[2020] The Roadmap of Dauntless | Developer AMA

I can answer the first part of this. Our video editor is hard at work on the Behind the Behemoth video for Thrax and a community video. Once these are done, he'll have some time to go back to the Q&A video.

For stats, we don't have this planned for the near future, but we may do something for FPS down the road sometime, but it's not a focus.

As for other cities, I'm sure we will hear about them :D

It's likely that Pets will live pretty exclusively in the Cosmetic side of things. That doesn't necessarily mean that they might not have interactions - I'd guess a "Rare" pet might just follow you around, but a "Legendary" pet might have some fun actions or even a utility function on islands. No concrete plans for the latter specifically in development today, but I don't see why we wouldn't explore that at some point!

This doesn't mean that we might not look at combat pets at some point, however -- I'd guess that might take the form of a "Beastmaster" type weapon, if I had to guess. We wouldn't want to add required pet gameplay for all slayers all the time. I think that would be too much.

Trials was originally intended to be a stand alone reward system but it's certainly possible we decide as time goes on, and we make some improvements to Trials, that we expand the list of options.

I think this would be really cool! I think as we look beyond Escalations into new hunt experiences something like this will definitely be on our list for consideration.

We're also currently working on prototypes for drop-in/drop-out islands that could contain activities for larger groups, a la public events!

We are currently looking at all of our progression and reward structures and have a lot of plans for what we want those to look like long term.

At present we have a system in place where players get increased power every escalation season. Long term the goal is that players do continue to increase in power and we introduce new content that leverages that power. In the short term we are going to be restructuring How players increase their power over the course of their time in Dauntless including things like a prestige system that grants power, gear being crafted at a specific power level instead of everything being upgradable 14 times, and an implementation of a skill system for weapons.

Those are going to take a while and will be coming online over time.

Hey Meirnon,

There are plans to expand the Training Grounds into more of a dojo experience for deeper theory crafting, but this may take a back seat while we work on other features. We put in the foundation in 1.3.0 for so new players could get a better handle of weapons before they go into the wilderness and getting wrecked.
There currently aren't plans to return to Shock Esca, but we've seen some desire for Behemoth variants. If we decide to go back, we'll let you know.

Ramsgate rework is RIGHT around the corner. Like crazy close. I can't give you a date on that, but stay tuned over the next few weeks. Sword Rework is in the final stages of testing right now, so they may land around the same time as Ramsgate. At this time, we're unsure what the next rework will be OR when it will be. The priority may shift to focus on other large features. Once we figure that out, we'll post it in the Roadmap.

" - plans to improve mastery system ? new and BETTER rewards, more lvls, more impact full things to do, cuz right now i don't think anyone feel rewarded to get lv 50 slayer / behemot, it's just a number, the currently rewards is really really bad. (silver cores) meaningless titles ( nobody see them). "

We are currently working on a lot of reworked progression and reward systems. Mastery will continue to exist in the new future but will focus primarily on objective based title rewards. The primary power growth is being reworked but we will ensure that any work players have done in the game will be compensated generously to transition into the new world.

• We generally like low life as a powerful, aspirational build that you can earn and equip a whole handful of cells around. Nerfing individual elements of this build to bring the entire build into line would likely leave each of them totally useless by themselves (due to their multiplicative nature). While we have designs for a "Gear/Cells 2.0" which changes enough aspects of the content in the cell landscape that the new builds would emerge, it's likely not close enough that we want to leave low life as the dominant build for that long. We're looking to introduce new cells and rework some underperforming old ones to have more 3-4 +6 builds arise to challenge low life. This will take some work, but we're targeting the first of these sets of changes for the start of next escalation.

• Likewise to the above, we actually like Iceborne for the most part. We see higher usage of it in Escalation, and lower usage of it in Trials as you'd expect. Playing with Iceborne equipped is a lower risk, but lower total output in the hands of a high level player. I like the idea of a singular addition +6 (likely defensive) cell added to a build that allows for sustain through combat, particularly if (as in the case of Iceborne) it feels like a synergistic and smart choice. That all being said, we discuss Iceborne in design/balance meetings constantly and have considered options where some aspect of sustain is integral/default to the game (a la Bloodborne's lifesteal after being hit, or having the Flask be cooldown based instead of charges based).

