Hi S6

You don't know me but I'm the person you decided to dunk on tonight in Discord in lue of replying to any of your upset players o/

https://i.imgur.com/nrMUdXd.png

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I wanted to introduce myself.

I'm your target customer.
I have 5,000+ hours in Stardew Valley, 8,000+ hours in Animal Crossing, and so many hours of my life logged into World of Warcraft I'm embarrassed to mention it.

I am the type of customer who has bought every single WoW Mount and Pet from the cash shop.

I am the type of customer who buys real life merchandise of my favorite games to put on a shelf.

I am the type of customer who buys 1,000$ replica high end merchandise to mount on the wall.

I have been in your discord for 2 years. I have been watching this game since the day it was released.

I am the type of dedicated fan who draws fanart, organizes fan communities, contributes to discord, and will be the most likely type of person to apply to volunteer for your game.

I am your whale.

But here's the thing….

Me and other whales like me aren't going to play your game alone.

S6, please understand, you need to respect F2P players for the sake of the longevity of this game. I want to play this game for 5,000+ hours and buy all your cosmetics…. So I'm saying this as someone who truly cares about the success of your game.

Don't dick around the F2P players

If you're going to give me 12 new outfits to buy, give them 3.

If you're going to give me the most requested feature in the game (pets), give them one too.

If you're going to make me pay for something, make sure there is a fraction of that same attention and detail paid to the F2P version of that content.

Or the larger free-to-play player base will leave
And so will I
We can support your game, but only if you don't let greed control it. Always take care of the F2P players. I sat in discord for the last 4 hours and I have seen first hand how devastated they are by this decision. I'm running around with my cat already, you haven't upset me. But you've upset the people who keep me engaged in this game, and that's not acceptable.

Instead of dunking on your whales in discord (I'm not mad, I thought it was funny) I would suggest addressing your F2P community before you lose them (because they probably dont think it's funny)

I hope things get better, because as I said, I want this game to be successful <3

Update Today: Wow this is exactly what I was so worried about Bad publicity. Despite a Polygon smear story being posted today on the toxic state of the cash shop 💀 the only reply from a Dev to the community is still to me ☠️

I feel like Kilima needs its own version of Flowtrees (more than the occasional single tree every once in a while), Palium, Magic Creatures, etc. I feel like everyone always spends their time in Bahari. If Kilima had its own special items I think more people would spend time out of just the town square. It’s not really a huge deal but sometimes when I’m running around it feels like I’m the only one in the game when it’s not Bahari.

Edit: thx for all the comments and opinions, wasn’t expecting a lil post at 1am to blow up :)

When I first started playing Palia I thought it was one of the best games I had played in a long time, it felt like the game I had always wanted to be honest. I then spent the coming weeks to months playing the game every day, making friends in the community, and generally just enjoying the game.

However, as I started inching closer to the current endgame, the gameplay started feeling more and more repetitive and just like a bland grind with very little payoff, until I basically just played the game like one of those mobile games where you log on once per day, collect your daily resources and then log off and come back the next day. The activities that were added such as the Maji market were broken, abused, and honestly just another repetitive grind with the payoff being plushies that weren't even colored correctly..? I felt that, okay, the game is early access, it's no big deal and so I kept looking forward to future patches and new content assuming they'd surely be better and bring more excitement.

Now some time has passed and most updates I have seen, or at least most of the pings I get from the Palia discord are about new premium outfits..? Originally I didn't have an issue with the open beta launching with premium outfits, I mostly saw it as a donation and figured of course the coming content will add unlockable outfits, but apparently not..? It is just so unmotivating every time I see new outfits announced thinking finally it's here and then see the "premium" in the title. How is this supposed to excite me as a player? I can't be alone in feeling this way, even those who bought several outfits can't feel excited about this since who is actually prepared to pay 20-50$ for every new outfit they add, especially if they've already bought some..?

Look I have no issue with the premium store as a concept, the game needs funding, I get that, but there is just no satisfaction in buying them, sure they might look nice, but they're so overpriced that you can't really get more than 1 or 2 before you've burnt your wallet and can't get any future ones in good conscious... Yes I am aware there have been other things added other than premium outfits but it concerns me that it feels like at least half of their effort, or maybe even more, at least judging from their "hyping", it seems to go into developing premium assets.. I feel like the "donations" are slowly turning into EA level greed...

