Dev Blog: August 28, 2018

[srand]

Works in Progress, or, The Summer Doldrums

Hi, I’m srand, Citan's partner and more-or-less second in command. Citan is unavailable at the moment (although I think I hear muffled curses coming from his subterranean lair), so I'll be delivering the dev blog today.

In previous dev blogs, we've talked about our iterative style of development. During alpha and beta our goal has been to get something out the door every two to four weeks. But it's been twice that twice that since the last update, and we're still a week or two away from the next one. So what's going on? Is the game dead? Is Citan dead?

Nah, it's nothing like that. (See my note above about the muffled curses.) But the pace of development has slowed down this summer. I could blame the summer heat here in Florida (96F today!) or the lingering effects of our hard push to Steam earlier this year, but no ...

No. It's mostly the damned casino.

The next update revolves around a casino run by the Red Wing mantis gang. If you follow our Twitter, you may have seen a screenshot of a match-3 game planned for the update.


https://i.imgur.com/yXEhu2H.png

The casino started here, with the idea for several mini-games like this. That might have been the whole of the casino - a big room with some mini-games - but Citan wasn't happy with it. It didn't feel like an integrated part of the game world. This casino is supposed to be a place where we can add more minigames over time, but why would people keep coming back to this place? Locations in Project: Gorgon usually serve multiple purposes, and this one just didn't quite work.

There were some other interesting features we had in mind for the casino beyond the mini-games. For example, an early screenshot on Twitter shows what appears to be a deer on a stage.


https://i.imgur.com/TnK2o9b.png

This is indeed a deer on a stage. Here Panzy is showing off an early version of the Stage Management console, a prototype of the kind of community tools we're keen on getting into the hands of our players and volunteer guides. A neat feature, to be sure, but still not enough of a draw to keep people coming back.

No, if the casino was going to be worth doing, it needed to be something more. So much like the casinos in Las Vegas, the Red Wings would strive to make their home an all-in-one, self-contained resort destination - a city in its own right. And hey, wasn't Citan just talking about a new higher-level hub city? Surprise!

Of course, building a city requires quite a bit more work than building 'just' a casino. But it also vastly increases the benefits from that work - there's a better return on the resource investment, if you will. And it goes both ways: A boring town is never going to be a good hub. (It's going to be hard enough to convince some people to leave Serbule, no matter how good the amenities at the new location.)

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of sexy new screenshots of the casino to share with you today. We're in that awkward stage where a lot of the features are working, but the art assets aren't good enough yet - not even by our lax standards for first-pass 'programmer art'.


https://i.imgur.com/5RoEwhE.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/rd4njOO.png

Besides, you probably don't want screenshots of a partially-built city anyway. You want to know the details: how much and what kind of storage it will have, where the portals will take you, where we're putting the player vendors, and whether you should be hoarding the existing game chips. But you'll have to wait just a little while longer for those answers.

(Actually, for the last one Citan says: "Those chips are the rough equivalent of 'home edition' poker chips -- they aren't casino chips. The Red Wing staff will trade them in for a pittance as a courtesy, but they aren't worth much. Don't bother trying to hoard them, as Councils will spend a lot easier!")

[INXS]

If you put 5 cows in new city, some people will move their mules and relocate to it.

[mrwarp]

If you put 5 cows in new city, some people will move their mules and relocate to it.

Make it a slots game! Every attempt to milk(spin) there's a chance to get 0, 1 or 2 bottles of milk!

And name the slot machine: Udder Madness!

[lileth]

If there's pole dancing, please provide curtains. The last thing I want to see ingame is these guys trying to fulfill rl fantasies ingame! :P

[Fifth]

Casino... Deer on the stage... With all those exciting minigames... Right. Yea! Uh!

* Turning around inching away real slow *

https://thirdparty.facepalm.de/images/facepalm.jpg

[Kryshael]

* Turning around inching away real slow *

Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!

Honestly though, this post only barely hints at what is coming and you are trolling negativity? You should be thankful that you have this "fun as hell" game to play and that they give regular updates. And when they don't give a regular update...they friggin update you with an update on the update!!!!

