So what's next? | Fragment 2.1.0 and beyond

-Dirtti, 13.9.2024

Hello again.

It has now been a bit since Awakening released, so I wanted to write a little about the future of Fragment. This post will mostly be focused on the imminent future (2.1.0) and the next large content update (2.2.0), with some small peeks into what awaits us beyond. But the most important thing to take away from all this is:

We're just getting started.

Next up for actual updates is 2.1.0, but what's included in it? The answer is a lot of quality of life updates and refreshes to outdated content.

New Beginnings

The first campaign of Fragment was good for it's time, but with the many updates and improvements made for the Awakening campaign, it has definitely fallen behind in quality. As it is the first content new players play through as they begin their journey through Fragment, I feel it is necessary to bring the New Beginnings campaign up to current standards.

So what does this mean for the campaign? What improvements are being made? These are the main points:

Allow players to quit mid-mission and rejoin at the same checkpoint.
Add respawn timers for multiplayer.
Rebalance encounters where needed.

The intention is not to change the campaign, just update it to better handle a larger playerbase.

Mission Playlist

The Mission Playlist's introduction was a great addition to replayability back in 1.1.0, but it has been over a year since it has had anything but minor tweaks and balance changes.

2.1.0 will bring with it a refresh to the Mission Playlist, adding new missions, loot, and new featured mission modifiers. More details about the featured missions will be in a progress update closer to release.

Quest Archive

The Quest Archive is a feature I have personally really wanted to implement for a while. The Quest Archive is a new section on Delta Station, which allows players to reacquire completed quests, along with letting you replay specific missions or cutscenes.

There are no new rewards given for replaying old quests/missions, though you can get any rewards the quest would normally give. The archive is simply a way for interested players to re-experience past content. This will also serve as a easier way to reacquire quest based legendary items.

Destinations

2.1.0 will also bring some small improvements to destinations, with a focus on the Lost City and Valley of Azarax. The main improvement is a full rework of the random encounter(SkeleTech antenna, escort drone, etc.) system for the older destinations. This includes making the existing encounters better, along with adding a few new ones.

Other updates include a rework of the roaming powerful enemy system, and the addition of loot chests scattered around destinations.

Other stuff

All that stuff was just the big stuff coming in 2.1.0, there's a lot more I don't have the time to talk about in this post.

Some stuff I can quickly list of are:

New Legendary items
Reworks to shock and bleed effects
Changes to the Hunter's bounties
Titles

After 2.1.0, it's once again time to focus on new content. I won't say much since it will be a while until this releases, but I can give a quick overview. 2.2.0 will add a new destination, quests, and a new stronghold. It is intended to be mostly mid-game content, around the same level as Zypt, if not a bit lower level.

The scope of this update is much smaller than Awakening, so the wait should hopefully be a lot shorter than last time. There will obviously be new epic and legendary gear as well.

It goes without saying that I can't tell you much about 3.0.0 yet. But while I can't tell you much yet, I can assure you that it isn't for lack of plans, since 3.0.0 has been in planning for long before 2.0.0 was even released, and the same goes for every major expansion of Fragment.

What I can say, is that 3.0.0 will be the closest to an "endgame" expansion so far, with content focused on replayability for endgame players.

The far future

While they may still be years away, 4.0.0, 5.0.0 and finally, 6.0.0 are constantly being planned out. Let's just hope we live long enough to see those plans realized.

Before I go

There are still a few things I want to talk about before we're done here. I would be lying if I said the development of 2.0.0 went smoothly, and that's what I want to talk about. Fragment was closed for over 8 months during the development of 2.0.0. It will never be closed for that long of a time ever again. (Until the server is closed forever, but let's hope that doesn't happen for another decade.)

I am also trying to ensure that future updates don't take as long of a time to complete. Well that's all good Dirtti, but how are you planning to do those things? Glad you asked. The main factors for 2.0.0's long development were:

Me making the entire expansion by myself.
Me having to fix the entirety of Fragment after the changes to item data.

First off: I'm going to recruit a builder or two to help with new destinations.

Second: The reason I had to fix everything for 2.0.0 was because Fragment was still operating as a realm, meaning we had to use the newest version of Minecraft. Now that Fragment is an actual server, if something breaks, I can just not update the server to the new version until it is ready.

Farewell

That's all for now. I hope you've all enjoyed this little peek into the future of Fragment. Until next time.

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