Priority Queue

General
21

I’m done donating. It all goes to server costs and the server rollout is managed badly. So, nothing else to donate to. I hate discord, so ‘discord rewards’ isn’t anything useful to me. Line-skipping (so, you know, I could play on the servers that 100% of my money [minus Patreon fees] is going to pay for,) would be actually useful and nice. But, God forbid anyone on this game suggest an idea that is actually useful and practical. You all just plain don’t do that here.

Sense I can’t get line skipping, and my money is wasted on servers almost nobody uses, while servers that are full can’t get a second server, and none of the Patron money actually goes to funding any real game development of any kind; there is literally no reason for me to donate. What, to continue to support this mess of a server rollout?

So, I got my answer. So, close the topic. I literally couldn’t care less anymore. US West is always full, no other official server has more the 20 people on it (a total joke and waste of money) and everyone from other Patrons, to freeloaders, to Project Management is looking at this fuster cluck of a rollout and saying, ‘Yup, everything is ok here. Nothing to fix.’

I have such a love hate relationship with this game. On the one hand, I spend a lot of my time playing it (when I can actually get on a server that has people, that is.) But, honestly, it feels like it’s ran and played by mostly fools who can’t see problems that exist and wouldn’t know a useful idea if it bit them on the ass.

 

 

22

4 hours ago, EVIL_ED said:

Does anything at all go to paying the developers for developing the game?

None of the people who develop the game, or are involved in it by being admins, maintainers, PMs, or other staff, are currently paid. While our contributors are not all in one place, and market rates for development work vary by country, $750 a month is not enough to pay a single developer to work on the game full time in many countries. All of the people who work on space station 14 and wizard’s den are volunteers. While monetary donations are obviously important, if you convert the time spent by ss14’s volunteers to a monetary value based on a fair salary for whatever they’re doing in whatever country they’re doing it from, the donated time of volunteers would dwarf the actual money donated through patreon. There are many individual volunteers who individually donate more equivalent value though their time than the total current patreon donations.

Many who volunteer receive no perks, those who do receive perks receive them because the perks directly benefit their ability to volunteer. For example, game admins are able to bypass the player cap so that they can admin the game even if the server is full. I want to stress that both volunteer time and monetary donations are important. The monetary donations aren’t currently anywhere near enough to make the game actually exist, and having a game isn’t very useful if you can’t actually play it. If you actual put a value on the volunteer time, it becomes difficult to argue that someone who donates between 3 and 20 USD a month should be able to not just bypass the player cap, but kick other players. Especially when you consider that some of those players being kicked will be contributors who who spend 10s or 100s of hours a month developing the game and have to wait for slots or join other servers like any other player.

4 hours ago, EVIL_ED said:

While the only other official English speaking server that comes close is Miros which has about 15 people, if you’re lucky.

Leviathan has been up for a day or two now, at it’s peak today it had almost as many players as Lizard. It had somewhere around 40-55 players throughout the time that lizard was full, around the time you were making these forum posts. While Miros didn’t maintain pop as well as Leviathan, it also had a respectable pop around Lizard’s peak. We can do things to try to make space available to players who want to play the game, but we can’t always have a server with 79 of 80 slots open, and allowing players to bypass the pop cap isn’t sustainable. It’s not going to fill out the many servers we have with available slots, it’s just going to force people to have to pay to play on the one server they’re willing to join.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome, but it’s not realistic for anyone to expect every idea they have to be agreed with and adopted. Anyone giving feedback or making suggestions needs to be able to accept that sometimes people won’t agree.

23

Somebody doesn’t seem to understand the nature of donations and goodwill. 

If you donate for anything on Patreon and there’s no promises made of you receiving anything in return for it then don’t expect something in return. 

24

11 hours ago, Rich0rd said:

Somebody doesn’t seem to understand the nature of donations and goodwill. 

If you donate for anything on Patreon and there’s no promises made of you receiving anything in return for it then don’t expect something in return. 

Fair point. That’s why I almost never donate to anything. I almost always feel it’s a waste of my money.

The one place I had ever donated to the most was the Free Software Foundation. I figured more advocating for Free Software would generate more development. This, in turn, would make the software that everyone (thus myself) uses better. Therefor, everyone wins.

I like to call this concept benevolent selfishness. I donate, to make something better for me; but it also makes things better for others who use what the money is going to as well. I never donate to anything outside of either this concept or like I feel I own someone something. Like when I sold so many MDA Shamrocks at work that I got a free T-Shirt so I felt like I should at least buy one myself to not feel like an ass. When other charities came that didn’t offer prizes for making sells, I wouldn’t bother to push them because I was getting nothing out of it.

