The Road Ahead, The game we’re making, part 2

Hi Paxians!

Here is the second part about our vision for Pax Dei. The first part talks about the high-level vision and the genre of Pax Dei—a social sandbox MMO, if you have any doubts.

Now, let’s look at the road ahead! As indicated, Early Access will last at least until June 2025. The game will change heavily in this timeframe as we keep building towards our vision.

We know where we want to go and how, but we also know that our plans will have to stay dynamic and will change to adjust to reality and the feedback our Founders will provide. All that to say - while this document aims to give you a good idea of our priorities in the next few months, please don’t consider it carved in marble.

Homestead

As you’ve maybe seen in the playtests we’ve run so far, the village building, crafting, and resource loops are starting to work and feel nice. There’s something magical about wandering around in nature in Pax Dei and collecting the herbs and mushrooms in the forest, watching a sunset from a cliff, or discovering a little house hidden in the woods. Our system already supports many types of buildings, from little huts to gigantic castles through mansions or factories.

So, what’s the future of this part of the game? We have plans for advanced features, but right now, we are focusing on improving balancing and skill progression, polishing the first hours (yes, ‘pin a recipe’ is on the list), and adding more depth to the crafting system. The first content update after the Early Access launch will bring additional building pieces to complete some of the current sets (among them, new walls adorned with grapevines - a great way to add some cachet to your buildings!). We’re also happy to confirm that prop signs are coming to label storage or specific areas in your village - this has consistently been one of the most requested features for that part of the game.

Adventure

Yes, the combat system needs work. Following player feedback in Alpha 2, we’ve spent the last few weeks focusing on improving the characters’ responsiveness in combat. We don’t think we’re there yet. Currently, our PvE is at a minimum functional baseline, and PVP is kind of fun but definitely not where it needs to be for the game vision to come together. The current PvP system is a test implementation and will be radically different moving forward. Overall, this part of the game will remain an ongoing priority for the foreseeable future.

Our mission here is challenging. We’ve taken an action-oriented approach to combat and want the skill ceiling to be relatively high. As an RPG, we also want gear and skill progression to offer depth and feel meaningful. Finally, we’re also an MMO, so the game needs to work for group combat in dungeons all the way down to a solo player hunting in the woods.

We’re assuming getting each of these aspects right and finding a good balance between them will take time, as the work related to fine-tuning responsiveness, animations, and NPC behaviors… is inherently slow. Our plan here is to keep improving things with every patch and engage with all of you in our Discord so that we can figure this out together.

In addition to tuning the combat feel, we’ll be adding more content—more weapons, armor, enemies, and spells. On the mechanics side, we are also focusing on combat flow from a tactical level, such as improvements for crowd control, role specialization, along with balancing special maneuvers and spells so they work both for PvE and PvP.

Finally, we will also start unveiling the game’s lore. It will be a progressive and iterative process, adding depth to the world through indirect storytelling. Who knows, mythical creatures might even start being sighted in remote corners of the world at some point…

Civilization

This pillar is the part of the game where an active player community is critical to continue development meaningfully.

Our goal is to eventually offer a choice of roles and systems, allowing a rich social fabric to emerge in all the shards. All of it will be player-controlled and structured so that you can participate in the political intrigue or warfare as much (or as little) as you want. Ultimately, players will be able to create social structures above and or across the clans and go to war… or have eternal peace if they choose so.

Getting to that vision will happen one step at a time. In this area, we currently have the baseline player clans but almost no other features. This part of the game will be one of our main focuses in the coming months.

In Pax Dei, (almost) everything is player-made, whether creating coal for the blacksmith, baking a cake, or crafting a piece of magic armor using the rarest of Relics found in the bottom of the deepest dungeon. We’re convinced that trade will completely shift the game's dynamics, making it easier for players to specialize and collaborate at scale. No matter what part of the game you want to focus on, there will always be things you can produce that are useful to others.

How will that materialize in-game? Our team is working on bringing (back) gold into the game and introducing the first system allowing trading between players via a new type of item: the market stall. You will be able to build a market stall on your plot in the same way as any other prop. The market stall will unlock asynchronous transactions with other players, using gold as the currency. Gold, in turn, can be earned either by selling items and resources to other players or as loot from PvE.

This continues further. More features will be added to this corner of the game during Early Access, including altars and miracles - the regretted teleport feature may make a comeback. And also some ‘roles’ that will sit outside of clans. The first such roles we want to introduce are the knight and the soldier. But this is a story for another time; we’ll tell you more about them as we get closer.

Just the beginning

For us, Pax Dei is the game of a lifetime. We’re fully committed to developing it for years to come and invite you, the players, to be part of this journey. If you believe in the game's vision and want to support a team making something fresh in the MMO space, please join our Early Access and help us build the virtual world you can inhabit for years to come.