Mel's July Q&A

I had a first iteration of the bot called "Markos"; at the time, the primary function was posting memes and meme image generators, along with copypastas. So I changed the name to "Dank Memer" later to better reflect the primary functionality of the bot at the time. Currency game aspects didn't come for months after this!

First and foremost, if you aren't aware, they're back! But to answer your question, we removed pls (message prefixed commands) because Discord told us, and all other bots, to do so. I've written extensively about what they said when it happened (2022), but in the end, Discord stopped caring about enforcing this. Now, pls has less functionality because many api features that our bot relies on are exclusive to slash commands and inaccessible to prefixed commands. Still, most commands work flawlessly with pls once again!

This global economy game is where nearly every action you take gains you new coins or items. Players love to come and troll us developers about "wow, inflation ruined this bot" without understanding how a game like this works and how inflation is impossible to prevent. The funny part is, those players are often the ones who previously asked us to reduce or remove tax, so in short, to help slow down inflationary pressure.

Let me start by saying that feeling like this game is complicated is valid and a problem we have been trying to solve, because that feeling is real to some people. In practice, when you look at our systems, we're often considerably less complex than many games you might already be playing on console/steam/etc.

An issue we run into is being a primarily text-based and Discord-based game. So, in a more graphical game example, you may be able to run to a pond and start fishing, see a physical leaderboard, press the tab key to see your inventory, etc. In our game, you have to remember commands, subcommands, arguments, etc, and so on.

When people say it used to be easier, they're right! But there was also very, VERY little actual gameplay; it was essentially the same system repeated with different words. "Run command, get reward, trade reward, lose reward, repeat". This type of gameplay is not only not what we wanted past a starting point, but also not sustainable as a business model or a long-term game.

So now, in this "short" answer, I hope you can at least start to piece together why this feedback is tough to "fix".

Absolutely! On average, ~30-50 games are added to Steam daily. Most of these games never make sales or have more than a few all-time players. Of those who do find a small playerbase, besides a small cult fanbase (rarely), they usually have most activity fizzle out within a year.

With this in mind, this game lasting as long as it has is nothing short of a statistical wonder. I'm proud of what we've built and continue to build. And we'll continue to develop and support it for the foreseeable future.

It has ALWAYS been watching people play the game and enjoy it. If this job cost nothing to run, and made nothing in income, but still had players? I'd still keep working on it for this reason. Seeing new content go out and watching people enjoy it and talk about it together is a joy, and is the only thing that kept me going in the hard times.

I didn't think Dank Memer would ever have users. Then I didn't think it would last a year. Then I didn't think it would ever make a profit. Then I didn't think we'd ever hit a million servers. Then I didn't think we'd survive lockdown. Then I didn't think we'd survive the lack of lockdown. Then I didn't think we'd survive a global recession. Here we still are! Who cares what I think? I just make a fun game and plan for the worst, but hope for the best.

We thought about this a loooong time ago, but decided against it. Part of what makes this game work is the social aspect, so to make it outside of Discord, we'd have to recreate social features and hope people care enough to leave Discord for it.

That said, I could see us peeling off parts of this bot (eg, fishing) to make graphical game experiences out of in a single-player format! But the risk vs reward is tricky here; it would take a long time and peel focus away from the main game, which I don't love the idea of doing.

Pets 2.0, pet rooms, tidy command, Australia adventure, level reward rework, omega rewards, random events, traveling merchant, etc. We do a lot, you just see more fishing because fishing has consistent update timings and is a significant funder for F2P content!

Not that I'm aware of!

I have no plans for this; the time and money investment versus player sentiment and engagement will not balance out.

Speaking only for myself, absolutely horrible LOL. Imagine you have all the stress of being a small business owner, with all the stress of being a game developer in an incredibly tough industry, with all the added stress of existing on a third-party platform that could break or remove you at any time with zero warning. It's brutal, and I don't recommend trying it.

Simply put, new players see the game as we intended and enjoy it, while old players see what it used to be, as it's no longer the same game. You can argue about it being worse/better/etc all day, but in the end, we are closer to the intended gameplay now than ever.

Imagine you started playing Fortnite before they added building (I know this didn't happen). After building became such a big focus, you can see how original players might no longer vibe with the game.

In the past, the game was essentially a "spam commands and number go up" simulator. Now, there are different types of things to do, strategy, and nuance in your actions. It's a big difference!

Find a new job and move on, haha. As I said many years ago, our game lasting this long is impressive. I'd be content if it died today because everyone got bored; this isn't something that I'm concerned about.

At the end of the day, I made a cool-ass thing that has been played by millions of people for many years and provided for my family at the same time. I've developed skills and connections that will help me in future endeavours. Eventually, when the game is over, I'm okay with it!

As for what I'll do with my free time and life? I'll probably get a job doing something I love, like I've been able to do for the last 8 years. It might be a new game, it might be something completely different. I could always become a goose farmer!

Nope! Not interested in this, nor would a majority of players be.

We're usually not trying to create "meta" ways to grind. That said, the people grinding this game are FANTASTIC at finding them for us. Most of our balances are in an attempt to normalize systems with each other within various categories. EG, all beginner commands should be roughly the same reward amount, and so on. It doesn't always turn out that way, but we've improved!

If it's in the channel, it's had eyes on it. Some get more consideration than others based on our goals and available development resources. Still, things aren't ever purposely or knowingly ignored.

I actually wish we had more suggestions!

Somewhere in game design is finding a good mix of player ideas, player sentiment, team goals, and... vibes lmao. You can't usually let players entirely dictate the design. Still, you can listen to what they're asking about with systems and find creative solutions that cause the least issue for development and long-term stability.

One example of this is the Fish Season Pass's daily challenges. While many players found leveling very easy, many also found it too slow. So instead of deciding to buff or nerf the fish pass XP leveling speed, we decided to give players a new way to get that XP for a more focused daily grind.

I think robbing can be fun, but there are many design issues with the system that we can't really address due to player expectations and how Discord works. In a perfect world, everyone is robbing each other back and forth so it's not so sad when you get robbed as you can rob them right back. In reality, people using alts and leaving servers make this basically moot. (It was closer to this when robbing was first implemented!)

So I'm not gonna say we'll NEVER get rid of robbing. Still, we'd love to hear player suggestions on how to make it a less punishing and more fun system for people to engage with rather than hide from (and bully new players with).

I think there is definitely a vocal minority of people who primarily fight, and while doing so, purposely act like bullies or toxic people. We try to handle this where we can, but we encourage servers to enforce their own standards of how their members behave.

For instance, places with lots of fighting can (and should!) consider implementing roles that can be given to block access to fighting commands when someone is behaving rudely to other players. Also, while I know how hard it is to fight against alts, servers should try to stop them where possible. Someone bringing an alt to fight is RARELY for a good reason.