Some people just can't see the forest for the trees.

[Rick Sanchez]

Thanks for the update Srand. sounds like Citan is doing the fathers role out of a christmas story
" In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space"
I hope the updates go smoother and the heat dies down for you.

[Daguin]

Thanks Srand! While I'm disappointed all my chips will be for naught, I'm still really excited for the new update!

[Fifth]

Some people just can't see the forest for the trees.Sry if I came across as overly negative. It doesn't mean I don't like the game as a whole. I do, I actually like it a lot. It's just the new direction I can't really dig... But that's prolly just me.

It's just one persons subjective opinion, nothing more. If everyone else is super excited about it then everything's fine.
I do believe, by the way, that the best thing to do if you really care about the future of the game is to give honest feedback.

Besides, we haven't even seen the end product yet. Let's wait and see... and hope for the best.

[spider91301]

Legit take your time its better to have a finished project done right then a half *** baked one we have waited this long not like waiting a little longers going to kill us

[Gardum]

Sry if I came across as overly negative. It doesn't mean I don't like the game as a whole. I do, I actually like it a lot. It's just the new direction I can't really dig... But that's prolly just me.

It's just one persons subjective opinion, nothing more. If everyone else is super excited about it then everything's fine.
I do believe, by the way, that the best thing to do if you really care about the future of the game is to give honest feedback.

Besides, we haven't even seen the end product yet. Let's wait and see... and hope for the best.

I agree with you mate, not sure why people think putting gambling into games is a great idea ?
I have been disappointed in the way the game has been going in the last few updates and this one is not giving me much hope for the final product.

We are allowed to give our opinion as we have paid to play and those morons that only want to hear their opinion repeated as they like to fan boy for some unknown reason.
The idea of these threads is to give feed back as I donated and then bought two copies as the game started as i hoped it would and therefore I was happy to put money towards it, now though I have barely logged in for the last month as it's just getting stagnant now and the last thing that would interest me is a casino.
Hopefully they wake up and go back to the game rather than waste of time fluff.

[spider91301]

I agree with you mate, not sure why people think putting gambling into games is a great idea ?
I have been disappointed in the way the game has been going in the last few updates and this one is not giving me much hope for the final product.

We are allowed to give our opinion as we have paid to play and those morons that only want to hear their opinion repeated as they like to fan boy for some unknown reason.
The idea of these threads is to give feed back as I donated and then bought two copies as the game started as i hoped it would and therefore I was happy to put money towards it, now though I have barely logged in for the last month as it's just getting stagnant now and the last thing that would interest me is a casino.
Hopefully they wake up and go back to the game rather than waste of time fluff.

Dude I know im one to talk considering ingame im probably the one that complains the most ingame about random crap but if the game dies it dies if it lives it lives all this negative sht is really uneeded do you even know how hard it is to code I do agree in terms of developing a casino might not be the best idea but its better then nothing also I would rather they take their time on what they work on in every detail so later we dont have issues with coding or its becomes a half baked product that sucks

[ShieldBreaker]

I agree with you mate, not sure why people think putting gambling into games is a great idea ?
I have been disappointed in the way the game has been going in the last few updates and this one is not giving me much hope for the final product.

We are allowed to give our opinion as we have paid to play and those morons that only want to hear their opinion repeated as they like to fan boy for some unknown reason.
The idea of these threads is to give feed back as I donated and then bought two copies as the game started as i hoped it would and therefore I was happy to put money towards it, now though I have barely logged in for the last month as it's just getting stagnant now and the last thing that would interest me is a casino.
Hopefully they wake up and go back to the game rather than waste of time fluff.

