- For the next 48 hours, all bonded creatures WILL NOT MISS while battling or casting spells, and have gained an additional “Force Blast” spell!
- New spooky “Prophet” eyes are available at Krafties Kurios near the landing point at the main island!
- Read a dev note about recent actions taken tied to the secondary market.
Dr. Fiddlestein’s Experiment
Dr. Fiddlestein makes his debut appearance in a big way! In pursuit of his single minded goal, and with the help of his beloved old vulpup companion, Dr Fiddlestein has ventured deep into a factory said to have once been the largest manufacturer of joy and laughter in the entire world. While stumbling around in the dark, though, he happened upon a mysterious lever that he couldn’t help but pull…
For the next 48 hours, bonded creatures WILL NOT MISS while battling or casting spells, and have gained an additional “Force Blast” spell able to be activated from the “Cast Spell” menu!
* If your creature is currently active, this change will not take effect until it is reloaded
Dev Note:
In an effort to both improve the new player experience as well as speed up progression to prepare for higher level spells entering the game, we believe this change will help to alleviate some common frustrations around Krafties battle gameplay. We will be monitoring feedback around this change and specifically measuring how it impacts the handling of low and mid level creatures. ‘Prophet’ Eyes at Krafties Kurios
Come on down to Krafties Kurios, where we peddle a rotating assortment of rare goods and exclusive wares you can’t find anywhere else! The products offered in this shop change often, so you never know what might pop up next or what our zany shop manager might be looking to swap for. That’s right! Not only can the wares in this shop be purchased using the almighty dollar, but shoppers may also opt to trade in their hard earned loot for the shiny new goodies.
A new item is available at Krafties Kurios, and it’s just in time for the spooky season! Introducing the next up in the Deep collection: the Prophet Eye Stone. What can you swap for, you ask? We’re *still* keeping the swapping as simple as possible for now: buy them with L$ or KraftieCoins! Rare Eye Stones procured from the swap shop are transferrable.
A… Dev Note? On The Secondary Market
This note will have a different tone than most, and is only applicable to a small portion of the Krafties player base. Still, it is an increasingly important topic to cover as this tiny fraction of the game has taken up more than 50% of all Krafties related dev time for… many, many months.
Introducing Patsy’s Pies:
Patsy has opened a revolutionary new business model she’s calling the Pie Market. Having been a world renowned baker her entire life, she’s finally setting out to pursue her childhood dream: make as many people as she can smile with weird, zany, never before seen baked goods. Not only that, but Patsy has made it her mission to change the landscape of how people interact with pie and revolutionize the industry. How is she doing this, you ask? Patsy believes that every human, no matter their background, deserves access to fresh slices of quality pie. With this in mind, Patsy’s Pies has set up an online storefront where people can shop through a huge assortment of pies, and additionally claim ONE FREE “pie slice credit” for themselves every single day just by visiting the site! The free pie types tied to credits change daily, but these slices are, of course, the cheapest and simplest to make. To make this work, the business offers premium pies for a markup in order to cover operational costs and subsidize the cost of cheap ingredients in their free pies. Patsy has cleverly crafted her marketplace to allow her pie lovers to trade their credits between each other on top of her direct sales, which she believes will drive engagement by creating a social atmosphere and make Patsy’s Pies a “killer app”. Her pie lovers can now have a bit of fun and spending money when they manage to procure a rare or valuable pie credit. The math checks out: with only 5 paying customers Patsy is able to sustain upwards of 100 free pie lovers! And, patsy has seen that at least 10% of pie lovers will become paying customers, so she’s excited for what the future holds!
One year later..
