Producer's Letter #2

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Iso-Hampuri, Mar 11, 2014.

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  1. Hey Mayors!

    Thank you all for the feedback and replies you have given to the first Producer’s Letter that I wrote. A lot seems to be focused about building up trust. It is never easy for us to make promises to a community; the nature of game development is often unpredictable. I will do my best to be as active as I can be, and with the help of the Community Managers and the moderators, I am sure we will be able to be as open as possible with you.

    We’re working on making the game more accessible, which means we will not add new features for the next couple of months unless they help us make existing features better for the game. This means that we are focusing on the technical and gameplay basics, reworking existing features to make them more beneficial and more accessible for our players.

    We saw that with the rework of the data base communication, whilst initially aimed at removing a nasty bug from the game, actually triggered another. This was incredibly unfortunate, however we can now look into why this bug was there and work on a way to solve it in the long run. The change in the data base communication was aimed at fixing the bug with the broken or corrupt buildings, and thus was a priority for us to fix.

    I will start by summing up what has happening since the last letter.

    Permission System and Premium Building Rework
    The permission system and the premium buildings were reworked to allow players to purchase more permissions if they wished, and to remove the clunky feeling around premium buildings. The price for premium buildings, whilst it has been discussed, was calculated from the old instant finish and permit cost, all in all they are cheaper than before. This makes the premium buildings a little more unique and special for you.

    Obstacle and Expansion Rework
    We’ve reworked the obstacle removal system so that all obstacles are removed within 10 seconds. Additionally all mystery buildings in expansions are now shown as a hologram effect and can be hovered over for details. This means that players can plan their expansions a little more carefully to get the buildings they want first, without having to guess.

    Quest System Improvements
    We’ve rebalanced quite a lot of the quests to give out better rewards, so that players can advance more quickly. We’ve also separated the quest requirements a little so that they can be completed in any order to make them a little easier to complete based on what you have in your inventory at that time.

    New Mystery Building Season
    We’ve added a new mystery building season to add a little more variety into the mystery buildings and best of all: they are based on a classic rock theme.


    That covers the changes we have made in the last 2 months, and now here is a look at what is going to happen over the next few months:

    New Quests
    We’re working on two things, additionally to the improvements, with the quest system. The first is to reorder and maybe rework the game entry/tutorial quests so that they are easier for players to follow and complete. This will allow us to get many more players to stay with the game. The second is to add more high-level quests and events for you. We’ve gotten the feedback that the high-level content is repetitive and so we want to add more for you all. As we are adding new quests, we will also have to increase the number of levels that we have, and look at how the level curve works. This should happen towards the end of March.

    Rent Collector Improvements
    At the end of March or beginning of April we will make improvements to the Rent Collector. At the moment we feel that it is too expensive and not accessible enough. Therefore we will add new timespans for the Rent Collector, make it cheaper to purchase as well as give it out in quest rewards and the Loot-o-Matic.

    Workshop
    The workshop will provide a way to make the Home Improvement system fit into the game a little better, and allow you to craft your own Home Improvements. It will make the entire system a lot more accessible and immersive.

    New Playfield
    As you know, most of you voted on a theme for a new playfield last month. We hope to get that new playfield released and out for you in May. The artwork required for a new playfield, new buildings, etc is quite significant so it takes a little longer than most features to develop. But we are on it and will get it out as soon as we can. Thank you everyone for voting!

    Confirmation Layer for MM
    We are going to introduce a confirmation layer for all Metro Money purchases; this will be in game towards the end of March so that there are no more accidental purchases.

    Loot-o-Matic Content
    We want to add new content to the Loot-o-Matic, we already added one new building but we will add more as the year goes on. Again, we are happy about your contribution in the Weekly Poll about potential Loot-o-Matic Content. It looks as though we can add new content to the Loot-o-Matic every three to four months so we can really vary the rewards quite a lot.

    Social Features
    We are aware of the lack of social features in the game, and we want to improve on that and add them. However, we have to rework the existing systems first to make them fit into the game before we can do so. We want to bring social features into the game hopefully in June, and steadily increase the number of them as the year progresses. We’re currently looking at a gifting feature, hire-a-friend to aid in building, an “epic-building” update which multiple users can construct epic landmarks. This is the direction we are looking into, and of course if you have any suggestions please let us know.


    As the year advances we will add more and more playfields of varying themes so that we get to the “sprawling metropolis” that I described in the vision statement for the game. We want the game to be very accessible and expansive so that players always have something to do and entertain them.

    Thanks for reading,

    \-Sephiroth-/
     
    Hyder, MissCash33, QueenVee and 6 others like this.
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