Constructive criticism is welcome. People try to show their support be being positive isn't frowned upon. Being negative and using words like morons is frowned upon.
The start of the game has had the most man-hours of work put into it, and has been reworked the most. The later content hasn't been polished and reworked yet, but of course, it will be. That isn't complex work (like creating new in-game systems), it is just very time consuming. I don't think the main idea is for the game to introduce gambling, I think the casino is more likely a testing ground for UI and puzzles. Think how cool it be if you had to solve some visual puzzle or game to unlock an area of a dungeon. Or if NPC had little mini-games you could play against them to gain favor or gifts. The concepts in the casino should be seen as an opportunity to imagine and suggest new content in other areas of the game. It is a building block in the overall game, a new set of tools to introduce fun content and express the lore of the game.

To your point about things getting stagnant. There is a finite set of content to the game at any given moment. But the amount of content is increased on an ongoing basis. So if you have done the content that interests you at this point you will get bored. But more content you personally like, hopefully will be added in the future. You could provide feedback on what you liked by submitting a suggestion using the in-game form for suggestions. Now it probably won't make the devs completely rewrite the order of their todo lists but it might influence them when decided areas to focus on.

[Citan]

What a thread to wake up to. I'm not sure how "we are delaying the casino so we can make it a hub city worth using", turned into the idea that we're adding hundreds of minigames. So to set expectations right: there are only two actual minigames in the casino and you've seen them in screenshots. There are no others. I cut the other games because they weren't fun enough... and I did that a month ago.

On the one hand I'm definitely still working on minigames: I spend about an hour at "breakfast" each day testing these two games, banging on them, tweaking them. And there are some other gambling diversions in the hub city that I'm trying to make worthwhile. But the majority of every day is spent making regular old MMO content.

First, the visuals of the casino didn't pan out. In a nutshell, we tried a new idea and it didn't work: it was slow, ugly, and would be hard to improve in the future. So we had to return to our traditional approach, which is working fine, but means we we basically have to remake the whole casino layout.

But the visuals are just visuals. Think about all the other work needed to make a good hub city: new interesting NPCs to raise favor with, new player vendors, new storage, new recipes, new abilities, new favors, new hangouts, new work orders, on and on it goes. It's a LONG list and it takes time. None of the remaining work can be outsourced, so it's being done by just srand and I. And we're crunching. We literally cannot go any faster than this, so please bear with us.

I really hope you'll like the two minigames we're adding, but if not, there will still be stuff for you to do in the casino. If you're bored right now, I seriously suggest trying WoW for a while, the new expansion is out and it's a fun game with a ton of content. And no, I'm not back-handedly disparaging WoW -- I like WoW as a second game. I think it's great for MMO players to play several MMOs. That's because no single MMO can stay fresh forever. You need to rotate between a couple of games. Don't burn yourself out on this game. (Please!) Just take a break.

Thanks for your support, and I'll be back soon when we have more news to share.

[Mbaums]

Citan is a mad man telling people to try WoW! I also like the idea of one day him looking back and saying, of everything the Casino development made people the most crazy. So far we've seen: in-game-housing speculation with the deer in headlights, people not being able to see past Serbule and to talk of Mini-game city.

[spider91301]

What a thread to wake up to. I'm not sure how "we are delaying the casino so we can make it a hub city worth using", turned into the idea that we're adding hundreds of minigames. So to set expectations right: there are only two actual minigames in the casino and you've seen them in screenshots. There are no others. I cut the other games because they weren't fun enough... and I did that a month ago.

On the one hand I'm definitely still working on minigames: I spend about an hour at "breakfast" each day testing these two games, banging on them, tweaking them. And there are some other gambling diversions in the hub city that I'm trying to make worthwhile. But the majority of every day is spent making regular old MMO content.

First, the visuals of the casino didn't pan out. In a nutshell, we tried a new idea and it didn't work: it was slow, ugly, and would be hard to improve in the future. So we had to return to our traditional approach, which is working fine, but means we we basically have to remake the whole casino layout.

But the visuals are just visuals. Think about all the other work needed to make a good hub city: new interesting NPCs to raise favor with, new player vendors, new storage, new recipes, new abilities, new favors, new hangouts, new work orders, on and on it goes. It's a LONG list and it takes time. None of the remaining work can be outsourced, so it's being done by just srand and I. And we're crunching. We literally cannot go any faster than this, so please bear with us.

