What if the team did a coordinated hack day event?
Perhaps the community votes on a single, bite-size feature that the team would work on to provide an MVP. Something that can be achieved in one day (with adequate pre-planning), but isn’t necessarily themed against an Alpha schedule, etc. Just an old-fashioned “gee it would be awesome/fun to have this thing in game”.
Obviously, Team Stonehearth would need to curate a list of stuff they’re willing to include on a hack day to ensure it’ll be fun for them, and actually achievable.
An example might be: “Let’s get basic procedural underground dungeon generation working”.
Or maybe the community coordinates broadcasting Let’s Plays in Twitch all on the same day (likely a weekend), and Team Stonehearth runs around joining the stream chats. Could even do a community live build competition, assuming we solve scaffolding and ladder logic by then, of course. Might even work out a method for Google Hangouts while live playing, so the team can spontaneously join in on various Hangouts sessions throughout the community event.
Regardless, I’m excited for #200! It’s gonna be a fun day no matter what we do for it.