• I can't speak to Behemoths as closely as I do to player combat, but we've been making an effort to go back to Behemoths and touch up aspects and mechanics that players find frustrating or unfair. Boreus and Valomyr are certainly on this list, however we're first prioritizing those Behemoths that are disproportionately more deadly than the Behemoths in their patrol group (Stormclaw, Riftstalker, etc).

Our goal is to create a wide array of play styles for players. The details of how we accomplish that is a topic of daily discussion so it's too early to give specifics but we want everyone to feel like there is a way to engage with Dauntless that speaks to them.

Hello! The new Narrative Lead at Phoenix Labs, here - great question! There is definitely going to be an increase to the presence and significance of lore within the world. We're actively talking about the ways that we not only build out the story, but the ways that we have to tell and experience that story.

At a recent company presentation, I referred to us wanting to change the way that behemoths are perceived, so that they no longer only feel like "fashion violently waiting to happen." I personally want to see us get to a world where the threat is shown and felt, and not just told - that way we can explore more of the impact of the actions of slayers within the world.

Having said that, the standard disclaimer applies! We're having some very exciting conversations about what that looks like, and what it takes to get there. We won't transform overnight, but I think you'll definitely notice incremental improvements along the way to something really exciting. I really have to stop myself from saying more, because I love getting into these things... but we've already got enough notorious leakers at the company, we don't need one more! (Sorry!)

A lot of these things are still in early development and are being reprioritized and shifted. I'll do my best to put these under soon and far, but take it with a grain of salt.

Ramsgate Rework: Very Soon
Sky fishing: Launching with Ramsgate Rework
Social Systems: Small iterations will drop as improvements are made, but big items (guilds) are far.
Trials rework: Far
Cells 2.0: Far
Sword Rework: Soon
Complete weapon rework: Far

I'm not sure if this hits exactlyyy what you're speaking to (I think "open world" can probably mean a lot of things to different people), but I can mention this:

We're currently working on a new structure for basic hunts -- imagine persistent, drop-in/drop-out multiplayer islands for Slayers to go to with multiple (and continually spawning) behemoths.

Players will progress through the Player Journey Map through a cominbation of mechanics. Core progression through the tree will be granted as the player earns experience and unlock the central nodes. Features will be introduced via quests once the player has reached the appropriate level, and specific upgrades and unlocks within each tree will use assorted resources that players earn from different activities.

That's awesome that you have a great guild you're actively a part of!

We definitely want to improve guilds and give players more reasons to play together with folks in their guild. But we’re super early on that and not ready to talk about anything yet.

I'm curious -- as someone who is active in your guild -- what features are most interesting for you?

This is actually a really neat idea...

Something we haven't shared yet, but Repeaters will have per-Behemoth variants!

In the new universe, the concepts of Barrels and Prisms will go away and instead Repeaters will have the same one-to-one behemoth-to-weapon relationships that other Weapons enjoy. This will add a whole new slew of Unique Effects for Repeaters to select from, tons of new cell combinations (no longer just Tech/Mobility), and the benefits of prismatic cell slots and bonds for the Legendaries. Repeaters will retain their ability to customize the Chamber and Grip abilities, as well as their Mods. Plus, that also means tons of awesome new models for Repeaters players to earn and enjoy.

We've got the art for this already in progress, however there is a decent amount of work to bring Repeaters back into the fold of more "normal" weapons, as well as the migration of ownership between existing Barrels/Prisms to the new Repeaters. We don't have a date set in stone for when this is gonna drop, but we'll let you know!

On the gameplay side of things, we've got a few ideas kicking around for a (minor) rework to some of the Repeaters core (non-Chamber/Grip ability) actions, but that work doesn't currently have a date associated with it. We'll let y'all know more when we do.

We'd had some discussions around this, but for now, we've pivoted away from mobile while we work on the core features of Dauntless.

We may return to mobile in the future, but at this time, no one is working on it.

We have a number of meaningful changes to how crafting works coming in the near future. We're still working through the details on a daily basis but one of my personal goals is that the act of crafting a new item feels rewarding and exciting.

There's always room to improve but I think we can do a lot better than what we have right now and we are in the process of executing on that.

To your first question, let me copypasta this from another question:

We're currently working on a new structure for basic hunts -- imagine persistent, drop-in/drop-out multiplayer islands for Slayers to go to with multiple (and continually spawning) behemoths.

