Announcements & News

[center][img]http://flightrising.com/dropbox/words_on_wind_001.png[/img][/center] Welcome to the first edition of [b]Words on the Wind[/b] - a semi-regular update that discusses community topics and questions. In these updates, we plan to get more [i]on the level[/i] with everyone and provide as much information as we can, straight from the admin team to you. This will, we hope, provide a good dialog in which you can get answers to some of our widely-asked questions in an easy-to-remember place. While we won't be able to get everyone's questions or topics covered, we'll certainly try to! [center][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=ann&id=979903]So let's kick it off![/url][/center] [more] [b]Mistakes were made.[/b] [indent]Yes. Yes, they most certainly were. So, a lot of you have noticed that over the past few weeks, your familiars may have been acting somewhat...[i]unfamiliar[/i] when you attempt to visit them each day. It doesn't happen all the time, but it can make the experience quite frustrating, especially when your pool of familiars grows! Just so that everyone is on the same page, we'd like to explain what is happening when this error occurs, and why we needed to alter how the feature works. It stems back to a time when [i]Flight Rising[/i] was in much worse shape than it is now in regards to latency and response time. The site was suffering some seriously bad lag issues and slow load times. As a result, some of the most seemingly quick tasks became elongated and sometimes never completely finished running. This meant that in some cases, familiars could be bonded with several times in one day, or they could bond without rewarding goodies whatsoever. To combat this we had to make the familiar bonding feature require both the successful countdown of one bonding turn, and one reward yield. If either part fails, the task reverts, as if it never happened, and an error is instructed to be shown. We have all become quite familiar (for lack of a better word) with this error, when it's something we only intended to happen rarely, if at all. Obviously, the bonding feature should not be failing as frequently as it is. This is one of the number of things we are conferring with Lightsky about. In addition to many new improvements on the backend, this is on our list and is a [i]top priority[/i]. We don't have an estimate for everyone right now, but it's [i]definitely something that will be addressed.[/i][/indent] [b]Those bestiaries look really nice! Will you be making them available for sale later on?[/b] [indent]Unfortunately, the [i]Flight Rising[/i] team is spread out all across the continent, so we do not have a central location, and are not equipped to maintain a store that ships physical items. Organizing large print-runs and maintaining a stock of books year-round is not something that we are prepared to handle; however, if there is enough interest we could look into a third-party print-on-demand option for this and future bestiaries that prints and ships the books directly to you as needed. We are overwhelmed by the positive feedback, and thank you for your interest![/indent] [b]Do you have anything planned for Halloween or Christmas?[/b] [indent]Not specifically. The holidays of [i]Flight Rising[/i] are centered around a world of dragons and the 11 elements within it. While it might be possible for a spooky tie-in during October or a winter item during December, a Halloween or Christmas-centered event is not likely. [/indent] [b]When does the [i]Riot of Rot[/i] Start?[/b] [indent]The celebration of plague (we celebrate the oddest things on this site...) begins on [b]October 27th[/b].[/indent] [b]So, what about that dragon economy?[/b] [indent]So, this is where things get a little fuzzier, right? An economy is a very interesting beast. The main observation here is that dragons are an inexhaustible resource, and thus have a high chance of depreciating in value the longer the site exists. We are seeing the effects of that. This is something that we mostly anticipated, but could not entirely predict until there was some data to work with. We created the exalt mechanic to help provide somewhat of a 'floor' for dragon commerce value, as well as allow you to make some money directly from the site for breeding and leveling them. We believe things still have some time yet to truly stabilize, and its anyone's guess how things will look in a few months after a few more Dominance battles, new features, and new breeds or genes play into the mix! We should also reiterate that the purpose and design intent of breeding in [i]Flight Rising[/i] was to allow players to create the dragons that they're going to love and be happy about, and reach personal goals for colors and patterns. We think it's doing a great job of that so far! The hundreds of hatcheries, tumblr posts, forum threads, and sales methods that people are making use of are astounding! Unfortunately, breeding for a guaranteed lucrative profit is not likely to be sustainable (as it's highly dependent on player interest/supply & demand). We would like to mention, though, that we looking at additional options for beneficial alterations or enhancements to both exaltation and Flight Dominance, but one of our main priorities right now is getting [i]Flight Rising[/i] in a place where registration can be opened freely again so that more users can help in taking advantage of a lot those dragons you all are breeding, which leads us to...