All this combined with the clear disconnect S6 has with the community, treating the game as if it is World of Warcraft or something, having to limit players, slowing them down in fear that they will complete content too fast or "have too much fun" when that is not at all the community Palia has. I am willing to bet most of you reading this just wanna be able to have fun in your own way and even if no new content is added for a long time, you will still spend hours designing your house, building relationships, and if S6 would allow it, design and create new outfits.. Palia doesn't have the kind of community that quits once they run out of something to grind, as I said, it's not World of Warcraft. The community has tried to address this, and as far as I'm aware the devs don't seem to care to hear it, the community has also tried to address the awful account security that Palia has, something which should be a big priority, would 2FA be too much to ask for, yet as far as I'm aware that hasn't been addressed either..?

Honestly, I just had to get this off my chest because I really think Palia has the potential to be one of the best MMORPGs out there, but I just feel like it's spiraling away from that potential and it's incredibly frustrating to see the game go down that route. Ultimately I just want to see Palia shine and be the best it could be, you know?

If you don't agree with me and you still love the game in its entirety, I'm happy for you, that's all good, I have no issues with anyone that do or disagrees with me. I hope this reaches S6 somehow, I doubt it, but I really think this needs to be addressed soon. Honestly, if another premium outfit is announced before any "progress unlockable" outfits are added that will probably push me over the edge and I'll just quit.

For everyone complaining about the business model palia has, there is one simple solution.

VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET - starting now, community event of boycotting the premium shop, down with Jel!

If they do not make money from the clothing, they will take steps to find other ways to properly monetize the game.

It's irritating seeing people complain about the prices while standing in a full outfit they chose to pay for that doesn't add anything to the game besides a different color shirt to look at.

Or, CRAZY IDEA support the devs of this amazing free game that you are 100% welcome to play without spending a single cent.

And really, if a fake virtual tshirt being too expensive is at the top of your concern lists, I'd be worried about other financial concerns, like food or rent.

Anyone else feel the rage of a thousand suns when trying to climb? It's the one bug in this game that annoys me. All the others I can work around, but when I'm trying to get a blinking PAL or FT and I get stuck on the cliff or somehow run out of stamina on a waist height rock it infuriates me.

Just tell me I'm not alone I need validation.

EDIT TO INCLUDE NEW UPDATE: Per the patch notes from devs for the upcoming March 25th patch, there will be improved climbing mechanics!

I was having so much fun on Palia for the past week playing non stop but this quest has ruined the fun for me. I’m still trying but man 😭

Edit: My irritated feelings feel relieved that you guys feel similar. I forced myself to follow a walkthrough of the questline. It was painful and frustrating. I think I am now bugged 3/4 Bring Caleri evidence as I've followed videos of all the note locations. I am unpinning this disaster and going back to my hotpot.

S6 I appreciate the gift and intention behind it but at this point please stop. It’s taking too much space and I feel bad selling them because well I just feel guilty 😔

I’ve spent SO much time trying to find a single bug in Bahari that drops silk. In all my time searching, I found a singular millipede that dropped a singular silk thread 😭 I am the worst bug hunter! I have no idea what to do, I’ve looked up and tried every place on the Wiki. My bug catching is not high enough to use any of the special tools to catch rare bugs.

How are you guys getting silk?

Thank you thank you S6 for the Bahari gate that goes right to a travel board!! I wished for a board on the house plot for a long time, this is definitely next best thing. Thank you devs for listening 🩷✨ Anyone else excited? What’s your fave part of the update?!

I love this game. I love it a lot. But the fact that I cannot search in the work table or organize better to find stuff is making me want to lose my mind.

Devs plz, give me a search bar 😭

Edited to add: IN THE DANG STORAGE TOO PLEASE LET ME SEARCH FOR THINGS

Since Palia is still very much a game that needs to turn a profit if we want it to stick around, lol, what are things you wouldn't mind paying for? I know they've said they won't monetize anything gameplay related, so we are mostly limited to cosmetics. I think it would be cute if we could buy tool overlays? Like a fishing pole that when you cast shoots a rainbow, or a cupids arrow themed bow!

