Patrons and other people that somehow got past security,
It's finally over. At long last, the clouds have broken and a ray of hot steamy internet has finally landed firmly in my lap.
To cut a long, and much repeated, story short - since the 10th of September, I've had very poor internet following a storm which more or less cooked my internet modem, and since the 28th of September it dropped to a completely and utter crawl, meaning besides occasionally popping into Discord on my phone, the minor amount of internet I have had has been dedicated to 9 hour long (per episode) uploading sessions.
Webpages wouldn't load. Steam couldn't connect and mods couldn't download. Overall it's been a complete nightmare. And then I suddenly got litigious and all of my problems went away - isn't it funny how the world works.
So, finally, I can release episode 2 of the Patreon exclusive update series I'm calling "The State of Things" - a 20 minute or so bi-monthly update video talking about ideas, mods, upcoming content, or stuff that's happening. This episode talks about the dead internet, but also plans for Ko-Fi, and the ever growing Rimworld names list.
Now as I haven't had any stable internet at all for more or less the past week, I haven't been able to respond to Patreon messages since the 28th of September, and the mobile web page was, unsurprisingly, useless, and I couldn't access the messages to even reply to. I could read them, but not reply.
Rest assured I'll be going through your messages ASAP (It's currently 3:46am, but I wanted to get some sort of blanket update out there) and you should have a reply later today.
Overall, thank you for patience. This is the rare occasion where it was entirely out of my control so I've only really been able to watch as my internet company floundered around and kept not following up on their promises.
Apologies if this is weirdly formatted firstly, I'm sending this from my phone!
Just a quick update to say that today I finally have an engineer visiting to fix* my internet issues and I'll be able to get back on Patreon hopefully either late today, or tomorrow, to respond to all of your messages and catch up with everything.
I have another Patreon 'exclusive' video to post as well, but I've been uploading around the clock just to keep a video everyday going up on the main channel, then whatever I can get up on the second channel, so the pipeline has been very much clogged. Apologies to anyone who watch the Elise and Sam channel as well, the content has dropped off pretty significantly recently because of the internet issues and I have to prioritise the main channel, but hopefully after today we'll be back to the regular three videos a day.
I'll go into a bit more detail as well in the main Patreon video, coming either today or tomorrow, but I did speak about a spoooky vampire month (as I think I've finally found a way to get the Rimworld vampire mod playable without breaking the game) alongside a CK3 Princes of Darkness playthrough on the main channel, but at the pace of the current Rimworld series I think it might be delayed to November at this rate. However, that will still be going ahead as soon as possible!
That's all for today, big post coming later!
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Shittle to Grandson Krap,
Sam Mr Samuel Streamer The Artist Formerly Known as Roll1D2Games
Hello friend, (there's only one of you, figure out which one it is between yourselves)
So the schedule this week has been basically upended by my ISP being absolutely useless, and not calling me back about the tech issues, but it should be resolved by the end of the week.
(For those who didn't hear about me complaining about it in the many episodes/discord posts this week; my internet stops working for long periods of time, the ethernet on it is dead entirely so I have to use extremely poor wifi assuming it's even working at all. I had to upload two episodes from my phone which used up all my mobile data!)
As a result the second channel was put on a pemanent-until-the-internet-is-fixed hiatus, and there have been entire days without content, which has only happened a handful of times in the past three years, but I might finally start Mass Effect over there as suggested by a lot of people before.
Main channel's new series will be starting tomorrow because I was caught a bit off guard with the Reem series ending and only had a few half-modpacks prepared, so I'm putting the final touches on one of them.
I am also planning on going back to CK3 in a few days because it's been quite a while and there's probably a lot of new mods to take a look at, along with a few updates since I last played.
So, fingers crossed, we may be back to three videos a day in the coming weeks, along with the tea reviews.
Podcast set is almost complete as well, for those who have been following that, I just have to do some technical wizardry and that should give me a new stage for a few non-gaming videos to go up on the Elise and Sam channel!
And thank you all for your patience, there have been more than a few sleepless nights with the lack of videos this week and it's starting to catch up with me a bit, but hopefully we're at the tail end of it now!
Your misdeeds are told from the Swan King to Reimus,
Sam Mr Samuel Streamer Formerly Roll1D2Games Society of Narcolepsy Honoury Member Award Recipient 2021 xxx
I have to keep this post short because I don't have many bits.
My internet has now slowed to less than 1mbs on my desktop. My internet provider has no idea why, their engineer has tested the cables and the box with no faults, and I can't figure out why either, and I like to think I'm pretty handy with tech.
Having used up all of my mobile data uploading today's episodes, I'm going scorched earth with it, and completely resetting my PC back to factory settings. I'm also replacing all of the internet hardware in my house (ethernet cables, routers, you name it) and hoping that it actually makes even a bit of difference.
So tomorrows episode I will prepare now, but after that there might be some technical delays as I try and fix things.
Out of the 23 unread messages on Patreon, I was able to reply to roughly 6 before I couldn't load any more and even that took 45 minutes, so I'll use Elise's PC later today and log in there!
Hello watchers of content, Or at least I hope you are otherwise you're getting absolutely SWINDLED.
I have a fresh heap of content for you. I'm marketing it as exclusive because only you all here can actually get the link to watch it, and, even though it's poor quality and not actually that good, I'm hoping the exclusivity will keep it afloat, in the same way the housing market has worked for the past 50 years.
It's basically just a monthly, or maybe weekly if it's a busy week, update video on what's going on with the channel, and the other channel, and the other other channel, along with anything else relevant to the whole Youtube thing.
I didn't have as much time to edit this as I'd have liked so there aren't many visual things going on, so I'd recommend just throwing it on in the background, if you're actually interested.
Just an extremely quick post to say that I've been locked out of the Patreon for a few days now because of 2-factor authentication issues (my mobile providers fault, not Patreon's this time!) and I've only just regained access.
Apologies for any delay in responding to your messages, I've got a backlog of over 50 to reply to which I'll be going through between now and tomorrow morning so you should have a reply by midday tomorrow (UK time)!
