SWGEmu Finance Update June 2023

[Praxi34]

I took the approach for months and months of communicating openly with the community on the forums and on Discord. Usually just ended with threads so toxic they were locked. We discussed changes and future server ideas with community members many times, you can say "just do x, y and z" but not fully realizing just how time consuming that is alone, also how dealing with some folks can straight up kill the staffs determination to do this voluntarily. Also, we did implement group xp. The full list of changes on Finalizer can be found here: https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=254610

I can spend a free few hours heads down and crank out fixes or implementations but make it 2 hours of trying to communicate and deflect the banter and 1hr on actual development, nothing gets done. Now I know immediately folks will say "Community Manager", thats not really the answer when no one has gone through the steps to just leap into a PR position that could sink the whole ship if not handled properly. Even just recently I took the time to writeup multiple posts about the accuracy changes and "put myself in the shoes" of those complaining and guess what, the thread just continued to go on about how the game is hard and people want to do it how they want to do it and almost all replies just completely ignore multiple staff replies.

The systems that are in place now for Support and LiveChat are the most effective with the time folks have to give. Handing stuff through Discord would not work when account or issue tracking.

Unban everyone and start fresh did not work out well for Finalizer. Crying, angry posts, staff allegations etc. Guess what, a ton of clean slate folks reoffended, as expected. The rules are the rules, folks fail to follow or want to just ride the line to troll and create a bad community enviroment just have to face the fact that actions have consequences.

Now onto the 1.0 chatter, in the larger picture we are there with some bugs here and there. Mantis needs a clean up and then there is deciding and getting in place what comes next or else you end up in the same position. Community expecting content and such, without proper workflow in place to effectively create and release said content. We are always still progressing, JTL has made definite progress but still has a lot to go.

This also walks us into advertising, if you draw everyone on and don't have the content prepared to release to keep them interested, history just repeats itself.


In the end we need folks to be patient and understand we are at the point where changes will happen, its just not a snap your fingers and it happens sort of thing.

Appreciate your time to write this up Hakry. A really good response IMO and agree with your points, like many others do. Workflow will be important and system planning to for content. Creating timeline content will be fun and cool to watch this game grow from 14.1 but the foundation needs to be rock solid for this to happen (more about process than the current state of the game, it feels more whole than ever when i jump on and play when i can).

[Lobreeze]

Can we get a line item breakdown of why roughly ~2300 dollars USD isnt enough to support at most 200 people online? Based on current goal 2300 is 65%???

Last total I saw (maybe last month) was $5550 USD... ???

It feels like this is for-profit

This should be run for pennies on the dollar relative to current costs.

[Bostwain]

Where is July's? You're 12 days behind schedule if you decided to do monthly releases.

[Lobreeze]

Scrooge McEmu couldn't afford after yacht payments.

[enyce]

Seems we are in a net positive now, and perhaps will see the donations spillover into the following months and possible upgrades. Looking good

[jj8926]

I would say if allowing donators to vote on the update direction, open it up where everyone gets a vote and have donators and those that have higher playtimes have their vote count as 2. That way the community still gets a chance to participate, and those that have dedicated their time or money to the game get a bit more say, but you also won't have the issue of someone coming in and tanking the vote against what the community wants as a whole.