The developers are no longer part of the community

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

Please know I say this with utmost respect for you and the team: 

Years ago when this game first came out, it was extremely popular for a short time. However due to the buggy servers people started leaving one by one until 5000 (peak) players went down to about 400. 

One by one those who had finished the single-player experience moved on because the multiplayer experience was not yet developed. 

Server after server closed down but I wanted some sort of excuse to stick around. I saw what this game could become and I knew it would take a lot of time. 

In that time I was really heavily assured by the developers that if I stuck around and kept creators with Ylands it would be very-much worth it. 

PRIVATE CONVO REMOVED ON REQUEST

However, the more the company grew, the more I saw the game lose focus. Rather than doing a few things well they started doing many many things. Servers remained unfixed for years and new ideas and projects began to crop up. 

Not only that, as the company grew, new voices came to prominence. In the early days Ales was very much leading this project with incredible passion. He loved the creators, he loved the community and he loved making Ylands. 

However, somewhere along the line, more and more voices that weren't connected with this community kept jumping in. 

Every new idea was a good idea and the development team became more and more disconnected from the community. 

Today we have a clear communication channel, @Adam Snellgrove but the split with the community has only grown. 

The passionate community-loving voice of Ales, I fear, is being drowned out by new-ideas-hype business people who are not in touch with the community. 

Complaints have been steadily growing about this game's practices and most reach the top but are not taken to heart. 

All the while promises of creators being rewarded real pay via a Coyns-to-cash system grow. 

However, let's take a closer look: 

1) All games which have the ability to save REQUIRE you to buy a server to run them. This means if you don't want to give your game away for free (protected  games), you have to buy a server to allow people to play: 

2) The price of these servers is now $20 a month. So to make money, you have to spend money. With some experience in this I will say that you would have to totally gouge people to make $20 a month on game servers.

-- I mean this with the utmost respect to the whole team but the optics of this is terrible and it's starting to look like things companies I have seen in the past. I'm not saying that's the case but at the current rate creators would need to gouge community members to run their games. 

At the same time local servers have been removed. 

As a community we ask you deeply and sincerely to stay true to who you are. I know you are doing this for the passion -- but we feel somewhere up their the business voices are choking out the passion.

We really need the devs to care about and connect with the community and not just depend on @Adam Snellgrove.

Too often the business side of things takes over these kind of projects. That can be prevented if you're actively part of our community. 

@Adam Snellgrove I hope this message can be read in full to the lead developers. For a long time now there has been a really strong disconnect between the players and the decision makers. Your arrival has helped that communication channel but it hasn't changed how people feel and has not resolved the disconnect and I think the recent steam reviews reflect that: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/298610/Ylands/

(135 negative today)

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by RedEagle_P1.

[bojo2736 1016]

1. I disagree.

2. Putting out a private communication in the public forum is pretty low. 

But I am totally not surprised.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

I have to say I'm surprised you're posting a private message in the forum - even though this was meant for P1 community (and therefore a lot of people) I think it's still quite an unfortunate thing to do.

I don't think my voice is being drown out - I was less active here because releasing Ylands 1.0 was extremely demanding, but that is, finally, past us.  

Also I don't see how we're losing touch with the community or are no longer part of it - we still react to pretty much every PM (I've been doing that with quite some delay - but I think the reason is obvious). We are extremely interested in great creations and whenever anyone reached out to us, we did our best to help them or at least provide them with advice.

As for servers - I understand some things are highly unpopular but in the end is very simple. Either we create an ecosystem that works, that generates money for creators to make them interested in creating new content and for us so that we can pay our bills and continue developing Ylands, or the game falls into oblivion. Not today, not the next year but there would be no Ylands 5 years from now.
 

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

"All games which have the ability to save REQUIRE you to buy a server to run them"

Actually, this is not quite true. Yes, if you want the games to save all the current information about the world, you have to rent a certified server. However, creators can store any information about the current game they wish and store the progress via scripting. This is exactly how Roblox (and others) work. What you stated is a bit misleading.

