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I will take your advice into consideration.
Thank you!
they get early access to updates. I believe they even have access to testing multiplayer, a previous update added it to the main game but it was only meant for patreon, which is why it was taken away.... early access to the early access if you pay monthly
The game isn't completed, Patron experimental branch is currently the same files as public and tester experimental versions, afaik. Patrons just get earlier access to what is being worked on, I.e, The access they get tends to have more bugs, as any fixes, changes, and additions, often bring a plethora of bugs.
In example of the most Recent few versions
0.1.2Y Previously had been the public experimental branch version.
Testers saw many of the versions between 0.1.2Y and 0.1.2.030
Patrons saw some of the versions between 0.1.2Y and 0.1.2.030
When Testers saw version 0.1.2.030, Patrons saw it at nearly the same time, and somewhere between at the same time and within 24hrs, though I believe it was closer to at the same time, Public Experimental saw version 0.1.2.030, as well.
0.1.2.030 had MP version 005 that was being tested at the time. This was supposed to restricted at this time to begin with, it was expected to be massively buggy, and it was still at minimum, fairly buggy. But due to an accident, Everybody got the same version as testing branch.
At the time 0.1.2.030 was spreading, Tester focus was largely on MP, but focus shifted a little more than heavily back to Story/SP after the news post for 0.1.2.030
Testers saw 0.1.2.031 and 0.1.2.032, Patrons, afaik, Did not
0.1.2.033 was seen by Testers very briefly
then it was pushed to Patrons and Public Experimental Branch.
0.1.2.033 is the most current release of the game, MP 005 is the most recent version of MP
MP is a vaguely sandboxish map, Which actually still lacks some key stations, That, for the host, Is Seemingly "playable" in 0.1.2.033, But While clients aren't exactly "laggy" or anything on a good connection, The way it feels, feels like it would be laggy.
The best way to describe it, Is that the View is doubled. Your client sees what what you're telling it to see, and the camera moves around like you want it to, but then you also see a view that lags behind that, your vision is constantly snapping back and forth between these two views, so even though in general everything sorta feels lagless, it also sorta feels laggy.
The way that stations, guis, and other interactions that normally are controlled by the only player in SP, have their various issues with interactions called by multiplayer clients - So stations don't like letting Host do stuff after someone joins, some fixes have been applied for some things that were seen in 003 and 004, but until Dasius learns more about the issues and designing MP, MP isn't ready for release, heck, there wasn't even a bed in the recent version of it, cause dasius was working on fixing an issue with the bed in 003/004, the Bed gui pre-sleeping would halt all clients from moving/doing things, sleeping they could move again, time would pass, fatigue I think recovered for clients, yada yada, If a client called the sleep function, nobody would be halted, time wouldn't pass, but they alone would recover fatigue.
In the beds place was chairs and a table with coffee on it, and the new fatigue system, you could sit and drink some coffee, but eventually that'll run out. Oh, and You can't yet save MP either.
Again. Until Dasius sorts these out, it isn't really ready to be in anyones hands, Even Patrons, Though they probably have the access code the testers have for it.
Versions that go to public Experimental are generally less buggy than versions seen by testers and patrons.
In General that's how all the version releases have been. The absolute newest versions are often rife with bugs.
Example: IIRC. In 030, There was an issue with customers accepting their repairs back. At the time, It was assumed related to the Quality changes, In Reality, It was related to an error causing some Repair orders to Secretly be Specific Request Orders, but they were still repair customers. This meant the head **had** to be tagged Repaired, and the item had to match the specifications, Or the customer wouldn't accept the item. if the item matched the Specifications, The Customer would actually Start moving to path to the item if it was shown to the customer, but they wouldn't take it, cause it lacked the repair tag. Worse yet, in this instance, They would charge you every time they attempted to leave the shop, and they would stop attempting to leave the shop, and attempt to take the specific item, multiple times, if they were still close enough to the item, and it was still a proper item. Disassembling it would help reduce charges from occurring.
Closing the shop while a customer who is charging you for theft is leaving, will cause them to charge you many many many times until they despawn - Likely Due to Them executing a "leave shop" despawn chain, which counts as the moment of sale/theft charge
In 031, again, IIRC, Dasius made adjustments to attempt to better separate the specific order disguised in a repair order, as well as specific order with the quality issue assumptions, to try and make sure they'd accept the right items correctly.
This change largely separated the wolves in sheep clothing, but in return, Customers at large, started not accepting items, Informing the player that the item, wasn't what they asked for, it wasn't a proper item, etc.
