Mar 14, 2023

Kingdom Crier #20: Door Locks and Roadmap Update!

Noble Fates - xobermon

Welcome to Kingdom Crier #20 Kontras.

Until now, Barricades have represented the state of the art in Kingdom Security.

The Builders have spent some time standing around with gears above their heads and discovered...

Door Locks!
Use these to keep your spaces secure

Door Locks control access to your important spaces and keep Bandits away from your goods. These Unlock at Building Level 5 and cost 24 Copper to add to a Door. Adding a Lock doubles the Health of a door.

Leverage the new permissions UI to control access

Doors with Locks close more quickly than those without - but beware of tailgaters! Permissions prevent someone from opening a Locked Door, but anyone can walk through a door that's already open!

Beware of tailgaters!

The existing Lock system has been renamed to Barricades, retaining the previously functionality. The discovery of Locks has lowered the difficulty of Barricades to Building Level 2 and the cost to 12 Wood. Barricading a Door doubles its health - giving you a little extra time to get into position and dispatch attackers.

The trusty Barricade

Finally, you can Barricade a Locked Door to stack the Health boosts for added protection!

Patch Notes

Noble Fates 0.27.6.2 Released!
Content Update #16

Crash Fixes Fix for multiple crashes related to Combat Fix for crash related to Items Decaying Add Door Locks Door Locks add the ability to control access to spaces Unlock at Building 5 Ingredients: 24 Copper Other Factions can grant the Player access to their locks Door Barricades Existing Door Locks are now known as Door Barricades Move to Tactical Research Category Unlock at Building 2 Ingredients: 12 Wood Update Visuals Reports (thanks!) Improve Unreachable Detection Fix broken pathing when Stairs are built above a Terrain Ramp Improve reporting when Cooking is Disabled for all Available Ingredients Fix for multiple instances of dispatched parties not returning Fix for bug that allowed an attempt to path to unreachable space Fix for Pathing issue related to Stairs Fix for Pathing issue related to Uncrated Props Crafting Show Locked Recipes by default Desertion Prevent Raiders from Deserting their Kingdom during Retreat Ordering Don't Select Hidden Blueprints when Right-Click Ordering Grass Increase rate of Terrain Grass regrowth

Roadmap Update!

It's been a bit - so let's update the Roadmap!

As a reminder - there are 3 types of updates for Noble Fates - Updates that address bugs and issues (including those that are listed on the Backlog and those that you Report in-game); Content Updates that focus on expanding existing systems and filling them with additional content; and Feature Updates that add new features to the game expanding the overall breadth of what the game has to offer.

Priority Fixes

Progress against the Priority Fixes that we outlined on 8/9

Details

Crashes Fixed 65+ additional crashes, bringing the total to 165+! Adventures Go on Adventures to Help your neighbors out Delegate to followers and stay home if you prefer Fine Stone Building Tier Made from Stone Blocks Adds Arches, Spires, and Portcullis Tactical Props Buildable Catapults Useful Chevals Shields Great against Projectiles Block Animal and Monster Attacks Crime Added Crime Tracking Factor Crime into Esteem Changes Kingdoms Map Reworked and Improved Demands and Gifts From other Rulers based on their Opinions of you Tames Added Pastures to keep Tames contained Added ability to eat from Stockpiles Wolves Added Wolves Added Hunted Notification Dangerous Animal Event Added Dangerous Animal Event Monsters Improved Imp Behavior Improved Breacher Behavior Spawning Improvements Rabid Animals Improved Flow and Difficulty Character Visuals Less Crazy Combinations Added Character Appearance Editor Conversation Refinement Surface inconsequential opinions Less Less need to talk to your people Camera Improved Fine Camera Panning Added Camera Panning Settings Reporting Added in-game Reporting tool Mods Added Versioning

That's a lot of changes! It's worth noting how much of our effort we've been able to put towards improvements and content instead of fixes! We have a pretty stable game now.

Current Priorities

Localization has climbed the list and is under way now. It's a complicated task for a game with so much procedural text, but we're hard at work on it. It will likely land between Feature Update #5 and Feature Update #6.

Beyond that, there are a number of systems and interfaces that could use their second pass to streamline and improve the player's experience, so those are starting to become important to us.

Content Updates

We've released 16 Content Updates so far!

There have been 3 Content Updates since the last Roadmap Update!

Content Update #14: Wolves Content Update #15: Mortal Customization Content Update #16: Door Locks

We'll continue to work on these and release them as they're ready,

Feature Updates

Finally, we have the Feature Updates. As a reminder, 8 of these will arrive during Early Access. 4 have landed so far.
Feature Update #4: The Adventure Update!

Feature Update #5

Feature Update #5 is well underway, recently crossing the half way point of development. As with The Adventure Update, we're taking on and tackling deeper changes to the game to expand on the mid-game. Stay tuned for details!

Early Access Status

We're more than half way through what we set out to accomplish with Early Access. We're tracking behind our original schedule - due primarily to increasing breadth and quality of our Feature Updates - but we have been successful enough that we have plenty of runway to reach 1.0.

Thank you so much for your support and patience!

Community Corner

cypr` stood up this cozy village in one of their playthroughs...

and this sick castle in another!

