On the 31st of May, all Citizens of Tau Station were invited to the second special online meeting with the Dev team. If you wanted to join, but couldn’t find the time, it’s all right, we expect more meetings like this in the future! Read on to learn what we all talked about…
The call began on Tuesday, at 18:00 UTC. Over 15 people attended during the call.
Meeting each other
Leila welcomed all participants and started with an introduction of the team members. This was followed by our esteemed Citizens introducing themselves. It was interesting to hear about how each of you found Tau Station.
We were all delighted to learn how some of you joined the game as far back as 15 cycles ago, with many signing up shortly after that. Sharing the stories of “the old days” when private ships didn’t exist and syndicates were not even implemented yet. A few even admitted that Tau Station is one of the rare games they can’t give up on, always coming back for more! We enjoyed hearing how you discovered us, whether it was on a French website or through a recorded conference talk.
For the team, it was great to see the different ways on how you perceive the game, the various features you like the most or the missions that contain surprises and unexpected twists. Or the ability to get ships and explore the universe, how the stations and systems fit into the overall lore, and finally, the important aspect of making new friends through the game.
That’s exactly what Tau Station wants to embrace: giving you a place to play in that lets you experience different emotions, ideas and stories.
Roadmap
Leila explained the current status and the next steps on our development roadmap. There are plenty of things coming. Firstly, we need to finish the current work with the new UI. It needs to be done everywhere, including mobile devices and tablets. The next steps will be the reapplying Discreet work, and following that, we’ll be adding more functionalities.
One of our goals is that no more user scripts should be needed. One example is the ability to see the item prices of all destinations: we envision a place in your CORETECHS where you can see all items with their local prices per station. These prices are going to change over time, therefore traders can experience a dynamic game economy in the future. But again: the UI needs to be finished first, and following that we can continue to build on top!
Our back-end team lead by Pete shared insights into the activities they are working on, such as creating the back-end logics for syndicate buildings that will bring in new multiplayer features and abilities.
There will be a few new ships and the extra functionalities you asked for. The next update will be rolled-out in the middle of June, with no further updates in the summer as we’ll be working on the mobile phone which needs to be done in one step. In the meantime, the narrative team keeps writing new missions for you. And on the cards we still are adding cargo ships, elite trading, ice mining and so on…
Open talk, sharing ideas
During the second part of the meeting, several ideas were shared with the team which we want to summarize for everyone who wasn’t able to attend.
How much is the fish?
A famous collectible item of Tau Station was mentioned once again: The goldfish item, and the fervor to get more of these. We will just wait and see what be done about this…
Chat
Another good idea is the indication of new chat messages, even if the chat window is closed. This way, people who want to chat don’t miss any new messages, no matter if the chat window is open or not.
Events
Nevah mentioned the idea of bringing some universal (cooperative) events that might even be time-limited, to engage with other Citizens. We love it! Leila mentioned we are right now focusing on the necessary changes, but there are ideas for multiplayer features, such as opening a new jump gate together before all travelers are able to use it.
Waving hello & small groups
Xierumeng asked for more player interactions like an additional button on player profiles for “waving hello” and the ability to make smaller groups. Syndicates normally consist of many players and you would need to take a few courses first. Therefore, the ability to make smaller groups of just 2-4 people for some fast fun activities would be a great addition to the game.
The team really likes the concept, which requires further consideration, but it’s definitely something on our list now!
The Welcome Culture in Tau Station
A lot of memories were shared about the awesome support by experienced Citizens who even gave welcome gifts to many of you when they first started their adventures in Tau Station. Let’s keep up this special spirit within the Community. We should continue this tradition and give all the new players who are joining us the same inclusive feelings you experienced!
Thanks to everyone who joined, we really enjoyed this meeting and we’re happy and excited to continue our journey together with all of you!
Cya next time in space again!
StarGazer for the team