Prophetess of the Parsnip Deity @malthenys - Tumblr Blog

contac

#Get money get paid #Dappervolk #dv #Not technically but whatevs

slimold

goosebird and turnip kids

#Pretty~#Dappervolk #dv #dv art

lineko-dv

no talk me im angy

#Good edit!#Dappervolk #dv

edenstorm

Guess I’ll put this out there since the game’s been out for a few weeks.

Honestly? I don’t see DV lasting long as a site. At least not as it is now.

This is just reiterating a lot of sentiments I’ve seen elsewhere, but... I see it going the way of Aywas, Sylestia, FV, and sites like that. After the launch hype dies down (in 3-6mo) there’ll be... maybe a couple hundred people tops online at a time.

Why? Well I mean. I’m not sure exactly how much content DV has at present and how much they plan to release in the next couple months, but unless that amount is much higher than I suspect it is (one, maybe two towns past the obvious underwater place no one’s gotten to yet) there just isn’t enough content to keep people around. Once people start achieving their goals and the actual content of the site runs dry, and later town stuff becomes available to everyone via the speed runners, I suspect the site will start to die. There’s just not enough content to keep people engaged, and the constant grinding to get anywhere past the stat gates gets boring after a while.

As much as I hate to admit it, FR does just have a better formula. The content is user-made, goals are set by individuals, and because of how the breeding/geneing system is, there is *always* new content if you just look for it. It’s almost impossible to run out of things to work towards. Sure, I grew bored of FR, but it wasn’t because of a lack of content. I didn’t quit out of boredom (like I did at the Sylvie’s Mine stat gates during DV’s beta) or frustration with the mechanics/community/staff (as I’m seeing a lot of people do now with the premium gacha) but instead because I just... grew out of it, I guess. Even then, it took me *6+ YEARS* to do so, just because I was never bored or confused on what to do next. There was always new content and 9/10 times I was excited about it.

Dappervolk doesn’t have that going for it. The way I see things going down is a new town added once, maybe twice a year, seasonal events a few times a year, and new premium items once a month. You can collect all the items, all the pets, maybe save up for the really expensive stuff... but beyond that (very limited) set of things to do, what is there? Besides the forums of course, but you can find forums on every other petsite. The community would have to be truly outstanding for it to draw in any number of users on its own merit, imo.

Really, besides a short story and an (inconsistent) art style, what does DV have going for it?

I think the best comparison I can make here is that DV plays like a Pokémon game and FR plays like an MMO, and that’s why one is a success and the other is almost doomed to fail.

Pokémon games have short stories and a limited number of tasks you can complete (of varying difficulty) before you’re just... done. DV only differs in that there’s a forum instead of replayability - you can’t reset your DV account just to play through the story, at least not with any level of ease. They’re limited because they’re meant to be played for a short time before they’re dropped and the next game in the franchise is picked up. This tactic, unfortunately, does not work for a browser game, because there is no next generation of games to buy.

MMORPGs have a story, usually, though by and large it’s optional to the player’s enjoyment of the game. There’s a lot of customization and nearly every character is unique. Everyone has a different playstyle and aesthetic, and new content is released frequently. They don’t want you to put down the game and pick up another, they want to keep selling you things from *this* game, so their goal is to keep you actively engaged. This tactic works well for a browser game, or really any game that aims to stick around for a while.

That, of course, isn’t even touching the fact that DV DARED to add a premium gacha to the site after the backlash that they got during beta, or the fact that the art style they promised isn’t even really what was delivered, or the fact that customs still aren’t open and I haven’t seen anything as far as an ETA on that... but then again, I also haven’t said much about the issues with FR’s management, so fair’s fair I guess.

Anyhow, soapbox rant over. I’m personally enjoying the game thus far, I just suspect it’s not gonna end up staying like that for very long if things keep going the way they are now. I sincerely hope DV gets better because I think the concept is cool and the art has potential (if they’d just go back to the more painterly art style from the beta...) but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

malthenys

This is a fantastic explanation of some of the reasons Dappervolk doesn’t work as a petsite. I’d like to offer a possible reason for that: it isn’t, not really.

The pokemon comparison works well enough, but I’d argue it’s more like a browser otome. I came to the Dappervolk beta just when Eldarya, Beemoov’s otome with petsim elements, was starting to get unbearably user-unfriendly to play (that was two years ago and the site’s still around, if you were wondering (I was)). I found DV to be very similar to what I wanted and was familiar with, with NPCs you farm for affection, cute pets, and humanoid dressup. Despite liking the story and mechanics, I got bored of it within a month, mostly due to the lack of good minigames, and therefore the difficultly getting potatoes.