At first when this was noticed, It seemed like sales were broken beyond belief - Order after Order, repair after repair, Refused. it wasn't right, it wasn't proper, etc.
Until that is. when some of the refused items had been left on the counter, While out, the shop was left open and a customer came, and immediately a sale occurred.
What did they want?? what did they buy?? why did they buy it?? How come they immediately noticed it? Is the Blacksmith somehow at fault? can they not properly see items being held by the player?
another customer, requesting the same thing, craft it.. Refused. Dropped on counter, Refused, Threw it at the customer, refused, back on the counter and left the area, Refused.
...... why? And Just as the towel was thrown in, As other tool heads were being made, as the timer ticked down... At 40 seconds remaining.. They bought the previously rejected item.
WHAT? WHY? What was different?!... Previously rejected.... The item from before, that had sold immediately, had been completed before several other orders came in.... Before several other items were crafted
They bought it the moment another item was assembled.... Since the towel was thrown in, other tool heads were being made, but they had yet to be assembled, and at 3 or 4 tool heads, That was when they were taken to be assembled, and then click, immediately, sale.
another order, another similar to the previous two, It has to be crafted anew, make it assemble it, Refused. took one of the previous items, Disassembled it, Checked customer, held the requested item again, still refused. Reassembled disassembled item, Customer arm swings up, They've taken the requested item, kaching, and they're off.
Crafted a copper dagger and set it on the lower backshelf of workbench
Another customer, Wants the item type I took apart just earlier, and reassembled, before assembling the dagger, Immediately bought it off the counter, same for the next two customers who fell in line with wanting previously requested items.
032 an attempt was made to fix 031's refusals, Though it didn't seem to take, Had to keep the dagger around, The reasons for refusal were different this time, but, the end result remained the same, that they only really were offended by the fact it was the last crafted item, as assembling something else allowed them to see through their fussiness and take the previously offered item.
In 031 as well it had been reported that interaction with the player sheet was damaged, This got fixed in 032 and leveling was possible again, as well as other things.
in 033, the issue with accepting upsales, downsales and the last crafted item, was, as much as I can tell and afaik, Sorted and fixed. Upsales and downsales were likely, not actually broken, but, They were actually what the reasoning for refusal was in 032, Was that the metal wasn't correct, even when it was neither upsale nor downsale, iirc.
in 033, resetting of point distribution was.... tweaked? for reliability, At some point it was noticed in 032 that the reset didn't seem to be recovering for many days in a row. Though I can't swear it is necessarily 'fixed' in 033.
MP got an extremely, extremely minor adjustment as 033 was being pushed to patron/public branches, In 005, The way MP delivers customers is that several spawn together, and 1 goes to request, when the request is finished, they leave and another from the spawned few, cycles in, while the other is leaving, and they issue their request, while the other is despawning and another new customer is spawning, making requests slightly faster even beyond the short distance of portal to counter in mp. But. This was slightly broken in 005, 2 of the customers that spawned, were not jointed correctly, and so when the shop would close, 2 customers would stay, when the customers cycled, two would never, when the next day came, Customers would spawn queued behind these two, and thus, Would never come to the counter, Sales stood still. In order to even get the first spawn to come to counter, shop had to be closed, and every customer had to be shoved, lowering rep, so they'd leave, then shop could be opened, and 1 customer would shop, but then it'd break again.
006's differences, are, as far as I can tell, Only the tweak to those customers, to make them properly function, where a solo-host could go 4+ days without issue from the customers not leaving or not shopping, and, a change to increase allowance of connection from 4 to 10.
Dasius will probably only push another MP change if he can get all the main bugs sorted from last test, whether its suitable for consumption after that remains to be seen on how buggy it is or isn't
AFAIK beyond this there is little in the way of extra content.
There is an extra content function for a gold coin, But, I don't think that is actually limited to Patrons. I think that was from the code everyone was given. Again. Think. Because at the time of it being given, I didn't recall seeing it change anything, and thought it wasn't working, and didn't try it since, but I believe that was what it did and it does take, though it may require a reload to officialize it.
if Patrons had any extra content beyond this, It is likely at the level like OP requested it to be, anyway, Which is to say, Cosmetic. There are no other content that I know about aside from MP, if there was, I would assume it would need more than Just Dasius testing it, and thus, would end up in the testing branch if even just briefly before going to Patrons
I do not believe the Patron branch even has the dev-console active anymore, though I could be wrong on that. But I assume that most people didn't really use it and those who did likely largely used it for money, and they can get a reasonable "restart" with the coin.
