I’ve brought this thread to the rest of the team’s attention, and we’ll hopefully be able to elaborate more in the near future. As a result I’m going to hold off on addressing specifics regarding our roadmap right this instant, but I assure you we are listening.
Regarding the recent sparkle token sale
That said, I will address this, as it is directed more to me than the team as a whole:
First and foremost, for those unaware, I am the staff member who sold a sparkle token to a player. The token was one of 4 I have owned over the course of playing this game, all of which proceeded my joining the staff team by several years. 3 came from the Anniversary HC which released them, and the fourth from an auction. One token was given away, another used on my Aegislash, and the third was recently sold to a player for 25m. I still possess one more.
I previously (again, prior to joining the staff team by several years) advocated for heavily adjusting sparkle token availability in this thread here: Discontinue the distribution of or heavily reduce the planned availability of new Sparkle Tokens
Over time, my feelings on the sparkle tokens have softened. I think I over-reacted initially–their availability never even came close to the level I was worried about to begin with. And though I still think their release could have been handled better (the prices in that HC were overhauled several times after launch) I do not have a particularly strong opinion for or against the tokens anymore.
Regarding my recent sale of a token, I understand your ethics concerns. When selling the token, I deliberately undersold it so as to minimize any ingame advantage I might see from both my previous arguments against expanding their distribution, as well as my new position as a moderator potentially giving me greater sway over future token supply.
Though I stand by my decision to make the sale, I do hope my explanation eases your concerns.
I have been a long-time advocate for expanding communication between our community and the staff team. Now that I am a member of said staff team, that goal has not changed. However, my perspective has certainly evolved and expanded now that I have experienced things from the staff team’s end; I can say that it’s not as simple as us just talking more.
You’ve already brought up a few good examples of where I believe unfocused communication has caused more problems than it’s solved. We’ve not yet made any decisions regarding things like rebalancing Mt. Moon, or nerfing the mobile scarf, but hearing only scattered bits and pieces of our very much tentative thoughts on the matter has generated a lot of gossip and rumors that aren’t necessarily indicative of our plans–we don’t currently have any such decisions finalized.
At the end of the day, we are a bunch of volunteers doing what we can to keep this decades old patchwork ship of a passion project functional. We hear (and even share in) the frustration that I know many of you feel about our lack of both permanent content, and our communication in general. I do agree we could benefit from a dedicated community manager or similar, so I’ll bring that up with the team.
Over the past year and a half or so, a lot of our team members have encountered difficulties in their personal lives. We’re slowly working ourselves back up to speed now, and have also brought on a new designer in Espyria, so hopefully the wait won’t be too much longer. I’d still like to see us bring on additional team members, but we currently have a high ratio of new to more experienced staff members, so this isn’t something we can rush.