severely. So that?s getting added also.
Socialization
- Groups & Group Harvesting Bonus: Right now, when you harvest, it?s a race for those resources against other people. It?s almost a PvP-ish kind of feeling. We don?t want that. So the systems are changing so that it?s advantageous to group together when harvesting.
- We?re also allowing groups so it?s easy to have a private chat channel and see each other on the map.
- -----Friends: Self-explanatory, but you need a way to see who is online from the folks you know, as well as to be able to find their claims and see them on the map.
- Twitch/Facebook/Twitter: Some of you will want to brag. Some of you want to stream. And to be honest, the more you folks do that, the bigger the game can become. So we?re trying to make it easy for you.
Moving around the world
In general, the dev team does not want to turn the game into ?instant travel?. However, a large part of the game is oriented around being able to drop by and see someone?s claim and buildout. So we?re carefully adding some quick-travel options to make quick visits less onerous, but at the same time still encouraging exploration through the world so you get accidental discoveries as you go.
Plus, keep in mind that you?ll be digging deep now. Walking all the way back uphill to return to your claim may not be the joyous experience you think it might be.
It?s almost certain that most of these options will be somewhat limited in usage by requiring either crafting of an item or requiring a certain amount of time to expire before reuse.
- Teleport to Claim
- Teleport to Hub
- Teleport to Friend
Better Building
- Unified Tools : We have way too many different ways to rotate, translate, and scale things. There should be a single system across all tools so that you can manipulate them all in the same ways, and those ways should be intuitive and easy to use.
- New Smoothing Tool : The current smoothing tool is very powerful. It?s also persnickety and it requires non-intuitive things like ?air buffers? around a column to smooth it properly. We can make it better, so we?re doing that.
- Claim Permissions: Building by yourself is fun. Building something grandiose with other players is even more so. Permissions allow you to cooperate together on your claims.
More Space
- Caves : The surface world is cool, but it?s only the top layer of what we promised. So caves are coming. Lots of spaces to mine through and explore. Why add them now? Because the resource tiers are *supposed* to be spread down through the crust of the world, not segregated on separate islands and spawning on the surface. You?re not playing the intended game yet, and we need to move the game closer to the real end-goal now.
- Attached Claims: You?ll first be able to add a new claim onto any existing one (whether to the side, above, or below). This will be the first time we let you have more space to build.
- Additional Claims : After Attached Claims are working well, and we have more server hardware in place, we?ll also be letting you establish more claims in different locations. It?s coming!
- Claim Upkeep : Empty and abandoned claims are not cool. So we?re introducing Upkeep which is basically a small amount of in-game coin you have to spend to keep your claim from being repossessed into the world and made available to other players. (NOTE: If you don?t pay your upkeep all you lose is your spot in the world. All your resources, props, crafted items, etc., are saved in your inventory and your buildout is templatized and saved for you.)
Phase Two
Phase Two is scheduled to be done the in the four weeks AFTER Phase One is complete. And it includes some really big systems that will have huge impact on the game.
NOTE:These systems are being developed during Phase One. You just won?t *see* them until Phase Two because they?re too big to finish and test before March.
Socialization
- Guilds: Bigger than a friends list, but essentially fulfilling the same role on a bigger scale. But now with a cool title and a few other perks.
- SOEMote: You knew it was coming! We?re adding this in now because Landmark is a beautiful stage for the folks that like to roleplay or machinma. SOEmote will be hugely useful for them. (And don?t forget the voice shifting tech so you don?t have to sound like you on VoiP!)
- New Naming mechanism with account handle: Now you can be any name you want. No longer do we require unique names for your character. (No name reservations!)
- Player Studio: You can finally submit your templates to the Player Studio (part of the overall Marketplace). This means that your creativity and work on your claims can be turned into real cash?if other players will buy your creations. This system is extremely interesting and will merit its own document soon because it?s heavy on socialization elements. It?s going to be fun.
Ley Lines & Movement
- Think of these as mini-hubs on the Islands. They let you micro-jump between ley line positions, and then explore the area from that hub. (You still have to go to the main hub to transfer between islands and worlds.) There are several advantages to this, not all related to ease of travel. (For example: Real estate around these micro-hubs is more desirable, adding yet another type of claim to seek out.)
