To give a better overview of what is planned next for Stein, I created this little roadmap for you. Be aware, this roadmap only shows our current plan and can change at any time!
Most of the things you will find here are also contained in the GitKraken Board which is/was posted in the suggestion channel of our stein.world Discord server. But as the git-kraken boards are going to be discontinued in the near future, I try to convert the most important things into this post and also organize them a bit better.
The three main goals for stein.world right now are: adding some minor improvements, creating the level 40 zone and then creating the first main city for the game. As each of those goals also have a lot of sub goals, I added them accordingly.
Below you see an overview of the current roadmap state and at the end of this post you will find more detailed information for each of the main goals. The bars below the main goals are progress bars for how many of the sub goals are completed and start out as empty. The dots in front of the sub goals show the state of the entry. No color means, it is still to do, blue colored ones are currently in progress and green ones are done.
The main goals listed in the roadmap are only listed as far as it makes sense for now. Adding a bunch more content goals would just bloat the whole list more than it already is. Also, the goals can change at any moment depending on what problems the game faces or immediate features the game requires. For Example, if we wanted to create some Halloween event or some internal tools needed improvements.
The first block of the roadmap are the minor improvements I want to add while working on the new content. Those are mainly things, which should make the life of players easier and especially make the game more accessible to new players. Therefore, this main goal is the one which will probably face the most changes or additions in the future, depending on what ideas we can come up with.
New content is probably the thing many of you are most excited about. Creating the new level 40 zone is also one of the biggest and most important goals for that reason. As we finally have cleared out all big roadblocks over the past years, like multi-server support, multi-language support, better mobile experience, class rework and much more, it is overdue to get the new zone going.
Creating a new zone is a lot of work, as the sub goals may show. Even while the outdoor area for the new zone already existed for a long time, there is a lot more to do. We still need to create all the interior maps like houses with their different floors, caves and also interiors for the little bastions all over the new zone. To get a better feeling of what those interiors need to contain and look like, and also what NPCs, Enemies, Quests we will require, the first sub goal is to complete the zone planning. During that the goal is to get a rough idea what kind of sub stories each part of the new zone should tell and what we need for that.
Besides that we also need to do a lot of grunt work like creating new items for the new levels, new content for professions and also creating a lot of new artwork for items, enemies and other things in the world like gathering resources.
As a new zone brings also some kind of soft reset, we also want to use this opportunity, to rebalance the classes in the game, to make the playing field between DPS classes more even and also tanks do not feel unnecessary.
To split the work up for the new zone, the dungeons will not be a part of the initial patch for the level 40 zone. It should also be no problem, if the dungeons are released one at time to have a more steady stream of new content.
Currently, it is also not clear how many dungeon goals we will require. I am currently unsure how many dungeons the new zone will contain. It may make sense to have more than two regular dungeons, as having more bosses to distribute the class gear to makes it easier to farm directly for certain items and also having smaller dungeons, reduces the time requirements to do one run.
The wave dungeon goal on the other hand is probably fixed, as our wave dungeons serve as starting gear sources for the level they belong to. Also, with having its own patch for the wave dungeon, it allows me to adjust the current reward system for wave dungeons to make it more worthwhile to farm higher waves and also find a way to reduce the randomness which is involved in farming equipment for the class you want to play.
After work for the level 40 zone is completed, the next big thing is going to be the main city, which is also already visible on the minimap. The city should serve as a central player hub which should be accessible for all levels. As the world by then will reach a point where travel times would be quite long, it is the goal to add a fast travel system between the main villages of each zone and the main city, so traveling big distances will be faster and also low level players get a safe way of accessing the city.
Another bigger feature which is planned to be added to the main city is an auction house, which will let you trade all your disposable items without the need for you being online and will make it easier for you to find suitable items for your character.
I also plan on adding longer arching story quest chains together with the main city, as a city seems to be a great place to tell big stories. There are also the hopes that the city could solve as a better place to continue the story about your lost stein in a more meaningful way. But there also needs to be put more thought into this to find a suitable solution.
For the future I plan to do roadmap update posts, which will keep you updated on the general progress and also create posts, which will give more insight to things we are completed or still being worked on. So stuff I post in the future may also get more technical, which probably reflects more on my own work style. Also if you want to help me out with marketing for the game or have anything stein related which we could post on our social media accounts, I would appreciate any help, as my skills regarding that are not the best.
If you want to participate in creation of the new content and features, feel free to join my sessions in Discord or Twitch where I work live together with you or simply join the discussions in Discord where we try to think of how things should be done.