aekashics
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Dragon Emperor Tier will be discontinued BUT...
🕑 Added 2018-10-01 14:10:39 +0000 UTC 4-direction Librarium Extra map sprites are here to stay!Howdy everyone!
While I was working and polishing our rewards for the September update cycles (which will be getting sent out by the 3rd), particularly the 4-direction map sprites for Librarium Extra releases, I started to wonder what was truly within the best interest of our community, and started to question myself if the extra $2 USD ( or $4 if you chose to support both update cycles) cost the Dragon Emperor tier represented was truly convenient for our majority of users. Though we didn't see any backlash against the idea when I posted about it to gather your opinions on the matter, and many readily upgraded, it didn't occur to me until today that we may not have heard all voices! I started to think about it, being a small indie dev myself who also single handedly produces all the content we have here on Librarium, that as someone supporting Librarium there's still a huge difference in monthly $10 vs $14 USD set apart for the project.
The Dragon Emperor tier was originally conceived because many users expressed the desire to have more map sprites going on, Map sprites are a lot of effort, and producing them for large scale releases such as Librarium Extra, never sounded like a trivial compromise to me, thus I figured creating a new tier was appropiate, but looking back at it, growing this way is not the route I want to go with, with Librarium in the end.
I gave some serious thought on what to do and came up with the following decision:
The $5 Dragon Tier will return to be the highest tier, and receive the upgrade of featuring 4-Direction Map sprites for Librarium Extra releases, such as the ones we had for September, on top of all the content which we have grown used to, sure it will be more work than before, but I feel our community is worth it in the end!
However I know this might be both good news and bad news at the same time!
Good news in the sense that even more content will be made available in the future in a scheme we are all already familiar with (The $5 Dragon Tier) but also bad news because it might come off as unfair to those who upgraded to Dragon Emperor last month, thus I also came up with another solution for that. I will be refunding the $2 or $4 USD upgrading to Dragon Emperor Tier last month represented. After payments this month are processed I will be contacting everyone who converted and check individually if a $2 (or $4 where it applies) refund is required!
At the end of the day despite of that setback, I feel reverting to $5 as the highest tier and still keeping the 4-direction map sprite content upgrade is in the best interest of our community, but I apologize any incovenience this decision might represent, as with any new feature, I have to do tweaks and trims and emphasize on what works and what doesn't, mainly because we are a relatively big community in my opinion, and I am just one poring, as always some ideas always sound good on paper but then you encounter something entirely different upon execution!
I want to express my gratitude for the positive reactions and support shown to the idea of having a new higher cost pledge tier. There was never any negative backlash to the idea, not when we had the public discussion, and never expressed separately either,and a huge number of people made the jump, was happy to see that level of support, which makes me feel even happier to give back in the form of more content at a lower cost!
This decision to revert the Dragon Emperor Tier was not taken because of reasons like...only 3 fellow users converted(didnt happen) or I saw a ton of pledges being deleted left and right(This never happened either, or at least as of this post hasn't happened yet haha) If anything, the new tier was a success for me, but I feel reverting the Dragon Emperor Tier, and upgrading the $5 Dragon Tier will be a success to the community instead !
TLDR;
-Dragon Emperor Tier will disappear, but the $5 Dragon Emperor will inherit the additional rewards it had, that is, 4-direction map sprites for Librarium Extra releases.
-A USD $2 (or $4 USD where it applies) will be sent out to those who converted to Dragon emperor tier, just because I don't want this decision to feel unfair in any way. (The Dragon Emperor Tier content will still be delivered however!)
As usual thanks for your support and interest! Writing up all that has left me a bit dizzy so I am going to get back to polishing the September rewards. Stay tuned for them, and have a wonderful start of the week! Of course, looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
Comments
Ækashics
Thanks for that support Sarah, greatly appreciated! I'm excited for the inclusion of map sprites myself, they open up a lot more avenues for implementation!
Ækashics
Haha thanks for the support Anonfox :D
Ækashics
Thanks for your support to date Swift! No worries, my health is fine :D
Ækashics
Thanks for being willing to support Librarium so much! And also for the suggestion, certainly an interesting idea!
Ækashics
Thanks Clint :D!
Ækashics
Glad to hear that! Thanks for your support Joshua :D
Sarah R.
I think I echo Anon, Swift, and Greguar's thoughts where I'm a bit happy and sad. Since the librarium at its foremost has been about the battlers first and the other resources in addition, I thought that the higher tier made sense. And especially since spritework takes a long time to get all 4 directions looking neat. But obviously it's your workload so you know better than we on how you want to value it. Don't worry about refunding anything from me! I'm always happy to show support for the wonderful librarium :)
Anonfox93
I don't consider it unfair, I chose to upgrade because I wanted to contribute more to you for taking the time and effort to produce more resources and to receive the benefits of you doing so, besides even if you had kept the dragon emperor reward tier, paying two dollars more every reward cycle is not going to break the bank.
Swift Illusion
With all the effort you already put into expanding the librarium, I think this is pretty crazy. But also crazy awesome. It makes me really happy to know that people have generally been comfortable with the changes you've made both in tweaking content/levels, and haven't responded as negatively as seen elsewhere to the delays and struggles you've sometimes had to deliver said content. Though I like being able to give what extra support to content creators I can, I know that with an increase of both content and content creators, and extra $2 for a patreon pledge may not be as readily available for everyone. Integrating these changes into the $5 tier also means more projects will have the opportunity to expand their projects and make additions thanks to these extra resources, which is a super nice thing to know. So, seriously, thank you for your continued efforts-I always have the biggest grin when I open up the latest librarium package and can see just how many creatures I have the opportunity to choose from to suit my battles/combat tone, etc. Just remember not to overexert yourself and end up falling back as a result-I hope most people would agree they'd like to see an extra months work from you even with less content, over hearing you struggle and being disheartened by not being able to deliver a cycle or more.
To be honest, I disagree with that. I believe that any work deserve a salary. So If you decide to product more, you deserve to receive more. As you said, 4$ X Subscribers is a huge amount for you. It is not for us (at least for me). If I choose to upgrade my pledge to the Dragon Emperor, it’s because I can afford it and I wanted to. You do a lot of extra work (Megapack and stuff). Doing it because you love it doesn’t mean you have to do it for free. Now, if you think your 4-direction map sprites, doesn’t deserve this 2$ (And again, I disagree with that), maybe you can imagine to add something more on this tier that is easy to do (I was thinking about covers like you do for some of your post but with some of the creature we can find on the librarium, maybe with a vote or something). So please, do not refund me. :-)
clint russell
You do you. Subscriber for the duration.
Seems sensible, i hopped on the dragon emperor tier right away because more 4 dir sprites are like the biggest thing ive wanted to see so i had no problem paying extra. I think this decision is a grear gesture on your part and thankful to have more content for less money!
