Hello everyone! Thank you all for your valuable feedback. The ATA team has been actively discussing the response to this content release since launch, and we want to make sure to touch base with you all and let you know you are being heard. In this post we hope to address your concerns and provide some reassurance about how we will move forward with re-running content based on your feedback.
We hear that a lot of you feel frustrated and upset about a story pass re-run, and we're listening. We have never brought a story pass back, and it makes total sense that this would feel surprising and upsetting if you didn't know that was going to happen. We also hear that this wasn't your favorite pass to begin with - fair enough!
We'd like to reassure you that we are still developing new story passes. To clarify, we also want to contextualize the development cost of story passes. Story passes take months of work to develop, write, test, and launch, and once they are done, they are done. Many players have joined PIMD since we first launched My Fairy (dorm)Mother who have never gotten a chance to experience this content. We wanted to experiment with re-running a pass to see if there was an appetite among our newer players for this type of older content, while making sure the time and effort we invest in this content has the biggest impact possible. The more people play our passes, the more resources we'll be able to invest in them! At the same time, we wanted to make sure that players playing the pass a second time would be able to be uniquely rewarded, so chose to create recolored avatars instead.
For those of you who expressed concern about the results of our moodboard surveys being disregarded, let us reassure you that they aren't. As one small example, the past two hunts were chosen based off of the top results of our Halloween moodboard survey, and plenty of upcoming future content uses survey results as well. Making content choices based off of your survey responses is our top priority at every planning meeting.
We hear that some of you feel frustrated about us bringing back older content, and we appreciate knowing that. While we still feel there is a sustainable way to fulfill the new player appetite for older content, we agree that there are ways to refine this process, and there is more to learn about how to do this correctly. We intend to be more thoughtful and deliberate in how we go about bringing back older content, going forward, and are deep in discussions about how this will look amongst ourselves and players.
To anyone who purchased this pass at launch, and realized that it would not meet your expectations, please get in touch with our team via a ticket. We will be happy to do a one-time refund of your ECs and remove your story pass.
Again, thank you to everyone who shared feedback, here or elsewhere! We always want to hear from the playerbase when you feel passionately about something, and we appreciate everyone who took the time to let us know their thoughts about this latest re-release.
I sincerely hope you realize what a bad trajectory ATA is on. I started playing this game 13 years ago, and I've never seen the community come together in collective outrage like this.
Think about what you're doing when you bring old content back: you're cheapening it. Why would I drop money and grind hard to get anything on the first round if I know it'll come back around, and be cheaper and easier the second time? Look at what Wizards of the Coast wrought upon themselves by cheapening collectibles with reruns.
Whichever executives are making these awful choices are jeopardizing the entire business model. ATA did the worst possible thing: you broke the illusion of fun for the sake of money, and now everyone is extremely conscious that you're a greedy company, not a community-maker.
You owe this community an apology for the Halloween fiasco, for this SP, and for the BS "months of work" line. The Halloween event was pure greed, and this SP took 15 minutes of recoloring. I was going to ball out for Black Friday, but you can trust that you won't see a penny from me for a very long time. I hope the boycott hurts the bottom line enough for you to give your heads a shake.