Update Feb 15th 2021

[Alexandar | Cyrene]

Hello everyone, I am back in your life this February 15th 2021, and hope you all had a great week. This past week has been hectic but very ED-ifying (pun intended).

Firstly, I can officially say that the Podcast is planned to be released at the end of Q1 2021. It will address development, player requests & questions we will open up to the player base through polls on this forum. Please keep in mind that anything that we are not allowed to answer as Planet Partners, will not be discussed. So consider this an “ask me almost anything”, and if your question doesn’t get an answer or gets an answer of “we aren’t allowed to discuss” then you know why.

Team Cyrene is planning an official event for at least once per quarter and possibly more. These events will scale up or down depending on player interest and for the holiday seasons. The good news is that this is one of the possible mechanisms proposed to solve the issue with the Imperium Armor upgrade missions.

Of the proposals, one has come back for now, though I am pushing for more. Again, I can confirm that this proposal with be implemented by Team Cyrene so we are just awaiting the go-ahead from the higher-ups (provided they don’t need additional implementation via the timing of the Version Update). There are, however, other options being considered for these items in particular. I would look at Q2 2021 for them to be released as per Kris’s approval. Once approved, we’ll make sure to inform everyone.

On the marketing front, the Team is working hard on a marketing plan with consultants, as well as MA on how to retain new players brought in with the marketing efforts for maximum effect. This will be ongoing with several stages and changes in development in both the short and long term for new and existing players. We’re striving to make sure that all players will want to be a part of this experience from gameplay, lore, and economic view.

A special thank you to commenters from last week’s posters, I know that my introduction here was as the bearer of bad news, but I hope that’ll you’ll come to look forward to the information that I share here.


PS

@bella thank you for the optimistic view, I will work hard to earn that.

@nick timegazer messner working hard is all I know, otherwise I gets the hose (puts the lotion on before Kris gets upset)

@Wistrel thanks for that video heads up, I’ll try not to get on McCormick's bad side.

Until next time

Alex

 

[Spawn]

Podcast... snotcast
Promises... where have we seen that before. Promises of events. ok.. Maybe do the ten event that was promised?
It's only been 7 years..
https://cyreneforum.com/threads/10-event-update-and-a-heads-up.1770/

Ask me anything.. anything a planet partner can answer.. so Ask me nothing?
" how to retain new players brought in with the marketing efforts for maximum effect." Here's a hint": Not interfering with a planet and closing down the entire eco infrastructure helps. Look at those players responding to the 10 event that never happened.. only a handful of those still play. All because of these nice "balancing" moves by Mindark.
Look in the mirror if you want to retain players. It's your own doing. You don't need marketing. You don't need podcasts. You don't need AMA's
You need to let the planet partners stand on their own feet. They need to be in direct competition with Calypso.

 

[bella]

Team Cyrene is planning an official event for at least once per quarter and possibly more. These events will scale up or down depending on player interest and for the holiday seasons. The good news is that this is one of the possible mechanisms proposed to solve the issue with the Imperium Armor upgrade missions.


If i got this right your plan is to give Imperium Armor parts as rewards,
I hope i am wrong but if am right ,that worst news for any Cyrene player that play on this planet ,cycle and keep planet alive, and we wont forgive you for that

 

[Zyloc]

I do not agree with the intention to drop the armour parts during event(s) if this is the intention.
This is a kick in the face to loyal Cyrene supporters and those that worked hard to get the mats for the upgrade. All that will happen is that people will come from all over universe for the event, win the parts and leave. This is not good for the long term economy. You need to make Cyrene "sticky" and this is not the way to do it.

 

[Kris | Cyrene]

Hey guys,

Just for clarification:

Team Cyrene is planning an official event for at least once per quarter and possibly more. These events will scale up or down depending on player interest and for the holiday seasons. The good news is that this is one of the possible mechanisms proposed to solve the issue with the Imperium Armor upgrade missions.


If i got this right your plan is to give Imperium Armor parts as rewards,
I hope i am wrong but if am right ,that worst news for any Cyrene player that play on this planet ,cycle and keep planet alive, and we wont forgive you for that

You are incorrect, as per our Discord Mod:

"The idea, is NOT to use the armor as event prizes, but to offer more uses for the turn in items themselves.
Right now the team is feeling out a lot of ideas between what MA can do and what Cyrene can do separate from MA. Sorry if this wasn't clear in the posting."

Cheers,
Kris

 

[bella]

Hey guys,

Just for clarification:



You are incorrect, as per our Discord Mod:

"The idea, is NOT to use the armor as event prizes, but to offer more uses for the turn in items themselves.
Right now the team is feeling out a lot of ideas between what MA can do and what Cyrene can do separate from MA. Sorry if this wasn't clear in the posting."