I really hope you'll like the two minigames we're adding, but if not, there will still be stuff for you to do in the casino. If you're bored right now, I seriously suggest trying WoW for a while, the new expansion is out and it's a fun game with a ton of content. And no, I'm not back-handedly disparaging WoW -- I like WoW as a second game. I think it's great for MMO players to play several MMOs. That's because no single MMO can stay fresh forever. You need to rotate between a couple of games. Don't burn yourself out on this game. (Please!) Just take a break.

Thanks for your support, and I'll be back soon when we have more news to share.

Pretty sure alot of veteran players know your doing your best take your time it turns out better that way in the long run and also I agree with rotating with mmos I'm not trying to suck up because I b*** alot ingame and not going to be two faced about it pretty sure everyone knows your doing your best my words probably don't seem alot because humans tend to remember the negative more then the positive me especially but keep up the good work and don't get discouraged life goes on in more ways then one rather we like it or not it will sort its way out it just takes time and effort to deal with daily bs and stress

[Grobyddonot]

Think how cool it be if you had to solve some visual puzzle or game to unlock an area of a dungeon.

This particular in-game "wall" is not cool, it never was, it never will be. Because it disrupts fun, active, action gameplay in almost every genre. Puzzles are great for puzzle and quest-genre games only. But that's just my opinion. Every single action shooter game I've played would have only been much better, if it had no puzzles in it, because playing a shooter I want to shoot stuff. And the ultimate fact is, that the players, who just want to play, will wiki or google how to solve the puzzle in order to get there faster. No offense and not to undermine current puzzles in PG, but I just read on the internet how to solve all of them, puzzles are just not my cup of tea.

As for the casino and built-in minigames in general, they're fine, because they are just an additional feauture in any big game. People who love it will enjoy it. People who don't, just won't play them.

[Fifth]

Thanx for the update, Citan. This is music to my ears.
Looking forward for all the good stuff!

[Arundel]

Can I get a quick confirm on whether or not the developer intent is to have vampires the "correct" way in game: forced glittering sparkle effect on their skin. And also for them to have a racial enemy of all werewolves, lycans, and wolves (They gain +4 damage to any hit against their racial enemy). I don't want to invest my time into a game that doesn't have a feature like this which is straight from ALL lore on vampires. Which is of course: They have pale skin that glitters brightly in a very awkwardly fairy like way - making their victims succumb to their seductive awful creepy romantic lines. Upvote me if you know that I am right because you have watched a movie lately that your family MADE you go see and guilted you for not liking it by calling you a "hater".

In fact, I offer a challenge to anyone in the community: name me a good reason that vampires should NOT sparkle that I can't refute and I will be forced to play only Animal Handling/Druid like the hippy tree hugger I am for suggesting this.

[Quanzhigao]

how do i delete someone elses post

[Kryshael]

how do i delete someone elses post

+1

Let me know if you find out :)

[SaintNerd]

Thanks for the few details you could share Srand. :)

[Mcnasty]

I agree with you mate, not sure why people think putting gambling into games is a great idea ?
I have been disappointed in the way the game has been going in the last few updates and this one is not giving me much hope for the final product.

We are allowed to give our opinion as we have paid to play and those morons that only want to hear their opinion repeated as they like to fan boy for some unknown reason.
The idea of these threads is to give feed back as I donated and then bought two copies as the game started as i hoped it would and therefore I was happy to put money towards it, now though I have barely logged in for the last month as it's just getting stagnant now and the last thing that would interest me is a casino.
Hopefully they wake up and go back to the game rather than waste of time fluff.

Indeed, I agree.

[preechr]

YAY I'M A STUPID FAN-BOY!!

