Sprint #4 - A new type of shiny

[ZeroX1999]

ThatDave is looking into conventions for advertising Alteil.

Obviously we'll be at ConnectiCon. I'm going to talk to one of my contacts about PAX East.

I really think that you will have to get that auction house soon if you really want to retain the players. Alot of people leave this game when they figure that being free players is almost impossible. The ability to get cards in an auction is very appealing to a lot of players. The cost per card ratio for this game is very high and you need at least 2 of a card for it to be playable. A lot of times getting 2 of any 5 star rarity is a challenge in it self. People who target specific spheres will sometimes find that the card they don't have is not in the auction and they will be naturally be forced to buy packs. And if the packs didn't yield the 5 star they wanted but got another one they will sell it in auction to fund more to buy the packs to get target card. With this method of auction you can entice players to pay real cash to get that card the player has put up. This is a win win for you and the players. You guys get money and the players are satisfied by their target purchase and the other satisfied that they will get more gran from the Auction House than the useless recycle.

[ICAC123]

It's 2/3/2013 today and the new chat is still not ready? The chat is in alpha stage for like 3-4 months now... seriously you guys seems to hire more and more people but nothing gets done.

What could you guys finish from "Sprint #4" except for moving to the office and hire new people?

[MysteryMan]

What will you be advertising there to the ex-alteil players? That's very important to consider!

This is a very good point.

[MysteryMan]

ThatDave is looking into conventions for advertising Alteil.

Obviously we'll be at ConnectiCon. I'm going to talk to one of my contacts about PAX East.

I really think that you will have to get that auction house soon if you really want to retain the players. Alot of people leave this game when they figure that being free players is almost impossible. The ability to get cards in an auction is very appealing to a lot of players. The cost per card ratio for this game is very high and you need at least 2 of a card for it to be playable. A lot of times getting 2 of any 5 star rarity is a challenge in it self. People who target specific spheres will sometimes find that the card they don't have is not in the auction and they will be naturally be forced to buy packs. And if the packs didn't yield the 5 star they wanted but got another one they will sell it in auction to fund more to buy the packs to get target card. With this method of auction you can entice players to pay real cash to get that card the player has put up. This is a win win for you and the players. You guys get money and the players are satisfied by their target purchase and the other satisfied that they will get more gran from the Auction House than the useless recycle.

The auction house is by far the highest priority next sprint.

The auction house will be a boon to general spenders (as it will lower the cost per card) and casual players who only want to spend a little on the game to get those one or two missing cards but don't have that option so spend nothing and give up.

The free players need to be addressed as well and I don't think they will be happy until the new arena types, such as the paper arena (one or two star cards only), go online.

[MysteryMan]

Today's plans are as follows

- Finish the re-factoring of the achievement engine and push it to test
- Push the underdog achievement fix to test
- Push the users under level 15 get xp in the single player arena fix to test
- Push the daily duelist achievement fix to test
- Configure Jenkins and an IIS server to run the fixes correctly

If time allows
- Unmothball chat. The damn thing had 8 hours left for far too long and needs to be completed. It's a low effort high profile item that needs to get done.

Then it's time for the retrospective. This is where we say what we did right, we did wrong, what we need to stop doing, what we need to start doing, and what we need to continue doing.

This was our first "real" new development sprint so I'm sure we have a lot to learn from.

The next sprint will most likely start next Friday.

[MysteryMan]

It's 2/3/2013 today and the new chat is still not ready? The chat is in alpha stage for like 3-4 months now... seriously you guys seems to hire more and more people but nothing gets done.

What could you guys finish from "Sprint #4" except for moving to the office and hire new people?

If you are upset about chat, that's not on the team, that's on me and me alone. I'm sure it will be brought as a major item up during the retrospective.

If you are upset about what we did in general this sprint I hope you change your tone after we do a video update of the postmortem.

edit: Also, negative criticism like this is good for us too, it lets us know what the users want.

edit2: Yes. I am aware that this is Superbowl Sunday.

[MysteryMan]

We will most likely no longer be using Trello for our updates. It just isn't detailed enough.

The new tool will be a bit more complicated but it will give details on actual work remaining as well as a burndown chart showing what's left vs progress.

It will also be tied into our day to day operations so it will be updated in real time.

edit: There are two big things - one details on a complete scope of a task and constant tracking of actual progress remaining.

[Callonia]

I'm fine with actual progress because I'm not on the dev team and I therefore have no real idea of what the thing looks like.

I would recommend adding an 2.2k rp falkow wizard kingdom thingie with return abuse and stuff as npc into the npc arena so that falkow haters in refess will have something to practice on. Maybe understand how to beat one up.

Anyone who complains probably don't have experience in coding.

[MysteryMan]

First take of video update.

Will re-shoot

[ForgotPassNotWorking]

Aside from paper arenas (1/2 stars only), why not add lavato heroes?

1. We don't care?
2. It cuts down from our spending we think?
3. We don't like it?
4. We don't want to add anything aside from the usual alteil 1v1 for now?
5. We don't want to add anything aside from 2v2 at best?
6. We just don't why, but yeah that's why?
7. Because aliens?