Idle Online Universe RPG - News, Updates, Changelog

Road Map

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:12:52 +0000

Hola,

Priorities have been tossed around like a hacky-sack, and I doubt that will change due to all the micromanagement that has to go on. This road-map is intended to express where I would like to go with the game.

Features, Rehauls and changes may be made outside of this road-map for various reasons.

Italics - Means just a thought
Requirements - This is what may be delaying, or what is required before this can be pushed forward

Features:

Expanded Expeditions System
A much larger expedition style mechanic with several additional growth aspects.
This system would be a partial tie-in to crafting (by performing expeditions on rare materials)
This system aims to tie in a separate PvP style system by players utilizing assets to grow their space station and battle ship for turn-based PvP
__
The delays on this are due to needing time availability from the art-house, or having the time to micromanage this major major addition
Crafting
A system that ties into Avatars, Classes, and a major new inventory system of materials.
This system would be a partial tie-in to the Expanded Expeditions System
This system would be a partial tie-in to post-inferno
__
This requires a Class system be implemented first
This requires an Avatar system be implemented first
This requires an Inventory system be implemented first
This requires a massive amount of art and development focus
Classes
A class-based system that allows players to pick a class that holds different strengths and weaknesses...including a stretch of passive skills and active abilities. A bit more team strategy would be expanded with this.
Character Base Stats would be implemented within this system.
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This requires a rehaul on the ability system at the same time.
Avatar System
The ability to see yourself, and your party inside battles, in a more final-fantasy style manner.
Equipment would alter the look of your character, along with apparel items for those that enjoy such a thing.
__
This requires a massive amount of art with a medium amount of development focus
Post Inferno
Inferno is intended for the final idle element in IOU in terms of the primary gameplay. However this system would add a more active (but limited) component to the game for players to tackle monsters on an entirely new caliber.
This system would tie in crafting material drops/elements.
This system would likely add several new planets
__
This requires a small amount of new art. I think this might be possible with existing challenge assets lined up used for this system instead of additional challenges. We already have more than enough challenges...perhaps for the rest of time given a minor rebalance of the challenge difficulties.
This would require a bit of rework on the upcoming World Select window rehaul
Guild Buildings (Including Beast Challenges)
Significant expansion is planned, with more interactive options and buildings to make guilds what they are supposed to be, instead of just a collection of players for unbalanced and stagnant bonuses.
__
This requires a significant rehaul. Some of this was discussed but it needs to be pursued further before we move forward. From discussions it appears players don't understand how unbalanced guilds currently are if they were to be expanded upon, while yet, the concerns are completely legitimate. This requires a lot of discussion and tuning before we can move forward with this. No guild changes/additions can be made until we come to a conclusion that fits the game best in the long-run.
Cohorts/Leagues
The ability to challenge yourself against others in many different aspects, pushing a more exciting competition system than the classic 'Top Rank' system.
__
We have made strong plans for this system already, but they have been scrapped a few times. We will be more comfortable with this when we feel we have a more balanced approach.
This requires a more balanced IOU scoring system
Daily Task System
Perform your daily tasks more seamlessly, and track your progress in an organized manner.
Go Fishing while battling monsters and monitor the progress external to the fishing window.
Perform Fishing, Woodcutting and Mining tasks in a more automated manner, and view the results when complete.
__
As we progress with the new UI Rehaul, we should be able to squeeze this system in without any major walls
Bingo
This system will allow players to play a social game of Bingo for Bingo Points, which can unlock an assortment of prizes.
The prize packs you can purchase with Bingo Points will only start with common currencies, until crafting and other systems are implemented.
Customize your card/dabber/etc
Gain Bingo Levels for additional points for prizes.
__This has been delayed countless times due to major changes required on our backend, however it's still something we continue working on every few days
Weekly Bonus & Deals
Randomly generated deals and in-game bonuses (XP, gold, sarifices, cards, etc) to be made each week
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This is pretty simple, but is somewhat tied to marketing, which we aren't quite focused on at the moment until the graphic rehaul is more complete.

Rehauls:

Cards
Cards at this time give a static damage increase. I think we could add a more exciting percentage or milestone system that increases consistently like other systems, performing growth based on percentages.
__
There's nothing other major in the way of this rehaul
Trophy System
This system is incredibly long overdue for a rehaul. I expect that we can revamp trophy points in a very different manner, by having them improve and unlock abilities.
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Requires that the ability system be rehauled
Ability System
The rehaul of existing abilities.
The addition of new abilities, including abilities that affect your party
The option to equip and change which abilities you have on your hotbar
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Likely requires that the Class System be implemented to ensure we can provide unique abilities for the different classes, while keeping the general abilities for everyone.
Interface
Already in the works, however many of the windows UI flow is quite complicated (Challenges, for example). The flow needs to be made more clear and simplified for the common casual user.