Like I said in my previous post, I really just don’t care anymore. My hope was that my donation to SS14 went to engine and content development. Something that made the game better for everyone. But, I found out through reading the spreadsheet and from what Chief_Engineer said that this isn’t the case. The donation money only goes to server hosting. And, I’ve already expressed how I feel about that. I suggested the Patreon perk of line skipping that would actually be useful to me, unlike the discord perk that isn’t because I hate and don’t use discord. I was told no.

So, I stopped donating because there is literally no reason for me to. I don’t do “good will.” I do benevolent selfishness. If I’m not getting anything useful back in return, it’s simply a waste of money to me. I see donations as communal investment. Similar to how people donate money to a project, like Godot for example, and then they can use that money to hire people to make the engine better for everyone; myself included. Thus, communal investing/benevolent selfishness.

That’s not what’s going on here. People are developing the engine and the game content for free. So, my donation money does absolutely nothing to help incentivize that. Instead, it only goes to server hosting which I feel is done poorly. Why would I reward a poor job by giving it more money? Also, if my spreadsheet estimation is correct, it’s not exactly like SS14 is hurting for server funds. If anything, it looks like they bring far more in a month than they pay out. So, it’s not exactly like they need my money.

25

Ok. Donate if you want, or don’t. I don’t think anyone is going to try and convince you to spend your own money differently. 

26

I’d prefer it if maintainers/devs were actively binging on hard drugs with my Pateron money and would give more if I knew this were the case. For anyone on the fence, if you have the money, you should donate because it’s your favorite game, not because you can bypass a queue.

27

As a contributor, I can absolutely tell you that spending Patreon money on server costs is money well spent. It is very motivational to have a player-base enjoying the game I’m contributing to.

It is extremely demoralizing to pay server costs yourself as a contributor. So Patreon donators who are helping to pay for server costs means a lot. If there was no patreon, there would only be a few very hardcore developers paying hundreds a month to run servers, and that cost would only grow over time.

Don’t think for a second that spending money on good servers isn’t helping development. It’s helping a great deal. It’s attracting new contributors, it’s playtesting changes, it’s building a community.

I’m sorry for the OP that they feel they can’t queue up and join the server they want. I’ve had no trouble joining - I just watch the OOC chat on discord, when the round is ending the OOC turns on and slots open up on the server.

If you did implement this then a priority cap is the best way. Any patreon can join Lizard as long as <100 players are online, with regular players only joining at <80. Any ban or admin warning makes you lose this privilege for a few days at least, given that the cap is partially to ease admin workload.

However it is likely that Lizard would gradually shed all new and non-patreon regulars over time were this rule to be put in place.

28

OH NO GUYS, WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT EVIL ED’S 20 BUCKS PER MONTH, WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO SHUT OFF MOST THE SERVERS AND FIRE HALF OF THE STAFF, AND CUT DOWN THE SALARY FOR THE REMAINING STAFF, AS WELL AS DECREASING THE MAXIMUM PLAYER COUNT FOR THE REMAINING SERVERS, WE’RE DOOMED!!!

29

On 6/3/2023 at 5:47 PM, PlushFox328 said:

Imagine a random player just enjoying their time on the server and stuff and all of a sudden they disconnect all because some patreon member wanted in. That sounds really annoying.

The benefits are really good yes, but seems like a bad thing to do in my opinion. Ofc thats just me though

That’s not at all what a priority que is, a question would be, if the servers full, you could que to get in as soon as someone disconnects, patron priority would just be a fast pass to the front of the que, it won’t disconnect people.

30

6 hours ago, JoeHammad said:

That’s not at all what a priority que is, a question would be, if the servers full, you could que to get in as soon as someone disconnects, patron priority would just be a fast pass to the front of the que, it won’t disconnect people.

Oh, sorry. Thanks.

31

7 hours ago, RatherLargeGuy said:

OH NO GUYS, WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT EVIL ED’S 20 BUCKS PER MONTH, WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO SHUT OFF MOST THE SERVERS AND FIRE HALF OF THE STAFF, AND CUT DOWN THE SALARY FOR THE REMAINING STAFF, AS WELL AS DECREASING THE MAXIMUM PLAYER COUNT FOR THE REMAINING SERVERS, WE’RE DOOMED!!!

be civil

32

On 6/8/2023 at 6:22 PM, Sosa said:

For anyone on the fence, if you have the money, you should donate because it’s your favorite game

A great point, and this is usually the spirit with which I enjoy donating to Free Software projects.

On 6/8/2023 at 9:40 PM, parallaxNZ48 said:

As a contributor, I can absolutely tell you that spending Patreon money on server costs is money well spent. It is very motivational to have a player-base enjoying the game I’m contributing to.

It is extremely demoralizing to pay server costs yourself as a contributor. So Patreon donators who are helping to pay for server costs means a lot. If there was no patreon, there would only be a few very hardcore developers paying hundreds a month to run servers, and that cost would only grow over time.

