First of all, I do fundamentally agree with the notion of an online doc talking about our plans and priorities (without deadlines). I've mentioned that plenty of times. But.. that is not an option right now.

Whistler is correct, I've been burned pretty badly on trying to reveal roadmaps before, and then having plans go awry through issues that were not predictable by me (both catastrophic problems out of the blue, like developers discovering long-term and private health issues, or opportunities we couldn't pass up, or any number of combinations).

It's easy to say "In the same time it takes you to write a wall of text, you could do X or Y", but that isn't accurate. Explaining the reasoning for a single issue, particularly when one can type incredibly fast, is not really that time consuming.

Writing up a cohesive inter-linked design doc for the future of the game, in a way that people can understand, is a massive undertaking. Probably a couple of months. If I did a "simple to-do list", it would be too obscure for you to understand, or.. (worse), you would mis-interepret things as meaning other things, and then be pissed at me when the thing you were "promised" went unrealized. Again, I've been down this road before.

I don't have time for this right now. I truly do think it's unfortunate that people are upset by this nerf, although based on all the previous things I've said on Suggestions.. it probably should not have been much of a surprise. But, some degree of upset was expected.

People can have faith, or not, their call. The player base is fond of making lots of assumptions, some of which get pretty strange. I was reading game chat the other day, where people were claiming how we don't care about the game, because all we do is "sell the engine" or some such nonsense. Basically, people decide that they know what's "really" going on, and then won't listen to me, no matter what I say.

Aside from that, keep in mind there are also changes where I absolutely will not reveal my reasoning in advance, because it may explicitly lead to exploits of some kind, like stockpiling, economic manipulation, or other issues. In some cases, I may be uncertain what the impact is going to be, and act in a way I consider conservative. This is in the best interests of the game.

I value what people have to say, and their input, and their feelings on this stuff. But, I also have to steer the ship the best I can, with the resources available.

And, yes, this "wall of text" only took a couple of minutes to write..

I don't really agree with the stock piling from the players if you say nonsense. Because players are already doing it. Many players I know who are holding 3-4 dent kits and tens of thousands of ores, sss, nice drops, levi drops. The point is instead of saying we don't understand a little bit of information on why what we say won't work other then "it doesn't agree with future plans" and a "this isn't set in stone" at the end would be great.

Well, you're welcome to disagree however you like. But, the fact is, there are times when economic exploits would be incredibly problematic. The kinds of "present-day stockpiling" that you're describing have nothing to do with what I'm describing.

Similarly, while you personally may be fine with a degree of leeway in TODO, it's been my experience that "many people" seeing X and expecting Y can be a very challenging issue for us to deal with on a community level. This is not about what "IronLord" or "Camzure" happens to like, personally. This is me being careful about spending my time the most effectively. There have been relatively minor "community perspective issues" that have ended up taking months of my time, so I'm pretty careful about this.

In any case, the overall point of this thread is to request a roadmap, and as various veteran players can attest, this is something I've advocated for at a number of different points. I like the idea. Hell, it's my idea, we had a public Design Wiki going back to pre-release, we were one of the first games to do that.

It's something I want to return to, but I can't offer that right now, for a variety of reasons (some written above, and some not).

What are some not presented

Uhh, if I didn't present it, it's probably because I'm not going to be presenting it.

I've responded to your feedback and questions in as much detail as is presently feasible.

Thanks for the detailed response, Inc.

Seeing as recent newsletters have declared a major game expansion in 2019, can we get a hint of what that game expansion entails?

As careful as you are with releasing information, you guys wouldn't have said something so grand without substantial progress being made towards that goal. I don't think letting us know what you have in store for us will do anything except build positive hype.

Word of a game expansion is partially why i am excited with VO right now. I am willing to stay as long as the basics of the game that we all love aren't overlooked (not saying that they are, that is just the only way i'd quit over something GS did).

VO is a simple game with it's complexities. That is why i love it, and why i still play. I can't find another game that appeals to me like VO does. All these changes are good in my opinion..and personally i am willing to give something meaningless now for the opportunities it could creae in the future. I am optimistic that this "expansion" will happen. Despite previous things. That will be wonderful.

Wtf so incarnate next step is to make all that stuff useless which players like me and few others are stockpiling from 2-3 years ?

Oh yes, that's clearly what he said: VO's entire future state hinges on inconveniencing you specifically.

C'mon dude, you love this game. Act like it. Who else would have you???

"Oh yes, that's clearly what he said: VO's entire future state hinges on inconveniencing you specifically. "

-Wash- is incarnate alt confirmed.

Wtf so incarnate next step is to make all that stuff useless which players like me and few others are stockpiling from 2-3 years ?

I'm really running out of gas with this kind of dumb crap. Pando, why don't you try actually reading something I wrote. I never said anything about "making stockpiling useless".

Seeing as recent newsletters have declared a major game expansion in 2019, can we get a hint of what that game expansion entails?

I appreciate the interest, but no. We'll push newsletters and press announcements when the time is right. There are a lot of moving parts up in the air right now that could change things in different ways.

Understand, no matter what, I'm moving ahead on a lot of major changes. Many great tech changes have been rolled out, which are making things "possible" that really weren't previously.

But there are some possibilities in the works that could alter things by orders of magnitude.

I've answered the OP in my prior posts, but as a final note before I lock up the thread:

If people are really interested in helping the game, then consider running an Event (and pushing it through the actual Event system). We're trying to spotlight Events as much as we can, and build towards having more of that.