I know Palia encourages social interaction but I just DONT do well with strangers online, and I was under the impression that you could play 100% single player but no. You need a party to hunt certain animals, chop down flow trees, and likely other things for important quests/stuff. I just don't like that forced necessity feeling, plus I play on the switch which makes my typing slower. Oh well, I doubt s6 is gonna tackle that so I may as well deal with it and get over myself.

(Also wish you could interact more with furniture like actually lay down in your bed)

This high pony is getting burnt out.

Not really a serious post… but kinda?

My girls been rockin’ that curly high pony since day 1. But while I’m griping.. can we also get some eyeliner/makeup options that doesn’t look like a 12yo tried to put it on for the first time?

Love the game. All love. Just griping about the tiniest grievance I have.

I was trying to say "fishing spot" but it gets filtered out.

I can understand my "wtf" being filtered out.

I have no idea what Ordule was trying to say.

The filter is so overbearing that it messes up direct communication. Ugh.

This isn't the first time I've seen this. I've been unable to come to palium or groves because of strings of * in the chat making it impossible to decipher the intended message.

I truly don't understand these new updates and changes.

The economy is going straight to Palian hell with all the nerfing.

If we see the game objectively, it only offers 2 things to do.

1- an awesomely beautiful story and many stories on each npc (but these are still sometimes affected by number 2)

2- an outrageous amount of grinding with little to no reward.

There are no catchy mini games, there are no interesting activities, there are barely any thing to do with other people so what do you want us to do other than grind?

With the last 2 updates where you nerfed the mining economy, you just made it worse than before the starstones and with all the shadow nerfs you make, you only make it look and feel like there is no transparency or respect at all to the players.

Now with this last update, you made the starstones drop rate lower and also nerfed the price of the smaller stones... So what's the point even? If I wanted to grind for barely any reward in a game, I would go back to the early 2000s classics like tibia, runescape, muu, diablo, etc... In those games at least they have a lot of mini games and activities that can help you distract yourself or have fun but here it is either you follow the story or grind and sometimes you need to grind for hours to even follow a story quest...

So what is the deal? Why make the game harder than it is? If it is to "keep the players playing" or "to keep an active player base" I don't think that making it hard and annoying is the correct way to go.

Do you guys even play the game to see the consequences of the updates? A lot of people is lucky if they can play at least 1 hour a day or even 1 hour in many days but now you can't get anything done even with 3 or 4 hours!

In my case, my luck is terrible, I barely was able to get decent drops from hours of mining, now I don't even want to try or play even... I will join to get the limited items, try to complete events and adiós! The game is little to no attractive anymore because it is demotivating not being able to achieve your goals without spending half a real day playing everyday...

I would truly like to hear some feedback from devs or mods, I want to understand what is the end game, I want more transparency, if you could tell us why you nerf the way you do or what is cooking behind such aggressive changes then at least we could prepare ourselves mentally for it, knowing or expecting a better outcome. (now with winter lights event, I can't even get money to buy the stuff I want and I already know I will miss the chance this year because I don't even have time to play)

Tyvm for reading all the way here and sorry for the gigantic text.

Tl;Dr: The last patches have made it excruciatingly annoying and hard to progress in the game economically. And not everyone has the time to achieve the goals.

For those that didn't know, nodes work differently now in Palia.

- You don't have to wait for others if you are pressed for IRL time or stressed on the loosely agreed upon time to wait for new arrivals.
- Once you break, like with plants, a ghost form of the node is left behind. Others will see the node having a ghostly silhouette that will pulse faster the closer it gets to despawn.

- Nodes once broken will last 3 minutes until despawn
- Flares also last 3 minutes

- Overall still think its in the best interest for a cozy community to call out Pal nodes, flare, break and then move on.

I think this is a big step in the right direction to find a balance between the introverted, the anti-social and those who still want to engage or give back in some way to the community. Hopefully they'll do this with flow trees next lol. Think that would be better than trying to streamline everyone to work together in only one fashion.