Don’t think for a second that spending money on good servers isn’t helping development. It’s helping a great deal. It’s attracting new contributors, it’s playtesting changes, it’s building a community.

I’m sorry for the OP that they feel they can’t queue up and join the server they want. I’ve had no trouble joining

This is very good to know. I was not seeing a clear line between donating to server costs and that helping development. I have never donated to a project that had such a direct online development component before. So, I always assumed server costs were more of a side thing that had nothing to do with development. Knowing that it is actively bringing in developers is key.

I have spent the last several months looking at these comments and examining the state of the game. I wanted to respond to these two comments because they were the ones that stuck out in my mind the most and kept me revisiting the topic of donating every time I played the game and thought about it again.

I will say that Leviathan has grown to be a nice new high population US Server alongside Lizard. I was not sure things would settle out this way. But, time has proven this to be good. I can usually get into either one or the other. If one is full, the other usually has high population also. So much so, that once in a while both are sometimes full at the same time. But, that seems to be sporadic enough to not yet be a problem. The game keeps bringing in a lot of players and that is very good to see.

Thank you to everyone who discussed my original idea in a civil way. That isn’t everyone, but thank you to the people who did. I put these ideas on this forum because I actually do enjoy this game. I am trying to make things better. I don’t expect people to agree with me all the time. Some of my ideas do need more input from the community. That is why I post them here. But, it does get frustrating when some people jump down my throat about something. There are more constructive ways to engage me. I respond much better to thoughtful discussion; and I think the game improves better when ideas are discussed openly and constructively.

As for my original idea; it doesn’t seem currently needed due to Leviathan doing its job properly alongside Lizard. When I originally posted my idea, things were bad enough that I felt that it needed posted. Right now, things are very nice.

All this and more considered, I have decided to return to donating to the game. I think I might donate what will eventually become $300 in total; $20 at a time. I came to that number because that’s about as much as I have spent in the past for proprietary games with DLC and with as much time as I spend on this game that does feel like about the right ballpark to aim for.

That said, is there any option to make a one time donation instead of doing $20 at a time? I already donated $20 once and would much prefer to donate the remaining $280 in a lump sum rather than trying to keep track of it on a monthly bases. I am moving soon and will be setting up with a new bank and so that’s going to make for a weird transition period where I am going to likely switch over to a new card and it kind of becomes a mess from there.

I don’t really care about Discord stuff. So, if there was a way to just donate the remaining $280 directly and get my name in the credits for donating then I’d be happy with that. Otherwise, I will likely just keep going $20 at a time until I hit my amount.

33

1 hour ago, EVIL_ED said:

A great point, and this is usually the spirit with which I enjoy donating to Free Software projects.

This is very good to know. I was not seeing a clear line between donating to server costs and that helping development. I have never donated to a project that had such a direct online development component before. So, I always assumed server costs were more of a side thing that had nothing to do with development. Knowing that it is actively bringing in developers is key.

I have spent the last several months looking at these comments and examining the state of the game. I wanted to respond to these two comments because they were the ones that stuck out in my mind the most and kept me revisiting the topic of donating every time I played the game and thought about it again.

I will say that Leviathan has grown to be a nice new high population US Server alongside Lizard. I was not sure things would settle out this way. But, time has proven this to be good. I can usually get into either one or the other. If one is full, the other usually has high population also. So much so, that once in a while both are sometimes full at the same time. But, that seems to be sporadic enough to not yet be a problem. The game keeps bringing in a lot of players and that is very good to see.

Thank you to everyone who discussed my original idea in a civil way. That isn’t everyone, but thank you to the people who did. I put these ideas on this forum because I actually do enjoy this game. I am trying to make things better. I don’t expect people to agree with me all the time. Some of my ideas do need more input from the community. That is why I post them here. But, it does get frustrating when some people jump down my throat about something. There are more constructive ways to engage me. I respond much better to thoughtful discussion; and I think the game improves better when ideas are discussed openly and constructively.

As for my original idea; it doesn’t seem currently needed due to Leviathan doing its job properly alongside Lizard. When I originally posted my idea, things were bad enough that I felt that it needed posted. Right now, things are very nice.

All this and more considered, I have decided to return to donating to the game. I think I might donate what will eventually become $300 in total; $20 at a time. I came to that number because that’s about as much as I have spent in the past for proprietary games with DLC and with as much time as I spend on this game that does feel like about the right ballpark to aim for.

That said, is there any option to make a one time donation instead of doing $20 at a time? I already donated $20 once and would much prefer to donate the remaining $280 in a lump sum rather than trying to keep track of it on a monthly bases. I am moving soon and will be setting up with a new bank and so that’s going to make for a weird transition period where I am going to likely switch over to a new card and it kind of becomes a mess from there.