All game content eventually finds itself in one of two places. Eventually finds its way into the publics hands, or eventually finds its way into the deleted code (i.e, gets tinkered with, but ends up removed or reworked into a state that may as well not have been the previous content)
Patrons have been what kept MLBS in development for years now, also, whilst Steam EA is, I do believe, only almost a year old, That includes the access Patrons had to a version on steam for a short while before it was Publicly purchaseable, As Patrons, and extremely old donors (donors of patron-level donations, before Patreon was being used) had been promised free keys for steam for their support, alongside the early access to development builds. - They've gotten anywhere from Status updates, to inbetween version development builds by the end or so of every month or other month give or take. Without Patron support, The likelihood of Dasius having a 2nd paid developer or anything hired, would be absolutely, bar none, inconceivable, and additionally beyond this, he'd likely have to heavily consider looking for and eventually getting a job unrelated to MLBS, which would greatly impact development speed of MLBS, if not, halt it altogether.
"𝕾𝕿𝕰 has My Little Blacksmith Shop 11 hours ago
So let me get this straight. You pay a monthly fee to gain access to the most unstable alpha content before it is updated to the main branch?."
And thus got a different answer. I will need more comments from those other than boom/yourself and the developer to decide on who im believing.
Obviously you can understand my cautiousness in believing you as many games and devs have what i can only say are groupies.
after some time, I thought, Dasius response really wasn't enough, and started making a new post, which also never got completed because I started having second thoughts on the content of the response, scrapped it, The other day, I started making another new response, During which I ended up copying the post and refreshing it and noticed your post - I scrapped part of the post I was working on, then most of the post, then between starting the post you see now, and now, I've been a little all over the place in terms of other MLBS related stuff and being incapable of continuing any kinda response, and then I pretty much crashed and slept before I could finish up what I wanted to say.
As for other responses...
It'll probably be hard to get well informed responses.
Dasius could know beyond a shred of doubt all various details including ones I couldn't know about, But, Not everyone's memory works like anyone elses, necessarily, I want to say my memory is real cruddy too, but then, I absorb a good bit of information that I do end up largely retaining in most cases, even though My memory is still pretty garbage, that, and, Dasius is the only developer and is usually busy with the game, or life requirements.
Volunteers that have contributed to helping development could have bits and pieces of information both matching and undisclosed, and their way of explaining things could also be better, and less wordy, than myself, another thing I think is pretty garbage (my ability to explain/ my perspective to a matter/that perspective's explanation) But Most Volunteers I don't think tend to use the steam discussion board, most also tend to be busy on things unrelating to MLBS entirely, Whatever those might be at any specific given moment, could prevent a more detailed response
Patrons could potentially decide to drop their perspective on the matter, whether there is somehow untested content they have access to or not, Whether that's more or less than cosmetic, etc - But I imagine they won't since most patrons probably make use of the patreon page for discussion/bugs/suggestions/etc - They've been doing that for a much longer time, Cause before Steam, It wouldn't make sense for them to post their issues over on Itchio, the only reason it has potential to make sense on Steam is cause of the current state of having a patron branch in the opt ins, instead of an isolated patron version.
Then also have to factor in them taking the time to respond, and whether or not they just looked at the OP and ignored it or not because of how they see the claim and how they see the situation.
Many average users, both those that pre-date MLBS being purchaseable on steam, and those that are first exposed to MLBS through recent recent versions on steam, will likely also not pay enough attention to the discussion board, I say this, because I know many of them show up to the discord for MLBS (or had already been there, in those that pre-date)
Some of those that have only been exposed to MLBS on steam, Without having absorbed additional information elsewhere, could definitely have come to a similar conclusion as OP, Especially after 030, Cause 030 wasn't supposed to just have MP just fully enabled no questions asked. MP is planned to come content, but again, until extreme bugs are fixed/sorted, It will likely not be public, When You can't even have just two people with Gamer computers and amazing internet connections performing smoothly, It isn't ready, when you can have an actual session with your friends, smoothly with proper responses for interactions, That's when it could enter its "existing" stage and get fleshed out from there
What I could also say is that if Dasius allowed it, My computer is probably capable enough that I could find an arrangement with another tester and record how Host and Client for MP look, and I could probably find a way to record (hopefully just, cause I don't really wanna have to record more information than the topic) the three branches and show the lack of downloading that occurs, and the differences or lack thereof.