Misc:

Chat Improvements, Emoji Additions & Custom Chat Room Support
We are looking at the addition of emoji's and other chat treats. We have Discord and Kongregate has their own chat rooms, however engagement does not expand in external chats. Additional Chat Improvements can significantly improve engagement globally for all players.
__
This requires a more final improvement & clean-up to the chat system. As we improve the chat over the next while, this can be done quite easily with minimal efforts.

Other Important Notes:
A year ago when IOU was growing exponentially from nothing (out of control practically from my perspective), development was a lot easier to throw together when Yahoo managed the back-end, and we didn't have to worry about that major management side of things.

However, IOU has had some pretty unique requirements, and being a game that many run 24/7, with quite a bit of data being tossed around (not a whole lot less than some FPS games and logic processing) it created some pretty complex challenges for us to handle. The cost of the hosting is pretty crazy, and to constantly hack at improvements/fixes to the back-end is incredibly time consuming...something I truly hoped would not be something I needed to maintain, but alas here we are....this year has been incredibly difficult as designing a game, and running your own full back-end are two very different tasks.

At this point however, as we continue to develop permanent events (1 final major event for each month of the year), and as the graphic re-haul progresses in preparation for major distribution plans, we are clearing way for improved development practices for content and balances.

I didn't design AAA games before IOU, so this has been quite a learning curve running such a massive community and game, so mistakes have been made and will continue to be made, but i'm doing my best to ensure that this game isn't perfect today, but that it's alive in 5 years tomorrow. This might be a heavy burden with all the waiting and dealing with transitions for long-term players, but I intend on pushing through the development of this game until our goals are met and beyond that.

Keep in mind these are not the only tasks I have to work on, between the major micromanagement of the team/design/life/publisher, there's an incredible amount to keep up with in between.

TL;DR : This is the Roadmap I've put together containing some of the current/future plans, and I intend on hacking towards it full-time until the goals are met.

Q&A with Ray&Jay

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 01:31:55 +0000

Hello ~~IOUtopians! IOTopians? Idleians?~~ players! It is I, Listat, uncoverer of secrets, master of questions, threatener of spam, the all-seeing, etc etc etc...

Today I have met with Ray and Jay, the two developers for IOURPG, to answer your questions (at least the ones that bothered messaging me!) and suggestions. Here are the results!

Q: What happened to the monthly challenges?
Ray: We actually have assets for 1-2 challenges waiting. It's getting complicated with the new UI rehaul coming as those assets may too have to be redone, which is both a waste of investment and time potentially. However since we are rehashing old events, and that's a fair point, I'll work with Isael (the artist who works on events/challenges) on getting something going this month.

Q: What happened with monthly bingo?
Jay: Bingo has been side tracked a bit but should be being worked on very soon, and it will be weekly.
Other systems became a higher priority.
Listat: So this is definitely still in the works?
Jay: Yes
Ray: Yep, the intent is to host Bingo every sunday multiple times (to allow people who were not able to participate from different timezones)

Q: What's up with the random disconnects lately?
Ray: We have been discovering that the longer the servers are up, the more instability occurs.

With maintenance, we have an unusually complicated process for even restarting the server due to the sheer number of servers, and the requirement to build new images or create to auto-scaling configurations. This shouldn't be nearly as big of an issue in the next week as we designed a brand new system for pushing updated servers.

Beyond that, we are taking our time before jumping into the next major feature to fix and clean up a lot of lingering issues. One of those is the server stability and our inability to pin-point everyones specific issue when they get disconnected. We intend within the next week to prepare a better system for tracking these issues, therefore resolve them more globally and hopefully permanently instead of one party at a time.

Q: What are your plans on giving newer players more incentive to play, to combat the helplessness felt when seeing higher levels and feeling like they will never catch up?
Ray: Actually, we have a great new top-rank system that shows where you are at (even if you're in the 72,000th place) and those around you, which updates very quickly to allow you to progress.
We also, after monitoring how this new rank-system works out, are looking at expanding the system further with different cohorts.
Tracing 'yourself' in the new toplist system

Q: What are the plans for expedition points, pvp expedition, etc?
Ray: I'm looking at us creating a full-fledged mini-game of its own using the expedition system, sending ships and improving far more multitudes of aspects. A tie in is expected with this, your ship, and PvP. This may even allow for expanding into crafting in the future by gathering materials via expeditions.