Firstly, many apologies that I haven't replied to messages in a couple of days, the Jilp series ended up being pretty taxing to try and swap game versions and wade through the mods for Ideology immediately after the Ohm ending. Not to mention all the usual thumbnails, workshop collections, bug-fixing etc AND then the first episode save crashing irrecoverably! I was pretty much working for 24 hours solid to get it ready for release by the end of everything!
I'm currently putting a bit of depth and spin into the current series. I know a lot of people enjoyed the slightly more down-to-earth Rimworld series exploring Ideology, but I'd like to do that, with the difficulty still in place, but try and find a better middle ground than where we are right now. A little ambition going in to such a difficult pack when Ideology has changed so much, so I have a very silly way to balance it based on the last couple of episodes. Won't be a full series restart, just sort of a soft-reboot with Jilp aiming for the Archonexus, with a fairly on-brand twist. ___
Content Delays
More importantly, content over this weekend might be a little less than usual (maybe a day missing) depending on the situation. Firstly, I was planning on returning home this weekend anyway for my Mum's birthday, but I was told this morning that my Dad was taken to A&E because of sudden heart problems at work, so I might take an extra day at my parents house depending on the situation with that.
Secondly, I have some intensifying long term mental health conditions, unrelated to the previous situation, YouTube etc, that have been a distraction. This isn't something I have discussed before, and won't be discussing again, but second channel content will be indefinitely suspended. ___
Anyway, apologies for the delay in replying once again! The second I hit publish on this I will be going through all of your many messages and responding right away. This months Patreon lists are all updated, and I'll get them uploaded to a public document so you can double check your shout outs as soon as I find five minutes!
As always, thank you for the support, whether continued or new! Last series was a massive success and the most successful series on the channel to date, which pretty much assuaged any worries I had about the rebranding killing the channel - I feel like we're properly cemented now!
Back to regular schedule soon,
Sam Mr Samuel Streamer The Artist Formerly Known as Roll1D2 Games
Just a quick post to clarify what's been going on the past week or so, and to offer you all animal names in the current Rimworld series seeing as it looks like it's going to be a long one, and the names list is very long right now, so it might be an opportunity for some of you to get a name in-game slightly earlier as one of our rare and exotic animals!
First section is just me talking, so if you're not interested feel free to jump to the end to see the names list and how to submit an animal name!
___
Firstly, thank you all for bearing with me over the past week and a half, it's been one of the busiest weeks of my life.
Lockdown in the UK ended for the first time since March 2020, and the majority of my family and friends I hadn't seen until the Christmas of 2019 because I live on the other side of the country, so we had a flood of people all within the same two weeks. Then one my other friends had to cancel the original date we had planned, and could only visit this weekend - so on top of the second Christmas, pre-recording, and other stuff, I had another unplanned visit right at the end of the week!
So hopefully that should be all of the visitors and guests dealt with until Christmas, and now I can finally play video-games undisturbed, instead of having to put up with selfish house guests wanting to bring me Christmas presents.
As a somewhat related side note, some of you might remember the time when, during a hilarious wood chopping incident, I fell and cracked the base of my spine. Well ever since then (even now as I'm typing this) sitting down for extended periods has been uncomfortable at best, and painful at worse.
I haven't gone back to speak to a doctor since I originally injured it, mainly because of the whole pandemic thing, so at the suggestion of a few people in the Patreon Discord channel, I bought a fancy new chair which should make recording content a little easier going forward. I ordered it almost three weeks ago and finally they've given me a delivery slot today.
So hopefully if all goes well I can actually start recording content this week without being constantly in pain, which is a nice bonus, though probably wont have the same motivating effect.
___
Animal Names
I floated this idea during the Patreon shout outs in the episode that went live today, but if anyone is happy to take an animal name during this series then you're more than welcome to. We have a lot of exotic and interesting animals that I'm unlikely to use again in a hurry, so it'll be a pretty unique name request.
One of the reasons I ask is that out of the 217 name requests that I currently have, we've managed to get through a whopping 23 of them. I never thought I would get to the point where we would have more patrons coming in than Rimworld recruits, and I am exceedingly grateful, but also feel extremely guilty offering a reward that is becoming more and more impossible to uphold!
If you are on the list and would be happy to take an animal name, with any sort of preference for animal type, creature, or anything free, then please send me a message here and I'll get that updated for you ASAP!
___
ALSO, more content soon.
I want to shift focus on to the main channel a little bit more so we don't end up with Rimworld stagnation.
The second channel ended up getting far more of a time investment than it had any right too, I just felt like I had an obligation to make the Skyrim series good because it's the final of the Elder Scrolls trilogy, but in the future we'll stick to games that don't need such a time investment.
I'm going to finish (I promise) Space Haven, it just ended up being quite a time consuming series at a point where I had absolutely no time at all! I also have some Paradox planned content soon that I can't talk about yet, but you will SEE.
I have quite a few games on my short list, I want to try and cycle through them once every two weeks unless we have something really good going on, but we'll see how it goes! ___
As always, thank you for your support in allowing me to make hideous content and even be somewhat entertaining.
The prospect of getting a real job where I work for 8 hours a day then come home and relax without having to juggle business documents, developer emails, fan messages, and be protected by laws and unions rather than operating on a platform that, at anytime, can take your money, job, and years of your life at a whim, sounds far too luxurious.
Incidentally if anyone is hiring for any job going right now I might know someone.
Rumours of your misdeeds are told from John the Cowman to Bert, sentient stegosaurus,
Mr Samuel Streamer The Artist Formerly Known as Roll1D2Games PETAs Most Wanted
Sorry about the slow replies the past couple of days, firstly Elise (who normally handles the patreon lists and updates the end card) has been busy with a university essay.
Secondly, I've been doing what I can but whenever I send a message it marks the message as read and nothing happens - I've spoken to a couple of you on Discord where it has been possible.
Patreon have acknowledged a problem with the inbox system, but nothing about sending messages.
I'm most likely just going to use Elise's PC later to log in and reply to everyone, so apologies about the delay! It's just another problem in the long lists of issues with the new Patreon inbox system that I've complained to support about.
If you have sent a message over the past few days and you haven't had a response, if you could take two seconds just to send another messaging saying "ping" or something similar, just to move it back into my inbox, that would be great!
Apologies again.