Edit: just to make it more clear - if you don't need to store things like terrain modification or each brick placed, then you don't need the world save feature, that is true. But for most of the game that creators may want to make this kind of save is not needed and can be scripted  

[RedEagle - P1Gaming.net 25]

As you have requested it, I will take down the personal conversation when I’m on PC. 

For years now a lot of people have been really excited about the potential of the exploration part of the game. The original trailer caused us to fall in love with what this game could be. The game was fundamentally amazing but the servers were broken and we were assured for years to just hang in there as they fixed it and they’re going to launch right away in 2018. In another part of that conversation you talked about launching in 2018 because they were pretty much feature complete and just wrapping it up. However you added so many things over those two years and took so long to address the one major problem which was servers. I think you really failed to recognize how much exploration was something that incredibly touched the community. Rather than doubling down on that you removed that  trailer And shifted this game to something almost totally different.

At the same time when you make promises about enabling creators to monetize with everything in your power if we would only stick around — I sacrificially did that for two years, keeping  the creator community together and encouraging them and asking them to stick with it.
 

In this conversation you mentioned that you really don’t want to lose creators like us. Then when we ask for help to keep the creators engaged and together your email response is basically like if we lose the creators, it’s no big deal.

 Then I see that rather than putting this creator community to use you just decided to ignore them and make your own mini games to feature on the homepage. We feel totally cut out and like we waited two years only to not see the promises made fulfilled.

Moreover, the issue with the Coyns was not addressed. By doubling the price of servers you halved the value of our work that we worked to pile up. One way to fix this problem would’ve been to increase the amount of Coyns  as a percentage of what we have. Such an action would balance out the loss. 
 

The thing is that the whole Coyns thing is reminiscent of what I’ve seen other companies do. Without a fixed value set to Coyns before we earn them, they should not be touted as a way for creators to earn money as a small change in the exchange rate can make a huge difference.

[Adam Snellgrove 1451]

10 minutes ago, RedEagle - P1Gaming.net said:

As you have requested it, I will take down the personal conversation when I’m on PC. 

For years now a lot of people have been really excited about the potential of the exploration part of the game. The original trailer caused us to fall in love with what this game could be. The game was fundamentally amazing but the servers were broken and we were assured for years to just hang in there as they fixed it and they’re going to launch right away in 2018. In another part of that conversation you talked about launching in 2018 because they were pretty much feature complete and just wrapping it up. However you added so many things over those two years and took so long to address the one major problem which was servers. I think you really failed to recognize how much exploration was something that incredibly touched the community. Rather than doubling down on that you removed that  trailer And shifted this game to something almost totally different.

At the same time when you make promises about enabling creators to monetize with everything in your power if we would only stick around — I sacrificially did that for two years, keeping  the creator community together and encouraging them and asking them to stick with it.
 

In this conversation you mentioned that you really don’t want to lose creators like us. Then when we ask for help to keep the creators engaged and together your email response is basically like if we lose the creators, it’s no big deal.

 Then I see that rather than putting this creator community to use you just decided to ignore them and make your own mini games to feature on the homepage. We feel totally cut out and like we waited two years only to not see the promises made fulfilled.

Moreover, the issue with the Coyns was not addressed. By doubling the price of servers you halved the value of our work that we worked to pile up. One way to fix this problem would’ve been to increase the amount of Coyns  as a percentage of what we have. Such an action would balance out the loss. 
 

The thing is that the whole Coyns thing is reminiscent of what I’ve seen other companies do. Without a fixed value set to Coyns before we earn them, they should not be touted as a way for creators to earn money as a small change in the exchange rate can make a huge difference.

Red, what is the point of me answering to you on Discord, when you then copy what I was answering to and then paste it here. Should I copy my answer from Discord and paste it here? But in that case we'll just copy paste our whole conversation here at the end ?