So yes, we're currently working to turn islands into persistent spaces you can roam around and beat stuff up over a longer period of time. Part of that process will surely be bringing in our smaller critters, special events, and maybe even questgivers -- TBD which of those will be in their initial release. We're in the prototyping phase of this and always looking to hear what sounds fun in this department!

We've put weapon 8 on hold while we rework some of the core features of Dauntless. Once we're in a happy place with progression, current weapons, and hunt types, we'll be returning to add more.

I can speak a bit to the first point: while not explicitly called out as a story mode, we've been having quite a few conversations about the ways that we can tell a more prominent narrative - both within the means of what's already present in the game, and new ways of engaging with it so that we can explore that story deeper.

You'll definitely start to see more of these elements making their way into the game when we move into the next season post-Umbral. Beyond that, we're having conversations about how we can take things even further in the following season... which I can't go into yet, but suffice it to say, the talks have been exciting to me from a storyteller's standpoint, so I hope they'll also resonate with everyone else and that we'll have a chance to detail our plans further in the future!

I would say "extremely low probability" on this one. We currently think of Neutral Behemoths as more of a stepping stone into the different tiers of fights, but that might change over time!

Quick aside: Instead of “friendship cores,” we’re probably going to rename these Slayer Links, because we don’t want this to be confused with any existing cores.

Our current plan is to have this be available for up to three friends -- that way you can have an entire party that’s all linked up together.

The thing our social systems team is focused on right now is Slayer Links. After that, we have a few things we’re exploring. It’s too early to say exactly what those are…but the spaces we’re looking at include improving the partying experience, identity expression, and Guilds.

Yes! We're currently working on something that will be added to the Roadmap on Friday.

Basically, we want to add explorative islands where Behemoths of varying difficulty spawn, allowing players to hunt to their heart's content. We're currently running some prototypes of this and it's showing A LOT of promise. In the future, these could hold more events and activities outside of just hunting (think sky fishing).

The intent of this is to explore ways in which we can make a mode that's more engaging and fun than the current patrols and pursuits.

Check back on Friday for the Roadmap update :)

While there aren't any concrete plans at the moment, I wouldn't rule it out for the future! This is definitely something that we've talked about from a storytelling perspective - I personally love the power that can come from a meaningful faction, and the sense of belonging and identity that it can entail.

Big question!

We've got a ton of moving pieces here right now. Repeaters and Strikers both were steps in a direction we want to move, not necessarily from what those kits are but what those kits allow us to do. Both Repeaters and Strikers have a lot of "Keywordable" gameplay hooks that we can use to push and pull that gameplay. When I say Keywordable, I mean things that can be adjusted and manipulated from things like Mods - Repeaters having Chamber Abilities, Grip Abilities, Empowerment, Reloading, Ammo Count, Range, etc. are a lot of different things that can we alter to make them have new or more specific gameplay. Compared to say the current day Sword, we have a lot of difficulty creating bespoke content that adjusts the "core kit" of the that weapon. Two Sword combos are effectively non-distinct from each other, when compared to the possibilies of gameplay adjustments for something like Tempest Form and Karma Breaker.

Why the focus on these adjustable aspects? In 2 of our big upcoming combat content changes, we intend to greatly expand on the options that weapon players can access to adjust the way their weapon plays more fundamentally.

• In "Gear/Cells 2.0" we currently plan on different Behemoth weapons adjusting more specific aspects of the weapon's kit: Embermane Strikers may reduce the duration of Tempest Form, but greatly increase the effectiveness, where Rezakiri Strikers may cause Adamant Bolt to pierce through Behemoths and hit multiple parts. Embermane or Rezakiri Swords would adjust aspects of the Sword's kit.

• In the future of Talent Trees (a feature beyond even the Player Journey Map), we intend to allow Players to customize and modify the way their weapons play even further. While it's still in the early design phases, having multiple mods, options to adjust gameplay of special, combo bonuses, etc are all ideas for that level of customization.

Weapon Reworks are multi-pronged: Creating a more keywordable kit, improving the flow of the kit and attacks, updating the visuals and style of the kit, and integrating the kit more closely with its specials (where applicable). After the Sword Rework is complete, we'll likely take some amount of break from Reworks while we assess the feedback of our first major Rework of this style, and focus on Talent Tree/Gear+Cells 2.0 zone.

