Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516 
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Post by Jeshin on Feb 13, 2016 1:04:12 GMT -5
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Feb 4, 2016 18:12:17 GMT -5
Optional Realities will always have a userbase as an unmoderated board (like this one) that allows people to post about their games without risking the judgement of staff. Project Redshift might have lost its base though, as a product/game it has a limited amount of good faith people will give it while waiting for it. See Laketown RPI and LabMUD for other examples of games that have been in development so long they have likely hurt themselves. Add Project Redshift to the list.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Feb 4, 2016 11:31:37 GMT -5
Emerging from hiatus to post...
I know of 2 groups that managed to get warehouses and 1 that was near it, none of the 3 were not linked to staff. No one I know has managed to get a hawker or a shop though.
1 - Sleazy male tuluki at the close of tuluk Draz? I forget the name.
This was played by a player who got force stored by Nyr on another character. They were basically running the Warrens prior to the Tuluki close and was one of the people who got completely blindsided by the situation while building up to have a merchant house with a human front and everything. They got a warehouse in Allanak after the move and had the legitimate income and money to begin the merchant house process.
2 - Aon and the White Carru Trading Company
This was formed by a tribal female and I can't for the life of me remember her name (but then again this was years ago). Aon inherited control of it and as a tuluki citizen was one of the first person in the north to use a warehouse when they came out. They never had a storefront but they did get staff support a couple of times for unique orders like 2 story tall marble or alabaster being harvested from the cliffs.
3 - Rinthi con artist girl
This chica was in the process of getting funding for a warehouse and was a rinthi who managed to move up the social ladder in Allanak. She was aiming to make her own merchant house but got cut short by being involved with the wrong people and somewhat murder happy templars. To my knowledge she was on track to get a warehouse as soon as the funds from her backers were deposited.
In general a culture of limitation is a good term for what is happening to Armageddon. Another way to look at it is simply lack of faith. Either in the playerbase to tell meaningful stories or be trusted to color inside the lines of the lore and documentation. Possibly even a lack of faith in the staff themselves to do something inventive or untested and be able to keep hold of it without ruining the formula. I think Armageddon, more than any other game, protects the formula. During my tenure playing there it was very obvious that with SOI closed and building up to Laketown RPI that Armageddon had assumed the largest share of the potential RPI players. And they didn't want to change anything if they could help it. Keep the formula going, minimal changes, success through consistency.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Feb 4, 2016 8:57:18 GMT -5
There's a space in there, can you try again? I don't have karma =(
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Feb 3, 2016 21:56:38 GMT -5
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Dec 25, 2015 8:56:04 GMT -5
PS - Optional Realities returning in an active state in January.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Dec 25, 2015 8:55:46 GMT -5
Hey,
Several people have suggested this and it is something that we've already considered, but...
There are two primary methods of crowdfunding that have a high rate of success. There is the kickstarter "venture capital" method of funding where you come with a product/pitch and ask for a % of your total required budget in exchange for rewards. Then you have the patreon "subscription" method of funding where you are likely a content producer and you get a range of funding per 'customer' for your continued work which is often provided free of charge to the general public.
The issue here is that Project Redshift requires somewhat significant funding if I want the original devteam onboard. Lets ballpark it at 1500/month to develop the game. That is non-full time development. If I wanted my devteam on full time development I would need somewhere in the ballpark of 5500/month to help offset expenses for developing the game. So with those numbers in mind lets look at the 2 common funding options. Project Redshift is free to play on release and there is very little monthly content we can release while in development unless we open in an alpha state and progress from there, but that would be kind of bad for the health of the game and roleplaying etc etc. Throw in that text-based gaming is currently niche and needs to break back into the mainstream gamer conscience again... It's unlikely we would get the 18,000 to 66,000 required to finish the game in a kickstarter campaign.
