Context:- Few hours ago, Shane jumped in Earth 2 discord offering his explanation on why he decided to seek suggestions on the Earth 2 marketplace only recently - a feature which has been live since the beginning. Earlier, Shane had tweeted from his Twitter handle asking Earth 2 users feedback/suggestions on the Earth marketplace. His response to the said question highlighted that unlike previously he has now taken full control of game design. Key take-aways and full transcript below:-
Key take-aways:-
(Shane) Asked suggestion on marketplace to ensure earlier missed suggestions from community are revisited or re-captured, especially in the backdrop of a new design team. Marketplace is just a small update and will not impact any on-going larger development. Will continue to seek suggestions from community/ user if it saves time for the design team.
(Shane) Have taken control of game design; users should be able to see the difference over the next 12 months, when compared to last 12-18 months, from the game design perspective.
Raiding concept is much larger than PvP, and will introduce multiple core facets of the EcoSim + utility to existing and new key digital assets.
Most delays result from a combination of factors - inherent complexity of the task, evolving priorities, external market conditions, team hiring, etc.
Different teams for frontend, backend, E2V1 and more. There are some overlaps between teams.
(Shane) Shocked at the terrible HB journey, little things being improved and others will be reworked.
Priority is to first achieve stability for the PvP as we build toward an Essence launch. Once Essence launches and has an external price I think we will see a lot of interest in different ways.
Post PvP release (birthday month i.e. Nov), CAT will finish processing Claims, figures will be published before the EcoSim starts and before Essence launches.
Didn't comment on speculation whether expensive countries will produce more resources or more Essence or not.
Think EPLs will be very important.
Reiterated more utility for jewels when PvP comes, slotting 'new things' will be part of PvP.
earth 2 will have a new landing page in November.
Full transcript:-
User:- How at the end of 2022 Shane asks for marketplace filter suggestions in twitter. He has been sent every suggestion possible already since last year. And that tweet reads as if NOW he understood there might be something wrong with the official marketplace..2 years later. Not like we haven't cried enough about it, or made a big deal out of it last year.
Shane (S):- We’re very busy focusing on many different things. Just because I tweet about one thing does not mean something else is not happening, or has stopped happening. I simply received some feedback and screenshots recently of people in the community talking about how difficult it still was to use the Marketplace. I thought this had been resolved in a previous update by the previous game designer, but obviously that was not the case so I decided to throw out a little, what I thought was a fairly inconsequential tweet, to engage with the community and collect some suggestions that would then provide a central location for someone from my game design team to later review, collate and compare to our own internal documentation (which I am sure will include things provided from CMs/MODs that may have been ignored by the previous person who was responsible, not sure, but obviously whatever happened in the past, the updates didn’t make it to the website – right?).
Would it have been better to assign a team member to the task without asking the community for suggestions and then potentially miss something? Spend more time brainstorming and not bother asking Earth 2 Players that were happy to respond? And just because something has been suggested in the past, does that mean there is nothing new or worthwhile hearing from another person? I just took a quick look through some of the responses to my tweet and there seems to be many good, reasonable suggestions which is exactly what I was looking for. It’s also a way of me showing that I am aware of something and I’m planning to fix it. This Marketplace update is a relatively small update, we have much bigger things we’re focusing on first so by no means does it suggest it’s now a big ticket release replacing other things we’re working on, that’s why I pointed out it will be something in 2023 so people don’t expect it to happen next week and then ask about it every day.
It seems the Marketplace was partially improved during its last update, but it seems to have been updated without really taking a lot of community feedback onboard and I wanted to ensure I had some of that community feedback to direct my team toward when improving the section does come up on our radar.
I have only recently taken control of Game Design and myself + the new team have been working around the clock not only to design and then guide this Raiding concept through development, which is extremely time consuming alone, especially considering the Raiding concept is much larger than just PvP and will introduce multiple core facets of the EcoSim + utility to existing and new key digital assets, but also to fix and complete key areas of the EcoSim which were previously neglected and this has been a massive, still ongoing task (but it's going very well). I am extremely proud of what we as such a small team has achieved in a very short period of time and you’ll see that difference over the next 12 months when compared to say the last 12 or even 18 months, from the game design perspective that is. Additionally, these are the first game design team members I have directly hired for the project and who were not directly introduced or hired by other internal team members and I must say it’s been very refreshing. It’s really difficult to find the right people at the best of times, and especially so when you have so much dramatized & misleading external noise and negativity being conjured toward the project.
