Autumn Premium Shop Test & Other News!
Happy Autumn, Dappervolk!
As our last order of business during beta, we are releasing our
Monthly Turnip Chance Machine for testing and feedback!
Alongside the new shop, a new mini-town called Peddler's Port has appeared. This location is where our new NPC shop will reside and will become home to various other merchants in the future - including NPCs that will be selling monthly potato items, class-specific items, and more!
As our last order of business during beta, we are releasing our
Monthly Turnip Chance Machine for testing and feedback!
Alongside the new shop, a new mini-town called Peddler's Port has appeared. This location is where our new NPC shop will reside and will become home to various other merchants in the future - including NPCs that will be selling monthly potato items, class-specific items, and more!
Visit the World Map and select the Peddler's Port icon to visit this new location.
Additionally, it will not cost you any town hops to visit this area.
You may also return to the town that you originally hopped from for free!
Additionally, it will not cost you any town hops to visit this area.
You may also return to the town that you originally hopped from for free!
Because this update involves adding a new town to the site, we
will need to go offline for maintenance for a short period of time
to implement the new content.
will need to go offline for maintenance for a short period of time
to implement the new content.
- In the spirit of autumn, all of the test items that we're using are an autumn-y witch/warlock theme!
- These items will be repurposed into seasonally obtainable items during official launch, so everyone will have a chance to obtain them again in the future.
- Bonus Prizes: For every 10 spins in this shop, the shopkeeper will reward you with a free bonus item of your choice from that month's shop stock! This should help reward collectors and give players a bit of control over the unpredictable nature of the turnip chance machine.
- When the site officially launches, the turnip chance machine's stock will renew each month, with the previous months' items permanently retiring. This type of retiring system will only apply to items that are "limited" rarity.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on the balance of this new feature!
- Dappervolk's cash-based currency is the Turnip, which is displayed next to your potato count on the top bar - not to be confused with the item called Plump Turnip.
- Turnip currency is not transferable between users, however items obtained using Turnips can be traded and sold freely.
- There will be 2 main ways to obtain Turnip currency on Dappervolk: Purchasing it through the site for real-world currency, and participating in in-game activities that will give out small amounts of it over time.
- You will be able to purchase Turnips starting in Official Launch, where we estimate that 100 Turnips will cost roughly $1 CAD.
- We also intend to launch with free ways to earn Turnips, such as through daily login bonuses, opt-in ad viewing, and NPC affection milestones!
BETA-EXCLUSIVE PET
All users who registered and verified their account during beta will receive a Prismatic Bell item during official launch, which will hatch into a Prismatic Pup! Like the Celestial Pup that alpha testers were rewarded, this pet is a beta-exclusive quaint that will be retired permanently.
BETA TESTER ACHIEVEMENT
All verified beta accounts will also receive an exclusive beta tester achievement to display on their forum posts! The achievement icon isn't ready for release yet, but it will be unveiled in a future announcement.
As a note: verified means that your account's email must be verified in order to qualify.
After the beta testing period ends on October 25th, 2018, Dappervolk will be going into a period of Closed Development to focus on reviewing tester feedback, updating/revamping existing features, and continuing development on new features to prepare for official launch.
In the last few days of beta, we'll be posting an important news post with more information on what our upcoming development plans are, as well as some rough estimates for official launch.
Stay tuned!
Comments
I do not want to spend money on items I don't want, which would be the case with gatcha.
i don't mind gachas. i find them interesting, and kind of fun?
but the thing is, it is a form of gambling, and since this is a site aimed more at children/teenagers than adults, i don't feel like it's a great idea to have a gacha that's set up the way that's been proposed.
a monthly gacha with permanently retiring items wouldn't be a terrible thing, but with the prices how they are, it leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. i would definitely suggest lowering either the amount of turnips per roll, and/or making the currency less expensive to begin with? additionally, something that you could do is have the items permanently retire from a lower priced gacha at the end of the month, and then add them to a shop where they sell for a higher price.
(then it would be possible—and less unintentionally skeevy—to maybe even mark them down to the original gacha's price after they've been out for a year, potentially fully retiring them at the end of that month.)
i don't know, there's just something about the thought of permanently retiring something on such a short-term regular basis that even a shop would feel a bit weird? so that's my main thought/suggestion, though i might come back with an alternative later on.
