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
The premium gacha IS going to cause you legal problems one day if you keep it. Lootboxes in games are starting to get banned and are in many places in EU at least being viewed as outright predatory gambling. Blizzard ran into problems with their paid for lootboxes in Overwatch for instance and had to remove them in Belgium. Gacha shops are exactly the same thing as a lootbox, so you WILL run into problems with it. Not to mention, gambling is considered an adult activity. Do you really want to run the userbase that are minors from this site? Do you support predatory gambling that can cause a very self-destructive addiction called ludomania? Because at this point you do, and it WILL alienate your userbase and cause you legal problems.
I highly suggest dropping the gacha mechanic for the premium shop entirely. Let us buy one of the items we want for 100 turnips and the whole set for 500 or something. 200 turnips for one spin is ricidulous when we don't even earn enough in a month for one spin...
I also suggest NOT retiring the items. Seriously, they are not supposed to be as elusive as kickstarter items! Retiring things will make them skyrocket in price and it is not good for Dappervolks economy. Kickstarter items are SUPPOSED to be rare and retired since we helped the site at the very start. Premium items are not THAT special. Cycle them if you want, but make them available for future users sometime. Constantly retiring items alienates users as well. I won't stick around at least if that's the way it's gonna be. I won't stick around if Dappervolk endorses predatory gambling either for that matter.
I also like the idea of a flat price, gambling with real money is no fun and actually causes me a lot of stress and anxiety :/ but that's just me
How about dropping the chance machine spin cost to half (or less) of the item's intended value, and then adding the ability for players to outright purchase each item at full price instead of spinning. Chance machines are a lot more fun when they're something you can kind of splurge on and see what you get, and making the transactions smaller will enable more people to participate more frequently. And players who just don't want to mess with that will still be able to just pay full price straight up and get the items without the frustration of wasting money on things they don't want.
As others have pointed out, permanently retiring items quickly skyrocket in price, and become a source of frustration and argument for FAR more players than those who are happy with the system. There are other ways to create rarity for these types of items: cycling, decreasing the chance of receiving old items as new ones come in, or bringing some/all retired sets back once a year (like Subeta's Black Friday program). If they HAVE to be retired, why not make them last three months at a time in a seasonal format, and have other monthly items that can cycle in and out? That way players can more comfortably spend however much money to get the retired items over a longer period, rather than feeling pressured to pay more than they can afford for an online game on a monthly basis.
Though 200 turnips per spin seems a bit much to me honestly. I think it's perfectly fine to have them priced higher to keep them special. But maybe 100 turnips would be enough for that matter.
But anyway love the new town.
Now is to hope that the full launch isn't too many months away.
The only thing that bothers me about the premium shop as it is is the price - $2 per item (that might well be an extra) is a lot.
the items are cute, though...?
That being said, I'm not too keen on the idea of permanently retiring items each month and that can only be obtained from a gacha shop with a premium currency that on top of it all is non-tradeable between users. This system reminds me way too much of Neopets and I do not like it. I prefer Flight Rising's system way better since premium currency is tradeable and they don't really retire most premium items, they sometimes cycle them out from their premium shop, but that's it.
Also, the legalities of a gacha shop that uses a premium currency that you can purchase, i.e. literally gambling with real cash, on a game that minors are allowed to play on is just... yeah, you might end up finding yourself in a real pickle if gambling laws become more stringent than they already are.
If you're going to include gambling with a premium currency in your game, you might have to consider only making them available to people that claim to be adults. But that would obviously be unfair towards the minors playing your game since this is a game that focuses a lot of its attention on avatar customization.
Just my 2 cents. ^^;