2022 Pre Update

griffsnuff - Jan 13th 2022 00:05

Happy New Year,

It has been a while since we did a news update and we wanted to take the opportunity to announce our plans for 2022 that need attention. In 2021 we finished some of our planned automations, introduced a lot of new items, lore, and art, and completed some of our massive backlog. We completed the Companion resource pages which took most of last year. Even with the amount of backlog that we have been working on, the ARPG and group has been a blast to run. With our super efficient mod team and amazing community we have had a great year. The community has submitted great feedback throughout 2021 which a lot of was either implemented or added to our future todolists. So keep the feedback coming!



Things we are focusing on in 2022:


- Finishing the Griffolk resource pages (Art, Lore, Anatomy)
- Continued Site Cleaning and Organization (Better tutorials and easier navigation)
- A functional Calendar
- More automation ( Moving some approvals onto site)
- Userdashbords inventory management, Trading systems, etc
- Optimizing and improving existing features
- Economy Balancing
- NPC Pages

2022 is set to be a great year for Griffia. That said we have to do some balancing for some of our game economy. When we automated Winflower we stated that we were going to watch it’s impact on the economy. We waited well over a year before addressing the economy again. In 2021 the games, Time Loot, and Magic Familiars all got GC increases and we have been watching the impact this has had all year. We are satisfied with Winflower, the Games, and the GC awarded from Activities.

We feel it's getting healthier rather than worse. However, the amount of Love Items approvals needs balancing. We have already tried to mitigate the amount won to a number we can process by doing the following:

- Adding more items to the loot pool
- Making small cuts to the GC values in the Void Well
- Adding more high value items and collectibles to the game.

All these changes have made the GC economy healthier. Users are seeking GC again and there are plenty of places to use it. However, it has not had the desired effect on how many Love Items are submitted each month for approval. This number is steadily increasing each month. We never want to put a restriction on how many love items a user can redeem in a month, but we have needed to do something for a while to balance the process a little.

Before we continue

TLDR: Do not panic, we will not be removing Love Items. We are just changing how many Love Vouchers it costs to redeem specific subtypes in the future. If this new system does not work we will figure out another way. Please read the full thing before asking questions or reacting. Thank you!

Problem:
The Love Item Approval process will always require manual approval (even if it gets partially automated on our site, which is planned), and it takes a lot of time to process each submission. We have every intention of keeping the service accessible while still making it humanly possible for a moderator to do it. The amount is still steadily increasing and we want to look at solutions now rather than later. We also wanted to warn everyone far in advance that it is approaching a problem area. We want to keep this process streamlined so that approvals only take max 5 days outside of holidays so everyone can enjoy their new characters as soon as possible.

Non Functional Solutions: (We can not do the following)
- We can not apply more moderators to love approval. Our current system has seen a sharp decrease in errors, copies, and scams because it has fewer eyes on it. This process needs quality over quantity. It is functioning as intended and in a way that benefits everyone. Adding more mods is not a functional solution.
- Changing the rate is not a functional solution, getting a Love Voucher already costs a lot of GC and time. We are confident if we made love vouchers themselves more expensive/rarer it would negatively impact everyone. It's not a step we want to take unless the situation is going to drown the ARPG completely and we are not at that point.
- Giving out free Love items to all accounts or as an award for doing X amount of work is not a functional solution. This set up harbors an environment where scams , side accounts and cheating occurs due to the item being such a high value. And it would take away all our time to track, monitor and moderate.
- Putting Love items behind a paywall. We will never make love items, mutations/upgrades cost USD through the official site/ARPG. 


Solution:
Increase the number of Love Vouchers it costs to redeem rarer subtypes. This system is already in place for Status Berry Vouchers and it works great. (Below we will post a list of these rates.) Over half the approvals of Love Items at this moment in time are the higher tier subtypes, which is not rare at the moment, but still desirable as if they were.

Pros:
- We do not have to decrease the rate in Winflower. Just the amount of time it will take to redeem a specific Love Item in higher tiers.
- All species with Love Items have a subtype available in Tier 1.
- Gives subtypes back rarity/reflect what artists are selling characters for.
- New Love items for new subtypes can be added that were not planned now that there is rarity tiers again.

