On the subject of patreon

[Tru3Fals3]

was curious what people thought of a benign kind of reward for patreon subs, like a visual form change similar to doppleganger badger challenge reward except for any toon or something similar, no power creep just a cool gimick

[FunkySwerve]

I'm open to ideas. Visual form changes are not high on my list of things to consider, however, as a lot of zots would be involved in automating them. More, eventually, if we didn't automate.

Funky

[Tru3Fals3]

had assumed it wasnt a high maintainence idea since the badgers challenge already exists

[magecat]

The Badger Challenge is entirely manual, though.

>hat tip to Sabregirl<

[gladi8or]

I like this idea because it doesn't provide any advantages within the game over those players who cannot or do not donate. That tends to be what ruins a lot of games. Kicking tires here, but if this is a lot of work, perhaps a selection from set of 5-10 forms could be available at a patreon pedestal at the docks or something that gives you a one time use. I know nothing about coding, but would a set item such as this be easier for devs than being peppered with people asking for specific looks?

[Deleted]

I don't see this as being beneficial, except for having a repeated visual cue of satisfaction on the behalf of donors. What happened to just feeling all warm and fuzzy knowing your donation helps and leave it at that? Why the need for repeated acclamation?

I honestly wished that I had donated anonymously years ago because I feel uncomfortable everytime I login and see my name pop up.

I just see it as a subtle way to divide the donors from the non-donors. Like we need more division here...

[gladi8or]

Personally I just saw this a a cool way to take on a different appearance for toons. I see your point about separation of people so I suggest my pedestal idea for everyone. Sometimes it's more beneficial to take a certain base class, or in the case of xr races, there is only one choice. So, I like the idea of being able to change your look a bit more than initial creation options. However, I'm sure this is a time consuming endeavor to create, so maybe in the future. The dopple challenge is really a cool idea. This would be a bit of an expansion.

[Deleted]

The appearance adjustment idea is a fantastic one. To Ray’s point, a stand alone option or tied to another thing would be a better approach.

[FunkySwerve]

Aug 2, 2020 12:44:52 GMT magecat said:

The Badger Challenge is entirely manual, though.

>hat tip to Sabregirl<

And also restricted to a single character of a single class. And we still plan to automate it because of the dev time it takes, which is far better spent elsewhere.

Making appy changes available to all donors would require an immense effort and require coding far beyond that, because we would effectively need a list of approved appearances for each size. Not happening, at leaset not while EE remains unfinished, and even then I would still be reluctant, because it's a lot of work for little upside, to a limited subset of players. It would also risk further breaking immersion, which is reason enough for me to dislike the idea.

Funky

[simpetar]

I cannot imagine any kind of such bonus be completely hands-free for devs, unless there is an automated way for the game to recognize Patreon contributions (sensitive data from 3rd party website) and link them to CD key / player account. Such automation would rise all sorts of complications, from technical to legal (GDPR connected for EU players).

[Tru3Fals3]

Aug 3, 2020 5:31:16 GMT FunkySwerve said:

Aug 2, 2020 12:44:52 GMT magecat said:

The Badger Challenge is entirely manual, though.

>hat tip to Sabregirl<

And also restricted to a single character of a single class. And we still plan to automate it because of the dev time it takes, which is far better spent elsewhere.

Making appy changes available to all donors would require an immense effort and require coding far beyond that, because we would effectively need a list of approved appearances for each size. Not happening, at leaset not while EE remains unfinished, and even then I would still be reluctant, because it's a lot of work for little upside, to a limited subset of players. It would also risk further breaking immersion, which is reason enough for me to dislike the idea.

Funky

well that settles it, thanks for response, like i said, i had assumed (knowing nothing about dev) that it was an easy enough little gimick to throw in but apparently not, so its obviously not worth the time.

just an off the cuff suggestion, there's no need for people to start getting upset or reading so much into everything.

[FunkySwerve]

Aug 3, 2020 6:24:16 GMT simpetar said:

I cannot imagine any kind of such bonus be completely hands-free for devs, unless there is an automated way for the game to recognize Patreon contributions (sensitive data from 3rd party website) and link them to CD key / player account. Such automation would rise all sorts of complications, from technical to legal (GDPR connected for EU players).

We do store donors in a database, which is how you see those messages coming in on login. Some of them don't provide playernames, however, and some are anonymous. We could certainly handle the part of this that would require identifying donors by searching that table, with anyone wanting a bonus submitting their playername. The really gnarly problems come in with the question of how many toons we're going to allow. If we don't restrict, things get simpler, but immersion is comparatively damaged. That may matter to me more than most, however. If we do restrict, we have many additional layers of complication like tracking through reincarnation.

Even without restriction, it's a lot of work setting up alt appearances, making sure they don't screw up subrace speed (which is linked to appearance by both Bioware and our systems), and more.

I'm providing this info both in the interest of transparency, so that you understand why I am not prioritizing it, and to let you know when it may be appropriate to raise again - after we finish Atropus, the last EE. That's not the end of development for us, but it will be the ultimate endgame run, and will mark a point when our efforts turn to rebalancing all classes/subs/content in light of exhisting areas. Of course, will will have to playtest all the EEs and tweak them before that, to use as templates for other levels of analagous power.

Funky