I went a re-watched the old kickstarter video just to remember the original goal for the game, and looking at the game now it seems very very very different. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1590639245/stonehearth/description for reference. But the idea of alternate plains and modules and elementals and “have a flexible path for tinkering and experimenting” -tom when it comes to crafting and making equipment doesn’t seem liked it is talked about by the devs or the community at large anymore. So I was wondering if this is still want the devs are aiming to do in the game or have just given up on some of these. ( I KNOW IT IS IN EARLY ACCESS, however these things are never even mentioned so I am worried these concepts might of well have vanished). So @sdee @brad @Brackhar are these still things you guys have in mind and talk about or is this the end of some of these.
I’d suggest the time for flexible paths has gone. In my opinion this project needs a clear development path to a clear goal.
@Yosmo78, watching the KS video is always such a trip down memory lane for me. 
Thanks for taking a look and reminding us of where we’ve come from. I’d say that of the features you mention:
- Alternate planes & elementals - both of these features are part of the end game, so we haven’t talked about them much recently. Our original, circa 2013 plan, of making the last third of the game about a giant string of titans (and elementals) that come hit your town sequentially fell down back in July of last year when we started to try to implement this and realized that our midgame gameplay (goblins and orcs) did not offer enough depth to make this an interesting challenge without inventing whole new systems and backporting them. @Brackhar is currently doing a much more holistic analysis of all our systems so that we CAN have an interesting end game that builds on all the things that have come before. At that point, we can start to talk about how these challenges manifest. Alternate planes may be a way of getting more resources; elementals could be a flavor of end-game boss. But we need to know the broad design strokes for the whole game, before we can really talk about how it appears.
- Modules - this is very much a part of the game.
The whole game is still written as a mod, and there are tons of mods out there, made by all of you! - flexible path for tinkering and experimenting - this is also still very much a part of the game. We want you to feel like you’re tinkering with systems and finding out how they work, as you play the game. We also do plan to keep the game flexible to your play style. For example, in the happiness system, there are many ways to make your hearthlings happy. Experiment and see which works best for your playstyle. This should get cooler as we tie the systems together.
- Crafting and making equipment - this is still in there. Was there something you were missing in particular?
In my opinion this project needs a clear development path to a clear goal.
Working on it! Right now I’d say that our goal for 2017 is getting the core systems into better shape–tie them to each other better, and make each choice of yours unveil a bunch of other optimizations you could make: some expected, and some surprises.
Looking back, I’d say that we’ve always had a clear development path, to a clear goal. The problem is that halfway through last year, we discovered that our existing development path was not going to get us to our goal, which was this sprawling, open-ended, but also deep and endlessly interesting game. End result: redefine goal, make a new path to get there
New goal: Stonehearth is a community-building sim game (ie, in the genre of Dwarf Fortress/Rimworld) in which you pioneer a living world that inspires warmth, creativity, and storytelling.
New Path: In progress!
Thanks for the reply @sdee I was just wondering because don’t here this stuff very often. So thanks for the refresher. Also i know this year is going to be focused on more behind the scenes stuff and hearthling systems, so my last follow up question is what would be planned after allllllllllllllllllll that backend stuff