[/indent] [b]How's registration looking?[/b] [indent]The awesome folks over at Lightsky have actually been making this a focal point for their work in the last few weeks. We have been jamming with them on optimizing the code for this system so that if a new registrant gets a confirmation e-mail, they'll be able to get through the full process. If it fails for some reason or another, the site will provide the proper feedback so that the registrant can try again. We feel really bad about those who were unable to finish their registrations last time, so we are making every effort to make sure that they have a successful attempt during our next window. We are not sure when the next window will be, but I anticipate it will be soon after those changes are tested and ready to go![/indent] [b]I haven't heard from anyone about my post in the Bug Report Forums![/b] [indent]We think there may be a bit of confusion about the purpose of this forum, so we wanted to make sure everyone knows how our team interacts with it. The main function this board performs is that it is a collective place for players to report if something in [i]Flight Rising[/i] is not functioning correctly. We use a variety of different methods to track these reports, but due to their volume, it is not the best place to get individual attention, and there isn't really a great way to wrangle or service specific requests. It is also extremely important/beneficial for us to collect similar reports into single threads, rather than multiple ones, as duplicate threads just push the board topics faster and interfere with our ability to chronicle and gauge the severity of each issue. If you feel you're experiencing a bug, give our stickied topics and first few board pages a browse just to be sure - it's likely that we're trackin' it somewhere! If you feel that you have a customer service-type issue, while a bug report is a great place to report the problem to us, you are going to best be helped by contacting us using the [b][url=http://flightrising.com/index.php?p=contact]Contact Us form[/url][/b] via your Flight Rising email address. This provides us with a timestamped receipt of your inquiry so that one of the staff can take care of it as soon as possible![/indent] [center][img]http://flightrising.com/dropbox/comm_spotlight_001.png[/img][/center] [b]Community Spotlight: Incoherrant's Dragon Breed Size Chart[/b] [indent]Over the weekend, we had a chance to catch a glimpse of a fan-made size chart for all of the current Flight Rising dragon breeds! The attention to detail is awesome, and we wanted to share it with everyone! [b][url=http://incoherrant.deviantart.com/art/Flight-Rising-dragon-size-comparison-405169714]You can check out the full-size image and give Incoherrant some love on deviantART by clicking here![/url][/b][/INDENT] [b]Community Spotlight: "Dear Mom and Dad..."[/b] [indent]The writing of "hatchling letters home to the parents" started a few weeks ago, but the team just wanted to gush about how awesome of a community activity it has turned into. For those that don't know what we're referring to, a number of players in the community have taken to writing messages from the perspective of their dragons. These messages would be sent back to the owner of their dragon's parents as a sort of "letter home." The letters would be filled with amazing storytelling, sometimes artwork or gifts! We're pleased to see that the recipients of these letters have even been sending replies from the perspective of the parent dragons! We wanted to call this out because we can tell that it has made many of your very happy, and it sounds like an amazing way to make new friends! If you haven't received a letter, we encourage you to write one! Just one of the unique things that makes the Flight Rising community so awesome.[/indent] [b]When are Clanbound Scatterscrolls being issued?[/b] [indent]We're experiencing a bit of delay on rolling out the Clanbound Scatterscrolls (we're getting the e-mails sorted and the workflow finalized, as well as making sure the items are primed and ready), but expect these to start going out within the next week or so. Thank you to everyone for bearing with us![/indent] We'd also like to acknowledge those who stepped forward and voiced their concerns and feedback about [i]how [/i]we respond to topics, and [i]where [/i]we respond to topics. We understand that having to search for answers or clarification to things can be really frustrating if its all over the internet, which is why we wanted to start this newsletter. No one should have to hunt. If we do answer or clarify something (on tumblr, deviantART, Facebook, etc.), you can be darn sure that we will make mention of it here, too. And that's all for this issue! Don't worry, though, we will be back with another very soon, and will be watching threads and community activities like hawks! Thanks again!