SWGEmu Finance Update June 2023

[oMek]

Staff needs to admit some fault in this situation. Lack of communication, unjust heavy-handed bans, unpopular changes that drove people away... ie LD buffing nerf, Solo mission nerf, Promised group XP etc...

Trim the fat. This is not a paid environment. Axe live chat and maybe set up a discord style support like you had on IRC. Trim everything you can to save a few bucks. Asking people to donate for unjust and under utilized "wants" is wrong.

Unban everyone and restart with a clean slate. Remove the forums/discord/game bans being tied together.

Spend more time advertising. People that are coming back to relive a pastime are much more willing to donate. Put feelers out to tech sites that cover games about doing a review, maybe do an interview.

Finally... Launch 1.0 as it sits. Fix/adjust what's left after. Send a mass email letting people know 1.0 launched and everyone is unbanned. Make the point no more wipes will happen. I would bet there are 1000s of people that refuse to play due to wipes.

[n310mf]

Finally... Launch 1.0 as it sits. Fix/adjust what's left after. Send a mass email letting people know 1.0 launched and everyone is unbanned. Make the point no more wipes will happen. I would bet there are 1000s of people that refuse to play due to wipes.

Interesting idea...I like it. If 1.0 were to launch today I would def start playing regularly and setup a donation subscription to match my play. I personally have been waiting for 1.0 to start playing again / get back into this game. If the financial situation is one such that this project may actually end, I think this is the best chance of keeping it alive. I'd rather have an incomplete / buggy 1.0 that's alive than no SWGEMU at all.

[Praxi34]

Interesting idea...I like it. If 1.0 were to launch today I would def start playing regularly and setup a donation subscription to match my play. I personally have been waiting for 1.0 to start playing again / get back into this game. If the financial situation is one such that this project may actually end, I think this is the best chance of keeping it alive. I'd rather have an incomplete / buggy 1.0 that's alive than no SWGEMU at all.

I have been thinking about this as well around launching 1.0 and then launching chapters to add any further content, similarly to how SOE did it in the early stages. Although we would have to put up with more bugs, certain things not operational as they should be. Ultimately, it is up to the dev team when they feel a stable/complete and wipe free (as possible) 1.0 is ready to launch but it might be good to put out a poll and see the community interest in how we transition into a 1.0 server.

Its amazing we can have these conversations, really shows how far we have come in the past 17 years or so!

[Rippster]

Finally... Launch 1.0 as it sits. Fix/adjust what's left after. Send a mass email letting people know 1.0 launched and everyone is unbanned. Make the point no more wipes will happen. I would bet there are 1000s of people that refuse to play due to wipes.

I like that idea and I'd come back the second it launched.

[KezJona89]

Staff needs to admit some fault in this situation. Lack of communication, unjust heavy-handed bans, unpopular changes that drove people away... ie LD buffing nerf, Solo mission nerf, Promised group XP etc...

Trim the fat. This is not a paid environment. Axe live chat and maybe set up a discord style support like you had on IRC. Trim everything you can to save a few bucks. Asking people to donate for unjust and under utilized "wants" is wrong.

Unban everyone and restart with a clean slate. Remove the forums/discord/game bans being tied together.

Spend more time advertising. People that are coming back to relive a pastime are much more willing to donate. Put feelers out to tech sites that cover games about doing a review, maybe do an interview.

Finally... Launch 1.0 as it sits. Fix/adjust what's left after. Send a mass email letting people know 1.0 launched and everyone is unbanned. Make the point no more wipes will happen. I would bet there are 1000s of people that refuse to play due to wipes.

Great response, support just launching 1.0 and start making positive changes and content. Relight the spark for the game.

[chayn]

Staff needs to admit some fault in this situation. Lack of communication, unjust heavy-handed bans, unpopular changes that drove people away... ie LD buffing nerf, Solo mission nerf, Promised group XP etc...

Trim the fat. This is not a paid environment. Axe live chat and maybe set up a discord style support like you had on IRC. Trim everything you can to save a few bucks. Asking people to donate for unjust and under utilized "wants" is wrong.

Unban everyone and restart with a clean slate. Remove the forums/discord/game bans being tied together.

Spend more time advertising. People that are coming back to relive a pastime are much more willing to donate. Put feelers out to tech sites that cover games about doing a review, maybe do an interview.

Finally... Launch 1.0 as it sits. Fix/adjust what's left after. Send a mass email letting people know 1.0 launched and everyone is unbanned. Make the point no more wipes will happen. I would bet there are 1000s of people that refuse to play due to wipes.

Bring back all the same ole' ppl dominating all the same ole' uber spawns with their same ole' legendary weapons for ever and ever????? No thanks....

Wipe all items, get rid of ADKs.... let us keep the rest.... i'd be good with that...

[Hakry]

Staff needs to admit some fault in this situation. Lack of communication, unjust heavy-handed bans, unpopular changes that drove people away... ie LD buffing nerf, Solo mission nerf, Promised group XP etc...

Trim the fat. This is not a paid environment. Axe live chat and maybe set up a discord style support like you had on IRC. Trim everything you can to save a few bucks. Asking people to donate for unjust and under utilized "wants" is wrong.

Unban everyone and restart with a clean slate. Remove the forums/discord/game bans being tied together.

Spend more time advertising. People that are coming back to relive a pastime are much more willing to donate. Put feelers out to tech sites that cover games about doing a review, maybe do an interview.

Finally... Launch 1.0 as it sits. Fix/adjust what's left after. Send a mass email letting people know 1.0 launched and everyone is unbanned. Make the point no more wipes will happen. I would bet there are 1000s of people that refuse to play due to wipes.

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.

[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).