Year End Review!
Welcome to our Year End Review! Since it's been an eventful year and is now our 5th Anniversary, we'd like to start it off right with a list of all of our updates from Dappervolk since 2024 began and also outline our plans for the coming year and into the future.
We've also updated our Roadmap thread with our most up to date priorities info! Thanks so much for an amazing year, and here's to an even better one in 2025!
We've also updated our Roadmap thread with our most up to date priorities info! Thanks so much for an amazing year, and here's to an even better one in 2025!
DAPPERVOLK UPDATES OF 2024
Recruited New Staff
2024 saw a collection of new faces join the official Dappervolk Staff Team:
- Nineve (#46) and Elkcrown (#3063) became Dappervolk's first ever Community Managers!
- Morphine (#35897) and Musicality (#39022) joined the official Moderation team!
- speckledplanet (#5301) bolstered our team of Writers!
Permanent Update Focus
We pivoted our focus to more permanent much needed updates rather than seasonal events this past year such as quality of life features, new assets to spend potatoes on, and new ways to engage with the community and get the community engaging with itself. We intend to continue in this direction until our main update goals are completed, while gradually adding in seasonal content that we're working on simultaneously as a lower priority.
New Pets & Items
Our art team steadily worked on new items to add over the year, resulting in a grand total of 1057 new items being added for players to collect and wear and 60 new pet species to collect and bond with. Many of these pets and items were worked on during our monthly development streams, and many more were designed and drawn by our artists behind the scenes.
Alongside the official pets and items, a total of 32 custom requests were fulfilled over the course of the year, making steady progress through the custom request queue.
Aviar Cove Balancing Update
We completed the Aviar Cove rebalancing update!
- This included edits to all NPC dailies, 118 new items, and 4 new pets to hatch and alchemize.
- This was our fourth installment in a total overhaul of the dailies on Dappervolk to streamline the gameplay loop and make it feel rewarding for players.
- All future towns are intended to follow this style of balancing, so this was a major step in bringing us a bit closer to introducing new towns and continuing the Main Quest.
Frog Pond Update
- Paulie made a splash by releasing his shop in two parts alongside a Gathering Event that helped kickstart players' Frog Coin stock.
- After both parts were released he introduced 22 new items, 6 new pets, and several secret "wiggler" trophies to collect!
- His pond will be seeing some much awaited new life in the near future.
Spooky Season Content
A small October update was made and added 8 new items to the game to celebrate the season.
Winter Carnival Update
A new resident of our seasonal Winter Carnival, Sysel, made their official debut in January 2024.
- Their shop became the permanent home of the Avatar Calendar items, and they brought with them 17 new clothing items and one new pet hatching item!
- They also contributed a new quest to earn Carnival Tokens through in their ingredient hunting quest "Of Distilleries and Procurement."
Nico Contests & Boutique
- We decided that these contests would award a special currency to be used in a brand new shop, Nico's Boutique, which has served as a new location for fancier items and pets to be released through.
- So far, 27 new items and 3 new pets have been released through the Boutique.
- It has served as an additional location for past seasonal content to be hosted as well.
Merch Planning
We have been slowly planning merch designs in the background in order to spearhead our future marketing projects to bring more activity to the site when we're ready! So far, our planned list of merch includes but isn't limited to:- Stickers
- Prints/Art Zines
- Enamel Pins
- Plushies (With Makeship in the future)
- T-shirts/Apparel
Major Codebase Version Updates
- PHP version
- MYSQL
- Laravel Version
News Polls
- These polls have made it easier to access the community's collective sentiment regarding a variety of subjects.
- It will remain a cornerstone in allowing the Staff team to ask for feedback without demanding users engage with longform discussions on the forums.
- We're looking forward to hosting more Polls soon as the need arises!
Bbcode Markdown Update
Clothing Diary
Clothing Previews
We pushed a major update allowing for clothing previews to appear upon mouseover across the site.
- This includes item tooltips, the clothing diary, and when tagged on the forums with Dappervolk's new markdown system.
- This was a longstanding request from the community dating and certainly one that feels good to finally have completely ironed out.
Numerous QoL Updates
- Multiple quest hand-in pool updates over the course of the year
- Oran's Accessory Vault was implemented for users to "abandon" or retire accessories the no longer want
- Backend optimization to decrease Tradesmarket load time
- Many food and hatch items were converted into totems to allow better personalization of pets' profiles
- The Custom Archive pages received an update to include a modal that provides ownership information, name and description, and a preview of the custom without the user needing to search through the owner's profile page.
- An archive was created for Seasonal Shard Pets to reduce the size of news posts and provide a single location to view all recipes and pets.
- Numerous other small backend fixes and optimizations
Nico's Atelier & Salon update
Vaer Balancing Update
- This update was also our largest, as it also included an additional Main Story epilogue and all 6 NPC Affection Milestone side quests.
- We released a total of 135 new items into the NPC shops and 10 new pet species, 5 of which are fantastical and the rest quaint.
- To celebrate this achievement, we also hosted a Gifting Event during this time called "Poe's Shell'ebrations"
GOALS GOING FORWARD
Here is a list of our updated major focuses! Priorities may pivot as needed here and there and our ability to complete everything we plan is dependant on many factors but we're looking forward to tackling these updates!
- Tradesmarket Revamp & Updates - Stock lots, QoL updates, Optimizations
- Peddler's Port Update - New content for existing NPC's
- Peddler Content Update - New Peddler area with new shops & NPC's
- More Ad Theater Fixes & Updates
- Guild Balancing Update - Balances to EXP gain, updates to existing systems, etc
- Various QoL fixes
- Thalies Event - Aiming for September this year, whether we can complete this depends on multiple factors/pipelines
- Vaer Event around December
- Frog Pond Update - New NPC, stories, items & pets to collect
- Pet Accessory Market
- Custom Market
- Block System Update
- Turnip Shop Updates
- Email Newsletters
- First Merch Run - We're looking at doing merch in batches of preorders, and accumulating enough surplus to market the game at various conventions/venues!
- More Major Marketing Pushes - More content & events on social media, Collaborations, etc
Comments
I think everything that's being worked on is great but PERSONALLY I would prefer new town over continuing to add small things in other areas. Like, qol stuff and new town are my top things. So, I'm happy to see the qol stuff, kinda bummed otherwise. That's just my personal take-- I try to not be overly negative and I truly hope that the marketing push will go well. I do believe this site deserves a lot more activity and I hope it gets there.
One question I have is about this planned merch and the financial state of Dappervolk: without asking for financial clarity, many of those merchandising options are pretty one-off expensive items, like plushies, enamel pins, zines/artbooks (if you're binding them). I also have a lot of existing plushies, enamel pins, and zines. Would you consider running polls on most-wanted merch items by the playerbase, if you're planning on doing merchandise?
I think many of us already wonder if DV is staying afloat or is planning to close on any given day, because the staff is pretty far removed from daily conversations and regular updates. So to hear "we're planning merch and collabs and we've already decided what merch it's going to be!" is really random.