We want to thank you all for the amazing, enthusiastic (frankly at times almost overwhelming) reception of Humankind. This was a dream game for us, and it warms our hearts to see so much lively discussion about all kinds of topics: Favorite cultures, strategies, balancing, map making and modding, and many others… But in all of these discussions, one question keeps coming up:
What’s next?
So, here’s a brief look at our plans for the near and not-so-near future:
Upcoming patches
Our team has been hard at work investigating and fixing bugs since launch (and we want to thank all of you who took the time to report issues you encountered), and we are going to deliver at least two patches to address various problems,
The first of these patches is already available as a beta test on an optional Steam branch, and we will release it officially very soon. For those of you who prefer to stay on the latest official stable version, and our players on other storefronts, here’s a small sample of what you can look forward to:
- Broadened generation conditions of Oil and Uranium deposits to reduce the risk of not enough deposits of either spawning
- Fixed GamePass players being unable to use multiplayer with the error message "You were forcibly disconnected from the game"
- Fixed “Stuck on tenet screen if all tenets are taken” bug
- Fixed several causes of turns not processing and getting stuck
- Improved AI behavior and performance
We’re already hard at work on the patch after the next one as well, but that one will take a little longer to be finished and released. In addition to more bug fixes, we want this patch to improve multiplayer and include a balance pass on several aspects of the game, such as cultures.
Map Making, Modding Tools, and Day 1 Mod
We’ve talked about our intentions for the modding capabilities of Humankind before, and while the scope of our plans has not changed, we cannot deny that the timing did not work out as we had planned.
We’re still working on the modding tools and the Day 1 mod, though we are focusing on the modding tools first to put a first version of these tools into your hands as soon as possible to empower you to create your own mods. This initial release will have more limited capabilities than what we would like to achieve, but we hope to be able to deliver this together with one of the upcoming patches.
In the meantime, the map editor is already available to you, and a number of bugfixes and improvements are coming to it in the next patch. And while you may be waiting for the modding tools to start your own dream project, this is a great time to get your feet wet in map making, as just yesterday we started a Map Making Contest with some amazing prizes! We can't wait to see what you come up with!
Other Improvements
We’ve seen many avid discussions about the game, and many interesting suggestions for how to change or improve it. Diplomacy, pollution, religion, and war resolution are only some examples of the many topics that came up in these discussions. We are of course keeping a close eye on these discussions to understand what you do or do not like about the game and what changes you would like to see.
However, these are big topics that may require big changes to address your concerns thoroughly. We need to carefully consider the steps we take on these issues, and then take time to properly implement and test these changes, so we will unfortunately not be able to provide a quick solution to these, though we will continue to work on balance improvements that may help to alleviate some of the problems you have been talking about.
Thank you once again for the enthusiastic reception, and for all your help making Humankind a better game.
We're here, we're listening, so let's forge the future of Humankind together!