Unlike a few posters here, I'm not going to pre-judge what comes next

I play P:G because its an eclectic and strange game and that appeals to me, so I'm not surprised or offended that the dev team is working on something that seems strange and eclectic

I love what we have so far, and I trust that whatever they are working on will add interesting and needed content to the game that will not only be amusing but probably be building up foundations for things we will see later

I guess if that makes me a fan-boy, I'd rather be that than one of those that complains about content they haven't even seen yet

If what we have as a game so far is great, there is no reason, in my mind, to presuppose that the rest of the game will also be great once it is finished

That doesn't mean every single pixel in the game has to be exactly what I want it to be, as I realize there are other types of players in the world that might like things I don't

[Silkt]

I have no problem with an update timeline not being met, but if the communication that informs us says its a week or 2 away from the 19 Aug as posted on the ingame login and we are well past 2 weeks with no official update of times I get very disappointed with the communication to customers. YES we are now customers not testers because we have paid for a product, acknlowdging we knew that product is subject to change, WE STILL PAID.

It was made even worse that I was in game Rummencola was giving all sorts of details of what was coming or not coming in the patch [general details only no hard facts not trying to stop a Guide working in game] I then lost electricity at my house part way through, if an EMPLOYEE is able to give info in game chat then they should also have the courstey to provide players [customers] not online at the time with the same information, I don't care if its only a screenshot of the general chat, this game has these forums for communication any other communication in game discord twitter etc should also be on here. I would love to give positive comments over weekend events that are announced on the twitter feed but not posted here, but I refuse to create social media accounts, previously my job security classifaction forbid me but now I am retired I still follow the same practice as social media is no better than internet graffiti. I am sure I am not the only player who uses this forum as their RELIABLE source of this great game information, I have no problems with other media or websites being used, that is a must for successful growth, but please IS A COPY AND PASTE TOO HARD or time consuming.

To me one of the reasons players forget about official forums espcially with Steam games is that they post information on Steam, Reddit, Twitter etc but forget or are too lazy to copy it to their official forum, then those platform users never come here.

[Tagamogi]

Well, I've said this before elsewhere but in the interest of adding some cheer into this thread: I am really excited about the update. Which actually worries me since no update can realistically live up to my overhigh expectations but eh, I'll deal with that later. :D

I was ho-hum on the casino idea initially, but I really like the details we've gotten since then. To me, the key is that the games will have a strategy element, rather than being purely chance-based. Pure chance isn't fun to me, but give me the opportunity to influence the outcome meaningfully myself and ooh, yes, I'm in. I like the screenshots we've seen. I had to google match-3 and I strongly suspect I'm going to suck at the game, but I'm still looking forward to playing around with the pretty gems. The mantis game looks super fun to me - exactly the kind of silly stuff I like to play around with, plus I'm really looking forward to finding out more about mantises. I'm hoping the casino will be a huge success and we'll get more games later.

I've been vaguely wondering if building games within a game is really a good use of our very limited dev resources. I'm leaning towards "definitely, if it works". Thoughts around that:

The basics of an MMO could be summed up as people whacking at mobs with a stick. It's not a bad base, but what tends to make MMOs fun and memorable is all the extra stuff added on top of that, so having a dev focus on stuff other than the bare bones of making an MMO is actually not a bad thing. PG does a lot of things that could be dismissed as non-essential fluff but which combine to make PG such a cool and unique game. Having games inside the game could be yet another unique PG thing. ( Actually, we already have a game inside the game, I still play /wordhunt on occasion.)

Somewhat along those lines: A long time ago, I played a single-player RPG called Might and Magic 7. It was a pretty decent RPG, if not particularly memorable. However, it had one fascinating bit of fluff: When visiting a tavern, you could play this card game called Arcomage. And Arcomage was fun. It had not particular relevance to the RPG I was actually playing - just a way to make a bit of money. However, having this game present gave me something to look forward to when visiting each new town and made me enjoy the actual RPG much more than I otherwise would have. ( Nearly 20 years later, I remember zip about the RPG but I still make periodic futile efforts to find a standalone version of Arcomage that will actually run on my computer.) So, long story short: Random fluff can be super fun and make the base game better.