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

1 hour ago, Adam Snellgrove said:

Red, what is the point of me answering to you on Discord, when you then copy what I was answering to and then paste it here. Should I copy my answer from Discord and paste it here? But in that case we'll just copy paste our whole conversation here at the end ?

No need to be sarcastic, this is not personal. The message above is significantly different. 

Edited December 6, 2019 by RedEagle_P1.

[Adam Snellgrove 1451]

8 minutes ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

No need to be sarcastic, this is not personal.

I'm not sarcastic, I'm genuinely asking in a non-personal way  ?  Why re-ask something that I have answered to you in a private conversation? 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

I just want to say that if any point I offended anyone in this conversation it was 100% not intentional. I have no beef with anyone and I think you guys are pretty awesome. I talk openly and vocally about this game because I care about it so much 

Moreover, I am extremely concerned about this game. I would like to ensure that we don't offend each other at all in this conversation as I want to clairfy one small technical aspect. From my understanding any game that allows people to put down a block or build will require a high-powered server (about $20 a month). I really want to create some amazing long-term games that are not the small casual games we create  currently. 

I want to create some really deep and immersive experiences that people can really enjoy such as protected RPG games. 

However, from my understanding each one of these games will require a 4800 Coyn server or certified server. This means we would have to obtain 4800 Coyns from players each month to keep going. My concern is that anyone that’s passionate about creating such games would need to obtain 4800 Coyns from their players each month. In my experience this would be extremely difficult to do without creating pay-to-win systems (until this game has like 30K players). 

My fear is that the whole workshop is going to be filled with pay-to-win experiences. That's what I am trying to prevent. 

What I want to know is, am I wrong or right? 
 

Edited December 6, 2019 by RedEagle_P1.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

It's like this: if you need a game, where you really need to store all the changes that players have built or modified such as modified terrain, structures built, position of entities in the world, then you indeed need to pay for a more powerful server. These games are generally demanding and it's not possible for us to spawn servers this powerful for free.

If you want to create a game where players have limited or no options to adjust the game world, you don't need a game save, you can store what needs to be stored via script and initiate the world from that data when it gets (re)started. Imagine an RPG, where you don't store players' positions (although even that would be possible via this system), but spawn at spawn points and all you have to store is what spawnpoint they have activated. When the player joins the game you just put them at that spawnpoint.

Such games load very fast and we provide some limited number of free server slots to run them.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

38 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

It's like this: if you need a game, where you really need to store all the changes that players have built or modified such as modified terrain, structures built, position of entities in the world, then you indeed need to pay for a more powerful server. These games are generally demanding and it's not possible for us to spawn servers this powerful for free.

If you want to create a game where players have limited or no options to adjust the game world, you don't need a game save, you can store what needs to be stored via script and initiate the world from that data when it gets (re)started. Imagine an RPG, where you don't store players' positions (although even that would be possible via this system), but spawn at spawn points and all you have to store is what spawnpoint they have activated. When the player joins the game you just put them at that spawnpoint.

Such games load very fast and we provide some limited number of free server slots to run them.

Removing the ability to have smaller servers has made this cost high in my opinion. Having people be able to purchase 3 player servers and load in a local save game is really important to keep costs manageable imo. I think having transactions all happen in the cloud could be a solution also -- this would allow local servers to interact with the monetization system. 

Edited December 6, 2019 by RedEagle_P1.

[bojo2736 1016]

Unless I am missing something, you don't even need a server to share with three friends.

There are sharegames (unless these are not a thing anymore.) Three people can use these free.

You can self host. I hosted a game last night for four of us. It worked just fine and it saved our progress.

 

[leo_chaos 23]

11 hours ago, bojo2736 said:

Unless I am missing something, you don't even need a server to share with three friends.

There are sharegames (unless these are not a thing anymore.) Three people can use these free.