Sam Mr Streamer The Artist Formerly Known as Roll1D2
Hello there people who may or may not have farming implements for hands,
Today I wanted to share something I've been threatening to share for the best part of a week or so now, but I've just not had time yet enough to put all together onto a document to spread out into the world.
And, below all of the first topic, at the header titled "CHANNEL RELATED UPDATE STUFF STARTS HERE" I'll be talking about, unsurprisingly, channel related update stuff about videos, content changes, and plans for the future of the main channel.
My secret, and very much patented, Future Rimworld series ideas.
In this magical document are the upcoming, or early planning, for future Rimworld series that I've been quietly working away on, amid a lot of other things. Though it's only very basic, it's an outline that I'll be using to work on for future series mod packs, and I wanted to get some feedback from you all to see which ideas sound more interesting.
And on that same topic, if you have any entirely fresh and new ideas using mods that I might have not previously seen, or if you've got a plan for one of the bigger mods we've used before, then by all means throw them my way.
So I'll go through a couple of my favourite on there with an idea for how they might play out. __________________________________________________________________________________
Player colony which consists of only playable animals, recruiting regular humans is restricted. Maybe some other anthropomorphic factions present in the world that are neutral.
Tech level: Rimworld Spacer-level WITH Magic (No Glittertech, No Rimfactory, No Androids) Play as the sentient animals from the Pawnmorpher mod
Make all human factions hostile, Empire as the main enemy for the Rimwar win condition
ONLY animal colonists
The animals are also magic (Rim of Magic)
Leader is Fat Larry (loves animals, also an Ice Mage since his Crypto accident)
Goal: Wipe out all pure human factions, RimWar Victory condition
So, this is quite a simple one on the surface, but pretty bloody complicated. In all honesty, I was working on this as the next mod pack for a play-through, but it ended up being a bit more complicated than I anticipated.
As we found out in the Glittervoid play-through, it turns out that not only can you morph people into animals with the tagging rifle, but you can also tame sentient animals that can be controlled like regular colonists. That gave me the idea of a full on Animal-Human world war, using RimWar (again, similar to Glittervoid) but with the main gimmick being that we could only use and recruit people who were either animals, or had been transformed into animals.
I was testing it last night and it was originally pretty promising, until I realised that people which you transformed in the Mutagenic Chamber are incapable of any skilled labour at all, which makes perfect sense, but means we would never be able to build or craft anything, and, to hopefully no ones surprise, that also tends to make the game a bit more difficult than usual.
One thing I did like about it though was that when used in conjunction with the animal gear mods, the combat bionics mods (that we used in the Robodaddy series), and xenobiotic patcher for full animal surgeries, you were able to make some insane combat animals. Think of the Mandrill, which appropriately had drill arms, or one of the combat Joris' which had his legs upgraded and ran faster than a jet (Santa series), but a whole army. The weakness of being animals was quickly evened out by being ridiculous superpowered animals.
The Empire and other high tier factions might have trivial advantages like being able to craft things, or opposable thumbs, but things were actually surprisingly well balanced, all things considered. __________________________________________________________________________________
Museum: Status: Planned Soon (2 - 3 Series)
Jon Hermond, Martinius Lastname, and other relevant characters being the quest to create the ULTIMATE collection by stuffing every creature possible into biovats (similar to the concepts from Dino Madness and VOID series) with heavy emphasis on caravanning into different biomes to collect creatures added by new mods such as alpha animals, magical menagerie, Rimbees, megafauna and others.
Tech level: Rimworld Glittertech-Level (No Magic, No Rimfactory, No Androids)
No robots, but advanced tech like Genetics is permitted
Smaller, but more varied planet with extra biomes for extra critters
Animal labour/training mods so they can be useful
Animal utility mods like kill for me, giddy up, etc
Goal: Complete a pre-determined checklist of Animals such as end-game Dragons, GeneticRim Hybrids, Big Dinosaurs, Horrible Cthulhu monsters, ALL Joris’
So this was a pretty fun idea that came out of the Skyrim series, on the second channel, where our goal is to collect all of the things - weapons, armour, animals, you name it. Then it occurred to me that we could just do the same thing in Rimworld using the power vats that we used to capture the enemy monsters in Glittervoid.
Most of the gameplay would be around purely collecting - probably slightly easier difficulty than usual series, with all sorts of strange creatures and animal mods, like Dragons, Anima Animals, GeneticRim, etc but before we started the series we would have to come up with a final 'list' of animals to collect as our win condition.
This would give us a lot to do, not only the mad scientist cross breeding stuff, but caravanning out to various different biomes to gather up animals, breeding programs and incubation with the dragon mods, all while carefully making sure that nothing happens to our pristine collection. Think of it as Genecorp, or Jurassic Park, version 2.0. This time with an actual end goal. __________________________________________________________________________________
Those are my two personal favourites right now, but I think I'm most excited for the big Seven-Deadly Sins cross over arc, as it has a bit more of a theme than the usual yearly Rimworld crossover series that we end up doing.
As I said before, if you have ideas for themes, feedback, and additions to these mod packs/campaigns, or entirely new ones, then let me know below and I'll have a read through and see what I like! __________________________________________________________________________________
CHANNEL RELATED UPDATE STUFF STARTS HERE:
So, firstly the main channel. In the first time since October 2018 if I'm remembering correctly, for over a week now the main channel has only had 1 video a day going live every day.
Now for those who don't know, or don't follow them, I have also been uploading to 2/3 other channels as well, so some days there were actually 6 videos going live on some days.
Firstly, we have the second channel, where I do much longer video content, RPGs, basically classic "lets play" style content. On the second channel, every day at 9am is Skyrim Elysium, which is a huge mod pack for Skyrim designed around collecting items and filling up a grand gallery to display everything, with the idea being that you get to see as much as Skyrim as you can in a single play through. Then at 12pm I upload daily Binding of Isaac content, which I ran a few episodes on the main channel, but decided to move it over to there after the pretty lukewarm reception.
