State of Dreadnought
Hello Captains,
It’s been a challenging year so far. I hope everyone is staying safe during this trying time. We wanted to update all of you with the state of things, what we are doing now, and what is planned for the future. Sinley Bay needs to go through some changes both to improve the current experience and to provide something new for long time Captains. While we work through these changes, we invite all to give us critical and constructive feedback to keep us on the right track. Let us know what we are doing wrong, but also what we are doing right so we can do more of it.
[h2]The State of Dreadnought[/h2]
To start, I wanted to give everyone a sense of where we are. Dreadnought was in Open Beta for around 2 years, and has been on Steam for almost 2 years as well. During that time, we’ve learned about what kind of game Dreadnought is and could be. We've had so many competing ideas it made it hard to focus and take player feedback into proper account. You might notice that when talking to other players, if they don’t agree with you, they might assume that you don’t know enough about the game. This is the same mistake we were making by assuming you just didn’t understand the reasons for the changes we were making. As it turns out we didn’t know enough about how you were playing the game.
While having a reduced team size is limiting due to the amount of work that is needed, it does allow us to be more focused on the vision and engage more with the community to influence what we are working on.
This leads me to what we are doing now. We are working on changing our matchmaking to help with long queue times, but we understand there is still more we can do. We continue to work on balance changes that are meant to help even the playing field for new players that haven’t been fully upgraded. We also want to have more events to give better incentives to log in and continue playing. We are looking at adding rewards tied to Captain rank and changing up the daily contracts and what they give you. All of this is to better prepare our infrastructure to allow for ranked play.
Looking towards the future, we want to provide new gameplay experiences and incentives to get captains excited about getting into Sinley Bay. For this, we need to provide new content (visual and systemic), incorporate improvements to existing game modes, and deliver on our promise of custom matches allowing for social and tournament play.
We want more PvE content for those that prefer a cooperative experience. Towards this end, the first initiatives will be Havoc on PC, reworking Onslaught, and implementing Onslaught vs AI. We plan on improving the AI to feel more like active participants in the game and update their loadouts and ship visuals to make them feel more like Captains that have roots in the Dreadnought universe.
There will be optimizations needed in the Hangar, and UI updates to improve the player experience. UI updates will be incremental whenever possible so it doesn’t take too much time from other initiatives.
Lastly, with all these things we want Guilds and Ranked play to allow better social play and let Captains know where they stand. These systems will need to be created from the ground up and, as such, are a ways off; we just wanted you to know that this is at the core of what we are working towards. In order to have Ranked play, we will need to even the playing field for all ships in the ranked queue. If T4 and T5 ships are to be included in ranked play, they must be competitive with each other, otherwise we would need to restrict ranked play to only T5. This is a work in progress and we will be doing focus tests with community members to get feedback before implementing anything.
Below you will find the roadmap schedule as it is now. As with any development, this schedule is subject to change. This is our intended plan and we will let you know as soon as we can if there are any major changes.
[h2]August Release[/h2]
[h2]September Release[/h2]
[h2]October Release[/h2]
[h2]November Release[/h2]
[h2]December Release[/h2]
[h2]First Quarter 2021 - Tentative[/h2]
We welcome player feedback through CS tickets from the in-game bug reporter or on Discord https://discord.com/invite/dreadnought
As always, many thanks for playing our game. We’re looking forward to seeing you in battle!
Ray Dog and the Engineers of Sinley Bay
It’s been a challenging year so far. I hope everyone is staying safe during this trying time. We wanted to update all of you with the state of things, what we are doing now, and what is planned for the future. Sinley Bay needs to go through some changes both to improve the current experience and to provide something new for long time Captains. While we work through these changes, we invite all to give us critical and constructive feedback to keep us on the right track. Let us know what we are doing wrong, but also what we are doing right so we can do more of it.
[h2]The State of Dreadnought[/h2]
To start, I wanted to give everyone a sense of where we are. Dreadnought was in Open Beta for around 2 years, and has been on Steam for almost 2 years as well. During that time, we’ve learned about what kind of game Dreadnought is and could be. We've had so many competing ideas it made it hard to focus and take player feedback into proper account. You might notice that when talking to other players, if they don’t agree with you, they might assume that you don’t know enough about the game. This is the same mistake we were making by assuming you just didn’t understand the reasons for the changes we were making. As it turns out we didn’t know enough about how you were playing the game.
