Myla cheers for the breakdown and explanation! I don’t really have anything to add to what I said before, but a lot of that was interesting to read.

I haven’t gotten the chance to read through most of the comments here, because I am on my lunch hour at my day job. Just wanted to say that it is nice to see such a detailed and considered staff response. It was a good and relevant read.

Thank you to everyone who has filled it out so far and/or has participated in discussion <3!

In total, we had 122 responses to our character maker feedback survey.

Many found the price as a positive
We received a lot of comments about how being able to better customize features for a more affordable price point was appealing. For many, unique pets are out of reach due to the cost.

Conversely, respondents also indicated price was a negative
Nugget scarcity, and burden of grinding, and stretching of already thin resources made some feel like this feature still wouldn’t be accessible unless they paid USD which isn’t feasible for some. Others mentioned it would be good to prioritize changes that would boost the economy before releasing this feature since there are already a lot of things players feel like they need to save up for. Some offered specific suggestions for what should be prioritized over this feature.

Many thought customisibility was appealing
There were many comments stating that the ability to make a pet more customized to a particular character would be a valuable addition for developing personalities and sparking creativity.

Some respondents are hesitant because of the potential impact on integrity of the site
Comments mentioned that there are many other sites with this feature so it wouldn’t be particularly unique, and that it could impact the art quality of the site. Some like that we take care to release content created only by official artists, and that allowing players to mix and match their own pets or create art to add to the pets would affect the overall unique feel of Mycena Cave.

Some thought this would be a positive for the artists
Comments mentioned that this would hopefully take some of the strain off the art team long term, players choosing to make their characters with the creator rather than entering the unique pet queues.

Some thought this would be a negative for the artists and/or the team
Comments mention that there is hesitation for the team to spend time and resources creating something that may not be used enough to be worth the team’s time at the expense of other potential features. Some mentioned that artists would likely need to continue to add to this feature over time, meaning that it wouldn’t necessarily lift burden from the art team.

Comments about items/edits/patterns
We received quite a few comments about these topics. Respondents commented about how it would likely be less risky and time consuming to utilize a base we already have, especially in terms of item compatibility. Many find our wide variety of items important in making the character feel unique, and a couple of respondents mentioned they’d rather have a semi-unique item creator rather than a semi-unique pet creator. There were also a few strong, sometimes conflicting opinions about how markings should work, some wanting a lot of pre-made options, others wanting only user-made custom markings, and some wanting a mix of both.

Comments about converting site coats
There were a few comments indicating that being able to put site coats into the creator or otherwise customize site coats more would be desirable.

Comments about limiting or not limiting features of this mechanic
Some respondents thought this feature or parts of this feature should be more restricted, e.g. could only be accessed with a special item or through participation in site events. There were also respondents who stated that no aspect of this feature should be limited in any way.

Positive comments about user-made content
Many responses indicate that allowing user-made content would boost the market and be a boon to the art community. Some respondents like the idea of being able to contribute content to the site, and that it would likely draw new players in.

Hesitations/mixed feelings about user-made content
Many respondents also indicated they were hesitant about user-made content. Quality control was one potential issue that was mentioned a few times since the consistent style is a draw to many. Some thought that if we did implement user-made content, it should be minimal and strict to keep the cohesive style in tact. There were comments suggesting user-made content get approval or screening by the art team as well.

New base feedback
Other mythical creature and dragon tended to be ranked most highly. Flappy also had a lot of support. Rodent was the most devisive with the largest categories being a 1 and an 8. Hooved was also fairly divisive with quite a few 1 - 3 rankings, but a large amount of players selecting 8 as well. Canid, feline, and swimmy tended to have lower rankings, likely because we already have bases covering those areas.

The most common specific request was a griffon-like creature and a bird-like creature.There were quite a few suggestions for different types of rodenty creatures, rabbits being the most common request. Dragony/dinosaury-specific requests were also common.

A few other common comments in this category was that if a new base was created, using it for more than this feature would be nice to help it feel not so disconnected. Others didn’t care what it was, as long as it was something that wasn’t already close to what we had, and that it was highly adaptable

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After reading the feedback, there are a few points on which I can give immediate comments and clarification:
Converting site coats - One big reason for considering this new and separate feature is because it’s not feasible to convert site coats, unfortunately. There are too many of them and none of them were built in a way that would make it easy to later add them to this feature without a huge amount of work for each one. Making site coats and what we already release more flexible would have been our preference as well.

Priority of other features - There were some comments worried about the status of other WIP features. This is very early stage development—we’re testing the waters for feasibility and you’re helping us make some big design decisions if we do proceed. We have a lot that is prioritized before our coding power goes to this, including marketplace updates and release of the recolors. This is a feature that will require quite a bit of work before it gets to the coding stage which is why we’re starting some initial planning now.

Priority of the economy - Although I already mentioned it here, it’s worth repeating that we hear you when you say this feature would be stressful because you already feel like you have too much you’re trying to save for. We do plan to prioritize some of your ideas for better balancing the economy even if we don’t move forward with this feature.

Site coats - There were a few concerns that site coat creation would go away or be phased out in favor of this feature. We aren’t planning on phasing out our site coats—this would be an addition to our regular releases.

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Thank you all so much for taking the time to give us your thoughts about this potential feature. There were a lot of thoughtful responses about a wide variety of topics which is helpful in painting an overall picture of how this would fit into our site. You’ve given us a lot to think about and have given us a more solid grasp on what you’re most excited about as well as most hesitant about. This gives us a much better idea about what the risks are and how to potentially mitigate them.

