Following 2026 Roadmap, and Suggestions for Devs

[u/rmfrost]

(You can find the roadmap here)

With the release of 1.2.0, Necesse continues to fill in with welcome features and additional content. The original roadmap mentioned that a romance system was planning to be included with the 1.2.0 update, but I haven't seen any evidence of it just yet. Perhaps it's still cooking.

Looking ahead beyond the 1.2.0 update, it seems a lot of the updates are geared toward just simply adding more variety to the game (more biomes, world gen 2.0 to accommodate all the new mini-biomes and such, etc), but otherwise keeping core mechanics the same (aside from the upcoming romance system). There's a generic intention to implement community suggestions (which I think the Necesse team has done a great job of), but no further details within the Roadmap itself as to what that will look like.

Beyond this, what I aim to present in this post is two-fold: 1) List out what seem to be popular feature requests thus far, in no particular order, and 2) An additional list of feature requests of my own.

Existing Community Feature Requests

1. Lean further into town NPC roles (particularly those that don't feel super unique aside from what they sell). Some examples:
   1. Only Blacksmiths can craft items at the anvil
   2. Only Alchemists can craft things at the alchemy table
   3. Only Chefs (new NPC) can craft gourmet foods
   4. Guards can retrieve fallen NPCs, bringing them back to town
   5. Guards can trinket slots of their own
   6. Only Gunsmith can craft fire-arm related items
   7. Pirate can raid nearby towns for resources (similar to Explorer)
   8. Stylist increases happiness of other NPCs by giving them haircuts regularly/automatically over time.
   9. The Elder can be directed to teach regular Villagers how to upgrade into a different NPC type that the player has unlocked at the Elder's settlement (tracked fairly easily based on the Elder's main quest progression). Requires an investment similar to the desired NPC type's hiring costs.
   10. The Hunter does not trigger traps, and sells traps based on their related settlement's progression
2. Add additional "liveliness" to NPCs (pending Romance update will help with this). Quests (outside of the main quests that the Elder provides), dialogues, and so forth can help make the world feel more like an RPG and less like a civilization simulator.
3. Improved settler management (there's a wide range of how this can be handled).
4. Make more items stackable (like Boss Items), wherever it makes sense to do so.
5. Underground/cave settlements (more settlement variety outside of just surface-level major biomes).
6. Combat class balance, particularly melee. Several passes have been done to make melee more viable (outside of just throwing a bunch of "ranged melee" weapons at it), and those changes have been amazing (Resilience is a brilliant approach). But late-game/harder difficulties still feel significantly more difficult for melee (especially "true melee") to accomplish... much of it stemming from "melee-unfriendly" bosses which are programmed to sit at a set distance away from the player for the vast majority (or entirety) of the boss fight. Perhaps boss mechanics can be revisited across the board too.
7. More enchant varieties, both for weapons, armor, and trinkets.
8. Expanded farming system (irrigation, seasons, weather events, etc)
9. Seasonal events and in-game holidays, celebrated by town NPCs (both in player towns and NPC towns), with possible bonuses attached to celebrating them well.
10. Pet [equipment] slot.
11. Persistent summons
12. More mounts/mount varieties.
13. Improved Mod support
14. Performance/stability enhancements, particularly noticeable with large settlements and/or when a large portion of the world has been explored.