You can self host. I hosted a game last night for four of us. It worked just fine and it saved our progress.

My old share works fine and I can still make new ones for up to 8 players, only reason someone would rather a small server is so the game runs constantly I suppose.

 

On 12/6/2019 at 1:44 AM, RedEagle_P1. said:

Years ago when this game first came out, it was extremely popular for a short time. However due to the buggy servers people started leaving one by one until 5000 (peak) players went down to about 400. 

One by one those who had finished the single-player experience moved on because the multiplayer experience was not yet developed. 

I was much more active before compared to now and the same with others I speak to, it was early access and we had done the content in the game a fair few times both single and multiplayer and play other games too, but we've still watched the updates and occasionally jump on to see changes.

If a games in early access then bugs etc should be expected, anyone leaving for that reason doesn't understand what early access is. It would be much worse if they concentrated all their effort into the servers over the game, yeah online people might have stability but everyone else would have gone due to the game stagnating.

 

On 12/6/2019 at 1:44 AM, RedEagle_P1. said:

recent steam reviews

They mostly look like the review bombing behaviour that's becoming more common on Steam, if anything the toxic attitude on there is hiding any potentially legit negative reviews so they're less likely to get addressed and if it's enough to make Steam act then all the reviews won't count within a time period so again will cancel out any legit ones too.

 

I honestly don't understand why there's so much toxicity about the launch beyond people's sense of self entitlement.

The games progressed a massive amount from how it was and the only actual reason I can see someone being upset about the F2P change is that they bought the game in the last couple of months specifically for the editor and have no interest in the exploration. I must have easily got my money's worth before it was even released on Steam.

[Antimidation 21]

I'm a bit confused, can't you just simply make a private game and give it a password and play with your friends for free without buying a server?  In fact that's all I've done since this game came out...and it's great fun!  I suppose I don't care about owning my own server.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Antimidation

[bojo2736 1016]

1 hour ago, Antimidation said:

I'm a bit confused, can't you just simply make a private game and give it a password and play with your friends for free without buying a server? I suppose I don't care about owning my own server.

You can. Also sharegames for three players are free.  

Edited December 7, 2019 by bojo2736

[Antimidation 21]

2 hours ago, bojo2736 said:

You can. Also sharegames for three players are free.  

I am confused at what the OP is stating, as if there has been some kind of tremendous wall setup to have you pay to enjoy the game, which is not the case, unless you want 8 people in game I guess. I'm asking in a rhetorical sense. I also looked over at the steam reviews and most people seem to be confused as well.....basically, the game is free to play for mini games that have been created by the community but still costs the same as it used to for the exploration aspect AND you can still do that for free in a password protected game with friends, you also do not have to pay for it again if you bought the game originally that contained everything together before 1.0....so i'm confused as to what people are complaining about. 

Edited December 8, 2019 by Antimidation

[bojo2736 1016]

The problem comes to those who are trying to monetize, I think.  If you are trying to make money, you don't want to be paying out for each server.  I do question the amount as well. But Red is in Canada, so maybe that is accurate for CA dollars.  When I look at the P1 stuff, they have like 6 or so games going.  So that does add up.  But again, monetization is the goal. 

I checked the numbers for US dollars, and it was $50 for three months of the high performance BI servers, which is less than $17 per month, for 8 slots. 

Nitrado, for 10 slots, was $13 I think.  That was monthly, I think it's closer to $10 per month for a year.  

 For the basic player, there is no real change, other than the changes that came with full release.

[GoldenPSP 6]

14 hours ago, Antimidation said:

I am confused at what the OP is stating, as if there has been some kind of tremendous wall setup to have you pay to enjoy the game, which is not the case, unless you want 8 people in game I guess. I'm asking in a rhetorical sense. I also looked over at the steam reviews and most people seem to be confused as well.....basically, the game is free to play for mini games that have been created by the community but still costs the same as it used to for the exploration aspect AND you can still do that for free in a password protected game with friends, you also do not have to pay for it again if you bought the game originally that contained everything together before 1.0....so i'm confused as to what people are complaining about. 