Then there is the Elise and Sam channel, where Elise and I do daily tea reviews, essentially a 30 minute - 1 hour daily podcast style content where we try different foods, sauces, drinks, etc. Originally it began as an advent calendar style series on tea that we started on the Roll1D3 channel, but moved it over there because people wanted more. Then along with tea review we also do a daily Q&A series where people send us questions to be answered, while we play a game in the background, currently its Dark Souls but that won't be lasting much longer, then we'll start a new game but keep the Q&A format.
Finally, we have Mr Streamer's Professional Channel which generally consists of me doing silly voices across short videos, and I would highly recommend AVOIDING IT AT ALL COSTS if you value your brain cells or current IQ at all.
_____
Now with regards to the main channel, a couple of things worth mentioning.
A) I have a plan for the rebrand, I'm basically going to jump on an idea very soon, it requires a lot of tax documentation updating, URL/Username grabbing, etc, but that will be happening in the current months. I'll also be reaching out to artists to get a Youtube banner designed.
B) I do plan on returning to more than one video a day on the main channel very soon, but I wanted to try some lightly scripted videos as a nice change of pace, consisting of games that have popped up on the Patreon polls and things that people have told me I'll be interested in. That way it will hopefully keeps things fresh and interesting!
I just need a bit more time, so when a couple of the 5 current series end across the many channels, then I can dedicate that time to the rebrand and new content. Just waiting to wrap a couple of things up first.
______
Finally, an apology to any of those I have yet to respond to on here who have sent me messages. Not only do I continue to have issues with Patreons messaging system (messages not correctly marking as unread, replying not sending etc) but I'm getting a lot of daily messages so it's hard to keep on top of them all with the current content load, but I'll clear some time in my schedule later today (might skip Isaac - sorry!) just so I can reply to all of you and make sure we're all up to date.
Also, oh god I just realised this as I was typing, I don't think I published the full names list did I? Did I? I don't think so. Either way, the new names list/spreadsheet is live, and will hopefully allow me to keep up with all then names that you've requested a lot easier now. Before I was juggling them across Discord, the Google Form, messages on here, and it was a nightmare. The bonus to this is that if, at any time, you want a name changed or updated to match the current Rimworld series, then you can send me a message here and I can change it in case it pops up. As a reminder, I'm still prioritising people who haven't had in game names yet, and we're way behind on free space, so bear with me! ______ And as a very final note for today, I hope you like Joris', because I've heard there might be some coming to a platform near you soon.
Of course, as always, thank you for your support. I apologise about not being able to keep up with the messages, and I apologise for the 1 episode a day on the main channel, but I'll rearrange some slots soon and try and streamline things now!
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Dictator General Pain to Derrick Lorge,
Two things this time, IN-GAME NAME REQUESTS and the regular SHOUT-OUT/END CREDITS LISTS FOR APRIL!
This months shout out and end credits lists are now completely and available for your viewing eyes here, mainly to ensure that people who've asked for a different name/no shout out are getting that.
I've also combed through months of Discord messages, Patreon messages, and collated the google form answers from a while back into a big old list of in-game names that people have requested for Rimworld. This is probably worth you double checking as well, just to ensure that you've got a name on there and it's what you want.
If there are any errors with this or you want something changing please message on Patreon asap, I haven't slept in quite a while so I wouldn't be surprised if I made one or two mistakes that I wont pick up on until after a good nights sleep!
If you want to update the name on that spreadsheet at ANYTIME then please send a message here on Patreon and I will update it ASAP! This way you can adjust your name to fit a particular series or theme.
Please note we have 184 names on there and only room for a select few name per series, so as always I will be prioritising those who haven't had a name yet.
I have also added a "last added" column so I can keep track of how long it has been since a person has had a name added, that way they can come back to rotation sooner!
__________
I've been very busy recently throwing together the new Rimworld modpack and everything else that comes along with it, including my personal favourite pass time of using the Steam Workshop without going full-on medically insane.
There will be a second series on the main channel starting again very very soon, I've had some requests to look at mods from CK3 developers (which they actually gave me an early preview build for but I just didn't have the time with the new Rimworld series starting).
I want to jump into a whole bunch of the random games that we've polled including the Sims, They Are Billions, Star Sector, etc and try out some more edited comedy-style videos, and see how interesting they are, and see if people are interested in seeing more. Might be a nice way to find a new series to latch onto, but hopefully it will keep things fresh for you all as well. __________
I'll be writing a more coherent and sleep fuelled post soon on here discussing that in a lot more detail and I'll be sharing the legendary Rimworld Series Design Doc and going into detail about some of the future series that I have planned for the channel!
I haven't yet responded to many, many messages, but I have read them all and saved them neatly in a folder so that I can reply to them when I've actually slept. So you'll all get a reply from me tomorrow at the very latest!
Until then I have ran out of words and mental capacity so please leave my house, you're scaring my children.
Tales of your misdeeds are told from General Joe to Martinius Lastname,
Sam Mr Streamer Roll1D2Games Onlyfans top 0.2% staggering sarcasm specialist
Hello friend, only one of you is a friend, argue between yourself who that is,
Here are the updated lists for the March shout outs!
Feel free to check these if you want to double triple check you're getting a shout out/end credits mention this month, if not then you can ignore EVERYTHING about this horrible post. ___
PLEASE READ AT LEAST THE FOLLOWING NUMBERED PART TO AVOID BIG CONFUSION:
1) You will only be on ONE list, End Credits people are ONLY on the End Credits lists, but you will still get a shout out! 2) Lists are OPT-IN, if you haven't sent me a messaging saying "Hey can I be on the list please!" then you won't be there, but feel free to send me a message and it will be sorted for you ASAP. End Credits (CLICK ME) - End Credits AND the shout out that goes along with it (Executive producer/Mr Streamer Special tiers) Shout Outs (CLICK ME) - Just shout out people
___
(I do in two separate lists so I can import one into Photoshop for the end credits screen at the end of all episodes)
Please note: While I'm confident the lists are correct, because of Patreon tax changes we realised that those on the shout out tier were not being included in the shout out list, because Patreon deducted taxes putting you below the line for a shout out which is a horrible system and PATREON SHOULD BE SHAMED, SHAME.
We have since fixed this, HOPEFULLY. If you're not on the list and would like to be please message on Patreon ASAP, and I'll get you added in.
A couple of people have messaged overnight in between making the lists and putting them live, you'll be added ASAP, don't worry!