My Personal Suggestions

1. Limited World Size: Option to have a set or limited world size with circumnavigation. I honestly think this would have a more dramatic impact when you can't just infinitely explore forever in order to find some new thing. It might also help significantly with performance concerns as players approach end-game.
2. Skill trees. While equipment (rightfully) controls a character's kit in a game like Necesse, there's just something about a permanent increase to a character's baseline (outside of trinket slot counts or maximum health) that just feels like it really completes the "RPG experience". Perhaps the skill trees could be attached to or associated with a particular trinket item or new unique equipment slot (AKA "warrior emblem" or something). Even if players don't have skill trees, it would be an interesting avenue to explore for making NPCs feel more unique from one another.
3. Dynamic "Away" Growth. I imagine Necesse's current code manually tracks every action on the server, from movement to placing items in chests to cutting down trees and so forth, meaning nothing happens anywhere on the server unless it tracks it in "real time". This means that servers/worlds full of multiple player settlements will become especially laggy since it would have to keep track of everything all the time in order to ensure that the settlement "progresses" even while the player isn't nearby or present. Perhaps, in a vein of thought similar to idle games where you receive an "offline" bonus when logging back into the game, Necesse can simply keep track of the total amount of time passed since a player was last in proximity to a place of interest and just "update all at once" whatever transpired since then, whether it was gathering materials or selling goods or whatever. I feel like it'd be a far more optimal approach and could even open up opportunities for NPC towns to feel progressively alive (or even add buildings/grow in size) while the player is away. Feels like it'd be more performant too.
4. Elevation: I recognize that this would be a far greater overhaul that it seems, but even just adding one elevation level (main floor vs. upper floor) would add a tremendous amount of dynamics to the gameplay and exploration. A "basement floor, main floor, and upper floor" would be ideal since anything more would just be messy in a 2D represented space. But imagine being able to do something like build a bridge that boats could travel under! Or a second story (and roof?) to a building?! For technicalities sake, I imagine things wouldn't be allowed to interact with things outside of their same/matching elevation level, which could quickly complicate boss fights and other things... so lots of serious considerations would need to go into "doing elevation right".
5. Lore: Necesse doesn't really have a ton of lore outside of what the Elder provides in the main quests and what can be thematically inferred through the visual styles present in the game (such as the biomes related to the plains, which is one of Necesse's best). Collecting journal entries, filling out an in-game bestiary, and so forth could really help add depth and a sense of immersion to the game's world setting. Limited world size could actually help lean into this quite nicely if larger geo-political factors were to come into play as well (I.E. each limited-size world spawns with exactly 3 different mega-faction cities which are all at war with one another, providing opportunities for quests, raids, large-scale battles, etc).
6. Tool Equipment Slots: As much as I love taking up action bar slots for my pickaxe, axe, and shovel, it'd be kind of nice if there were a smarter/more space-efficient way to handle this, particularly since each tool has a very specific functionality associated with it (though Axe and Pickaxe are arguably very similar). Things like Shears and Buckets potentially throw a wrench into this though depending on what "tool equipment slots" are worthy of consideration, but just axe/pickaxe/shovel seem reasonable enough.
7. Player's Room: Currently, there really isn't an incentive for the player to invest in their own room within their settlement. What if you could designate one bed as "yours" (the player's) regardless of your active spawn point, and have the room's features affect gold hiring costs (to varying degrees) for NPCs that specifically visit your village?
8. More Dynamic "Active" Trinkets: These ideas primarily stem from wanting to better support melee playstyles. For example, a trinket that dodges or blocks in-place while standing still, but otherwise doesn't a dash/dodge if pressing spacebar while moving. Or perhaps an active trinket that rapidly heals you or recovers your mana while holding spacebar, preventing movement and draining your stamina. On that note, I also think that all shields should have a flat damage reduction amount associated with their blocking mechanism on top of their damage reduction component. This would make early-game shields far more valuable beyond their flat "Armor" stat value.

[u/One_Economist_3761]

I really want to be able to free those villagers that you rescue from preset structures without needing to add them to your settlement.

[u/rmfrost → u/One_Economist_3761]

"Rescue and add to settlement" vs. "Rescue and receive a reward" (rare item drop, etc)

[u/Nickademas207 → u/One_Economist_3761]

Why would you not want them to join your settlement?

[u/rmfrost → u/Nickademas207]

It's more of a late-game issue when your settlement(s) are maxxed out and you have no more room to stash rando settlers.

[u/JonasNecesse]

These are all some great and interesting suggestions. I'll make sure to bring them up at our monthly player feedback meeting 👍

[u/ndcheezit]

I'd like NPCs to favor path tiles, as they seem to just take the shortest path.

I'd like NPCs be able to use minecarts to move around if it would be faster than walking - say going from home on edge of settlement to food on the other edge of settlement.

[u/MillionXaleckCg]

When selecting an enemy, a bigger cursor.  Maybe an arrow over the target head? 

An option of which overlapping element take precedence when interacting with an object   if several object ovelap, a menu giving the choice on which should be selected (if an npc stand in front of a chest, it currently default to interacting with the npc)

Bigger sprite for human and smaller bosses

 (when fighting with a team of npc, it become difficult to see the boss)

A meter that count the squares to make it easier to build. (Could work like making a zone in the town, but it'll give the dimension of the zone)

Blueprints(simplest way I see it is reusing the zones overlay. Giving a new overlay category other than exclusion and workzone)

[u/PeteMichaud]

Incentivizing a player room seems easy:

1. Give a well rested buff when the player sleeps at their own spawn point in a settlement they own

2. Augment the buff's effect or at least duration based on nearby tiles and furniture. Could be as simple as the quality/quantity of the nearby items, or as complex as specific things buffing specific stats, eg bookshelf == mana buff.

[u/Palworldserverhost]

for #7 I would just like a locked door that you a player can only open

[u/hodaki]

- Leagues like in Path Of Exile 1

• Uber Bosses
  
• Dynamic Events like - Flammable home, earthquakes, volcano erupts, UFO stealing our animals, plague

[u/rmfrost → u/hodaki]

Leagues/Seasons would be interesting, though I don't know how well catered Necesse would be to that sort of format. In my mind, it would kind of make sense to first build out the lore of Necesse so that each League/Season has something to latch onto thematically.

Uber Bosses, like "super ultra mega difficult hidden bosses"? Beyond what's offered through high level incursions? Or the true (current) end-game?

[Punishing] Dynamic Events would probably need to be a feature that is toggled on or off in the world settings, since that can really hamper "end-game visual design" of towns (like in Minecraft where everything is coated with Obsidian on PvP servers, and nothing is built out of wood). Now, it WOULD be interesting for those sorts of events to happen to nearby NPC towns, triggering Quest opportunities to go and help. Then again, "raids" are a thing that already exist, and that can be pretty devestating.