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:
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 by RedEagle_P1.Share this post
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