As of full release, I really have no complaints aside from premium things (and I consider that par for the course, this game is by far not the worst offender, even with gacha) and intend to play for quite a while. I think the common comparison to Flight Rising does Dappervolk a disservice, because the two are not very similar at all. The blame for that falls partially on Snail Games, for advertising their game as a petsim only, because that won’t attract the sort of audience really fit for it. I do think there is an audience, like myself, out there. Snail Games just needs to find us.

edenstorm

This is an excellent explanation and a point of view I hadn’t even considered, and it makes a lot of sense.

Considering this, I think the main issue boils down to this: Snail Games has no idea what kind of game they’re trying to make. It just seems like a muddle of genres - there is, like you said, the NPC affection aspect that’s very reminiscent of the otome genre (which I’ll admit I had to google, I’m that unfamiliar with it lol), the avatar dressup feature that was so widely advertised as being like other dressup/avatar-oriented sites, and there’s the pet collecting and customization option like a petsite has (which was the main focus of the ads/KS).

The problem with all of it is that I don’t feel they do any one of those aspects particularly well. Again, not at all experienced with the otome genre, so this is an outside perspective on that area of the game and as such absolutely feel free to dunk on me for errors in judgement therin.

NPC affection/otome: this could be just me, but I feel a lot of the NPCs are... shallow? That’s not to say they’re badly written, I would take a bullet for mycel and visindy any day of the week, but I definitely feel like they all really only have surface level personality traits. Pretty much all of them can be summarized in one sentence. I also don’t feel a lot of the characters get enough dialogue to really fix this - you get a surface level backstory and an option to either cheer up or put down the majority of them, and then some letters saying what a great friend you are if you spend weeks doing daily quests (with the same repeated dialogue.) I want to know more about the characters! I’m curious about some of them, the lines are there, but they just don’t lead anywhere! There’s bait on the hook and I’m biting, DV, reel me in! Again, not an expert at all here, but I feel like I’d definitely be more enthusiastic about dailies if the characters felt a bit more real/dynamic and less static.

Avatars: first of all, please bring back the beta art style, gosh I miss it. Second, there’s just... a lot of potential they’re missing out on here. Custom recolors of existing items (done by the user, only allowed to change hue/saturation/luminosity, original lines and shading can’t be altered whatsoever; maybe a built-in tool for this on the site, as hard as that would be to code?) would be awesome. Definitely more skin tones and anatomy alterations, and unique class-specific items - hair and most eyes shouldn’t be class specific, animals should get something more special that ears and tails, galactics should get skin tones that aren’t blue, etc. Really, ways to ensure that almost every avatar is unique and that everyone has access to the same aesthetics if they want them is all I’m looking for. I also feel that items you can add to your wardrobe should be limited to the town you’re at and the towns before, not after, and that the stat gates should be lowered slightly to encourage people to *actually play the game* since they’re trying so hard to sell it as having RPG aspects. But hey, that’s just me.

Petsite: petsites need one of two things to be really successful. A) a huge number of pets to collect, some rare and hard-to-get, with a small amount of customization options (very very rare custom items or just the ability to dress the existing site art, like DV’s current custom system or CS’s pet dressups) or B) the ability to almost fully customize every aspect of the pet (like FR’s whole thing). DV is in a weird middle ground. They have super rare custom pets and *extremely limited* pet customization (seriously, read the pet accessory page, you’ll get a headache guaranteed) but they lack a good catalogue. Getting every pet on the site is a super reasonable goal, especially with how infrequently new towns are added. Getting accessories for every pet is only difficult because of the amount of art you’d have to make or commission, but again, certainly feasible. My biggest issue with this part of the game is that it just... doesn’t feel customizable, even with the option to do so. What you can do is so limited compared to other petsites that it just doesn’t feel worth it. I would never commission artwork of a customized DV pet because it doesn’t feel like *my pet*, it feels like another creator’s character that I’ve slapped a bow on, because that’s exactly what it is. I’d be alright with that if the collecting was the challenging/fun aspect, but again, that’s simply not the case.

In short, DV’s trying very hard to be a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ sort of site, but it just doesn’t really work like that in the end. It’s much more feasible to stick to one or two aspects and really do them well than to do all three well. In this case, it’s absolutely better to be a master of one than a master of none.

#I'm replying in tags this time cause I've already commandeered OP's post once I don't need to do it again #But one of their tags was #'but for those of us that were sold a petsite/avatar site it just feels kinda like a flop yknow'#And that's the crux of it isn't it #You didn't get what you paid for #Literally in the case of KS backers and bundle purchasers #And that's more that enough reason to feel bitter and unsatisfied #Also their comments on the systems being underdeveloped is spot on #Otome games do have a tendency towards shallow interaction #But that doesn't mean we have to just accept that #According to the site Snail Games has at least one active writer on staff after all #How difficult would it be to modify even just flavor text?