I have to agree with basically all of what Shepard said.

Also, I can't find myself agreeing with the whole "10$ Patreon supporters get a free rare egg every month" is that not an advantage, as well as affecting the economy of the game? Why are Patreon pledgers exclusively the ones allowed to potentially make more PC than non pledgers (& yet disallowing art shops because "it's unfair advantage")?

edit: I think the playing field is more even now, since with the new update [Jan.10.2018] art shops are allowed and now users have the potential to earn money through that, so previous paragraph is now irrelevant haha

I know it is quite difficult to come up with rewards for RLC spending, so I'm not entirely sure either about a viable solution to make pledging "worth" it. Everyone has a different standard to that so it's not plausible to please your entire paying userbase. It wouldn't be such a problem for me if the reward was account-bound (but then you could get duplicate eggs that you can't get rid of, so not viable), or if the rewards just at least didn't impact the economy of the game. However, if the dev(s) want it to be like a pay-to-enjoy premium subscription game, there is no ill judgement from me, I understand completely. Funds are needed to keep the game alive & continue its active development, games are a business after all.

Honestly the game for f2p players isn't very engaging, and probably won't be for a while, unfortunately. But I'll still stick around to see the game hopefully improve and grow. ^^

@shepard

I think I'm understanding you better now, and in the interest of improving the game, I'm wondering if you have any examples of idle games that you consider good or done properly? Especially in regards to things like waiting times, activities, premium perks/content, etc. And engaging...ness...(engagement?) in general. ^^

Hmm, to be safe, that may need to go in the suggestions/improvements thread if you decide to reply, eheh. I know it's related to this topic, but still not exactly on-topic, and I don't want to possibly get you in trouble with another forum mod. And you can quote me if you like, so people know who sent you to a different thread... xD

I wouldn't say that this site is super engaging but the question is if it needs to be. Games like this one rarely are, and in my opinion doesn't have to be. This is the type of game you vist a couple of times a day to check on things, look in the forums and maybe post something there.

While I see what people are saying about Patreon supporters having an advantage over free to play players, I personalty don't see that as a huge problem. Sure it would be nice if everyone could stand on equal ground but in the end this is a game, not an arms race. Does it really matter if some people spend money and get things done faster? As long as all things the site has to offer are achievable by any player that is.
I completely understand why some people would get upset by the fact that the Patreon supporter have early access to features, I personally view it as they are paying to be beta testers and making sure that everything will work correctly when the rest of the players get access to the feature. I rather have that then buggy features being released to quickly.

While the game is slow, that doesn't inherently has to be a bad thing. For me personally it is nice to have a game where you can slowly work towards something, making little but steady progress at a time. It is a welcome contrast to a lot of other games where you feel the need to get things done quickly. Sure, there is room for improvement but the site is still new and there is plenty of time for it to improve.

At the moment i feel like the place where this site really shines is the forums. Now a drays it's rare to find a relatively small community full of nice people. Almost every time i go the the forums i recognize most of the people who has been posting. It's nice to see that most of the time there are som new posts and topics but not an overwhelming amount that you see on bigger sites like for example Flight Rising where the community is much larger (i love the FR community, don't get me wrong).

To sum up this mass of text: this type of game doesn't necessarily have to be engaging in that sense and can afford to have a slow pace.

I can see myself staying here for a very long time.

I'm gonna go ahead and chime in as someone who hasn't played very much of this game yet (for reasons):

Part of why I can't find the motivation to keep playing this game very much currently (and I say "currently" with a hopeful outlook on the future), is because I really don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. I started this game without any kind of Patreon reward, and feel like I have a massive disadvantage over people who paid.

The waiting periods for every single step along the way are pretty demotivating, and make even checking into the site for just a little bit somewhat tedious and not very engaging. (This is my main problem actually; I feel the site is really trying to get people to spend RLC to shorten waiting like a lot of mobile games do.)

There's a difference between spending RLC for certain special rewards, and spending RLC to even be able to play the game at an enjoyable (if casual!) pace, and unfortunately I feel pixpets is currently the latter.

That being said, I do enjoy some of the gameplay mechanics, but hope there will be at least some changes made to cooldowns and the like.

Anyway, I want to put my two pixcoins into this :

Pixpet isn't really the most engaging site - but it'll get there. I think part of the reason is that the whole site is pretty much on a timeframe except for the forums. Hoards, cultivation, cooking, pixpet eggs, and even auctions. I love the slow pace idea Komodo is going for, but if someone wants to go a little faster. It should be allowed. Plants take way too long to get products from them and grow. The game in its current state makes it feel like 3 days is not a lot.

About the patreon, I don't think it is pay to win at all and this is coming from a non-patreon user. In fact, I'm grateful on how this site takes that approach. The currency cannot be traded into PC which is pretty nice. If Pixpet tickets or SPC do become available in other ways in small amounts, it would be good enough for me. The price tag, is relatively small: If you pay $10 you could do 11 automatic hoards and get a free rare pixpet egg once a month - which isn't all pay to win to me.

However I agree that a rare pixpet egg should only be a one time and thats it like noo-long. Otherwise, it should probably be in tiers 4-6. $10 for a rare pixpet egg a month is really harmful to the current pixpet economy.

I do see myself to be on here for a while, since i have nostalgia from Dragonadopters. I do want to see where this goes in further developments, since i know this has so much potential!