Patreon Changes (Patreon)
Content
Here's the tl;dr:
We will be charging patrons monthly instead of per-release (release schedule will still be roughly once a month)
Commissions will be optional and must be claimed through a PM or email don't worry, if you forget to claim your commission you can still do so later!
The $50 tier (Fat Cat) will be removed
The Discord dev chat will be removed from the $30 tier (Chatty Cat) and made public
The Chatty Cat tier will be renamed Fat Cat (still $30)
The Chatty Cat tier will now unlock the Trickster skin as well as Zeit (the skin it already unlocked)
Monthly Charging
It seemed only fair to us in the first few months of Paraphore's development to charge per release, since we were still figuring out the average time it took to complete a release, but now that we've got a decent cycle down we feel comfortable changing the Patreon to charge donors per-month. This allows us to take a little longer on a release if we feel it's worth it without putting us in a spooky financial situation; right now, if we release after the 1st of a given month, we don't receive the money for that release until the 1st of the next month (which is when Patreon charges our donors), and moving forward that could mess us up really badly since we're both pretty much living off of Patreon money right now. We don't want to be forced to rush out a lame release because the alternative is not being able to make rent.
Optional Commissions
With this new charging style comes the possibility that patrons will be charged twice during one dev cycle, so whereas right now your commission is guaranteed to be in the release you were charged for, in the future commissions will be done whenever you claim them and potentially might be pushed over to next release if you happen to get charged right in the middle of a dev cycle. I hope this makes sense! Please throw any questions you have at me in the comments.
I promise to keep up a robust rate of work on commissions making it so patrons will have to claim their commissions is not an attempt to avoid completing them as soon as humanly possible!
Tier Changes
Fat Cat ($50) hasn't been a very popular tier, and while Chatty Cat ($30) is currently packed full of folks, few people Fallow and myself included are spending much time in the Discord dev chat it unlocks. We figure it would be a more lively place if everyone interested could join the chat freely, so we're going to make it public! We'll work hard to post interesting Paraphore-related stuff there too, and hope to make lots of new friends! :3333
This means Chatty Cat is no longer chatty (not that it ever really was very much so >.>) so it'll be renamed to Fat Cat, and the original Fat Cat ($50) tier will be removed. The refurbished $30 tier will inherit some of its rewards, and will now give you the following (in addition to all of the rewards of tiers underneath it):
Unlock two super special semi-animated UI skins when you enter your player name
- Zeit
- Trickster
Receive a .7z with full resolution character art, .psds, .swfs, and sketches each release
You can vote five times on polls
Kitt gives you a MEGA smooch
We'll post the invite link to the Paraphore dev chat after the next release, once these changes go live.
If you've signed up for the $30 tier and you're unhappy with these changes, remember to switch off before the 0.1.4 release if you don't want to be charged for it!
Thanks very much for bearing with us while we get our shit together!!!!