How about patreon? Well OR had 200 members (220) at peak. Assuming all account were individual people and all of them were interested in Project Redshift being a reality sooner rather than later. Yeah I'm claiming development will likely resume in March, I'm pretty focused on it being a reality but... FutureMUD so I'll do my best. I promise not to get Hex pregnant >_>? Anyway 200 people at an average of 10 usd per person is 2000/month which is more than enough for the non-fulltime development of the game. Great. Non-fulltime development is estimated to take 9 months (possibly 13) so those people will spend 120 dollars for the game to be finished. In the meantime the rewards we could offer would be minimal because Project Redshift will never be pay to win or pay to play.
TLDR - Crowdfunding while flattering that you'd be willing to do it is more likely to relegate Project Redshift into a completely defunct state in terms of public image than do anything else. Nothing hurts a project/ventures image more than failed funding campaigns, especially public ones.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Dec 15, 2015 14:42:29 GMT -5
Hey, Actually between holidays and transitioning Optional Realities to a new server provider and under a new webadmin. I've been a bit to busy to maintain the level of content that we had in the past. Also I'm looking at probably transitioning back to SMF or updating nodebb to be more in line with what people want. TLDR: Don't want to put to much rebuilding time into nodebb if I'm going to transition back to SMF and lose all of those posts anyway. Also holidays. EDIT --- Because unlike many game/website/whatever owners  I actually listen to feedback and recognize that while I might believe nobebb is better in the long run there wasn't any NEED to update to it when the original SMF was more than adequate. |
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Dec 2, 2015 8:51:22 GMT -5
The individual subforums are gone and in their place we have the catchall MU* board. People are welcome (and encouraged) to start threads dedicated to their specific games in there and discuss them. I'll probably be throwing a few up now that my computer which decided to explode after the webserver is back up to full life.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Nov 23, 2015 11:16:12 GMT -5
Hey,
I also made "unread posts" open to guests. This is a much more efficient means of checking for new content without being disjointed like recent. Let me know if it improves your experience.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Nov 23, 2015 10:54:16 GMT -5
Hey,
If you hover your mouse over the subforums it displays a brief description of what they are.
This is the most common significant complaint, I'm looking into options.
This was a replacement site after losing everything we aimed for getting back up (took use 1.5 weeks) over dotting all our i's and crossing the t's. Sometime in December I hope to spend more time on addressing these usability of both the forum and the website.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Nov 23, 2015 10:37:45 GMT -5
Is it because the forum sections do not indicate when they have new posts? Is it because the recent button at the top (the clock) is not intuitive enough? Is it something that can be address or an inherent problem with the nodebbs template.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Nov 23, 2015 10:29:53 GMT -5
Interesting. The reactive template, mobile device, centric one with visual appeal over pure function? I admit the older website was more efficient but this does certainly look nice and the forum is the real focus of the community. We've even folded our articles into the forum because it enables tagging now.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Nov 22, 2015 19:58:11 GMT -5
Hey,
For navigating the forums if you go to the top you can click the unread button or the recent button which will show you all newly updated threads. It's a little different than skimming by sub-forum but it's pretty intuitive because it shows thread name + subforum. As for open sourcing work we will be doing that but there will always been some code which was specifically tailored to PRS that we'll keep for ourselves. Likely this wouldn't be of interest to anything but a scifi space game and thus not really great for modular open source because of how niche it is.
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Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
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Post by Jeshin on Nov 22, 2015 15:20:57 GMT -5
We made them more accessible to tablets and phones. It's a forum system known as nodebb and it's pretty slick. It also had built in realtime updates to posts and a chat system. So a bit more responsive and nice to look at than SMF which is what the original is. We do plan on replacing those forum section button/logos with something more unique when Hex has the time to design them.
PS - Since we lost all former content we didn't see much harm in updating to something more responsive. Is it too phone app looking?
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I actually listen to feedback and recognize that while I might believe nobebb is better in the long run there wasn't any NEED to update to it when the original SMF was more than adequate.