While having a reduced team size is limiting due to the amount of work that is needed, it does allow us to be more focused on the vision and engage more with the community to influence what we are working on.
This leads me to what we are doing now. We are working on changing our matchmaking to help with long queue times, but we understand there is still more we can do. We continue to work on balance changes that are meant to help even the playing field for new players that haven’t been fully upgraded. We also want to have more events to give better incentives to log in and continue playing. We are looking at adding rewards tied to Captain rank and changing up the daily contracts and what they give you. All of this is to better prepare our infrastructure to allow for ranked play.
Looking towards the future, we want to provide new gameplay experiences and incentives to get captains excited about getting into Sinley Bay. For this, we need to provide new content (visual and systemic), incorporate improvements to existing game modes, and deliver on our promise of custom matches allowing for social and tournament play.
We want more PvE content for those that prefer a cooperative experience. Towards this end, the first initiatives will be Havoc on PC, reworking Onslaught, and implementing Onslaught vs AI. We plan on improving the AI to feel more like active participants in the game and update their loadouts and ship visuals to make them feel more like Captains that have roots in the Dreadnought universe.
There will be optimizations needed in the Hangar, and UI updates to improve the player experience. UI updates will be incremental whenever possible so it doesn’t take too much time from other initiatives.
Lastly, with all these things we want Guilds and Ranked play to allow better social play and let Captains know where they stand. These systems will need to be created from the ground up and, as such, are a ways off; we just wanted you to know that this is at the core of what we are working towards. In order to have Ranked play, we will need to even the playing field for all ships in the ranked queue. If T4 and T5 ships are to be included in ranked play, they must be competitive with each other, otherwise we would need to restrict ranked play to only T5. This is a work in progress and we will be doing focus tests with community members to get feedback before implementing anything.
Below you will find the roadmap schedule as it is now. As with any development, this schedule is subject to change. This is our intended plan and we will let you know as soon as we can if there are any major changes.
Dreadnought Road Map 2020
[h2]August Release[/h2]
- Balance Changes
- Siege Mode
- Hell Lasers/Missile Lasers Balance
- Heavy Torpedo/Light Torpedo
- Mithras Main Gun
- Plasma Turrets
- Siege Mode
- Proving Grounds
- Rewards that are closer to PvP match play
- Rewards that are closer to PvP match play
- Market
- Captain Vanity Starter Bundle
- Ship Vanity Starter Bundle
- Rise of Troy
- Captain Vanity Starter Bundle
[h2]September Release[/h2]
- Contracts
- Count AI for contracts
- Hangar Optimization
- Improve performance (first pass)
- Count AI for contracts
- Balance
- Disruption rework
- Disruptor Ammo Balance
- Scrubber Module
- Rupture Ram
- Disruption rework
- Market
- Unannounced
- Unannounced
[h2]October Release[/h2]
- Havoc on PC
- Release Havoc on PC
- Release Havoc on PC
- Balance Changes
- Scattergun Broadsides
- Auto-repair
- Bolt Guns
- Offensive Lockdown
- Scattergun Broadsides
- Market
- Unannounced
- Unannounced
[h2]November Release[/h2]
- Onslaught Rework for PvP
- Focusing on the PvE aspects with the Command ship, Scoring, and AI support.
- Give Onslaught new life by changing things up and creating a unique experience compared to Team Deathmatch.
- Focusing on the PvE aspects with the Command ship, Scoring, and AI support.
- Balance
- Carrier module Balance Changes
- Storm Missiles
- Carrier module Balance Changes
- Market
- Unannounced
- Unannounced
[h2]December Release[/h2]
- Custom Matches PC
- Getting Custom matches working for PC
- Getting Custom matches working for PC
- Balance
- Tweaks to Onslaught release based on feedback
- Tweaks to Onslaught release based on feedback
- Market
- Unannounced
- Unannounced
[h2]First Quarter 2021 - Tentative[/h2]
- Custom Matches PS4
- Complete custom matches work and enable
- Complete custom matches work and enable
- Proving Grounds 2.0
- Onslaught vs AI
- Onslaught vs AI
- AI Updates
- Loadouts Updated for AI Ships
- AI Refactor
- Loadouts Updated for AI Ships
We welcome player feedback through CS tickets from the in-game bug reporter or on Discord https://discord.com/invite/dreadnought
As always, many thanks for playing our game. We’re looking forward to seeing you in battle!
Ray Dog and the Engineers of Sinley Bay