Discord

Join the Official Discord to participate in Development!

Reviews

If you like the game, please consider leaving a Review. These can help players decide that Noble Fates is worthy of their attention.

Thanks for reading and thanks for playing!
The Noble Fates Team

Mar 14, 2023

Don't Starve Together Roadmap 2023

Don't Starve Together - Klei-JoeW

Anybody interested in a roadmap?

NOTE: Please remember that the roadmap is provided to give the community a sense of what we are working on and what is driving our decisions and what we are focused 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 that you 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, we will let you know if any of these plans change significantly.

2022 Recap
Our goal for 2022 was to “Set the Stage” for what was to come next for DST.

In the 2022 roadmap we saw the Year of the Catcoon and Bunnyman. We released refreshes for Maxwell, Wickerbottom, WX-78 and Wilson is right around the corner. We released QOL updates all over the place including a revamped Crafting UI, a redesigned Ancient Guardian, Map QOL changes, World Presets and New World Settings.

We introduced Shared Unlocks and Offline Skins. We added more games to the Midsummer Cawnival and we released the Curse of the Moon Quay and A Little Drama updates.

We released 10 sets of Twitch Drops and 50+ hotfixes with bug fixes, tweaks, and balance changes.

2022 was a busy year for Don’t Starve Together. While it may not have been as content heavy as some players were hoping for, the changes were necessary to prepare for 2023 and we’re ready to talk about that a bit.

This is going to be a pretty substantial post, so I am going to give a bit of a brief TL;DR summary first, then get into the meaty bits. Additionally, I should mention that we’re still doing a lot of experimentation and tweaks to how these plans are being implemented at the moment, so I have to be light with the details (surprise, surprise). But we want you to know what you have to look forward to.

What’s coming up in 2023? (TL;DR)
Our goal for the next roadmap is to smooth out the experience for less experienced players and provide longer lasting endgame challenges for veteran players.

3 Content Updates
2 Core Game Enhancement Updates
All the usual events
A secret bite-sized crossover
Don’t Starve 10 Year Celebration

Additionally, this roadmap does not cover a full year, because the last Roadmap ran into 2023.

What we’re doing and why.
Don’t Starve Together is arguably one of the most challenging survival games out there right now. However some of the design principles that were used to create the original single player game can feel unnecessarily unfriendly in a multiplayer game. The original Don’t Starve was designed around the idea of players being self directed. However multiplayer isn’t always compatible with this design and was largely why we resisted multiplayer for the original Don’t Starve.

With DST, we have smoothed some of the rougher edges over time, but most of the focus has been on providing group based challenges up until more recently. We think there are still a few areas that we would like to see improved upon, and many, MANY of you have suggested the same. The areas that we are going to focus on in this roadmap are in early game discovery, and the late to end game loop.

Now - before you start getting worried, know that we understand that we’re stepping into some weird territory here. Our goal isn't to make the game easier, or even to make the game harder (overall). The goal is to make the game more interesting in the ways that those who love Don’t Starve and Don’t Starve Together will enjoy while also providing people who don’t know the game more opportunities to understand what the game expects of them..

But not all Don’t Starve Together players are the same. To some, DST is too easy, to some it’s too hard, and to others it “is what it is” and they don’t want it changed. Our goals here are to offer all players something interesting, fun and engaging and to improve the game in areas we think will have a lasting impact. This roadmap should result in a game that is easier to understand and harder to master..

We have a few areas that we want to focus on to accomplish this. In terms of content, we plan to delve deeper into the stories surrounding Charlie and Wagstaff, and explore the impact of their actions on The Constant. The introduction of late-game world challenges will change The Constant in ways that players will need to adapt to, either by working with or against them. This will also provide Survivors with the opportunity to discover new resources and items that will be vital for their survival as they progress throughout all areas of the game.

Some of this has been introduced as part of the Wilson Refresh, and we will continue to build upon them throughout the year.

And what about the newer players?
Something that we have seen time and time again is that some newer players have a hard time understanding what they should be doing, or where they should be going and may become frustrated or miss a lot of content if they don’t know what else is out there for them. With this in mind, we are going to work toward making it a bit easier to understand what should be happening in the game without necessarily making the game easier.

To that end we will be working on additions to the compendium and other elements of the game that will provide more information about what is happening, as well as progress indicators that help players see themselves grow through what they have learned in the game.

Some of you may have noticed that some elements of the Wilson Refresh are a part of this effort as well. Wilson now acts as a sort of guide through the progression of the game, without directly telling the player what to do, his new skill tree can guide a player toward long term goals as they explore the world. He’s still rather vanilla, he just has some sprinkles now. Nothing too intimidating to a new player.

It should also be said that the “Core Game Enhancement” updates are foundational and are likely to grow and change over time. This means that we’ll implement systems or features that we can tweak or add to over time and while it’s probably not accurate to call these QOL updates, they will be Quality of Life oriented in the sense that they are meant to make the overall game better for most players, but not always by improving existing systems.

What’s next?
The Wilson Refresh will be released Thursday and the update following that is currently planned for April will be a content update as part of the new Story Arc. This will be the first content update as part of this roadmap and should be quite interesting.