Well, given the content in the new area, the thread title is a bit of an inadvertent pun, but we'll let it slide for now. ;)

I thought it'd be a good idea to take a moment to write about some of the things that went well in the last section, some of what didn't go so well, and some of what's in store for the future.

I'll write up the post in (roughly) the style of the Game Developer Magazines' postmortem articles. ...Which will make it easier to publish there if they ever have an incredibly slow month. Heh. They usually do 5 good and 5 bad, but since this is a smaller production, I'll only do 3 each.

Things That Went Right:

1) The support of the community

It sounds cheesy, but I really couldn't have done this without all of you. Your patience and willingness to ferret out problems and offer solutions even when months were going by without new stuff being added makes it worthwhile for me to keep doing this. Sure, financially it's still 99% out of my pocket, but having people who believe in me and in the project helps a lot. Thank you, everyone!

It's also worth noting that every item suggestion that was made in the forums wound up in the new content area in one form or another. It's a small way that I can help ensure that you're involved in the development of the game, but an important one, I feel. There'll be more and more opportunities to help create content for the game in different ways, so stay tuned on that front.

2) Brainstorming and working with others

The new content section encompasses some 40+ new monsters, 60+ new items, 3 new skillgems, almost 20 new quests, and piles of mapping and new artwork. These ideas take a lot of time to come up with, and much of what one comes up with in the interim stinks and needs to be thrown out. Working with others (especially my wife, JavaLuv) to brainstorm ideas and bounce concepts off of proved especially helpful. I'll be looking for more ways to bring more people into the process to help ease the burden for future content areas.

3) Algorithmic balancing

It's one of the cornerstones of the underlying systems, and it is working incredibly well. Being able to just drop in new monsters without having to individually tune each and every one is a godsend. Sure, there's some manual tweaking here and there, and tweaking the algorithms themselves to better fit what's going on (see also the pricing algorithms), but by and large it makes creating new content significantly easier than it otherwise would be, and helps create a consistent balance throughout the game world.

Things Which Could've Been Better:

1) Time

Since this is a one-man show, and I'm used to doing my programming work on a 8-hour/day, 40-hour/week schedule, progress on the game feels incredibly slow. This is especially true since I'd initially estimated that I could create a month's worth of playable content in 1-2 months, which obviously did not happen.

I still believe that if I were doing this as a full-time job I'd be able to do timelines like that, but I'm going to have to seriously rethink how to add content in the future. My current thought is that I'll want to add it incrementally, rather than in giant chunks, to help get new things into players' hands more quickly.

2) An immature game engine

The game engine is light years ahead of where it was when I started, and a lot of that progress has come since the game went into open beta back in May. However, time spent on engine work is time that isn't spent on creating content. It's a balancing act, to be sure, but both content and the engine need to be improved and added to, and I ended up spending more time on engine work than perhaps I would've liked.

Unfortunately, this probably won't change much going forward. Without the ability to just throw 1-2 months of dedicated time on improving the engine, it's going to continue to be a long, slow journey towards what I'd like it to be to enable the sorts of content I'd like to create.

3) Development pacing

This is related to the time issue, in that only being able to do this in tiny portions when I've got spare time causes me to make short-term decisions about what can and can not be done. Longer-term projects, like content creation, wind up being put off in favor of quick fixes or new features that can be implemented quickly. The end result is things like writing 180 item/monster/effect descriptions over the course of 3 days at the end of the process, rather than being able to focus on them as the process goes on. Sure, the end result is the same, but it makes it more frustrating to see how slowly it develops.

Moving Forward:

There are a *lot* of things on the todo list that are waiting to be done. Some will get higher priority, and others will be relegated to later. Here's the next couple of major focus points, in no particular order:

* Improve the first 6 seconds of the game.

I think that a lot of players are unsure of what to do when they first start off. They're unwilling to read the tutorial, don't see the quests panel as important, and therefore can't figure out what they're supposed to do, or what the game is about. They never make it outside of town as a result, so they walk away thinking the game sucks when really they haven't even played it!

I have a lot of ideas on how this can be improved. Still, I invite people to give feedback on what they think would help make those crucial first 6 seconds better.

* Improve the game's UI

Things are reasonably well organized, once you get into it, and fairly intuitive overall to get at what you need when you need it. However, the whole UI is suffering from a bit of information overload, in that there's simply too much going on on-screen. Much of this functionality can be just as accessible, but better hidden away when not needed.

There's also about a billion little improvements throughout that are needed to help unify the experience. I'm thinking specifically of the shops and the package-sending interfaces right now, but those are just the tip of the iceberg.

* Improve income

I know that not having new content makes it difficult to retain longer-term players, and that this retention issue is part of what makes it difficult to get enough income. Part of this, too, is the lack of critical mass in the playerbase to make buying clothing feel more worthwhile, as well as a lack of variety in the clothing and an overall crappy interface for getting from money in -> awesome outfit.

I'm also going to have to consider alternate schemes for generating more income, so that this can start to at least cover its server hosting costs. Some ideas are subscriptions that offer some minor in-game benefits, as well as projects like the PQ Dojo. Also, I'm thinking about how to best offer IRL custom t-shirts, which I think would be fun. (EG: Get a shirt with any piece of art in the game!)

* Add more content!

I'm planning on trying to add more content in a more rationed, incremental fashion. Rather than adding 40+ monsters all at once, I'll be trying to simply add one or two every update or two. Adding in new areas at a slower pace should help, too. Sure, it means that things like the artwork costs might be higher since they'll just be occasional works instead of big blocks. And it means that a coherent new area will congeal over time rather than being planned out in toto (though some rough up-front planning will help this), but it should help a lot going forward with keeping people interested.

* Continue improving the base game itself

There's a lot to be done here. Everything from adding new features (like grouping and group vs. group PvP) to rearranging content (I'd like to have the skillgems more readily available at the beginning, so people can get into the overall flow of them easier). Fixing the innumerable bugs that are out there. ;) And, of course, continuing to implement things based on all of your feedback!

* Improving the social aspect of the game

This includes better in-game communication tools, but also some secret stuff I've got up my sleeve. Also, when I get to things like player houses that others can visit, I expect that this will improve, too.



So, that's all for now. Thank you everyone for your patience! Together, we're making this an incredible game, and it's only going to continue to get better.

Thanks!

Go social aspect improvements

on the front page you put 07 as a year instead of 08. I just wanted to point that out.

Oh excellent! I need to log in right now.

I hadn't played in a while because doing side quest after side quest was getting a bit repetative...

I LOVE THE CHAINSAW THING!!!!!!!

i think you could have a quick youtube intro of the game only, add voices, useing a beggning level character showing all the basic things. make it short 2-3 min tops. and since ive been playing for so long i would like to offer you my services {for free in this case, or at least game stuff} to desighn a print for your shirts. contact me if your interested and ill give you my resume info and web link to see my stuff.