First off, we would like to thank everyone for their support and feedback. We did not expect this much attention and it has been overwhelming! We would also like to give a shout-out to all the streamers showing Athos on their streams, be it good or bad. It takes a lot of work and effort to bring the news and entertainment to the masses and we truly appreciate it! With this announcement, we would like to share our vision for Athos with everyone and were we intend to take the game.
As a small indie company, we can make rapid changes without a lot of red tape when the community asks for it, we can also deploy bug fixes and updates faster than the bigger companies. With this advantage and the feedback we have received from the community, we can now post a proper roadmap for the future of Athos.
With Athos Primitive, we intend to have the Eternal Isles map set in a more primitive environment, excluding any futuristic technology. Future released maps will have more advanced technologies available in them not available in other maps, allowing a better progression between maps from age to age. At the current stage, we do not intend to allow dinosaurs to be able to harvest resources, but be used in a more engaging ways like traveling or combat. With a variety of different saddle types, players will be able set their tames to be used in different ways; moving heavy resources between areas or having saddles with siege weapons to siege other players or NPC tribe bases.
The main goal with Athos is to be more of a RPG/ survival game than just a survival game. This will set us apart from other survival games. To achieve this, increased lore and player engagement with the history and world of Athos is needed. In the next few major updates, NPC factions will be introduced which will allow us to implement a robust quest system intended to take the player through the history of Athos. Some of these factions can be befriended and traded with. The higher a player's faction stance is with a faction, the more quests and other trading options will be available.
In our first major update scheduled on Saturday, 21 October, we will be introducing new revamped player characters and a new character creation system, allowing for players to customize their characters. This will be in its early stages with future updates allowing more customizations, showing the primitive direction of civilizations on this map.
Now for our Roadmap. Do note the roadmap is just an estimate and anything in it can change at any time. We will update the roadmap whenever we finish something, if we do not get a certain item finished at a certain timeframe, the item will carry over to the next release.
Roadmap 2023:
- New Weapons - As this is a primitive era, we will have weapons like swords, bows, crossbows and other handheld types.
- World improvements - We will be adding in more POI with quest opportunities and different types of mobs.
- Ai Balancing and improvements to Dinosaurs - This is very high on our priority list. We need additional improvement on the Dinosaurs AI, adding in a more engaging ecosystem where carnivores will only attack herbivores when they get hungry. Population controls will be implemented; if there are more herbivores in a region, more carnivores will spawn in and balance the population. We will also work on the basic AI movement improvements and prevention of dinosaurs getting stuck. Bigger dinosaurs like a T-Rex should be destroying trees as they walk and so forth.
- Adding in NPC factions/tribes - Due to the way we intend to develop Athos as more of a RPG/Survival game, we will introduce NPC factions/tribes. Players will be able to engage with these factions on the map, either increasing or decreasing their faction stance. Some might require you to attack other factions to gain favor or do certain quests. This will also open up trading options which could include selling items to a tribe gaining tokens to be used for trading between players or trading with other factions.
- Adding First person view - Both first person and third person view will be supported.
- Player Tribe System - Allowing players to create and manage their own tribes, setting options on access to chests and doors, ranking tribe members and forming alliances with other player tribes will be added.
- Player In-game trading system - the option for players to place down merchants to sell their goods will be developed, in addition to trading between players with a trading interface.
- Improved Animations on Player characters - As we continue development, we will be doing improvements and polishing all aspects of the game including the player animations so they are more engaging.
- Sailing System - To allow us to bring out other world maps that could be more island based, we will be adding a sailing system with different options on how to traverse the water. From swimming mounts to sailing ships.
- Add in more clothing options - With Athos having a variety of different armor sets and clothing, this will play a big role in how the game is played, some clothing and achievements may add better stats and temperatures resists, while others can be worn for style. Being able to dye each piece is also important to have that unique look in the game.
- Improve server creation and server optimization - Continuous improvements to the server creation and stability will be developed.
- Building system improvements - We are planning to polish existing building system and add in additional build type pieces. We also want to add more styles of a building which could be unlocked though quests or completion of certain server achievements.
- Improve and polish combat - Combat balancing and improvements will allow for a better game play experience.
There will still be many other items to add to this list. For now, this should give you an idea of where we are going with Athos. We hope to get more feedback from you as we continue to improve and develop Athos to the game we want it to be. Please join in with the conversation on our discord or on the Steam forum to help us make this a reality.