At the end of the day, creating a game takes a lot of time, and the challenges Earth 2 has for creating a metaverse platform with foundations based on various types of gamification is arguably even more time consuming – especially with what we aim to deliver long term. Many decent games take even established studios over 5 years to deliver and more often than not, they still don’t release features or things to do along the way, so you don’t often get this raw connection like you do with Earth 2 and the ability to access, buy, trade various key digital assets of the game along the way.
We are literally coming to an end on year 2 with 12 months of that time being mayhem after hypergrowth scaling and the past 12 months slowly putting a better team together and parting ways with members who didn’t genuinely care about Earth 2 and were causing more harm than good. So forgive me if I disagree with your statement of it being ‘just pathetic’ for me to ask for some community feedback. And I’m sorry you’ve been so disappointed in the Earth 2 and openly critical of our little Egg Hunt to give Players rewards + something to do, and which personally gave you $2,400 in winnings. Perhaps if I hadn’t I would not have pushed for the locked country listings to be filtered out, most of which have already been filtered out now. My tweet did not delay PvP, or E2V1 or other areas, it was just a little of my time working with a free dev to at least get those locked listings out of the marketplace for now.. it might even mean ‘something else’ happens for those who look carefully enough over the next little while.
Anyway, I am back to focusing on more pressing matters but I do appreciate those who just answered my tweet with their own suggestion instead of complaining about something that was supposed to be positive, thank you. Later this year all suggestions will be reviewed and taken into consideration by the team member responsible for drawing up the detailed doc for the Marketplace update and I will try to fit in little, obvious quick fixes on improvements if I get a spare chance along the way.
What happened to marketplace
S- I spent a little time today working with a dev to get some of the locked country listings removed
Engaging with the community is a good thing
S- that's what I thought
I see you guys are talking about delays and things like that, what is causing the delays exactly? Is it a lack of devs or just inaccurate estimates of when things should be ready or something else?
S- it's a mixture of many things. What we are building is not such an easy thing to build and we're doing so in quite testing conditions. Also, things that were important at the start of a year might not be so important toward the end of the year if we make better or less progress in various areas. External market conditions also affect decisions etc. Finding the right talent is definitely an ongoing issue for any start up but we're slowly onboarding the right people
Do you have 3 separate teams (frontend, backend and E2V1) or are there overlaps between these?
S- yes, there is a kind of 4th team as well and yes, there are overlaps
Its sad that you have to ask basic questions about the marketplace. All it takes is looking at it for about 5-10 mins to know what should be done.
S- 5-10 mins? I highly doubt that. I probably saved hours of research for one simple tweet that people have the option of responding to or not. I am not sure how you could still suggest it's sad that I asked the question after reading through what I wrote
Yea 5-10 mins. You can highly doubt it all you want but the marketplace fixes should of been done a long time ago
S- I think this might be where the problem is, people assuming something takes 5-10 mins when it simply doesn't. Anyway, I don't have time to argue the point, it is what it is and if I want to tweet a question, whether you or anyone else agrees with it or not, I will. Especially if it saves my team a bit of time and allows the community to provide some feedback
Yea I'm selling on the next pump. This man really ab to sit there and tell me something when I've been the one on his platform for 2 years
S- sometimes you need to look at the result, not the how you arrived at it. I appreciate your support and anyone's support of the project, but it should be clear we have significant work ahead of us and that takes time. I cannot control what you want to do I'm sorry, I can only keep pushing the project forward
What we need is a suggestion channel in here. We need to be able to vote on all suggestions
S- yes, we've already discussed this but again, it's prioritizing. So it will likely come later. I also want the staking system to be used for suggestions in the future.
Why is that you have to work with a Dev? Aren't the other devs aware to get it done ? We don't want you to interfere in such small aspects of the project. You should be leading the project.
S- I thought it was pretty bad seeing those locked listings in the marketplace so used a bit of time to get it fixed, I don't mind, I am fixing things every day as a CEO, takes up a lot of my time but is quite normal.
There is a common pattern on UI/UX experience that is lacking (I know deprioritized at the moment). But it may be helpful for honestly a deep look into UI/UX the site as a whole. For example, look at the user journey currently on say holo building. There is no way to even easily figure out what properties remain that do not contain a holo building. And agreed, takes time and you have competing priorities
S- yes we are, the HB journey is terrible .. I was shocked when I tried it myself. There are little things being improved and others will be reworked
Shane don't forget to drink some good coffee or tea
S- I like your username (blackcoffee), but I don't drink coffee! I used to
Tea?