One key piece is that we had the option for a free locally hosted server right up until release.  Many of us were counting on this to be a thing given the dedicated server has been there since the beginning of early access.

Now if it is simply not ready and it will be out later fine, but so far it seems it was just axed in favor of a revenue stream

[bojo2736 1016]

Do you mean a server in your basement? Or do you mean the option that is STILL in the game to locally host?

Given that the game is free to play, it seems to me that a revenue stream might be important.

Edited December 8, 2019 by bojo2736

[GoldenPSP 6]

58 minutes ago, bojo2736 said:

Do you mean a server in your basement? Or do you mean the option that is STILL in the game to locally host?

Given that the game is free to play, it seems to me that a revenue stream might be important.

Basement/datacenter wherever it might be.

The point is this option for a dedicated server was available pretty much since the game was released in EA.  I bought ylands 2 years and a day ago, and the first thing I did was sign up for the dedicated server beta.

Now I understand early access means things might change.  But there was a clear precedent that the dedicated server would be an option up until just before the release when they cancelled it and gave us only a paid option for a dedicated server.  IMO that's a d**k move.

[Norway174 3]

30 minutes ago, GoldenPSP said:

Now I understand early access means things might change.  But there was a clear precedent that the dedicated server would be an option up until just before the release when they cancelled it and gave us only a paid option for a dedicated server.  IMO that's a d**k move.

As someone who just found about this game yesterday.

Reading the Steam Reviews, and other various sources.

Seems to me, from my personal perspective, that they decided to remove the dedicated servers based on greed.
Now, the actual reason, may be different.

But they should be doing a better job of communicating it, if that's the case.

And maybe let us know if they plan on bringing it back?

[bojo2736 1016]

I understand your dismay. However, having suffered through nearly 2 years of servers being jacked up, if they will actually support the limited options we have, I'm just going to deal with it.

[GoldenPSP 6]

10 minutes ago, bojo2736 said:

I understand your dismay. However, having suffered through nearly 2 years of servers being jacked up, if they will actually support the limited options we have, I'm just going to deal with it.

By the same token, if they are selling dedicated servers it seems to me that they have managed to make some solid server code...

And I agree, sadly this is one game that my gaming group has done very little multiplayer due to the frustrations involved with multiplayer options.

Edited December 9, 2019 by GoldenPSP

[bojo2736 1016]

16 hours ago, Norway174 said:

As someone who just found about this game yesterday.

Reading the Steam Reviews, and other various sources.

Seems to me, from my personal perspective, that they decided to remove the dedicated servers based on greed.
Now, the actual reason, may be different.

But they should be doing a better job of communicating it, if that's the case.

And maybe let us know if they plan on bringing it back?

Welcome to the forum and the game. The devs explained that they made the decision because of performance issues. The BI rented servers really do a fabulous job handling the game. Other servers have had issues. 

It is worth noting here because not everyone reads the whole forum, that Nitrado will be an option. They are not online for YLands yet, but will be supported soon.

It is also worth noting that you can self host for free.

Sharegames are also free for three players, although from my experiment this weekend they still don't work as advertised. Or maybe I don't understand how they are supposed to work. 

And I'm not sure that those who use a server in their home or job won't be able to host for free. What the devs said is they won't be supported. But they have never been supported in my experience. I am not sure that means they won't work.

[GoldenPSP 6]

22 minutes ago, bojo2736 said:

And I'm not sure that those who use a server in their home or job won't be able to host for free. What the devs said is they won't be supported. But they have never been supported in my experience. I am not sure that means they won't work.

Currently you cannot as the files necessary to download and run a local dedicated server are no longer available.

[bojo2736 1016]

That's probably why Nitrado isn't working yet.