Hey guys! It's been about a week since the last update, I don't quite have the next one ready, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the near term future of the game. Basically, things have kept exploding, and I'd really like to keep up the momentum. I think I might really have a once in a lifetime opportunity here, so I want to take it seriously. I've been working on a few things so far this week (although I've also been really busy at work, so I haven't been able to get as much done as I wanted), but one of the primary things is some cosmetics! I've talked about them a bit in the last few updates, and wanted to let you guys know that now I am taking some time to get them in the game. Right now what I am thinking is I will have this initial set of cosmetics, which will include some things that you will keep permanently but will also be available to other players in some form in the future (like the cowboy hat and sunglasses), and the Early Access Supporter Badge, which will be exclusive to this DLC and won't be available anymore once this Early Access period is over. Here is what I have so far:
I'm planning on adding a few more things (people in the discord mentioned that these are mostly male focused cosmetics which is totally accurate lol), so this isn't the complete set, but the cosmetics will be something along these lines. I'm also not sure how much I should charge for it; I was initially thinking $5, but I've also had a bunch of people suggest it could be more. I don't want to be greedy and charge too much, but I also don't want to leave money on the table unnecessarily. I think I've already made a mistake by not having anything available for sale at launch, and I want to try to be smart about it. What do people think is more fair? What if I did something like charge $10, but have a discount for the first few weeks or something? I'd really like your guys' feedback on this, because I want to make sure people don't feel like I'm taking advantage of them.
Another problem is that for right now, I can only really sell something on Steam, so the Quest players are going to be left out for a while unless they play through Link. I feel pretty bad about this, because it seems unfair to only let some people get access to the cosmetics for now. The problem is that for the Quest, since I'm trying to get onto the Oculus app store through their App Labs, if I did that I wouldn't be able to apply something they bought on a third party store to that account, or at least at this point I don't think I can. My plan would be to make sure that no matter what, I have a way for people on Quest to get access to the cosmetics at some point. I'm posting this on both the Steam page and the Sidequest page, so hopefully you guys can give me some feedback on this as well. Would you Quest players be alright with Steam players having access to these cosmetics before you do? Should I wait until I can sell it everywhere at the same time? I wouldn't make it so you could only get the Early Access badge on the Steam store, but I also don't know how long it would be until it would be available. Like I said, I'm trying to make sure people feel like I'm being fair, and from my perspective I want to start selling something sooner rather than later. Every day I'm not I feel like I'm missing on an opportunity.
Anyway, cosmetics aside, I'm also working on some important features like being able to join public rooms with more friends at once (so basically you'd join a private room together, and then you could choose to join a public room all at the same time), as well as another queue for players who are trying to match against other people who opt in to that queue as a way for better players to match together more easily. I'm also adding some other features like push to talk/push to mute, a speaker icon on the scoreboard that shows up when someone is talking, as well as the start of a better account system so I can keep track of what cosmetics people have access to on the back end. I'm hoping to maybe have all this stuff available by Friday next week or so. I'm also starting work on a new canyon map, although I can't say for sure whether or not that will make it into the next update. I will probably do some changes on the Cave map first that I think will help flesh it out a little bit more.
Thanks again for all your feedback and excitement around the game. I'm extremely happy that everyone's enjoying the game and having a good time playing together. I'll keep working hard at it, and please do let me know what you think about the cosmetics situation. Thanks!