Going back to PG: We want a town hub in addition to Serbule. Convincing players to abandon Serbule means the next town hub needs to have something special. An opportunity to play some games could be that special carrot we need... No way to know if it will work until the update happens, but it seems worth a try.

( In super-silly stuff: I've been having fun imagining the work order board for the new casino. It could have all the special tailoring hats, and of course it needs food work orders for chicken psi-mantis style and several venison-based foods. To keep the casino going, maybe some work orders for game chips, obsidian, and gems used in the matching game.

I've been trying to think of what else mantises do, but all I can come up with is "collect food to feed baby mantises". So maybe this could be the opportunity to allow a cooking level up to 70, and introduce some fancy new recipes?)

[Silkt]

Well, I've said this before elsewhere but in the interest of adding some cheer into this thread: I am really excited about the update. Which actually worries me since no update can realistically live up to my overhigh expectations but eh, I'll deal with that later. :D

I was ho-hum on the casino idea initially, but I really like the details we've gotten since then. To me, the key is that the games will have a strategy element, rather than being purely chance-based. Pure chance isn't fun to me, but give me the opportunity to influence the outcome meaningfully myself and ooh, yes, I'm in. I like the screenshots we've seen. I had to google match-3 and I strongly suspect I'm going to suck at the game, but I'm still looking forward to playing around with the pretty gems. The mantis game looks super fun to me - exactly the kind of silly stuff I like to play around with, plus I'm really looking forward to finding out more about mantises. I'm hoping the casino will be a huge success and we'll get more games later.

I've been vaguely wondering if building games within a game is really a good use of our very limited dev resources. I'm leaning towards "definitely, if it works". Thoughts around that:

The basics of an MMO could be summed up as people whacking at mobs with a stick. It's not a bad base, but what tends to make MMOs fun and memorable is all the extra stuff added on top of that, so having a dev focus on stuff other than the bare bones of making an MMO is actually not a bad thing. PG does a lot of things that could be dismissed as non-essential fluff but which combine to make PG such a cool and unique game. Having games inside the game could be yet another unique PG thing. ( Actually, we already have a game inside the game, I still play /wordhunt on occasion.)

Somewhat along those lines: A long time ago, I played a single-player RPG called Might and Magic 7. It was a pretty decent RPG, if not particularly memorable. However, it had one fascinating bit of fluff: When visiting a tavern, you could play this card game called Arcomage. And Arcomage was fun. It had not particular relevance to the RPG I was actually playing - just a way to make a bit of money. However, having this game present gave me something to look forward to when visiting each new town and made me enjoy the actual RPG much more than I otherwise would have. ( Nearly 20 years later, I remember zip about the RPG but I still make periodic futile efforts to find a standalone version of Arcomage that will actually run on my computer.) So, long story short: Random fluff can be super fun and make the base game better.

Going back to PG: We want a town hub in addition to Serbule. Convincing players to abandon Serbule means the next town hub needs to have something special. An opportunity to play some games could be that special carrot we need... No way to know if it will work until the update happens, but it seems worth a try.

( In super-silly stuff: I've been having fun imagining the work order board for the new casino. It could have all the special tailoring hats, and of course it needs food work orders for chicken psi-mantis style and several venison-based foods. To keep the casino going, maybe some work orders for game chips, obsidian, and gems used in the matching game.

I've been trying to think of what else mantises do, but all I can come up with is "collect food to feed baby mantises". So maybe this could be the opportunity to allow a cooking level up to 70, and introduce some fancy new recipes?)

Where is a forum LIKE button for this

Even at 4:30 AM drunk as 10 monkeys on thai rum this post sums up what is great about PG. Bashing stuff with whatever version you like, stick, skellie, cow or even eating it, wolf, plus fluff is what makes this game, just keep the fluff accessable and all is good.

[INXS]

All was needed is a Serbule town nerf and players would have scattered away, i am excited about the update for that matter all the updates always brings this ongoing game closer to a finish product.