Thank you for your patience, the new system is basically up and running so going forward this should be a lot, lot easier!
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Fat Larry to Cracko,
I have an announcement regarding the future of the channel as a business, and that is my very first employee.
Why?
Well quite honestly ever since I crossed the 100k subscriber mark I've had people clambering on to try and get sponsorships, and collaborations, and networking, and sales etc, easily 10+ business emails a day.
Then Youtube CEO Susan decided, in her infinite wisdom, to remove playlists as an automatic feature, meaning I have to do more channel management.
And now Patreon, in their constant quest to break what works fine, have complicated the messages features and now it always shows me as having unread messages when I actually haven't.
Overall, utter nightmare. So much so that it got to the point that most of my time/effort was in the admin work; editing, uploading, adsense, accounting, playlists - and all of this across two channels.
Basically before I'd even had time to start recording I was absolutely exhausted.
___
So, after deep introspection, I have made the decision to seek help.
Mental, physical, and spiritual help.
And a channel manager.
Without any further ado, let me introduce the new channel manager: It's Elise.
Elise, as in my fiancée, and girl what I live with, and star of the legendary Christmas series.
She will be the channel manager. It's a very simple choice, she is competent, and if there are any technical issues I can walk all of about twenty-feet and solve it. And I trust her, because if she does anything wrong I can THROW HER INTO THE STREET TO FREEZE AND BANISH HER FROM MY HOME.
Which, as I understand, is not a legal course of action if an actual channel manager makes a mistake.
__
What will her jobs be?
- Managing Patreon lists, and making sure the right people are getting shout outs (something that previously took me hours and hours and hours)
- Managing playlists and making sure they're all looking nice and tidy
- Making sure the accountancy stuff is up to date, ready to be sent to my actual accountant
I'm sure I'll think of more stuff for her to do at some point. Basically this leaves me with recording, video editing, thumbnails, and uploading. And mod packs. And ideas. And Discord/Email management.
So a regular amount of stuff left for me to do.
Ha ha.
___
So fingers crossed this will save me a little bit of time but add a nice amount of polish to the channel as a whole!
She's already started on making some playlists for the main channel of forgotten or old videos that have been fished out between the cracks of the Youtube sofa, that honestly, after watching a few, should have been left there forever.
Eventually, when she has earned my trust, I might even let her edit some of my videos. But baby steps, she might prove to be an untrustworthy evil witch.
___
Please watch attached video for extra fun bonus content, and a somewhat better explanation along with 40+ minutes of rambling, life plans, a horrible challenge, platemail dancing update, and even more!
If you have to chance to watch the video above please do, it was recorded mid-rimworld episode at 2am so it might be a bit rambly, but basically I'm taking one day a week off going forward, specifically Saturdays.
I'll record two videos on Friday night, like I always do, but instead of both going live on Saturday I'll instead put one live on Saturday and the other on Sunday.
I've been thinking about this for a while now (the patreon series was supposed to be a weekly different game to give me a day off!), just because I haven't had chance to do anything. Genuinely, I wake up, record, try and finish everything early enough to sleep, and repeat. I can't remember what I did yesterday of note, and I can't remember a week before that, it's just kind of blurring together at this point.
To be honest, don't be surprised if I do end up using that day for some weird extra content, one off episodes, that type of thing. I enjoy making videos - a big part of why I started the second channel was so that I could actually play games without the pressure of a shit load of viewers on my back. But monotony doesn't make good content, I feel like I'm just jumping into episodes, doing what I can in a time limit, and ticking off another day.
DON'T GET ME WRONG HERE, I could do this forever. I am very persistent (or stubborn) and could very much work every single day, but life is going past extremely fast and I want to slow it down a bit.
I also fully understand if you want to drop your patreon pledge - if netflix emailed me and said "by the way on sundays you can't watch anything" I'd probably be pissed too. As always you never need to explain that stuff to me, people have messaged in the past apologising for lowering/cancelling and sincerely that is not necessary, with everything going on in the world I get it 100%
Anyway, I'm going back to recording episode 1 of the new series and it will be seemless, you'd never know I stopped midway through to make this post because I am powerful.
Thank you for reading, I apologise if there are spelling errors I don't have time to read it back many thanks.
I'm putting the finishing touches on the Patreon-In-Game-Rewards-List-Tracker-2.0 (name pending) and I need your submissions for it!
Below is a very basic google form, asking what name you'd like in Rimworld, that would help me a bunch if you have the time to fill it out - if not, don't worry about it, I still have the old lists to work from and add into the new form manually, but this goes into more detail and will hopefully allow me to prioritise new Patrons getting their names in.
Only I can see the information you enter, and it's very basic stuff like Patreon name, in-game name etc, no personal information or anything like that.
___
Secondly, the poll for the new Patreon series is now underway! It will close 24 hours after this post goes live, so submit your requests now. As always, the top result will necessarily be the guaranteed one, but I will use this as a guide for what type of content you want to see, so don't feel disheartened if your submission/picks are the top results!
There has been some concern over vote manipulation, which is a bit of a shame as really we only do these polls to help me out and to give you guys the content that you want, and if we end up with a series that only one person wants following massive manipulation then I'll just end up cancelling it and having a bit of a sour taste towards it, so really it doesn't help anyone. There are more votes currently than active patrons so it's obviously not working as intended.
As with everything, there are the tools included in Patreon to help facilitate so many in-game rewards, or shout outs - it's not like Rimworld or OBS are going to support Patreon API anytime soon, so a lot of what we do is on a basis of trust, and ultimately I'm doing the best I can with the time I have available.
I really don't want to have to present a handful of games for you guys to choose from, so we'll try again next month with the same poll system and if the same vote problems persist we'll have to try something different entirely. ___
Also a personal thank you to the new Patrons that have messaged me recently - I have seen all of your messages and I will be replying right to each of you individually after this post goes live! I'm a few days behind because of the xrays a couple of days ago, the novel of stuff I've had to read for combat extended, series endings, and constant, ongoing second channel technical problems etc etc.
___
Tales of your misdeeds are told from the Guinea Pig of Marriage to Gen. Joe,
Sam Mr Streamer Roll1D2 Convicted, acquitted, and reconvicted of breaking the laws of time.
