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THE INN - MARCH 2024 DEVLOG 2
🕑 Added 2024-03-31 17:51:21 +0000 UTCWhat's up people?
The second half of March went as I expected regarding The Inn's development.
I was able to finish all the scenes I needed for the update and, as of the writing of this post, the only thing left to do before release is adding songs and sfx to the game, which I'll be doing today.
So yeah, tomorrow's release is 99% confirmed!
On the subject of releases, I wanted to talk to you all about something.
I've been planning on reworking the tiers for this project for a while now, and that's mostly due to 2 reasons:
I've been working with the current tier system for little over two years, the way it works now is that the INNitiate tier ($5) serves as the "update release" tier and the higher tiers as only bonus or additional benefits tier.
It worked great so far, back when I introduced it I saw a massive growth in new pledges and, in part due to the monthly release schedule, it also helped retain pledges throughout the month.
The drawback to it being that my pledge growth became pretty much non existential after a while, it stalled in around 300 patrons/month.
The good side is that they didn't decrease, but the bad side is that they didn't increase either.
The other reason being that the current monthly release, while working great, has become pretty stressful towards the end of the month, where I have to pretty much crunch to be able to finish the udpate in time and, as the game evolves, updates become more and more complex, so the development difficulty also increases. So, from this release onwards I'll be switching to a bimonthly release schedule.
This in itself will bring it's own set of benefits and drawbacks.
While I'll have more time to work on the update and that will translate to better and bigger updates, it'll also prove to be challenging to retain patreons during the second month of the release cycle.
So, after a lot of consideration, research and talking to other devs, I realized that my current release system is flawed and gives little to no incentive for upgrades and new pledges.
That means after tomorrow's release, I'll rework the release system in favor of a tiered release system, which was what I used way back and seems to be the preffered release system for the vast majority of other devs.
All the current tiers will be unpublished, meaning new pledges to them won't be possible but current pledges will stay until the pledger either cancels it or upgrades to a different tier.
The current tiers will be renamed to "Legacy" tiers and all their benefits except the release related ones will still be valid for as long as you're a member of them.
Here's a quick rundown of how each tier will look like:
And, just to be really clear, if you're part of a Legacy tier, you'll still receive it's benefits (except release related ones) even if the tier is not available anymore.
That means, for example, if you're part of the current INNtimate tier, you'll still be elligible for the monthly custom artwork for as long as you're part of it.
Regarding the INNvested tier reward:
Nominate an idea for a custom render that's voted on through a monthly poll (top 3 are made)
This will be a new poll type event that I'll be making every month and will go like this:
Around the 15th of every month, patrons of INNvested and higher tiers will have access to a special discord channel where they'll be able to post ONE idea for a custom artwork.
The channel will be accessible for 2 days.
After 2 days the channel will be closed and a patron exclusive poll will be made on patreon so all the ideas can be voted.
Votes are weighted according to the patron's tiers, so the higher your tier, the more weight your vote will have.
This poll will be up for 1 week.
At the end of that week, the 3 ideas with the most votes will be made into artworks which will be posted on discord and patreon and will also be featured in the in-game Pin-Up gallery.
Alright, I guess that's it for this devlog.
If you have any questions regarding the new tiers or the game in general, don't be afraid to ask them in the comments or in our discord server!
Also, don't forget to check the official sneak peeks post to see some of the stuff that's going to be in the next update!
Have fun!
Comments
Gary Ridgway
Bi-monthly releases are fine with me, some of the ones that I follow only release twice a year.
