Hey there, fellow Ylanders!
In today's Dev Diary we would like to talk about some things that players often comment on in their reviews or forum posts.
REVIEWS
Speaking of reviews - during the last year, we saw the average current game reviews score raise substantially. Seeing the average rating rise some 20 % and keep going is a clear indication that we've managed to turn the ship around and things are improving - and we would like to thank you for your support and the trust many of you put in us when we said things would change.
Apart from us not giving Exploration as much love as it deserved in the past, the main complaint players state in the review is often related to the game being free to play with Exploration being a paid "DLC" and the presence of monetization. So we feel like we should talk about this.
EXPLORATION AND F2P
Even though we're now fully focused on Exploration, Ylands is still a platform as well. We have a very sophisticated Editor and Workshop, where anyone can create, share and play each other's creations for free - with the emphasis put on "for free". We want everyone to be able to do this, it makes absolutely no sense to put these tools behind a paywall. That's the reason why Ylands went F2P, with Exploration remaining a premium segment.
Now you might ask "So why didn't you make it two products instead and didn't keep Ylands Exploration as a premium title?" and that would be a very good question. The answer will become obvious once we release 1.10 later this year. But in a nutshell: our ultimate goal is to continue to create the Exploration world while also giving players the option to create their own "areas" within that world. within these "areas", they wouldn't be bound by materials scarcity or their skill to build something ingame, but to let them create their own Exploration adventures in the Editor. The Exploration and the Editor have a future together. Make no mistake, if you're interested only in the "original" Exploration you won't have to worry about anything else. If, however, you feel like creating an yland in the Editor and have other people visit you, we will give you the option.
(screenshot by spiritchaser28)
MONETIZATION
And that leads us to the other topic, which is monetization. For obvious reasons, this is always a controversial topic but we feel it might be a good idea to summarize what Ylands monetization is about.
Firstly, it's important to say that ever since we introduced monetization, it has remained the same - players can purchase only cosmetic items that have no impact on gameplay.
Monetization was never really a priority for us:
Not only, after years of development, there's still very little content for players to buy (which, funnily enough, we get some complaints about as well :) ), we actually even removed entire categories of objects that players could originally buy (weapon skins, armor skins) and let all the players have them for free (while, obviously, fully refunding everyone who has ever bought one).
We never promoted our in-app purchases, which we believe is, when it comes to games with some sort of in-app purchases, rather rare. You never see a pop-up window urging you to buy a new pet or costume or anything and even when there's was a 50% off of everything in our store, in the game you could tell only by a tiny text over the the Store tab button and a Dev Message. We are doing our best so that players who are not interested in buying anything don't feel pressured in any way.
FUTURE OF MONETIZATION
So this is how it's has been for years now, but what about the future? Are there any ugly surprises waiting for you?
Nope.
We will keep adding costumes and pets. Not in huge amounts and only when we feel like we have some good ideas for those. Just like we've done up until now.
We will be reworking Blueprints (and merging those with Compositions) so that you can create them in the Editor and let you, the creators, sell them to other players for coyns, so that you can buy things you want or pay for rented servers this way. This is why we're keeping monetization in the game - we want a functional ecosystem where those who create nice things are rewarded.
NFTs
And last the last thing - we've seen some people mentioning NFTs. So where do we stand with those?
We don't like them. We don't want them in our game, and as far as we know, neither do you. The way we see it, they don't bring anything that wouldn't be in some way already possible in games and have no plans whatsoever on implementing those.
And that's it for today! Thanks for reading all the way here, thank you for your support... and stay healthy and classy!