1) Those on the Executive Producer end credits get a shout out by default, you will only be on one list.
B) The in-games names have a pretty significant delay, if you're one of the people in Discord who have messaged about a name in the name request channel then I will get to you eventually! I am prioritising people who have never had an in-game name before because the list is growing faster than I kill people in Rimworld!
(Though with this current series that might not be true for long)
3) I have renamed the "In-Game Friend" tier to "Virtual Friendship" tier just because it added unnecessary confusion with the "In-Game Names" list, which is entirely separate. The tier is identical though, just renamed! ___
If you are STILL missing from a list, I have no idea at this point. Maybe I'm imagining this whole thing and none of you are real. Maybe there is some magical technical curse deleting your name. However, in the event of either of these things being true please message me again ASAP and I will offer a thousand apologies and fix it.
Incidentally I might be looking for a channel manager OR someone who can add an extra couple of hours to each day. Manager and genie applicants pending until further notice. ___
Yours sincerely,
Mr Streamer
Sam CEO, CCO, Manager, Director, Treasurer, Actual Executive Producer, PR, HR, and Sous-Chef of Roll1D2 Inc.
Glorious Patrons, and other people who have somehow snuck in here,
I have two lists ready for your viewing pleasure. Well, not really pleasure, but two lists that you can check to make sure I'm doing my job correctly, and full permission to shout at me in the case where I'm not.
For EXECUTIVE PRODUCER and MR STREAMER SPECIAL End Credits: End Credits List
For MIGHT SHOUT OUT and IN-GAME FRIEND: Shoutout List
Edit: Please send me a direct message if you're missing! That way I can easy check dates, tiers, etc and would make things a huge amount easier!
___ It's an overly complicated system, but, for those who don't know, I keep two private lists which contain both your shout out name, and your Patreon sign up name (if they're different), but because some people sign up with their full name I'm not happy publishing those for privacy reasons.
Then I keep two separate public lists which only contain your shout out name for maximum privacy and safety.
As a result, because I have to keep track of potentially three names per person across four lists, I do tend to make mistakes on occasion as I have to manually create these lists. The lists Patreon provides only gives me your sign up name, which is no use for people who want something different or unique! They are updated to the best of my knowledge, ability, and very limited time. It's been pretty tricky keeping up the two private lists and two public lists, and there are almost certainly issues with at least one of them, so as I've written in the documents if you're missing from any I will make sure you are added on immediately and you'll get extra days of shouting out if/when you cancel your Patreon to keep it fair!
I am also working on the current IN-GAME NAME REQUESTS as a separate list, but I might change the system as I've been experimenting with a spreadsheet where I can keep track of the date a name was requested, so that those who have never received a name before are prioritised to keep it as fair as possible.
Unfortunately the name requests are so popular there are still 40+ names right now in rotation, which is just the nature of Rimworld. I might need a better system of offering in-game rewards because it's way too popular to keep up with! ___
Thank you for your patience while I've been super busy with tax season (at the end of January) building the new PC, and going through Rimworld series super fast! As always, your support is massively appreciated and I wouldn't be here without it.
Tales of your misdeeds are told from General Joe to Legal Lee,
Over the past few days I've been building a new PC and that came with a swath of technical problems both hardware, and software, and other problems still to iron out (like the video sync issue!)
I've actually been locked out of my Patreon account for the past 4 days as a result of switching over to the new PC! I use a password manage and getting back into that was a nightmare, only to find that my Patreon password wasn't even saved on the bloody password manager regardless!
So after resetting all of my authentication, I'm back.
There are messages dating back to the 7th that I haven't yet responded to (I respond to every single message so I will get back to you, I promise!), so massive apologies for that - between building the new PC, tech issues, and having to swap back to the old PC to keep on to of the videos I've been stretched very thin, but I've think now the setup is completely finished! ___
I will be publishing the new Patreon names list for January/February supporters going up to March 7th (roughly), so if you're want a shout out or are concerned you're not on the list then you can double check on that and scream at me!
There has also been a lot of queries into the names that are currently in rotation for Rimworld, I will publish a public version of the full list soon. I've started a new system where I track the name to go in-game, the person who requested it, and on what platform, so there is information I'll have to remove before making that public.
Right now we have roughly 30 names still in rotation. This means that any names requested will go at the end of the list, however in the interest of fairness I'm keeping track of names of people who requested names in-game THAT HAVEN'T EVER had a name to ensure they always get first priority. ___
We also hit 100k subscribers on Youtube. I am overjoyed to have such immense pressure on my shoulders on daily basis but at least the shiny piece of engraved tin from Youtube will make up for it - right?
Tales of your misdeeds are told from C-70 to Legal Lee,
Wow I never thought I'd be writing those words again after the great tentacle incident after 2019.
Yes, this is uncensored AND unedited, an extra 10 minutes of meaningless guff and banter that was so bad it was removed from the original. I don't know how that's a selling point in hindsight, yet here we are.
It is that time again where we roll the dice and take a gamble on what YOU, the people, want to see next on the channel.
Darkest Dungeon has been an interesting journey, but, I'll be honest, losing the save game has really knocked the wind out of my sails, and it has just unfortunately become a grind to get back to where we were, which makes it difficult to do daily content without once again going over what we've already done - so I've decided let's move on, and maybe I'll pick it up again in the future with a fun mod pack, or even take a gamble on the higher difficulty.
The new poll is now officially OPEN for 48 hours from this post going live (so that I'm not favouring people who happen to be in my timezone!) https://poll.ly/#/2NNZxx7Q
As always this poll is a guide for me to understand what you all want to see more of - I can't guarantee that whatever wins will be the top series (maybe technical reasons, copyright reasons, length, 18+ content etc) but I'll always try and go for the top result.
NO GAMES ARE OFF LIMITS (with exception to previous exceptions) that includes games we've played previously, or games I've called all sorts of horrible names.
As always the games that fit nicely with the channel will be a huge help (simulators, warcrimes, moddable, you guys know) but I'm always up for trying the oblique.
