Answers From Ray - 22/2/2018 -> 26/3/2018

[Level]

How about adding a notification window next to guilde chat, that would inform if a guilde member needs someone to join in Group or Duo challanages.

^ and that notification button when pressed is a window that is filtered with only guild members doing challenges
- It's not a bad idea but I don't think this will realistically make it into a priority any time soon. First we need to improve consistency with the guild rooms to begin with, let alone adding challenge details into it.

Curious, will there be a thing put in where we could make the mine ores set to invisible? When you save a lot of Dyna and have quite a bit of energy, when using all of them at once to get a lot of mine ores, you get that CRAZY LAG.
- There will not. Mining is likely going to get changed a bit soon....beyond that the Unity client should not contain the same kind of lag you experience in Flash, and since at that point the option by far should not even be necessary it won't really be tackled right now. I know what you're talking about though.

Question for Ray: since ship arena is a important part of the game, and many people have unknowingly made mistakes during their build, example raising reactors to high. Would it be possible to get a one time reset code? or will reactor be fixed anytime soon? Or even better make it like asc and let us reset points at a cost
the abuse is the punishment we receive by not having 100% optimization from the start, there is no way to repair a build because the cost is simply too great and there is no income.  this could be fixed with upcoming features such as more drones, fixing of reactors, speed boost, etc.  a one-time forced reset when a major change is introduced would be nice, just so that everyone gets to play with the new toys without being stuck in a build months-old with no way out.  in short:  raybeewankanobee you're our only hope
- The thing is about systems like this, is they are not from a limited currency. You can always get more and improve the build by upgrading the things you would better intend to. That being said, there will not be a reset code, or at least it is not planned.
    
I was searching on google for what would be worth my money on the game and I found like next to nothing. I'm a light spender who is just returning to the game and I had to come on discord and search for some key words about it (pack, best deal, just coming back, ect) to find out the monthly pack is good value. My suggestion is to maybe make a small guide on spending for someone who is new or just coming back? (maybe see if it can be added to the Game Guide by ExWhiteWolf? I'm not sure if its still updated though)
- Such a guide would not make sense for me to write up (Bias, lack of understanding of value of packs through limitation considering I can just 'give' myself the packs). Something like that is generally something the community can assist with...it probably makes more sense to just ask the chat instead of the community writing a guide for it.
    
Add a ding for every new player who joins the challenge queue
- An improved sound system is planned for the Unity project. This would be very easy within the flash client however there are a lot of people who would get annoyed by that if the option wasn't available, and that's where it gets complicated. In any case, I am adding this to an upcoming Trello-board for unity features for the new front-end developer to add

Is it possible to get involved in the development of IOU? I'm an MCSE and I've been developing in c# since 2002, also good with Swift, SQL, C++ ... loads of experience as a professional developer, thing is I'm sick and bored at the moment
- I appreciate the interest. The work on IOU is extremely niche. We just got a new front-end developer on the team, but this required some serious specifics to make happen. Most people, no matter their skill level would become a detriment to the development since IOU has so many different technologies involved, and has a serious collaborative context. It also requires a lot of years of experience in dealing with multiplayer code due to the threading, AWS (Ec2's, lambda, S3/Cloudfront, etc), SSL, MongoDB, Redis, etc. It's unfortunate that it's such a complication to expand members because IOU has many programmers within it.

Question: can the mining border be changeable, i got the water one way back at lv100 and I'm ready for something new, but 200 levels later it has not happened.
- I sure hope so. I'm looking at a mining rehaul by summer.

Will we get some new use for huge infinity matter stash after maxing all drone slots?
- This has been a growing concern, where people are actually asking for rewards other than I-Matter in things like Match-3. The answer is yes, but I don't know when or what for as of yet.

Will we ever be able to reset personal guild building lvls? after a while some of the buildings become useless or unwanted, and with the current setup, once you upgrade a building, you are stuck with it. yet we can reset our donations to full guild buildings to move stone to new buildings.
- This is another case of a very unlimited resource. I don't think it will be necessary to integrate such a system as you can spend some time investing into the newly desirable buildings pretty quickly. I don't like 'everything' being resettable.

"Total woodcutting damage" Trophy?
- Interesting. We haven't tracked such a thing, but I think I'll start tracking it and then consider the trophy later.

I have issue with the numbers and skills it can be annoying. we need a button that can activate them all in 1 press say number 7? Learned that key boards can have a hard time with multiple key-presses at once. 3 or 4 of them trigger and then i need to press the others to trigger them which ends up being 1 or 2 secs delay
- Hmm, what is your ping in this situation? I find they all activate quickly as I press the numbers. It is an interesting idea though and it was suggested before having built-in macros to handle abilities in sequences.

