Hi all,
This post is not going to follow the normal structured routine of a producer’s letter, where we give a wider overview and update. I just wanted to pick up up on some things that you were discussing in the subreddit in reaction to some of the high level feature ideas from our last communication that you can find here .
Some team members helped me collect and group the major topics of discussion. Rather than just saying thank you for any positive notes, I decided to tackle the critical ones instead 
I hope we can keep up the dialogue from here on out.
1) Fame Reset
When the Producer’s Letter went out, I was absolutely sure that there was going to be a lot of talk about this one. I am glad that there is even, although I am sorry that some of you got needlessly scared.
From my point of view, there are three aspects to this:
- Live Fame (characters): I can tell you with certainty that the plan did not include resetting live fame of existing characters. What could change is the way you gain fame going forward including the bonuses and how it relates to Leaderboards (see below).
- Account Fame (currency): Fame as a currency and the way it was built into the game never got properly balanced and was heavily abused at times on top of that. Thus, you could never really purchase anything of true meaning with it… except for ammies, pet related features and seasonal/event fame boxes. If something cool is supposed to be available for fame, there needs to be a good way to balance it before and a reset could possibly happen while we adjust or change the currency system. Again, we are talking here about the fame as a currency aka account fame.
- Leaderboards (ranking): Here is where I see a lot of potential for change without too much disruption. It would mostly be about adding new leaderboards, defining the way they get scored differently and shake things up. Current leaderboards can always stay as legacy rankings but we want the scoring to be more meaningful to our active user base. In case I am missing something obvious on the Legends/Leaderboard topic, I am interested to hear about it.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the same conclusions… The game needs and deserves a well balanced scoring system and a currency that are tied to how good you are at staying alive and overcoming challenges.
The system should also give you the option to buy cool things without voluntarily sacrificing your character or characters first. Unfortunately, writing the sentence is a lot easier than coming up with a new system like that and integrating it to a game that has been running on the same recipe for years. Based on the feedback, it would seem though that thinking in this new direction and leaving the legacy fame system alone with a few small tweaks is the best option.
2) Game’s UI after Unity Port
The Community, here on Reddit, was a bit split in opinion on the UI look and feel as well as the changes the team are testing out. I totally get that. Note that whatever is in there now is not final and that the team definitely took your feedback to make an extra effort to at least give the option of a classic UI as far as possible. Let me reiterate: our top priority with the port is to keep the experience as close as possible to the current game but the team is also exploring new opportunities, which are made possible by Unity.
We are also considering adding additional resources to the team to support a UI rework, specifically to make sure that we do the legacy UI justice when implementing a new one. Alas, I guess there is no guarantee that everybody will like it. But between trying hard and having the option to switch between UIs, I hope we can make it work and deliver better UX.
3) FPS in Unity
Some of you were asking about the frame rate in the latest video and I believe pointed out that it hit 40fps in some places. That is definitely not the performance the team is aiming for and was admittedly a bit confusing. The main reasons for any reduced frame rates right now are:
- Recording inside the Unity development tool directly instead of in a built client
- Having all debug options enabled and running in parallel
- Not having gone through any client optimization phase yet → first we have to build most features into the client
Anything I missed for the time being? If so, leave a comment and I will get back to you the next time around. Thanks for being constructive and helping shape the game, we’re excited and hope you are too.
Cheers
-R4