I have a huge New Years post planned soon, but I'm going to give this post the full 48 hours of visibility before I discuss plans and feedback in my patented ONCE A YEAR SUPER SERIOUS POST Be very afraid,
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Squiffy Ghast to Caiusette Bruntly, Sam, Mr Streamer, Roll1D2, Youtube's Official "Oh no" Award 2021
Vote on the new poll HERE RIGHT HERE CLICK HERE The poll will run for 48 hours or so just to give everyone time to vote!
Greetings traveller, ___
So ends Project Zomboid, literally the most disliked Youtube series I've ever done with sometimes 6x as many dislikes as a regular video.
I won't lie, I was pretty disheartened with this one. The things that I found the most fun and enjoyable about it - driving like a lunatic and restarting (it's a persistent world, the game is literally designed for that) and the survivors mod, were some of the most heavily disliked regular series videos ever. People constantly complained in the comments about not playing it realistically despite the fact it's a game about zombies.
It was quite a tricky game to learn as you go, I had never even heard of the game before, let alone had any experience watching/playing it, that coupled with the no apparent goal but survival meant it was a bit of dud, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and will probably play it when I'm not recording so that YouTube randomers can't whine.
Maybe one day I will return to Project Zomboid, but not anytime soon. ___
And so, with the death of Zomboid, a new series begins and that can be WHATEVER you want (within reason). Ultimately, the poll is to give me an idea of what games you guys are interested in and I'm not going to promise that the top result is what we'll play but 99% of the time it will be.
This series will probably be every other day, simply because YOUTUBE doesn't notify if I upload more than 3 videos within a 24 hour period. That means that whatever the 3rd video is that comes out in that 24 hour period is buried, and if the final video is offset even by a minute then it will bury the first video that is meant to come out. EXAMPLE HERE
At which point I basically have to willing choose a series to bury, and if I do that we get onto the next point which is being shouted at for underperforming videos.
If you post a video and it doesn't perform as well as your regular content, firstly you get a lovely screen telling you you're a failure, then it reminds you that the content wont be recommended as much, and then it gets less views, then you get another "you suck" screen when you post the next episode in the series, etc.
Overall, the channel has actually performed better when only running 2 daily series on the main channel and uploading the extra series to the second channel instead where they wont get buried and potentially risk the performance of the main channel as a whole. ___
The other thing I wanted to briefly discuss was Crusader Kings III.
Unfortunately, it just doesn't do as well as CK2. And unfortunately now that CK3 is out, CK2 doesn't do as well either because the audience is split between the two games.
The big problem for me is that Rimworld does REALLY well, and there's not a lot of overlap between the CK and the Rimworld audiences, so every time I upload a CK3 video Youtube likes to remind me about how badly this video is doing compared to my usual content and how they're not going to recommend it so much as a result, and I get the sad screen that I discussed earlier.
It sucks, I want to play CK3, but I don't want to punished for it, and in 2020s Youtube that's unavoidable. To be honest, I've mulled over moving CK3 to the second channel permanently, but the last thing I want to do is split my audience between two channels because it's more than just the regular workload when juggling two channels, and I would just get mediocre growth across two channels.
Ultimately, CK3 is still in its infancy, and I know when it gets a few DLC like Way of Life and Monks and Mystics for CK2 that it will be a lot closer to the CK2 experience whilst also having a lot of the nice quality of life features that CK3 is known for. It just needs a bit more time in the oven. ___
I'm looking forward to seeing what you voted for, but please god no more suggestions for Nekopara.
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Raymon Lastname to Natsa Claus,
Though I have bravely resisted three offers from Shade: Ladow Regends, various other mobile garbage, and even Paradox themselves with HOI:4, I caved, and took their offer on the Crusader Kings III Ruler Design campaign. ___
So for those who don't know, I recently worked with Paradox for TWO videos. One promoting the free update on my channel, and one to act as a Ruler Designer tutorial on theirs.
Honestly, I had planned on covering the Ruler Designer anyway, they just offered to pay me definitely do it, which I was going to, but they definitely wanted it to happen. So honestly why not - I even told them "I was planning on doing this as a video anyway" (this actually happened) but they just paid me regardless.
The only thing I did want to do, if it is to be a sponsored video, was to make it mine. I didn't want a cookie cutter checklist of points I cover as meekly as possible just to get paid. I wanted it to have a place and tie in to what we were already doing, and the Battle of Crowns mod (stupid) tied perfectly into that. I was able to use it to tick all the boxes for Paradox and get you guys to provide some characters to me to add to the horrible mod, as a nice community thing we can work on together. (As a quick note I added about 20 characters to Western Europe today, so we're really filling out the world, but my god they are seriously hideous)
Ultimately, Crusader Kings built this channel, and was the cornerstone content for the best part of a year and has only taken a backseat in the past week or so because I was working on my stupid mod, and didn't really have any series ideas.
From a moral standpoint, I wasn't even selling anything, and neither were Paradox. It was a free update and they just really wanted me to help encourage people to play the game, so I had no problems with that in the least.
Now with the aforementioned Hearts of Iron campaign they offered me I ultimately decided against it, because that was me promoting a DLC for a game I hadn't played before and couldn't even begin to explain what it offered or changed, so I didn't feel right about that one.
Overall it was a video I was already going to do that they paid me to promote a free update that CK3 players got anyway, and the success of CK3 directly correlates to the success of the channel so it was win-win-win. ___
Now the other video I did was actually pretty good for the channel. For those who don't know they asked me to script/voice/edit a video for their own channel, which had a pretty hefty time limit on it - as far as I understand the influencer manager I spoke to was given the request from the community team pretty last minute, so I was to believe I had around 16 hours to plan, script, record, get b-reel, edit, upload, have them review, makes changes, and then upload again.
This is madness, especially as that day I had Rimworld, Zomboid, and Oblivion on the second channel to record, edit, upload, but the opportunity was pretty good for me as a creator.
It was nice to get paid, especially this close to Christmas and tax season, but ultimately this was a way of me showing to Paradox, and other companies too, that I can actually be professional and hit a hell of deadline whilst also hitting all of my own deadlines too. It was a big opportunity to break out of the "that one guy that makes the funny meme" format and be Mr Games Journalist.