I don’t really care about Discord stuff. So, if there was a way to just donate the remaining $280 directly and get my name in the credits for donating then I’d be happy with that. Otherwise, I will likely just keep going $20 at a time until I hit my amount.

You COULD do an annual subscription and probably leave it at that then.

Or instead of paying what the tier asks for minimum, you could just up it and then cancel the subscription ig but that’s silly as it would waste money

34

On 6/8/2023 at 6:22 PM, Sosa said:

I’d prefer it if maintainers/devs were actively binging on hard drugs with my Pateron money and would give more if I knew this were the case. For anyone on the fence, if you have the money, you should donate because it’s your favorite game, not because you can bypass a queue.

This why I donor to game, cause I has da monies to spare and I lika da game. I could care less about a priority queue.

22 hours ago, EVIL_ED said:

A great point, and this is usually the spirit with which I enjoy donating to Free Software projects.

This is very good to know. I was not seeing a clear line between donating to server costs and that helping development. I have never donated to a project that had such a direct online development component before. So, I always assumed server costs were more of a side thing that had nothing to do with development. Knowing that it is actively bringing in developers is key.

I have spent the last several months looking at these comments and examining the state of the game. I wanted to respond to these two comments because they were the ones that stuck out in my mind the most and kept me revisiting the topic of donating every time I played the game and thought about it again.

I will say that Leviathan has grown to be a nice new high population US Server alongside Lizard. I was not sure things would settle out this way. But, time has proven this to be good. I can usually get into either one or the other. If one is full, the other usually has high population also. So much so, that once in a while both are sometimes full at the same time. But, that seems to be sporadic enough to not yet be a problem. The game keeps bringing in a lot of players and that is very good to see.

Thank you to everyone who discussed my original idea in a civil way. That isn’t everyone, but thank you to the people who did. I put these ideas on this forum because I actually do enjoy this game. I am trying to make things better. I don’t expect people to agree with me all the time. Some of my ideas do need more input from the community. That is why I post them here. But, it does get frustrating when some people jump down my throat about something. There are more constructive ways to engage me. I respond much better to thoughtful discussion; and I think the game improves better when ideas are discussed openly and constructively.

As for my original idea; it doesn’t seem currently needed due to Leviathan doing its job properly alongside Lizard. When I originally posted my idea, things were bad enough that I felt that it needed posted. Right now, things are very nice.

All this and more considered, I have decided to return to donating to the game. I think I might donate what will eventually become $300 in total; $20 at a time. I came to that number because that’s about as much as I have spent in the past for proprietary games with DLC and with as much time as I spend on this game that does feel like about the right ballpark to aim for.

That said, is there any option to make a one time donation instead of doing $20 at a time? I already donated $20 once and would much prefer to donate the remaining $280 in a lump sum rather than trying to keep track of it on a monthly bases. I am moving soon and will be setting up with a new bank and so that’s going to make for a weird transition period where I am going to likely switch over to a new card and it kind of becomes a mess from there.

I don’t really care about Discord stuff. So, if there was a way to just donate the remaining $280 directly and get my name in the credits for donating then I’d be happy with that. Otherwise, I will likely just keep going $20 at a time until I hit my amount.

Also I came here to see what crazy thing EVIL_ED was saying now, but you did respond in a understanding and reasonable way so I salute you for that.

To your point I think you are over thinking what it means to donate to the patron. Its awesome that some of use are able to afford and donate, and its awesome that you want to donate as well, but I think trying to put a cap or monetary value on the games “worth” relative to games you have payed for in the past wont go well for you. I mean this in the most sincere way possible, trying to add up relative worth and haggling over what you think you should donate is just a means to an end, and will just end up tormenting you.

If you really want to support the game, start developing, again I’m writing this out of a place of love, not a REEE you should develop the game if you actually cared. Learning development can be a great hobby in your free time, not to mention a applicable life skill IRL, plus you get the added bonus of that feeling of accomplishment when you finally implement something that people get to play on. For me my first PR was just a simple price change to the nukie weapons bundle, and when it got merged I got to see people talking about how it made sense and that they enjoyed their nukie round more because of it. That feeling, was way better than the feeling I get from mindlessly paying the three dollars a month that I subscribed to.

Just some advice,

I wish you well EVIL_ED

35

On 10/11/2023 at 11:25 PM, Fortnite said:

You COULD do an annual subscription and probably leave it at that then.

Or instead of paying what the tier asks for minimum, you could just up it and then cancel the subscription ig but that’s silly as it would waste money

I am just going to go forward with the $20 a month until I reach my goal. I might just have to take a few months off when I move to get situated with my new bank and new job and stuff.

36

8 minutes ago, EVIL_ED said:

I am just going to go forward with the $20 a month until I reach my goal. I might just have to take a few months off when I move to get situated with my new bank and new job and stuff.

Coolio then too.

37

that is a terrible idea, no offence