As Patsy looks at her online dashboard, the numbers aren’t making any sense. In the first 8 months of Patsy’s pies all of the projections worked. The pie market was a success, and a whopping 40% of users became paying customers! The pie market saw a huge influx of activity, and everyone was happy. They were in love with the pies, and there was a fervor around what the next flavor combination might be. Other users reported that Patsy’s Pies had changed their lives, providing some extra income via her market at a time when it was sorely needed. Now, though, something has changed. The fervor hasn’t died down, and in fact the user numbers are skyrocketing, but the percentage of paying customers vs free pie claimers has hit an abysmal 1%. The price of Pie Credits on the market, carefully calculated to retain a value related to the cost of goods and labor associated with production, have dipped well below anything that makes logical sense. Many pie lovers have stopped purchasing Patsy’s premium pies in favor of obtaining deals on the market. Patsy is stuck shipping pies all paid for with pie credits at a loss, and a large portion of her original pie credit traders leave frequent, angry voicemails as they see their earnings decrease in turn.
Three months later
After too many sleepless nights Patsy connects the dots and realizes what’s happening. She spends months pouring through logs and data so she can be sure, and now she is. A small number of people have found ways to bypass the various security mechanisms she’s had her developers put in place. Their methods are varied, but the result is always the same: one person eating up profits and credits that were intended for hundreds. Patsy, never to be deterred, quickly blocks the offenders from her marketplace and adds more security measures into Patsy’s Pies. These measures will of course create a bit more friction for her “good” users, Patsy knows, but they’ll understand that it’s in the best interest for all of her pie lovers…
One week later
After pushing down a small wave of anxiety, Patsy heads to the Patsy’s Pie forum. The recent thread about the pie credit limits and security changes is still going, with the latest posts all centered around how Patsy doesn’t care about the people who relied on her free pie because of the extra verification steps. Familiar usernames. One of them Patsy even stayed up an entire night baking a very special pie for. Patsy joins the thread and tells everyone EXACTLY what’s going on, how the bad actors were causing problems in the market, and even tries to reassure people by describing the new security measures that have been put in place. A few hours pass, one person says thank you, and the thread finally dies.
One month later
It’s happening again. After all of the work done to secure things, the same issues are back. Patsy now realizes that people are using the information she provided in her forum post to skirt detection and resume draining the market. She reaches out to her devs, more protections are implemented, more users are blocked. And then more forum posts appear. People are angry that there’s an extra step involved in claiming free pie. People demand more pie credits. People are worried that their accounts will be blocked, not understanding that the bans only apply to the bad actors that are milking the Kraf.. Patsy’s Pie’s economy to siphon hundreds of thousands of US dollars away from other users and the business. People are mad at Patsy. Mostly, people don’t seem to understand that Patsy just wants to make pies that people love.
Patsy, obsessed with chasing the dream she’s had since first grade bolstered by hand drawn pictures of fanciful pies and talks about all the amazing flavors she would make when she grows up, carries on.
What did Patsy do wrong here? Well, all sorts of things I’m sure. But enough about Patsy, let’s talk Krafties. After spending the better part of a year building systems and monitoring behavior, this week Krafties has removed a select few players from the game who were using various means to manipulate the market. No, I can’t tell you how they were doing it. No, I can’t tell you who they were. What I can tell you is this: we put a lot of time and effort into protecting the integrity of our secondary market. Our market exists to benefit ALL of our players, and anyone found to be hurting the market for selfish gain will be addressed more severely than we have in the past. The means that we’re pursuing action is escalating, and in this next stretch of time Krafties will be looking at how we can coordinate with Linden Labs and their new policy changes in order to add a bit more of a headache into the mix for these bad actors. Finally, NO we don’t care about your alts unless you’re doing the above, or obviously gaming the system or intended gameplay progression in some way. You know if you are or not.
This move will fundamentally shift the supply of goods available on the secondary market, which has a few implications. First, now is a very good time to begin selling some select Krafties items if you aren’t already. However, it’s already apparent that this won’t be enough to maintain a low enough floor price on some of the items that players have become accustomed to, so expect to see some major changes related to crafting and progression in the near future. Also, now that the majority of bad actors siphoning value from the game are gone, at long last it makes sense for Krafties to finalize initiatives tied to new and returning users. We’ll finally get to see fun things like new user tutorials, events for returning players, and more. All good things.
