Quote Originally Posted by Citan View Post
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.