Everything broke
A lot has changed since our last post! We've moved to a sharded, cross-server solution, bringing Haven & Prime to Roanoke Diamond. Naturally, it was massively broken for two weeks, and then very broken for another month or so. With this blog post, I'm happy to say that we've fixed 95% of the issues, and are now trying to figure out whether that last 5% is:
Usual Minecraft jank
Something we've broken
Something someone else has broken
Players scamming us
Some form of curse on the network
Although we can laugh now, it was a stupidly stressful time, switching inventory solution, dealing with so many tickets the channel category overflowed (constantly), and constantly worrying about permanent damage. Without Ivy, who took on almost all of this alone while I tried to fix issues, we probably would have just deleted the Discord and ran away. Angus came in to help with the deluge after the first two weeks, and more recently RibbitLibbit joined the team and has made sure any of you affected by leftover issues were reimbursed!
What we've been up to
Luckily, Roanoke has a team of 80~ people behind it, so while everything was broken, our teams kept working on new content, letting us release events like Chinese New Year & the Spring Texture Jam, add features like PokeBank & Boss Boosts, and more recently brand new, higher quality quests, like Harlan Nimbus' Zapdos mission.
Historically - Roanoke content has been held back by one person, me! Implementing textures, quests, events, and everything else, requires a certain level of engineering and technical work. A significant amount of that could only be done by Novoro, Ivy, or I. A huge amount of work has been put into documenting our processes, and training our brand new Roanoke Staff department - the Engineers!
Engineers are integral to everything Roanoke does, they are the glue that holds together our new & improved event team. The Spring Texture Jam was the largest we've ever done, and thanks to our new Engineers, especially the effort of Ortsac and Triumphator, the implementation of 32+ incredibly complex designs (including models, animations, posers, particles, and more) was handled without my input. This let me work on our brand new Texture Coupon & Booster Box system. The week before the Texture Jam was certainly the most productive our staff team has ever been, with engineers implementing, artists fixing, and other teams keeping the lights on. It's proof that our effort, training, and docs, have paid off!
But textures aren't all Engineers handle, we're kicking complex NPCs and Quests into overdrive over the next month. You got a hint at our new workflow with the Harlan quest, but bigger and better things are coming...
Pinkan Island
That's right, get your Lapras ready, this April, you'll be jetting off from Diamond's port to a brand new adventure. There'll be battles to fight, areas to discover, Pokemon to capture, and quests to complete! This will be the biggest event Roanoke has ever ran, and will stick around permanently as a new feature and launching pad for future expansion. In the run up to it, we're now having bi-weekly event team meetings, and the artists, builders, and engineers are working hard on features.
We're aiming for an early April release, between the 5th and 15th, we'll let you know a more specific date shortly!
Post Pinkan Roanoke
We plan ahead a lot these days! Pinkan is a test for us, and will lead into our Biodome project, where you'll find rare Pokemon more easily... including custom textured ones, and those of the legendary variety!
Don't worry, we haven't forgot about our competitive players. Perhaps the release I'm most excited for, our Roguelite Battletower will be coming to Diamond in the next two months. From the battletower, you can see for miles, and its floors are limitless. At floor one, you choose from a random pool of Pokemon, and as you progress up the tower, defeating NPCs as you go, you'll unlock new Pokemon, items, and abilities.
Consistent Content
While big events are great, we need regular content so you have new things to do. Our staff team is finally at the point where organisation is on point, and features no longer rely on individuals. That lets some of the team work on the "big" stuff, and others work on the day-to-day operations and weekly content. Our aim is to bring out smaller scale quests (think WonderTrade Technician, Harlan Nimbus), every single week, on top of our tournament schedule and "big event" timeline.
We're not quite at the stage to commit to this weekly content yet, but with every new engineer who joins we get closer. Our plan is to build up a small backlog of content that can be released to give us some wiggle room.
We'll also be introducing new weekly events that aren't tournaments/competitive focused, such as build competitions & minigames like Spleef.
Monetisation, Gambling, and Greed
While we've called our crates "Booster Boxes", we know you aren't stupid, and we know they're crates. When I first created Roanoke, I vow'd against "P2W" and crates as a point of pride. In the Minecraft scene, crates are tied together with P2W items & features, giving an insane in-game advantage over other players.
We did not add these crates lightly. While they're fully cosmetic, it's still a form of gambling, and we definitely can't say that's a net positive for the world. Monetisation is obviously a problem for Roanoke, historically shiny boosts have made up to 90% of our income - one feature meaning we either break even that month or not isn't great.
Monetising & distributing textures has been a pain point for us since we launched. We either:
Gave away (old-style) Texture Coupons during events
Only distributed coupons via the store (irl money purchase)
Giving away coupons certainly got eyes on our textures, but generally people have one or two favourites from a pack, and the coupons they get via events mean they don't interact with the pack past that. Just selling a pack on the store meant people never saw them, and that contributed to people not buying them at all. Over the past 6 months, not including the Spring Booster Boxes, we've sold less than 10~ texture coupon packages.
You can swap out textures for titles, particle trails, or cosmetics like hats. Each have their own unique challenges, but the end result is the same: selling them is hard. Gacha, crates, packs, gambling, they make it easier - you throw everything into a group, and then can give them away more freely without flooding the server (reducing the value).
As touched upon in our last post, Roanoke Diamond is taking a different approach to our strict NOP2W stance, moving to a more F2P style. We've had ranks with sethomes, pc, pokeheal, etc, since launch. More monetisation means more new features, upgrades, etc etc. In my opinion, this has clearly paid off. Diamond has retained a high playerbase for a longer period than any of our previous servers.
A few people have mentioned the slippery slope of P2W. The 1,000+ messages of back and forth in staff channels about implementation details for things like our cosmetic crates makes me confident we will not slip. The hard line is, and will always be, never selling anything that gives an in-game advantage. Everything in our ranks, or available on our store, that isn't a cosmetic, is available for free via DexRanks or similar. Even cosmetics are given out during each event.
The hard part is balancing how much we give out for free while keeping that incentive to purchase, as cosmetics are our only monetisation option. Overall, I believe cosmetic crates are the way forward, but that comes with a few changes and upgrades. This was our first launch, and we've learned a lot already, nothing is set in stone. A few changes and upcoming features are:
Stopping crates from giving duplicates (once you get something, you won't get it again, to make getting everything easier)
Explicitly banning selling textures on GTS (more on this below) or for in-game money
Per-player sale limits on our store
Scrapping/recycling features (turn coupons back into boxes to get rid of your dupes)
A trade hall type feature at spawn (to facilitate player-player trading of coupons)
Some of these are easy to implement - the ban on sales of textures in-game is effective immediately, and player sale limits will be placed on each future release. The other three changes require more work on the technical end, and things like the trade hall/scrapping need some game design thought.
Previously, we've banned selling textures to stop any way of in-game money being gained via IRL currency. During this launch, we allowed it, with the primary logic being that a texture sold for $10-20k in-game gives an opportunity for players to get what they want without any IRL money. That amount of in-game money is insignificant (easy to get), so players wouldn't buy coupons just to sell. While I say we, this was not a decision that was voted on, or unanimously decided on. That's a mistake on my part. Our staff discord has been busy with people arguing for both sides, and the prevaling opinion is to ban it - even if it's "not really gaining (significant) money", it's still gaining in-game money from IRL currency.
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