S- sometimes - no sugar
With the PvP will you push a little more sal marketing? PvP can attract a new type of users and that is gamers. Will you be marketing?
S- I think we'd like to get it stable first. So will be a good opportunity to launch, balance, fix bugs over ensuing months as we build toward an Essence launch. Once Essence launches and has an external price I think we will see a lot of interest in different ways that will actual(ly) exist by that time, for new users to earn Essence
But why don't you work daily or weekly to improve the user experience? it would take so little .. filters as Earth2Stats had when it worked for example (PPE - 1Tile selection) and a GUILD SYSTEM! It’s so hard to implement some of this stuffs?
S- I was not involved with this area previously. There were others in control and believe me, many things were passed onto them and that's basically where it ended. I have some more direct involvement myself now and I will be replacing those positions with people I know can do a better job (and people I actually hire, not introduced via internal members)
When will we find out the amount of resources each property produces? will it take weeks or several months? Furthermore, the amount of resources produced on a property will depend on: 1) jewels 2) level 3) class 4) new land value
S- we will release PvP, CAT will finish processing Claims, figures will be published before the EcoSim starts and before Essence launches. I am not locking in a date / timeframe sorry
What's the PvP like?
S- you'll not need to wait long to find out. I want to talk about it during the birthday month. There are many different key parts to it, it's quite complicated. I would love to have the first part live toward the end of next month, I am pushing for this, but nothing is 100% in software development. What I can say is that many of you will have a very decent idea on how everything will work by the time the month is through and should be quite interesting
Now is difficult to extract essence from properties with huge new land value (such as the US and South Korea). But perhaps properties with huge new land value will produce more resources? Otherwise I don't understand what sense it made to buy a 750 tiles in the USA and not in a cheap country
S- shhh
Do you have a plan for an internal EPL/ keyword search on the long run?
S- yes, I think I've mentioned that before. They will be a key tool for Players to teleport / jump to key locations. Let me tell you this, do you know how hard it is to find an exact specific spot inside E2V1? Even if you know the general area, good luck finding it again if it's small! EPLs will be very important I imagine
Why did you choose the acronym CAT? Is a partnership behind it? There is a crypto project that works in metaverses and deals with cats and the logo is very similar to your CAT logo. Just a coincidence?
S- coincidental I would say. The team we hired came up with the name themselves, which was pretty cool
Will jewels be used in PvP? It would be nice to have some more utility for them
S- 100% they will. I wanted to add Utility to Jewels and PvP was created, in part, to allow for that. Slotting 'new things' will be part of PvP
I have worked countless hours on some of my HB designs and would love if some of my best ones were used in the EcoSim. I submitted a collab ticket a couple months ago but heard nothing yet. Not sure if you have seen some of my recent designs yet. If not I can drop you a DM with the images.
S- I receive so many emails and messages on LinkedIn, I rarely read them. I think I have around 1,000 unread messages or more there. I just don't have the time. I am sure there will be ways to collaborate in the future when we have better structure in place
Can you make somebody on the team who is working for the PvP, to present somehow some specific mechanic of the PvP before the release of the game? Would much be appreciated since I'm a player and I'm curious of how is gonna work and where i can improve (reflex, aim and so on)
S- well, it's my idea. I am trying to psych myself up to talk about it .. sigh
Another resource will be released by mid-November? It's possible ?
S- unlikely, we already have too much on our plate as it is
Is the PvP similar to clash of clans style gameplay?
S- I think I have pointed out before that it will start off web based and just text etc. The key is it will be built into E2V1, so it's kind of using the mechanics before the visuals come into play. I think a few people will like it as it's related to Earth 2 and is relevant to the long term goals of the EcoSim + E2V1
Will anyone be available for Enter the Metaverse? Your attendance was definitely a highlight of the event last year
S- is the last thing on my mind right now, but I'd love to attend. Let's see if I'm still breathing by the end of Nov .. a lot going on
Will the new site be launched by the end of the year?
S- the new landing page I have scheduled for Nov
Anyway, coming up to midnight and I still have things to do. Hope you all enjoy your day ahead and keep safe
Shane leaves chat