To explain doubt about whether we had abandoned Settlement Survival

[John.H]

Hi all, John here,

We have recently heard some discussions about whether Settlement Survival has been abandoned, and these discussions seem to have lasted for some time. I think maybe it is time I joined the topic.

First and most importantly.
Settlement Survival has not been abandoned, not even ideas about it. This is our first game, and this is the game that supported us continue to make games. What you are thinking about we will give up Settlement Survival.

But I will admit these facts and sincerely apologize
Settlement Survival has indeed lack of major content updates for few months.
Although bugs and suggestions are still being collected, the activity of developers in the community has significantly decreased.
Yes, we are working on new games, it’s necessary to make the team fed, further, to allow us to take care of our game.
Letting players have feelings about we abandoned Settlement Survival is a major mistake I made, opinion taken, and I will try to fix the issue in recent weeks.

And I promise
In the near future, after more reasonable rearrangement of manpower, we will still be putting in updating Settlement Survival, including bug fixing, more content etc. even possibly a new generation of Settlement Survival.

About Early Access.
To avoid some harsh criticism, I would like to clarify some facts.

Settlement Survival is already an officially launched game, in October 2022

After its official launch, we keep a significant amount of major content updates for at least a year, including free DLCs and major content updates like battle feature.

As a team that has benefited from Steam's assistance, I do not want to participate in discussions about EA policies and developer responsibilities after release. However, I admit developers have responsibility to ensure reasonable running of the game. Settlement Survival still has some unresolved problems with this, and that will not be ignored.

I don't want to escape responsibility towards Settlement Survival by emphasizing these facts. Settlement Survival has always maintained a high priority among our team, but the fact is that we have desires and need to open new titles, within a short period of time, it will unavoidably hurt benefit of current released games, but I don’t want to be the guy saying sorry and leave the corpse of the game behind because we are too focused on only thing in hand and not caring about livelihood.

Future of Settlement Survival

Balance is a very tricky topic, especially in a relatively open system, it is difficult to guarantee that all players like any numbers in your game. This is related to everyone's preferences, the way they play the game, and even the time they open it, we will continue to pay much attention to balance, but carefully adjust the structural balance of the game, otherwise if we frequently reform the balance to please everyone, it will be a disaster for most players.

We are still unsatisfied with some of the mechanisms in the game, the terrain modification has been a violent solution since the very beginning, we have several plans to make significant adjustments to the trade system, and the content of the battles seems somewhat sloppy due to time and basic framework issues, we have also discussed the gameplay of elite citizens, all of above is just parts in our memo, there is a high possibility that we will find ways to update some of them in the future.

Also, we still remember the Easter Island chapter we removed, as well as the various stories of struggling and surviving of different human groups that we envisioned in the early days.

After all, being a player myself, I totally understand the concern of players, regardless of the approach, most players simply hope that developers will not discard their product hastily. At least for now, as developers, we are still striving to survive and wish to create more possibilities for players, all we need is just a little bit of time.

Wish you all have a nice day and by the way happy Chinese New Year.

[John.H]

Also, I be hanging around in community for some times, feel free to ask anything if you want, not just about the game, lol

[Rattlehead]

I come back to this game every so often because it is relaxing. The one thing I would encourage you, the developers, to do is to make brand new sounds for the buildings. They seem out of place and annoying at times, and it would be so nice to come back to the game someday and have wonderful new sounds to hear. I don't want to hear screaming in the school, or yelling in the market every time I click on it. It'd also be nice to have a building be built and then a voice to say what building was just erected instead of the pinging sound. A total revamp of the sounds of the game would go a long way... just my opinion.

[blkcurtains]

Thank you, John, for addressing this issue. Why did Myron Owl say what he said? I have screen capped it. Was he acting on his own or did he misunderstand something?

I have no issue with you making another game.