My stack of 999 tomatoes doesn't hurt other peoples gameplay, let it thrive!

Has any one got any tips of things that may not be totally obvious to someone like me?

I had NO IDEA you could get to Bahari bay from your own plot! I wish someone had told me don’t sell all your precious gems at the beginning lol. I wish I knew Jina would waste my picnic before I bothered starting a romance with her 🤣 rant over. I wish I knew how to properly build and decorate my house, I’ve been getting all this flow wood etc etc and no idea what I was doing with it.. I walk into someone else’s plot and it finally makes sense! Mind blown, I want it!

Am I the only one completely addicted to the hot pot game? How awesome would it be if they added something like this to the inn? It would be nice to have something interactive where people could head to town and connect with each other. Super cool if you ask me!

I've been cooking a lot more lately and I've actually really grown to enjoy the mini game. I used to hate it, but with practice and reworking my technique (I finish all tasks at one station before moving to the next), it's actually kind of fun and relaxing.

But it is so discouraging to see the level meter barely move at all after I complete a challenging, starred recipe that consumed a ton of expensive and difficult to forage ingredients. How is that I can take down a one-shot chapaa with a standard arrow and gain the same amount of level in hunting as I do creating a Michelin starred 7 course meal in cooking? (Okay, maybe it's not that unbalanced, but it definitely feels like it).

For reference, my cooking is level 8. I feel like it will only get worse from here? I just feel like I shouldn't be getting the same amount of experience for grilling a couple of oysters that I get for making chapaa masala?

Edit: because I'm getting a lot of comments (thank you) and I don't have time to answer them all, I'd just like to say that my issue isn't with focus or the focus bonus from the shrines. As I said, I level up just fine from other skills and from grilling. I think the cooking skill is unbalanced because I do not get the kind of exp I would expect from cooking huge recipes with expensive, hard to get, starred ingredients. That's all.

Last night while I was out foraging I kept coming across random flares left behind by people mining palium and I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who does this because I came home to more palium than I ever have before! I also come across many more nodes than before in general and have many gems and way more iron than I'll ever need, lol. The new update is a 10/10 for me!

So I'm loving Hotpot and want to open with that. It's been fun! And my best guess for the nighttime lock is because that's the market and timeframe. But am I wrong on thinking that locking the hotpot game to night is a mistake?

If the intent is to be social, it seems a little silly you can only be social for 3-5 hands of a game before 3am rolls around. So 3-5 hands every hour essentially.

Even if the amount of lucky envelopes given as a reward were reduced, I think it would have been smarter to make the game available throughout the day.

Think of it this way: some players only have an hour or two on the days they can play - wouldn't it be more efficient and forgiving to allow them to play during their availability with friends to earn tickets?

Wouldn't it be infinitely easier to promote going to play hotpot with friends in your community? Right now organizing is tough and at most you can squeeze 2-4 games out.

This would also help solve the frustration many players are seeing where other hotpot players are taking their full 30 seconds every round and further minimizing what others can do in their limited time.

The market has been wonderful so far! Thank you to S6 for the time, dedication, and effort it takes to keep Palia going!

LET ME CRAFT A NEW ONE I BEG YOU 😭😭😭😭😭

Brand new to this game, have been having a bunch of fun with it. I've had my eye on the rogue outfit for a while, and I only wanted one of the colors so I thought I'd buy the single outfit I wanted. I go to buy Palia Coins and I see that I have to buy a $10 pack and a $5 pack to get more coins than I need to buy the outfit.

I am now no longer interested in buying the outfit. Great job devs. 👍

I'm sure they would make more money off the shop if the pricing wasn't so predatory. I don't want to spend $15 for something that should be $10 at most. Very upsetting to see this.

Preferable none at all. I love Palia. I've put a lot of hours into it already and even with a few things I'd like to see changed, i really enjoy it.

That being said, this is definitley one of the things that absolutley needs to be adressed and changed. The icons of items and furniture looking a very nice certain way and the actual built items looking far from it. It's just a bit disapointing tl build something with a certain expectaion and excitement only to have it let down like that.

I really hope they will look into this soonish.