Cheers,
Kris

Ty for clarification, we almost started packing bags

 

[Zyloc]

thanks for clarification ... so is forum or discord definitive source of Cyrene info. don't mind which or both just need to know if I should be checking both

 

[Belenor]

Well, I'd prefer Forums to be the main source of info I do not use Discord
Anyway, I was happy to see the amount of players coming to Cyrene when armor missions were available. As Zyloc said, Cyrene needs something players can do for a long term.

I'd like to ask what is the status of Codex for Cyrene? It would also bring in some players.

 

[San]

Thank you, Alexander & Kris. Not sure if I read this correctly, are you inviting questions through this thread, or Discord, or any channel to be announced later? In any case, my question then will be:

Which topics/items exactly are you allowed or not allowed to talk about (whichever list is shorter)? (As per previous experience, non-answers will be interpreted accordingly.)

To anyone new to the discussions regarding this most recent unpleasantry and general MA-PP relations in its context, I want to re-iterate that any criticism, sarcasm or otherwise challenging remarks I can't help having to vent, are not directed at you personally or the development team, but are rather to be taken in the meaning of "you know who you are". I have the highest respect for those who do all the creative and development work. I am less sympathetic towards some patterns of business behaviour and business jargon. Not that it was the first such occurrence, but to be specific here: This was not a "configuration issue". I'd be happier to learn otherwise, but for this to happen, somebody needs to say something.

My avatar is now on Cyrene for the time being, to direct whatever (comparatively little) resources I have to where I believe they are deserved.

Cheers!

 

[mastermesh]

Whatever you do please DO NOT RELY ON AVATAR TO AVATAR EXCHANGES for even prizes or for any sort of special type things you as a Planet Partner are doing. Instead build NPCs in that can handle any exchanges that need to be done or use the event system or other systems to reward those that need to be rewarded, etc.

Many, many, many years ago I had a shop on Calypso that I thought about doing an upgrade on. Mindark in its infinite wisdom decided that any upgrade exchange had to be done between an avatar and an avatar Mindark had set up (this was all well before planets existed and Calypso truly was the center of the universe). I decided not to do the upgrade, in part, because I could not log in at a time when the Mindark avatar could, and also because I had this thing in the real world called taxes that had to be paid using funds I was thinking about using for that upgrade. So... time went on... and a few months later even though no exchange happened Mindark upgraded the item points on the shop just because. My suspicion is they gave one team member the job of collecting for the upgrade and a second one to actually implement the upgrade in in game code or whatever... I don't think I was the only avatar that benefited from that (although it wasn't really a benefit since I ended up selling that shop at a loss a while later to help recoup some of that tax issue).... in other words Mindark relied on a avatar to avatar trade and lost economically in the process of trying to get it to work..

Fast forward to recent times.... Next Island did a 'survey event' in their forums that has a reward of an in game shirt being given away by a planet partner avatar. I, along with many other avatars did the survey but Next Island in it's infinite wisdom decided to make the reward for that be handed out by an in game planet partner avatar. My avatar has been on Next Island about a month so far. The first week I sent some notifications on forum and facebook to Next Island staff about my avatar being on Next Island.... About a week later I finally got the planet partner avatar to add me to friend list in game... I was never online when he was.... then the online system told me he went about 5 and a half days without logging in since friend system in game tells you the last time avatar logs in, etc. I did finally see him online one day when I was but he didn't answer any chats and was showing as away from keyboard for many hours.... then another week went by where he was offline for over 5 days at a time... and so on... I highly doubt my avatar will ever actually meet him when I'm online, and I suspect many other avatars that did that survey in good faith have received the 'reward' for the survey yet either based on some comments I see on forum and facebook....

In a separate event on another planet, the entire POVR giveaway on Rocktropis was an instant success for all avatars that were online the weekend that happened a few years ago because the entire event was done via an in game instance, automated give away of the key to that (using same system Christmas gift giveaway was done), and an npc to do the trades in game... it worked since it was all done via in game automated systems instead of a player to player exchange with real world people from the planet partner having to be reliable to be online when the avatar on the receiving end was online at the right place at the right time, etc.

Arkadia did similar type christmas event not long ago where they gave away rewards as Christmas gifts from years past via an automated npc vendor type system and event system, etc. Lots of other examples out there...

Many planet partner events (moon events) involving Monria (now Toulan as it's run by the same folks behind Mondris) show a lot of favoritism to certain avatars that get rewards when others don't simply because human avatars on the planet side are being utilized instead of a more fair and official in game automated system.... just don't go down that path of using planet partner avatars for turnins or trades if possible... it's far better to use in game systems instead of doing thing by hand by logging in to an avatar.... Planet Partners should code things and develop npcs and events using in game systems, not try to role play and fail at it miserably due to all human errors and faults involved that cause favoritism, lots of frustration on the player's part due to real world issues like being in different time zones from planet partner, etc..