“Someone asked about CP stats, so Mythra obliged and painstakingly went through all of our internal logs since 2014. 736,037,996 CP have been earned by all players since January 1, 2014. Earnings by Year: 2014 - 61.382 Million 2015 - 54.845 Million (This does not include the 173 Million CP given out on Christmas) 2016 - 156.216 Million 2017 - 129.478 Million 2018 - 160.944 Million My ability to post pictures is not working, but here's a chart: https://66.media.tumblr.com/4f0df38c031a67cce3f4c70135d3420a/tumblr_pgiar7ozvb1w16t78o1_1280.png Here's a chart for 2018: https://66.media.tumblr.com/1e80828292bac41c534397f03f701d0e/tumblr_pgiar7ozvb1w16t78o2_1280.png And another: https://66.media.tumblr.com/7b685578c70185ca018c0fb4d836bcbe/tumblr_pgiar7ozvb1w16t78o3_1280.png As to be expected, the "top" days for 2018 were the first and last day of the July 4th event, and the TIB 7th Anniversary Event (August 19) Here's the Top 10 CP-earning days: All-Time Top 10 CP Days Rank Date CP 1 2017-12-16 10,254,120 2 2017-12-17 9,708,477 3 2017-12-08 9,329,826 4 2018-06-30 8,054,972 5 2018-08-19 7,812,375 6 2018-07-01 5,897,345 7 2018-07-07 5,273,984 8 2016-04-10 4,739,296 9 2018-02-24 4,461,970 10 2016-06-26 4,256,237 ”

10/12/2018

“This has been a busy week! We're preparing to publish a major update to Heroes of Dire that adds a lot of previously promised features, bug fixes, and drastically improves the new player experience. Part of that includes back-end database fixes which also apply to The Infinite Black Expansion, because it uses the same database system. Next week we're going to officially announce the new Dire game, using a modified Heroes of Dire engine. It will focus on fast battles, PvP and gambling without all of the PvE exploration junk that got added by kickstarter stretch goals. The idea is to create a more exciting and fast-paced experience, and be less confusing to new players. It's a 100% "clean" one-time purchase with no pay-to-win mechanics. (It will have additional paid vanity-only features)”

10/05/2018

“Steam Marketplace I ended up working on the Steam marketplace all week. Steam's interfaces are from the 1990s and very poorly documented. I basically have to make a request, blindly parse what comes back, and fix bug after bug until it magically works. It's going well now, however. I can pull down Steam players, their stats, achievements, and item inventories, then add/remove items, verify ownership, etc. The next step will be figuring out how to link Spellbook accounts with Steam accounts. This gets more complex since a lot of people don't use Steam, or might share accounts. There will probably have to be a special "Move Item to Steam Marketplace" system, where the item is removed from your in-game inventory so it can't be traded or sold in the middle of a Steam transaction. Either that, or the Steam Marketplace transactions could all be done in-game through a new auction interface. I think it's worth the effort because players obviously want a way to buy and sell items for real money. This lets them do it safely with a real market exchange. Rings of Night I've always liked RON more than TIB. It solved many mechanical problems, is more casual friendly, and I think has more challenges. Capitalism disagrees with me, however. There's 100x more players in TIB than RON. We'll be investigating the idea of merging RON with TIB-X after the expansion has a playable beta available. Many of the changes in TIB-X are inspired by RON, such as the resource economy, and more difficult NPC challenges. Unannounced Cthulhu VR MMO Steampunk tesla-coil sniper rifles kick ass.”

09/21/2018

“Already done, as well as ignore list, and most of your general game settings.”

09/21/2018

“If we ever made TIB a paid game, it would be more like $4.99 app store and $19.99 on Steam. You'd still have all the same challenges and goals, but the items, experience, ships, and corporations would be earned through effort only. It keeps a lot of people from playing the game when they see you can buy good items etc. This would be a long ways off. The expansion is going to be free-to-play, and would have to bomb pretty hard through 2019 for me to consider it.”

09/20/2018