Here is the outline of what I will present to you today:
-Development Schedule
-Recent Developments
-Playerbase growth
-How you can help
-Epilogue
Make sure to read September Report if you have not already, as this report continues from there.
Development Schedule
Game Maintenance
A lot of work in game maintenance has already been done and it utilized a large part of our time during September. There are still a few open issues, that require more time than the usual.
SMS payments implementation has stalled. Those who do not use PayPal, please consider PaySafeCard and CryptoCoin payments till we open such again.
Plantations
We made some further progress with them, by adding Advisors. We also added the acres availability overview page, we improved Fertile Lands, we improved Quartermaster bidding and more.
For October, we would want to add a better tool for Governors, in order to help them with op pricing.
Plantations are now going to fall behind in priorities as their current progress is enough. Once plantations become really profitable, we will script the random events. These will only affect advanced/developed plantations.
Player vs Player (PvP) Battles
We have spent a big chunk of our time in designing the next step here. Initially, we wanted to release base Flagship version within September. We stopped this as we felt that it would be nothing more than something to appease those who want it. The truth is that we need a very well thought plan and we must proceed step by step, building on what we have already. If this means slower procedure, then so be it.
To help the progress, we have opened quite many discussions, revealing part of our thoughts. These have helped already. We will try to come with some final suggestions and move step by step. Ideally, we must complete the whole process and implementations within October. This is a huge objective but we will try it. Despite the high odds of failure, confidence is high.
Players vs Environment (PvE) Battles
Some initial preparations have been made. They are now prioritized after PvP battles so we will deal more with them later.
Game Interface
Following the discussion from last month, we have committed some of our time here. We are still a long way from it, however some basic structure now exists and this is crucial.
Recent Developments
Besides plantation developments which were analyzed above, we also got the port control timeline, which acts like a History page for ports. Plus the in-game discussion for every port. These are the first in-game forums available to everyone.
We expect you to use the port forums for anything related to them. Here are some ideas:
-Governors can use them to advertise their rates for Operating Permissions.
-The rest can ask there details, regarding acres planning for example.
-The nations can announce there their policies or other nations their willingness to conquer the port.
-Population discussion
-Gold bars price. For example, if you want to sell a large portion of gold bars to a port, perhaps you could let other people know, by promising a maximum sell price that you will try to maintain. This will help other players to redirect their fleets there and help you with the sale. In this way, all sides win.
-Governor discussion - Perhaps you want a different governor, either because the current one is creating issues for you or perhaps because you want his place? Such discussion can now go beyond same country discussion and you can have foreigners interfere in your favor
Track down all September developments at the Changelog:
https://s2.piratesglory.com/index.php?page=changelog
Playerbase Growth
390 users has joined in last 30 days.
This is an average low number. We estimate that we need around 1,000 new users per month, to secure playerbase growth (much like plantations work)
Here is an overview on account metrics:
Accounts Status
Total Accounts 118,412
Total Characters 16,397
Without Character 102,015
Characters flagged Active 3,919
Characters flagged inactive 12,478
This is a bad month in terms of number of active players and is actually worse than August. October is traditionally a good month with a lot of returning players. If situation does not improve during October, we will need to prioritize new design over anything else as the need to get fresh players will out weight anything else.
This is the situation; as numbers grow, we give priority to features for veterans. If numbers diminish, we give priority to features for newcomers.
How can you help
Till summer, we were trying to create 1 post per day at our Facebook page. This is helping to retain players. Not immensely but every bit helps.
However, lately we are having issues in keeping up the pace. Therefore we are looking for someone to do what we have been doing.
Description in titles:
-FB mod is needed.
-We require at least 25 posts, unique and with image, per month, with maximum 1 post per day.
-A small reward will be given for meeting the objective, in credits. Feel free to suggest the credits reward that the FB should receive for this, below.
If you are interested, PM me at #1 in-game.
There is also our standard list of needs:
-Training Guilds
-Game Content creation (forum posts in Union of Honor for game events, like wars etc. Newspapers were such to give an example and War declarations are another)
-Bring your friends to the game
Epilogue
This signals the end of this monthly report. If you have not read it for whatever reason, please at least read our "How Can you Help" section above, regarding the FB mod position.
For any questions or feedback, please post!
Till next time then!
Bermuda