Cons:
- Increases the time and effort to get higher value subtypes using Love Vouchers. (Especially for new users)
- Rarer subtypes will cost more Vouchers.

Summary:
From our data this should mitigate the issue effectively while also returning some subtypes to their intended rarity from early Griffia. This solution has the least amount of cons with some benefits that should balance the economy. We know not everyone in the community is going to like this change, but we are trying our absolute best to balance that good feeling from winning a voucher, keeping getting a new character achievable, and what we are capable of doing. And also making the higher tier Griffians feel rare again.

If you currently have any type of love item in your inventory, you can change it out with a love voucher if you want to change the rarity of your love item before June 2022 by going to errors.

It is a difficult line to tread but we think this change will be very healthy for the GC and character economy. We know it will take longer to get certain subtypes in the future, but we hope that will just make them more prized by their owners. This change will not take effect until June 2022. We want everyone to take the opportunity to stock up on rarer subtypes now if you can and save them. Everyone has 4 months to use the current rates. If the issue still persists after this change we will keep everyone in the loop, we are going to be watching it closely.

New Rates:(Once the change is implemented on june 1st 2022)

x1 Love Voucher:
Bagbean (Fauna, Floral, Nomnom, Abstract, Item)
Bavom (Viking, Gladiator, Pirate)
Caster (Capricorn, Aries, Leo)
Fashion Fishy (Harbor)
Foolee (Party)
Guardian (Land)
Kryptox (Funtox)
Fornlee (Hexlee)
Perfaunt (Ashfaunt)
Parasplicer (Annunaki)
Terradragon (Solid)

x2 Love Vouchers:
Bagbean (Celestial, Elemental, Hollow, Myca, Tribal)
Bavom (Amazon, Valkyrie, Soldier, Mercenary, Ninja)
Caster (Orion, Ophiuchus, Taurus(New Love Item will arrive after change))
Fashion Fishy ( River)
Guardian (Sea)
Kryptox (Jestertox)
Fornlee (Witchlee)
Perfaunt (Aurafaunt)
Terradragon ( Liquid, Gas)

x3 Love Vouchers:
Bagbean (Mythical, Mythiflora)
Bavom (New subtype is planned in the future)
Caster (Cetus, Aquarius)
Fashion Fishy (Ocean)
Guardian (Sky)
Kryptox (Trancendtox)
Fornlee (Shamanlee)
Perfaunt (Crystalfaunt)
Terradragon (Plasma(New Love item will arrive after change))

Griffolk in higher tiers will get additional statuses and abilities to reflect their new tier. These will be added to all existing Griffians when the griffolk pages are completed. Any future potential x4 Love voucher tier could be added to subtypes of griffolk that were not planned to have love items at all (example bec Terradragon and future subtypes for other species etc.) This is only possible with this new tier system.

Magic Familiar Balancing
Magic Familiars are not balanced based on feedback from 2021 we acknowledge that Duo is overpowered. He affects every item in the game except vouchers and uber items. While the other magic familiars are more specialized. We want to equalize the familiars by making Duo a specialist like the others and nerfing his ability to duplicate GC. His ability is making it impossible to add high GC prizes globally (which we would like to do). At the same time we will be giving some of the other familiars a buff and get exclusive items. We are still discussing possible solutions. This will happen sometime in late 2022 with a month's notice. We will also allow players to exchange familiars (for free without new art) at that time due to this change in case they want to have a different familiar. Once the change is made we will address the GC rates awarded in Activities to rebalance everything. We will not change Magic Familiars until after the Love Item change so that it doesn’t affect the amount earned right now.

Markets
With all these changes we are going to watch the amount of GC earned and take a lot of time to evaluate the market prices to ensure they are fair/working as intended. So if shops increase or decrease prices. This is why.


Patreon
We have been getting some new patreon members, Thank you so much!. We have plans for our patreon in the future and it does support the project but we are prioritizing backlog over adding new features to our patreon at this time because we want to meet the obligations we have already made. Everything we have ever submitted is still there and we are very grateful for the support.

Closing
Other than balancing we have a lot of great features coming down the pipeline. We are currently working on site Character transfers and improved Griffolk Pages which are both big undertakings from our backlog. We are really looking forward to 2022 and our future updates! We will also be doing more Love voucher raffles and giveaways so stay tuned!

 

- Owners