Q: Any plans for the new guild building?
Ray: No plans at the moment for a new building. As we are developing a multitude of other things we may jump into that, however I think the issue with guilds right now isn't there not being a new building, but the system not allowing for expansion once capped.

Q: Plans for trophies?
Ray: We have talked several times about trophies needing a major revamp. I think it could be a pretty fun/exciting change, but it's not in the works, nor in the early plans just yet

Q: Will minor bug abusers (even accidents) be punished more severely, or rolled back more often?
Jay: One thing we can consider doing is better tracking who has gained small advantages, and see if the same names are constantly showing up.
Ray: ah, small cases.....again depends on the amount of players affected. Small amounts have usually been ignored because of the lack of how much it affects the game and the effort required to deal with small cases, but we could probably be a little more consistent in that regard on our end.

SUGGESTIONS!

1: More frequent dev updates - YES!
2: Instant challenge start button - hopefully in the next 1-2 weeks!
3: Incentives to help people (carry ranks, etc) - Ray: No official plans for this at all, to be honest. I have contemplated a daily 'task' system, for extra rewards, which could include simple things like "Perform 3 group challenges", however, that is definitely 'after' the new UI, and not in the short-term.
4: Password change options - YES! High priority
5: Dual spec system (for asc upgrades and pet tree) - Ray: Ascension resets will not always be free, and at that point I don't think it makes sense. On top of that, saving full configurations on accounts on our database system isn't ideal, especially if we end up with multiple upgrade-map style systems.
6: Dynamite type item for tree? (chainsaw maybe?) - Ray: Not a terrible idea, it's a possibility down the road.
7: Sell tiny packs for diamonds or make it a % like the rest? - Ray: I'd like to allow merging of tiny packs into larger packs at some point. We're going to look at adding it in the next couple weeks as well.

Thank you Ray and Jay for your time and explaining your reasoning behind some of these issues. Thank you players who contributed to the list of questions and suggestions!

Listat, out!

Latest Updates

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 03:18:04 +0000

First public release of the new Client & Server are out and available for testing.

::::: Introduction :::::

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 03:17:00 +0000

Howdy Folks,

We are ready for testing on the new service!

I ask that testers keep up to date on the forums section about the testing to understand where we are, what is being tested, what does or doesn't work.

What you need to know for the testing:

Existing accounts have not been transferred. You will need to create a new account for testing.
Logging in, and creation may take up to 20 seconds. This is known and will not be like this on the official release.
TEST everything. We want to make sure everything works as intended out of the box.

The servers may go down at any point. Please don't report this unless you have checked in with the forum status to ensure it wasn't a planned restart of the service.
Please only report issues that relate to stability or are new issues that were not present in the current service and are not mentioned to already be known.
These testing accounts may be cleared out at any time.

To access to test client:

The test client Access: http://iourpg.com/testClient.php

I really appreciate anyone assisting with these tests

Thanks!
Ray

Well Known Issues

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 03:16:33 +0000

-Unable to join a party through guilds
-Regional Chat does not work
-Queue Challenges is broken now
-Patch notes are old
-Not killing an enemy in time does not set you back a zone
-Pet trophies stuck on pet score
-Trophy upgrades: expedition/mine/wood reduction don't appear to be working (the others are)
-When searching for a party, if you search for a specific name and it's not found; no error / notification message pops up.
-When attempting to use a space in the username, you get the following error within the client. [bubble error]
-Party Passwords not working
-Level Score trophy appears to not always be working as expected
-Last Online doesn't appear to be showing correctly as I'm pretty sure was showing online yesterday [showing online weeks ago?]
-"changezone error broken" when changing zones or joining a party
-Challenge Milestone is showing on the character page, this stat doesn't show on the character page on the current service (Challenge milestone is the multiplier from reaching certain CP milestones)
-Click attack while waiting for challenge to load causes errors
-Party member zone progress is slow to update
-new leader able to donate under the 24 hour limit. [Guild creator should be bound to guild records for reference of the 24hr bypass]
-After completing all planets, not receiving xp bonus(edited)
-Config changes not taking effect in logic (Treasures off, password?, etc)
-After a while attempting to start challenges brings up bubble errors consistently
-receiving 3 and 4 card drops at AT0 with double cards? How?
-IOU scores not syncing with guild members list