[Khyros]

Can I get a quick confirm on whether or not the developer intent is to have vampires the "correct" way in game: forced glittering sparkle effect on their skin. And also for them to have a racial enemy of all werewolves, lycans, and wolves (They gain +4 damage to any hit against their racial enemy). I don't want to invest my time into a game that doesn't have a feature like this which is straight from ALL lore on vampires. Which is of course: They have pale skin that glitters brightly in a very awkwardly fairy like way - making their victims succumb to their seductive awful creepy romantic lines. Upvote me if you know that I am right because you have watched a movie lately that your family MADE you go see and guilted you for not liking it by calling you a "hater".

In fact, I offer a challenge to anyone in the community: name me a good reason that vampires should NOT sparkle that I can't refute and I will be forced to play only Animal Handling/Druid like the hippy tree hugger I am for suggesting this.

Euuugh, I cringed so hard my face almost imploded. If vampires aren't a proper grimdark blood aristocracy, I'm going to strap them all to a mantis-powered rocket and fire them into the sun.

[spider91301]

When the casino finally comes out Im going to unleash inner cringy kid and start doing this

https://media.giphy.com/media/7J55j4EBJGrYI/giphy.gif



And yes I had to post this cringy seizure inducing picture

[Arundel]

What a thread to wake up to. I'm not sure how "we are delaying the casino so we can make it a hub city worth using", turned into the idea that we're adding hundreds of minigames. So to set expectations right: there are only two actual minigames in the casino and you've seen them in screenshots. There are no others. I cut the other games because they weren't fun enough... and I did that a month ago.

On the one hand I'm definitely still working on minigames: I spend about an hour at "breakfast" each day testing these two games, banging on them, tweaking them. And there are some other gambling diversions in the hub city that I'm trying to make worthwhile. But the majority of every day is spent making regular old MMO content.

First, the visuals of the casino didn't pan out. In a nutshell, we tried a new idea and it didn't work: it was slow, ugly, and would be hard to improve in the future. So we had to return to our traditional approach, which is working fine, but means we we basically have to remake the whole casino layout.

But the visuals are just visuals. Think about all the other work needed to make a good hub city: new interesting NPCs to raise favor with, new player vendors, new storage, new recipes, new abilities, new favors, new hangouts, new work orders, on and on it goes. It's a LONG list and it takes time. None of the remaining work can be outsourced, so it's being done by just srand and I. And we're crunching. We literally cannot go any faster than this, so please bear with us.

I really hope you'll like the two minigames we're adding, but if not, there will still be stuff for you to do in the casino. If you're bored right now, I seriously suggest trying WoW for a while, the new expansion is out and it's a fun game with a ton of content. And no, I'm not back-handedly disparaging WoW -- I like WoW as a second game. I think it's great for MMO players to play several MMOs. That's because no single MMO can stay fresh forever. You need to rotate between a couple of games. Don't burn yourself out on this game. (Please!) Just take a break.

Thanks for your support, and I'll be back soon when we have more news to share.

Citan
and the other devs of course

I wanted to say I love the direction you are taking and the mini RPG looks very fun. I am a chess player and play JRPG's and old old PC RPG's even still. I like to mod games and add mini games within them for this reason, the diversion adds to the immersion and fun for me if the mini game is good. The Final Fantasy series has successfully (imo) added mini games starting from early in the franchise and especially the collectable card game that you could play was simple, fun, and added a way to "grind" out new powers early on. If anyone is familiar with that, for me that is what made the WHOLE game because I could collect cards everywhere and even turn monsters into cards (this card game was FFVIII btw if any of you have not played it). Even a mini-game like a mud or old school 90's rpg like you are adding is awesome and I love it. It kind of reminds me of say the Arena feature in Hearthstone (Blizzard's online card game) where you try to get as many wins as you can for rewards and you build your deck from random cards. Those kinds of features are so fun.