Can the start time for Bingo be moved each week? Start it one hour later, then the games will all start at a different time
- I think this would make it difficult for the community to attend as it being consistent has made it clear when players can and will make it for bingo. Changing it requires weekly research on the times. Short answer? No, sorry.

Anyway to unlock new themes as you level up to a certain level or unlock to buy them. I mean you started your Universe writing on wood. When you are at Qs of coins and levels 1500+, I think we should be writing on more expensive/elegant things instead of wood.  I mean we've come from keeping a snake as a pet to going past a Mechanical Dragon as one.
- If you can throw together some toss-up versions of what you're thinking, show me and I can potentially look at that being done for the Unity version.

Will we have some sort of celebration for reaching version 1.00.00?
- The celebration will be the features released with 1.00 =p What did you have in mind?

Quick button to start fishing, often find myself forgetting about it when I login and have other things to do.
- We've talked about having a fast-track option for fishing. Likely in the next month.

'Lazy man' option for events
- Nope. The ep is awarded for doing the interaction. Lazy man option is not doing the event at all, and not getting the rewards.

Think this might be annoying for some people because of missing claims and having to deal with it every 8 hours. wouldn't it be better to have it as a single claim with 24h cool down and have time timer going for the next 12h if you miss a claim? having it at 150 energy instead of separating it in to 3 claims 8 hour each? Or an automatic claim system like the santa event?
- Is the forgiving claim recoup not working?

Suggestion
Release stats regarding the player base, average level, average time played, most fish caught, etc..
- At one point I was looking at weekly 'Interesting Stats' on fridays but it didn't pan out. With a new developer on board it might be possible again.

Make a hook with the inscription "Billy" on the sharken (World 4, Stage 13 mob), referring to the short story written by our very own Beifong.
- lol - I don't think we're looking at new fishing gear for a good while.

When will new VIP be added?
- I assume you mean VIP improvements? Whenever it becomes a priority. It hasn't been brought up much/lately by the community.

Can we obtain pet points outside of arena and the pet pack (which gives worthless amts of pet points) ? i.e expedition or some
- Pet packs will be changing in that regard. Pet arena is also getting a solid rehaul as the next major patch.

Can we get a quick patch for pet feed that lets us players with maxed out pets collect apples for pet feed timer
- I've added it to trello as a critical matter for the next patch.

Why does the ability to sell stone and crystals still exist? (especially stone...)
- It wasn't supposed to still be there lol. It'll be removed soon.

Building Idea
Said this a while back but I've thought about it more and want to suggest it.  New building "Building of Requirement"  Like in Room of Requirement in Harry Potter (lol).  Building does whatever you need it to do.  Simple.
So imagine space expeditions.  You can select the resource you want to farm and increase.  This building does exactly that.  It gives you the bonus you want/need.  Have a few different bonuses active, perhaps tied to current building bonuses or new bonuses entirely.  You can then select what bonus you need and the bonus can be changed on a weekly cooldown.  Perhaps to offset or boost current weekly bonuses that you might want or not want?
Perhaps the bonuses could be from the list of possible weekly bonuses
- It's interesting but if I'm being realistic, it is more complicated than i'd like for new buildings.


Just a minor thing but: why are the gold pop up messages longer than others that can be "clicked away". I mean in the event they take forever to disappear where others pop up with a window to acknowledge by clicking "ok"

- Because, bad UI integration by me It'll have to be something looked at/fixed for the next match 3 (which, who knows, may even be on the Unity client, where UI will actually be consistent!)

Can we get better estimation of "Coming Early 2018"? (Relating to the unreleased guild building)
- First half of the year. The guild bonuses for 200+ has become a bigger issue needing attention before a new building.

Could we get some zone specific music at some point, the game still runs that old 3 second looped tune
- It's much longer than 3 seconds lol, it's minute(s) but feels like a loop doesn't it? I don't know about zone specific; world specific maybe.

Can dyna dmg owerflow hit next mine (with auto refresh) like woodcutting?
- Dynamite is pretty powerful now with the upgrades for it. I'm not sure it would be good to have that. If it becomes a more desirable feature we can look at the math and ensure it isn't a balance concern.

What are the exact ranges (min, max) for the weekly bonuses?
- These are the ranges:
        XPBonus : 10% - 25%
        GoldBonus : 10% - 40%
        WoodBonus : 10% - 30%
        StoneBonus : 10% - 20%
        FishValueBonus : 10% - 40%
        CardBonus : 10% - 40%
        CrystalBonus : 2x
        TrainingBonus : 2x
        PetPointBonus : 10% - 30%
        ValorBonus : 2x
        ExpeditionPointBonus : 10% - 40%
        MultiCatchBonus : 10% - 50%

Can we get the current gold logs in the export? "goldLogAcc" is in the export but not gold logs on hand.
- Done for the next client update

Thanks everyone for the questions this time. You can post your questions and concerns for the next session over here https://iourpg.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2555