I also understand that balancing the game mechanics are not so easy, but I think mostly the Earthquake should be looked at. Earthquake III is devastating, destroying all buildings and the brick floor is too advanced in the tech tree to unlock in a logical way before Earthquake III start to happen. Personally, I don't like the combat so I choose not to play with it.

Yes, agree about terrain/map generation. Almost all maps are the same. Also, I would like the ability to make my own mountains.

It's very good to know that updates and fixes will still be coming :)

I love this game. It's my favorite city builder ever, even more than SimCity 3000. I look forward to more news in the future :)

[John.H]

Originally posted by Rattlehead:

I come back to this game every so often because it is relaxing. The one thing I would encourage you, the developers, to do is to make brand new sounds for the buildings. They seem out of place and annoying at times, and it would be so nice to come back to the game someday and have wonderful new sounds to hear. I don't want to hear screaming in the school, or yelling in the market every time I click on it. It'd also be nice to have a building be built and then a voice to say what building was just erected instead of the pinging sound. A total revamp of the sounds of the game would go a long way... just my opinion.

Noted, reason we set up these environmental noises is to make the town more alive, I don't want to remove them totally, some new audio or more convenient setting option to adjust them seems to be a better choice from my sight.

[John.H]

Originally posted by blkcurtains:

Thank you, John, for addressing this issue. Why did Myron Owl say what he said? I have screen capped it. Was he acting on his own or did he misunderstand something?

I have no issue with you making another game.

I also understand that balancing the game mechanics are not so easy, but I think mostly the Earthquake should be looked at. Earthquake III is devastating, destroying all buildings and the brick floor is too advanced in the tech tree to unlock in a logical way before Earthquake III start to happen. Personally, I don't like the combat so I choose not to play with it.

Yes, agree about terrain/map generation. Almost all maps are the same. Also, I would like the ability to make my own mountains.

It's very good to know that updates and fixes will still be coming :)

I love this game. It's my favorite city builder ever, even more than SimCity 3000. I look forward to more news in the future :)

More likely he's saying part of things instead of the big picture, for people under highly pressure sometimes they can only focus on stuff they are facing, I did talk with him about this, he feel sorry about the attitude and worry about the bad effect from his comment, but we both agree the very wrong thing he did is to close the topic rudely instead of communicating with our guys, sometimes easy way is not the right way to deal stuff.

I have to tell you secretly that he's a very sensitive man, much more than I do, which give him better instinct about detail experience in game, but sadly also more aggressive when dealing with doubt from people, for guys not knowing details about our work and plans, which I also wanna apologize cause we indeed barely share our working status or plans, it's natural that people have questions, doubts even worries, but his high sense of duty make him consider those caring about our games to be inquiry for professionalism as developer.

Anyway, my very gratitude for liking our game, great honor as developer, and I wish to not fail the honor by making this game better in the future.

[michael.shawncollins]

I was told a few times that Gleamer Studios abandoned this game for some time. Not only that but why did you guys remove Easter Island? As I really dont want to have to revert to a beta patch just to access the statue upon completion so my question is this, are you guys going to reintroduce the story, or at least the statue in the current version? And if the game can no longer be maintained why cant it be? This isnt meant to be a criticism of the game or an attack on Gleamer Studios I just wanted to get to the bottom of why Easter Island was moved to a beta branch.

[Auflauf und Bier]

Hi!
Is it ok if I ask here if there are plans to adjust the RNG which seems to be a bit off sometimes when it comes to gaining blueprints or "getting" disasters? Some disasters are quite rare, and I didn't get a single blueprint by the trading ship in over 70 ingame years (Some other players report even more, if I'm not mistaken).

Besides of that, I'm happy with the state the game is in. ;)

[Pluto Rex Infernus]

I can only speak for myself but I wouldn't mind paying money for a good DLC that isn't just a cashgrab. You don't have to keep updating a game for free indefinitely in my opinion. It's understandable you can't survive on a one-time sale forever.