TLDR: "BSLLOL" (Too Long Didn't Read But Still Long LOL): Please keep going in this direction for awhile. You guys are great. I may make goofy satirical posts to try to lighten the mood but the features you add are always value for the time you put in imo. I believe you are the best developers anywhere on Steam or outside of it right now. I normally break the economy (not cheating just solving an economy and figuring out how to make the most money so I can spend less time grinding and help friends) in games as a hobby but your economy with so many items and crafts, plus adding mini games, just adds to the complexity and fun ways to pass time in the game solo or with help. I love you guys and even though I don't always log in (Just started a new job) I read your forums everyday and long for new content. Thanks so much again for all you do. It takes dedication to put this amount of time and money into making a game but it is almost therapy (saying this coming from a licensed therapist) for us as MMORPG addicts because it is so so fresh. I was so tired of WoW clones, even though I have great memories from that game, you guys are going a fresh route and please never stop. I don't care if others don't accept every idea, you refine them everytime and are just flat out the best devs.

[Arundel]

In response to people hating my vampire themed after "Twilight" post:

LOL. I hope you know that post was satirical. I am of course a fan of vampires like old school dungeons and dragons. Dark, generally evil, and overpowered. My favorite class the devs have announced is Lich though. I hope it takes a lot of grinding, effort, and penalties to maintain but an interesting and strong power level. Lich's are serious frickin business in Dungeons and Dragons and most any other game. You don't f*** with a thing that made itself immortal with magic, that is strong. Demilich's are my favorite. Would love to see that as a heavily penalized endgame class someday.

[Khyros]

In response to people hating my vampire themed after "Twilight" post:

LOL. I hope you know that post was satirical. I am of course a fan of vampires like old school dungeons and dragons. Dark, generally evil, and overpowered. My favorite class the devs have announced is Lich though. I hope it takes a lot of grinding, effort, and penalties to maintain but an interesting and strong power level. Lich's are serious frickin business in Dungeons and Dragons and most any other game. You don't f*** with a thing that made itself immortal with magic, that is strong. Demilich's are my favorite. Would love to see that as a heavily penalized endgame class someday.

Lol I knew it was satirical, I still love to take shots at Twilight though.
BUT WAIT
They announced LICH? Aaahhhhhh please tell me this is coming relatively soon. Vampire and Lich will be such freaking cool skills to play. Is there a list of announced skills somewhere?

[ShieldBreaker]

Lol I knew it was satirical, I still love to take shots at Twilight though.
BUT WAIT
They announced LICH? Aaahhhhhh please tell me this is coming relatively soon. Vampire and Lich will be such freaking cool skills to play. Is there a list of announced skills somewhere?

In the blog posts Lich-dom is always mentioned as something after vampire, and it is just something that Citan hopes to, maybe, add after vampire. I wasn't able to find a lot of info, or anything really recent that give clear indication of Lich-dom. Vampire needs 2 updates, that we have been told of, that have to happen before vampire can happen. It is likely not soon, probably months and months and months away, sorry.

There isn't a list of announced skills, you would need to check what is mentioned in blog posts and hints from items in game that mention their use, like gems.

[spider91301]

In the blog posts Lich-dom is always mentioned as something after vampire, and it is just something that Citan hopes to, maybe, add after vampire. I wasn't able to find a lot of info, or anything really recent that give clear indication of Lich-dom. Vampire needs 2 updates, that we have been told of, that have to happen before vampire can happen. It is likely not soon, probably months and months and months away, sorry.

There isn't a list of announced skills, you would need to check what is mentioned in blog posts and hints from items in game that mention their use, like gems.

I predict a year or 2 at this point Im just taking it easy now I stopped caring as much on what new thing happens ingame as much got my full set of sword and shield gear most of it is yellow but its all tweaked to the best it can be so not really motivated do worry or complain as much why is/isnt added to the game doing phrenology at this point for shts and giggles

[Khyros]

I predict a year or 2 at this point Im just taking it easy now I stopped caring as much on what new thing happens ingame as much got my full set of sword and shield gear most of it is yellow but its all tweaked to the best it can be so not really motivated do worry or complain as much why is/isnt added to the game doing phrenology at this point for shts and giggles

Yeah, there's plenty of other things in game to keep me occupied until then, but I really, really hope Vampirism doesn't take another two years.