Scapes on Rumbling Archeum Trees and Trion's Control over the Marketplace

originally posted by Trion Scapes (view source)

As we’ve mentioned in the past, we review and discuss the contents of each Marketplace update with the game’s developer, with the goal of getting to a place that will work for both our audience and the developer’s game balance goals for the product. As with any healthy partnership, there’s a lot of back-and-forth in these discussions.

In this case, the developer’s desire was an honest one to help make farm carts slightly less rare. We absolutely agreed with that as a goal too. So, where’d it go wrong?

We were aware that the logs were one potential outcome of the Rumbling Archeum Tree Saplings. We had mistakenly assumed they would be far more rare and dangerous to acquire than they were in reality. Our incorrect assumption was that they would have a high requirement of rare, dangerous, and time consuming resources and would require more time needed to grow. We felt that if they came in as a rare/time consuming thing, people would perceive them as a slight bonus, a genuine part of gameplay, and we did not expect them to enter the game in sufficient numbers to impact the economy.

From our point of view, there are a couple things that we need to do better for you in the future.

While we do perform functionality tests on the Marketplace updates as we receive them (such as buying every item, making sure items are received, and making sure billing is correct), we have not been in a position to do as deep of gameplay impact testing as we would like. We absolutely need to test these more thoroughly with players on a Public Test Server to make sure our collective assumptions align with reality. This server is in the process of being spun up right now.

We need to be in a position to share more of the WHY behind changes, ahead of time, which we’re currently working on with the developer. Then, the instant we get wind of a balance change that may impact people’s time investment in a negative way, we need to be certain to call it out well ahead of time. The last thing we ever want to do is surprise people with something that negatively impacts them. We know enough from running our own games how bad of an idea bad surprises are.

While we have said that “we manage the Marketplace” in the past, those statements have been perceived as if we have exclusive control: to be clear, that is not the case.

The way it works is essentially this: we agree on Marketplace update dates with the developer a month or two ahead of time. Then for content and pricing, we make suggestions, they make suggestions, and we reach an agreement. The developer does the development and in the days before a Marketplace update, we receive a compiled Marketplace file with the content fully built and a build of the game that contains the items in the Marketplace. We then perform the aforementioned functionality tests on the Marketplace and deploy it to you on the day it’s supposed to go live.

While we don’t have exclusive control over the contents of the Marketplace, we do have exclusive control of is how well or poorly the communication between us goes regarding changes that are coming in. We definitely feel that we fell far short in investigating and communicating and you do have our apologies for that.

That is why we’re pushing so hard on a Public Test Server for you right now and look forward to working with you there in the near future, even if it means updates may need a little more time to bake as we evaluate future deliveries there together.