Given the response, we think it is worthwhile to continue to do a more in-depth exploration into the feasibility by working out more specifics and if we think we can successfully navigate some of the potential issues that were brought up successfully enough for this to be a well-received feature. Our next task will be for staff to discuss the results of the feedback survey and utilize them to shape how the feature might work. This is likely to be worked on slowly in the background for awhile while we prioritize other projects, but when we get to points where there is enough information to release or get feedback on, we’ll keep the community updated!

A special thanks goes to Hyasynthetic for helping to do an in-depth analysis of the results!

 

50 winners were chosen via random number generator, and are as follows:

I’ll get those out to you shortly!

This is well written and easy to read! Thanks y’all, for the thoughtful feedback on the results.

And thanks Hya, for making the data points and discussion topics accessible without comments being linked to individuals in the community. I’m glad to see you doing well with your new position. =D

Yes, agreed, good results post. Charts are v nice to have as well.

Love the super detailed results and analysis. I’m very interested in seeing how this impacts the site with the economy and the development of this new feature.

And thank you very much for the ticket!

What a wonderful breakdown of the results! I’m intrigued by the splits in the species voting in particular. It’s all very interesting and the charts are great visual aids.

I also greatly appreciate the time that went into crafting the survey in the first place! MC is the only site I know of that consistently seeks user feedback. I have mixed feelings about the concept of a character maker, but it’s nice to know that everyone’s views are considered, and it’s much easier to express those views in a survey than on the forums. <3

It is a lot easier to give feedback via survey versus on a forum. There’s less risk involved, and also it is easier to keep to a focused topic when there is a structured question and answer system to rely on.

Nyfeaena The biggest surprise for me was the percentage of players who were flexible about whether we do a new base or stick with an old base. It was something I’ve been very undecided about because there are big pros/cons to each. I was semi-hoping surveying players would lead to a large push in one direction or the other, haha. It’s nice that a large portion of our players feel flexible about the route we go (rather than if there were a lot of strong but opposite opinions about which way we should go). It certainly did give us more things to think about when considering the possibilities!

Thanks for the in depth write-up, I appreciate it a lot! My thoughts are percolating and I want to think about this (and leer at the charts) a little bit more. Something I think would be interesting to see is the relative rankings - for example, if someone ranks “dragony” first, how likely are they to rank “other mythical” second (or just higher in general compared to the more mundane animals). Or something like maybe a user that ranks “hoofy” highly is also more likely to rank and “swimmy” and “other mythical” highly, indicating a kind of “hippocampus-want” lol, or maybe users likely to rank hoofy as the least desirable are treated kelph as filling that niche (evidenced maybe by ranking of “we’ve already got it” shapes like feline/canid/etc lower). I would also expect a super high correlation between whether a peson chose “use a new base” or “use the old bases” and the actual types of bases they picked in the later question (IE people that wanted the old bases used might be more likely to pick canid/feline/dragon.

Also a question because I can’t remember: Is 1 always the negative/no/never response and 5 always the positive/yes/always response in the Likert scales?

The only top-of-mind comment I want to add right now is, I think, relevant/adjacent to the talk of “converting site coats”, though I’m not sure. It’s specifically involving expression edits. I mentioned in my form, too, but I think it would be really sad if expression edits were locked behind a semi-custom paywall, and I know other people mentioned something similar both in the thread and just in general conversation. I also know it’s been a difficulty with the original bases, but I think it might be worth considering expression edits as something separate from other types of conversions.

Thank you for this feedback survey result. It’s very interesting to read the analysis of the results!

And thank you for the golden ticket! ^_^

Myla I did have an opinion about that, so I was surprised by those results too! It certainly placed the onus for the decision more heavily on the staff again, with “old bases” winning out in the minority of users who did choose one or the other, but by a very tiny amount that likely isn’t statistically significant. It could have so easily been a clean split had a few more people thrown their votes in (it’s, what, a difference of about 6 users? I didn’t expect it to be so close!). Luckily, that does mean that most people will be pleased no matter what the staff ends up choosing! I hope that means you can make the choice that will be less work (and more fun?) for all the staff involved. <3

Jacq 1 is “strongly disagree” and 5 is “strongly agree” for the Likert scale questions!

Our current templates are designed in a way that makes it a time consuming and manual process to offer different expression edits. It’s difficult to get a grasp on what we mean without visuals or having worked with our templates. Our Castaway coat color is a good example of a pet we offer toggleable expression edits for, so I can show you a break down of how we make that possible:

To make a e.g. frown available to all current coats, it would need to be individually colored for each site coat and would need to have the ability to be placed over the current expression, making open-mouthed mycenians especially difficult (e.g. we usually swap out the entire head when a custom goes through the edit queue to get an open mouth converted to a closed mouth). That is a significant amount of work, and just for one expression.

The hope for the new system is to build something from the ground up with the specific goal of having easily interchangeable expression edits in a way that is currently not possible—if we use a base we already have, it will require an overhaul of the template and the way every component of the template currently works. It will almost certainly not be feasible to convert old pets to the new system because if we do use old templates, they’ll be significantly different (or an entirely new template in the case where we’d create a new base). Thus I think it’s highly unlikely we could convert site coats without a huge amount of work for each coat, but it’s not something we are purposefully leaving out or not considering for the sake of exclusivity of expression changes. If it does turn out that it is possible to convert site coats without a huge amount of work, this is something we would love as well!