- -----Ley Line use will require in-game coin or resources.
- New movement methods: Methods of gliding, flying, etc. will be added to the game via items that you can craft and find.
Risk & Danger
- Health: Yup?you can die now. But you can actually increase your health by finding increase items while adventuring through the world.
- Death Penalty: Yes, death will have teeth. Try not to die.
- Revive: Standing up after you fall down is always useful.
- Graveyards: When you die, you?ll need a place to respawn unless you Revive.
- BASIC combat: This is the first of many steps that will lead us to the eventual combat style we want. This first step is extremely basic as we prototype systems. But things will try to kill you.
- Buffs: If you can die, there need to be ways to avoid that damage and death. You?ll be able to craft (or find) various mechanisms to make yourself tougher.
NOTE:For both combat and buffs, your combat abilities and defenses will all be tied to items and potions, so there will be much item and crafting progression involved in getting ready for those things. Future rollouts beyond this initial offering will make the whole system more robust and do so pretty rapidly.
New things to do
- Plant harvesting: Expect great things. ?Nuff said for now.
- Tree harvesting revamp: Again?great?things. More details as we get closer.
- Water: The likely progression of water coming into the game will be:
- -----Oceans: These are static bodies of water surrounding the islands. When oceans show up, we can start doing interesting things with our coastlines and real estate choices will be a lot more interesting.
- -----Lakes: Lakes are different than oceans because they can appear at many altitudes. They are still static bodies of water, but again, they add more desirable real estate choices for claims.
- -----Running (dynamic) water: This is the piece that will come in last. This is the rivers and waterfalls that everyone wants. It adds more real estate choices, but it also creates a lot of gameplay as you folks can start diverting water to do all kinds of interesting things on your claims.
- -----NOTE:The dynamic nature of water is a big system that still has a lot of R&D to overcome before we can be absolutely certain of when it will arrive. We?ll keep you informed as we progress.
- Journal: There?s a lot to keep track of in this game. All the crafting choices, your resources, and we?re going to be adding a lot more achievements (see below). When we do that, you need a mechanism to keep it all straight and to help you organize what *you* want to do. The Journal is a cool interface designed to let you do just that.
- Achievements: Achievements are the ?quest-like? equivalent within Landmark. There?s a ton of things to collect and do in the world, and the achievements system allows you to be recognized for that effort, as well as hinting at what you can do to become more powerful or capable.
- Salvage: Remember all those picks you discarded on your way to Rubicite and beyond? Well?you can reclaim part of those resources now. You can also ?remake? a crafting result so that you don?t have to be quite as disappointed that your brand new axe you finally got to make is ?Inferior?.
- Treasure Chests: This is a generic term to represent loot and surprises that you can find as you explore through the caves system below ground.
- Unlocking recipes: Right now, all recipes are available at crafting tables as soon as you make them. When this system goes into the game, you?ll need to find those recipes before you can make them at the crafting tables.
- Claim Chests: More storage! Your vault is stuffed to the gills and you?re carrying as much as you can on your back. Time to make chests! You?ll be able to craft chests and store them on various claims as supplemental storage.
Phase Three ? Everything after Phase Two
There are a LOT more systems to come after March. All the huge stuff like PvP, advanced combat, better AI, interesting physics features, plus a whole host of ?possibles? and ?must haves? that we?ll narrow in on as we get more of Phase 1 & 2 complete.
However, we?ll update the roadmap as we finish each of the Phases we list above, so you?ll always know what?s coming and when.
In Summary
Hopefully, this TL; DR roadmap has helped set your expectations as to what you can expect to see in the game soon, as well as giving you an overview of what the game will become so that your suggestions can be more in tune with what we?re planning already.
Once again, THANK YOU for participating in Alpha, and thank you for your opinions. This process has been amazing to us (the dev team) already and we think it?s going to grow into something even better as time goes on! Please let us know what you think on the forums!
~Dave Georgeson, Director of Development