Lowering the price seems like an obvious first step. This will make more players able to buy premium items, increasing player engagement and satisfaction and decreasing player frustration and alienation. As it stands, I cannot justify spending the current price on the items offered in the premium gacha, even though I really like them. And I am a player with an income, that is invested in the game and willing to spend money on it (I bought a beta bundle, and I am starting to regret it - not a good sign). The current setup makes me feel like this is a system that sees users as cash cows, and I tend to immediately clam up when I get that feeling.
The obvious second step is not releasing and retiring premium items every month. Holy item overload and user burnout! I'm a defintite collectioner and completionist, and permanently retired items frustrate me to no end. Make premium items seasonal, to give people more of a chance to save up for them and buy them. Not everyone can spend money on a game every month. Not to mention that the current setup sounds like an unrealistic goal for the site's artist(s), considering they'll likely also be working on new towns etc. That should, after all, be their main task, as it concerns the game's main available-to-all content and driving force.
I am also in favour of premium items not being sold in a gacha. I am getting bored with gachas and would love to see a variety of shops on site. The premium shop would be a logical place to have fixed price items, especially as it would mean avoiding legal issues with gambling/lootboxes.
I wanted to love this game but my trust in the staff has consistently been eroded over the last few months, which is a shame. I will give it a chance and wait for final release, but I am wary of the way things are being run (stiffling users' freedom of expression and the way they can give feedback...) and of the direction in which developers want to take the game (hyper-exclusive gambling premium system).
Tl;dr: here's what I hope for in a premium shop:
- reasonably priced items (rougly half of what the costs are now)
- items changing every 3 months, i.e. seasonally, and preferably not being retired forever (there have been several good suggestions for limited re-release here and in the suggestion board)
- a fixed-price premium shop, instead of a gacha, or a system where items are available both for a fixed price and in a gacha to give players a choice as to how they want to spend their money.
Thank you for reading this, and for your hard work. I hope we can find a solution that is agreeable for all.
All of the other changes I'd be ok with have already been suggested a ton. Cheaper rolls, the free item carrying over, or having the chance matching be every 3+ months instead of every month.
I've read over the Belgium lootbox reports, and based on those, buying a specific "gacha token" and then spending those on gacha spins would have the same issue as just buying gacha spins with turnips. As long as the item can only be used for spinning gacha, and the main way to receive the item is from spending money, it counts as a "wager" under their ruling and thus contributes to it being classified as gambling.
And if you're looking to get around any potential legal issues, mayhaps just turn them into $10 or $20 monthly item bundles that permanently retire, like your current Beta Supporter Bundles.
Or come up with a Premium membership that gives a user a monthly item. If a Premium user doesn't like that particular month's item, they'll sell it for potatoes and thus it'll be available to non-Premium folks, too.
Now that I think about it, re: Ichumon: They also had a Premium shop that sold the same items (albeit for higher pay-currency prices) every month. So maybe that's how they avoided legal issues re: gambling. ...Either that or no one ever cared enough to try to sue 'em, lol.
That site's been around for 10+ years and has a premium pay-currency chance machine whose items permanently retire and no one's sued them or anything. Well, they eventually ran out of ideas and started recycling monthly chance machines, bringing back stuff from, like, five years prior, so it's not really "permanently" retired anymore, but still. Ichumon was one of the first pet sites I've ever been on, since like a decade ago, so all this monthly rotating gacha stuff seems pretty normal to me.
Swallow your pride and actually talk to your userbase, not just in the discord either. Make public statements on the actual website instead of just giving vague answers that are hidden away in a discord chat that not everyone is a part of. Even just a comment saying that the team is taking our concerns into consideration or that you need some time to think of alternatives. ANYTHING is better than the radio silence we're getting right now.
Someone WILL eventually find this out and report it, be it a player, the parent of a player, or an outsider who happens upon it. I hardly think it'd be a matter of if, and rather when it happens, due to the site's initial popularity. Seeing the continued push on Premium Gacha is what has made my mind up to not supporting the Gumroad bundles, as much as I like some of the items. I'm not going to potentially waste my money on a site that's going to shut down due to gambling lawsuits- I'll just save up the potatoes and buy em off someone else.
To continue pushing for Premium Gacha at this point- with over 50 concerned messages in this suggestion thread alone, let alone the concerns that have been voiced time and again since Beta's opening- is pointless and childish. You cannot defeat bodies of government because you enjoy a mechanic- laws do have to be obeyed and it is classified as gambling. Please understand this when you move into post-beta mechanic follow up to change it to a premium flatbuy shop.