I can take the first two questions!

We're currently reworking a lot of the progression in Dauntless and keeping an eye on power creep. I've heard conversations about making more difficult modes of Escalations, and it's something we're considering but haven't committed to. Bottom line: We want players who have hit max power to have activities that challenge them.

As for interacting with the relic... Stay tuned.

The plan WAS a bow, but we've put this on hold while we tighten up other game systems.

Repeating Elements will be removed in the Sword Rework! The Sword Rework removes and replaces all of the basic combos from the current sword on live. The 3 specials will remain, however each will receive adjustments and tuning that will help fold them into the way the new Sword works.

From a social systems perspective, it would be a great opportunity to have players work together toward helping factions they align with. No plans currently, but it's within the realm of possibilities. :)

I don't think we consider "sub 3" a hard and fast rule at all - we could always tune a particular fight to have a different time to beat if we needed to. We do like the idea of always having an aspirational goal time for players to reach for, though!

At this time, no. This would really bring down performance for players in the city, and right now, it isn't a priority. NPCs do talk though!

Environmental hazards are a big possibility though, especially for mods and such.

Yeah, of course! Thanks for the answer. Will share these with the team.

Got it -- thanks for the thoughts!

Of course, thank you for answering too. I'll share this back with the team.

Great, thanks for the input! Will share with team.

I can answer your third question! We recently pivoted away from streams in favor of creating more videos like Behind the Behemoth. We have a few more in the works...

That being said, I'd love to come back for more casual hunts on streams and answer some questions live.

Thanks for stopping by! We're all going back to work, but we hopped some of our answers were insightful.

See you in the Shattered Isles!

Absolutely! Beyond the things that are already in the works and coming (such as Sky Fishing) there is an entire team dedicated to developing activities that flesh out Dauntless as a world.

From the perspective of things that are under my purview, I am very keen to see things like differing objectives within missions, for certain. There's a ton of power and versatility that can come from those modifiers to completely change the feel of a story - and better yet, provide moments for some organic storytelling. You know, those moments that you share with friends to say "We were trying to do [redacted], but then [redacted] happened, so we had to [redacted] in order to save [redacted] - I thought we were done for, but we managed to pull it off!"

All in all, we are definitely looking at a future that lets us expand the ways there are for interacting with Dauntless!

Copy-pasta-ing an earlier answer :)

We definitely want to improve guilds and give players more reasons to play together with folks in their guild. But we’re super early on that and not ready to talk about anything in detail yet.

I'm on the social systems team, so can't answer your question, but just wanted to say -- thank you for the message! That's really kind and considerate of you to say. We appreciate you <3

I can't put those concerns to rest! The Sword Rework will be entirely different! Haha :)

For real though, we are removing every core combo the current Sword on live have and are creating a brand new suite. This new suite has a new flow and has more specialized combos that excel (or don't) at more specific scenarios - this is a step forward for us in a landscape of weapons that have generally either had an entirely prescriptive kit (Strikers) or a 1 optimal damage path that players just need to experiment with until they find (current live Sword). These combos will also be more responsive, with a more updated style - sporting all new animations, vfx and sfx -, and more satisfying. The Sword Rework does still have the 3 Specials, however these have been updated and/or tuned to be more in the fold of the new kit.

I think the new Sword is a treat to play, and it pains me when I played the current Sword on live haha. I encourage you to give it a shot when it's out, and hope you feel the same way too.

<3

Weapon 8 is a Bow. We had it in development for a short time, which is why it showed up in some of the mockups for UI made around that time. Since then, we've put the Bow on ice to focus on reworking some of the earlier weapons to better support the Player Journey Map and subsequent weapon Talent Trees.

Post the Sword Rework, we'll likely spend some time assessing the impact of that while working on the above 2 features. After the assessment, we'll then what we'll work on next in terms of big combat content - that will probably take the form of more Reworks first, then picking the Bow back up at a later date. Either way, we'll also be working on supporting all weapons via the Talent Trees at the same time.

Agree - "grab gatherables as you run past them" is literally the example we've used internally as "probably ok!" I consider anything that touches combat at all to be off limits, and that would include even giving you a single stim - you're just metagaming at that point and not picking a favorite pet flavor.