(By the hopefully just, what I mean is, I'd want to record the window and the download bar, but not my game list/screenshots/start bar/etc - Its real real real easy deciding to leave out unimportant info in screenshots, I have no experience in recording gameplay/video and potentially having to crop similar irrelevant info out of that.)
I could describe pretty much all factors of MP good or bad but it'd just be another chunk of text or few, where it'd be all of like maybe a few minutes of video. And like I said, MP is pretty much the only thing I think is being worked on and testable, but isn't in all user hands atm.
Well I wouldn't go that far. I'm trying to be respectful and take anyone's concerns into consideration. I can defend my actions or take notes and make necessary changes.
If someone thinks there's an issue with how this game is being supported, I am happy to listen(read) and have discussion about it.
However, I'll mention a few things.
The game is accessible to everyone via Steam for a fee and a free version is available on itch.io and gamejolt.
Patrons do get Merch (Poster, Mug, Sticker, later t-shirts/hoodies), weapons/shields made for them, customers named after them, multiplayer and early releases ahead of Steam and for sure, there should be more rewards. Patrons, however, are content with what is offered, from what they told me, but i'm sure they would appreciate more and I would like to do that.
Multiplayer was removed from Steam because it was in such a early stage, that I didn't feel it would leave a good impression to Steam users. Especially for those that have never heard of the game or followed its development. I am hoping to release it ASAP. But at a stage when more things have been properly implemented.
Patrons on the other hand have been receiving versions of the game long before Steam and generally have been more willing to enjoy the game with its flaws and won't feel like they've been cheated. Patrons that have been supporting me for a long time are more like close friends that have a invested interest in seeing the game finish.
One Patron told me this felt more like an investment, hoping that the game will turn out awesome can be proud to say they took part in its development (paraphrasing of course). That is something I am hoping to get too but it will take time and unfortunately money.
Right, but my complaint is that steam already has an option to opt-in to beta's for all games for this exact purpose, so your argument doesn't even make sense. stating "patreon is more willing to deal with the game and its flaws" is just not true, since people are literally paying you money for early access, which is exactly that, dealing with the game and its flaws. If this was really your concern you'd just use beta opt-in
Your entire rational is honestly insulting to anyone buying via steam. "patrons that have been supporting me for a long time are more like close friends that have a invested interest in seeing the game finish" anyone giving you money on steam for early access have an invested interest in seeing your game finish(literally, they've made a monetary investment), that's why they paid you for the game in early access. This is the crap I'm talking about, a second paywall of preferred "friends" that somehow care more and get preferential treatment for paying you monthly. If you want to go that route do pure patreon or kickstarter instead of offering the game for $10 on steam and giving anyone who offers you that money a big middlefinger because they "don't care" enough to pay you a subscription fee.
like im fine with pateroan getting extra accesss while its in early acces but when the games done i expect for every thing thats with patreon to bcome unlocked apart from the get your own character part
The Patreon support page closes on release or earlier when the extra funds is no longer needed (or when Patrons no longer want to support). The only thing that Patrons have over Steam (in terms of access) atm is Multiplayer and Steam users will get that long before release. But essentially yes!
There isn't "pay walls" - The only content that I know of that the public majority doesn't have access to, Is multiplayer. That's the only content that can be considered as substantial and "locked away" and it isn't "locked away" for the benefit of the patrons and testers, It's "locked away" because its the 5 to 7 iteration of its existence, And its existence so far is akin to that of a person devoid of all their skin, having their nerves and muscles exposed and touching every particle.
Its not a playable state save for the host, solo. Clients are treated to a bad experience, and hosts are limited to the multiplayer experience at this time whether they solo or don't, and the game broke further if they weren't solo.
Patrons likely won't see the 7th iteration of its existence, There's some fixes and additions to it, sure, but there's new bugs that likely will see to it that it stays a tester version, though I could easily be wrong, I doubt it, It's borderline between being in a better state than before, and a worse one due to the new bugs. Its definitely not something to be consume. if it had none of the bugs it currently has, I'd assume it'd be on the public branch. If it had half of them gone... I dunno where it'd be at, Really depends on which and how playable it was. If it was "tolerable" but not really "easily playable" It'd remain limited to testers and patron versions, while the singleplayer continued to get fixes, changes, additions, etc.
I mean That's ultimately what happened in 0.1.2.030 to 0.1.2.033 (the public happy accident of mp, and the current public experimental version)
Very little acceptable progress had been made in multiplayer, Dasius pushed singleplayer progress down the pipeline, That the public majority got to see relatively quickly.