While we haven't hammered out the details of the migration yet, likely you'll get the equivalent version of the same bespoke Behemoth Repeater. So if you have a +12 Dawnstar Barrel, you'll get a +12 Valomyr Repeater.

I should mention -- our plan is that it's a time-bound link that matures and unlocks to grant your rewards, and not a permanent one that you can only use on a single friend.

Currently, we're planning for each link to last 7 days. After that, you can choose to re-link with the same Slayer or choose a new Slayer to link with. Each link is on its own time too, so if you start a link on Monday with Friend A, and a different one Wednesday with Friend B, they would end on the following Monday and Wednesdays, respectively.

We'll share more info as we get closer to the release, and things are more firmed up.

Current thinking is that most of rewards will be things that help Slayers continue to achieve their goals in the game -- so think things like rams, break parts, bounty coins, vault coins, etc.

For the slots -- that means that you can have up to three Slayer friends that you are linked to at a given time.

Yep same deal - in cases where we have a Barrel/Prism conflict (such as Valomyr), we'll come up with some method to make sure folks are rewarded. Perhaps the Prism becomes the Valomyr Repeaters and the Barrel becomes the Rezakiri Repeaters.

For the neutral barrel players will be migrated to owning one of the neutral Repeaters (Quillshot if I recall correctly). The new ones that don't map to existing barrels will need to be crafted up, as they effectively will represent new gear.

Your chambers and grips and mods will all remain, no adjustments there. Perhaps there will be some adjustment to when those are awarded from quests to fill in how Zai's questline plays out, but no change for players who already have done those quests.

Cool, good feedback - that's my inclination as well. I want players to be able to main a weapon if they want and have X different loadouts for that weapon in different configurations.

I totally get where that fear would come from, but I am hopeful that once Slayer Links are in-game that you will see they don't discourage you from playing with people who you are not Linked with. Our goal is not that you choose favourites, but rather that you have more of an incentive to play with your friends since we are a co-op game. We are excited to put it into the game and see how players use it / what the feedback is once people have their hands on it.

Perhaps players within your guild will use the guild as a starting place to find people they want to link with! Also, since the Links are completed after 7 days you can always rotate who you choose to be linked with week over week if you like.
That all being said, the Social Systems team that is working on Linked Slayers are also working on making Guilds even better in the future. We appreciate you leading communities within our community, and in tandem with that we want to make sure we are supporting the friendships that people are forming in Dauntless.

If you mean me, I'm still here and working with John on all of this. :) He is actually the first strictly narrative designer we've had.

Sure yah - likewise you could have just 1 Sword loadout and still be able to change it in any time you'd normally be able to adjust Specials/Mods etc.

In the universe I'm describing here, the exampled Embermane/Rezakiri Strikers effects actually replaces innate Perks on the weapons, not the UE. One of the goals there being Perks are an untunable tool when it comes to the strength of an individual weapon. It's not always the right call to nerf the Perk itself, and we can't arbitrarily grant 2 instead of 3 on some weapons. In a universe where these are more granular mutators, we can actually hop in and tune them.

That being said, the division of "what lives where" hasn't been decided with regards to Talent Trees vs. Weapons vs. Cells - Once we start to shore up those designs it's likely that some (or all) of these ideas change.

He would have gotten Exodia'd, but I let a very trustworthy looking young man see my cards, and he proceeded to throw them into the ocean. I don't know how I didn't see that coming...

Yah, I'm speaking openly about stuff that's further out than we want on the roadmap. If we had EVERYTHING we had planned on the roadmap, we'd have to constantly be removing things when priorities, design, etc change.

We're deep into the Repeaters work, so I'm confident it will come to players but have a harder time predicting the timeframe.

I can only answer #2, but here it issss:

2: Guilds are something that the social systems team is thinking about, but we are not yet actively working on them. We formed the internal social systems team at the end of March, and we decided that top priority for us would be friends list and communication functionality (seen in-game as: interact with a nearby Slayer, improved friends list, slash commands). Our current focus is on Linked Slayers, which will reward players for playing with friends week over week, as well as upgrading "interacting with a nearby Slayer" into full blown Slayer ID cards (!!!). Both of these features are in development, with Guilds as the probably-next-up-thing after they are live.