So I took it, even though for a few days it was hell on earth going to bed at 5am after recording my own stuff, only to then wake up at 7am just to make sure I didn't miss any communications with them, and to ensure the content I made got a thumbs-up.
The best part is now I have a video, on a corporate channel, to point to and say "see, I can refrain from war crimes for 30 seconds".
There was also a great delay in the making of that video where they asked me to edit out a part where I said cunt - to stress, I didn't say cunt, but I did say the word 'Akan'. I can only assume that somewhere during the line of an English guy saying a West African word for an American guy representing a Swedish studio it was a bit lost in translation.
That video is a great example of a sponsorship I'm more than happy to do in the future - it doesn't detract from my own channel by randomly slotting a sales pitch in between regular content, and it shows I'm capable of working to the standards of a fairly high tier games publisher! ___
Now I wanted to talk about this stuff here to get your feedback - you are the ones who sponsor the channel on a day to day basis, and enable me to work on the ever changing and terrifying platform that is Youtube.
What did you think of the sponsored content? Are you strictly 100% against it? I just want to hear some general feedback for the future so I know, if another offer like this comes through, that I can accept it with conditions or ignore entirely. ___
As a quick note, I'll be starting a Patreon poll again soon, with some more info on the channel schedule and why things are a bit different in a separate post so I don't make this too overburdened with junk.
Thank you for reading this 4am round-up. Apologies if it wasn't very coherent - Elise is writing an essay and I'm staying awake in solidarity because I am nice like that.
Especially those of you on the Mighty Shout-out and In-game Friend Tier! I have so few of you on there compared to the Executive Producers so please let me know ASAP if you want to be added on! ___
As a quick side note, I will get you guys a big old update post about channel stats, some of the collaboration work I've been doing with GAME DEVELOPERS, and some behind the scenes stuff for the new series!
I've been extremely busy lately with Oblivion on the second channel, the new Rimworld and Zomboid series starting, working on my own CK3 mod which I'm aiming to time for release with the new CK3 patch, along with a new play through of that mod, the two collaborative videos with GAME DEVELOPER (I can't discuss quite yet!), and finally dreaded tax-return season in the UK, oh and Christmas too I guess!
I haven't really had chance to breathe in the past few days, so once the 24th of the month has past, and my collab work and new series are well established, I'm probably going to pre-record some content and take a day just to catch up on some sleep.
The NDA on my other projects will expire then so I can also inform you guys about it! ___
As always, thank you all for the support. Without you guys supporting the channel that this would be completely unfeasible, even as we approach the big 100K mark. And of course another thank you for swapping platforms over for me once again, I know it's a big inconvenience but the ability to message, discuss, and track you guys on this platform is a major headache I no longer have to deal with. ___
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Duffelbag Damarcus to Hefty Shoveller,
Mr Streamer Sam Roll1D2Games Most Concerning Channel Award Runner-Up Award 2020
It's me. Hello. You might remember from a few days ago when I did another post, or when I responded to one of the 140+ Patreon messages I've received over the past 36 hours. ___
What is the Patreon series poll and what rules are there? Well that's a great question, let me sum it up in some easy to digest and relatively innocuous bullet points.
- The Patreon series poll is a poll for Patrons that determined a new series. Obviously. - These will be main channel episodes lasting for a week. - If you like the series and want it to go on longer then vote for it again! - Any game is allowed, except for 18+ games because I'll get my channel banned.
These polls are to give me an idea for what you guys want to see, and control over the channel content. I will try to always play the most upvoted response, but in rare cases like technical issues, copyright issues, etc then I'll default to the next best option.
Depending on the game these episodes might not be daily, but I'll instead try and do a high quality episode every other day. I might also not be able to immediately make a video when the poll finishes and might want to get some experience or ideas for the game you guys have chosen. ___
Secondly, I have received an update from Patreon regarding the Discord role issues that a lot of you have reported recently, basically they have no idea what's wrong. I've attached an email sent to me by Patreon a couple of days ago, so give it a read. I'll update you guys as and when the problem is resolved.
In the meantime I've given the moderators some tools that allow them to give out ranks, just send them a screenshot of your pledge (feel free to censor it, I trust the moderators implicitly but as long it just has the tier on it then it's all good) or message me hear or on Discord with your Patreon/Discord username and I'll set it all up myself. ___
Thank you all for returning to Patreon, I'll do a more comprehensive write up soon where I talk about why exactly we came back and the comparisons, and also a channel progress update with numbers straight from Youtube headquarters.
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Cock Excellente to Robomummy,
Sam Mr Streamer Roll1D2Games Organ Donation Bank's Largest Organ of the Year Award
Friends and suspicious shadows in the shape of my greatest fears,
The new names list is ready and awaiting submissions! If you would like a shout out please direct message me here, or on Discord!
- IF I DON'T REPLY IN 24 HOURS THEN I HAVE ACCIDENTALLY MISSED YOU, PLEASE MESSAGE AGAIN! Those I have responded to within the past 48 hours are added on, but there's no harm in double-checking if you want! - This is a FULL LIST RESET so all names are being wiped to reunify things with the Patreon platform, so even if you think you're on the list please message again when convenient - I don't want to accidentally miss anyone! - Please let me know your Patreon nameAND the name you'd like to be shouted out!
As a reminding, people have said in the past that they would have messaged but didn't want to bother me and I want to reiterate that my inbox is open specifically so I can get messages from you guys, otherwise it's always in the back of my head as a concern, so you're doing me a huge favour by reaching out!
I will also be doing a big old Patreon write up coming in the next few days and we'll open the vote for the fabled FIRST EVER PATREON VIDEO SERIES VOTED ON BY YOU GUYS, EVEN.
Welcome back,
Mr Streamer, Roll1D2, Sam, Gardener's World 2020 Award Wining Cabbage Competition - Third Place.
I will try and keep this one a bit more brief and explain everything up front, and go into detail afterwards. That way if you haven’t got much time, or attention span like me, it should be a 30 second read. If you have even less time I am going to write big things in bold, so you can read what is relevant to you, this isn’t meant to be condescending but instead to help facilitate speed.
- The transfer to Patreon is going ahead, opening on November 1st - If they make significant changes before we swap platforms we will hold a vote. - Cancel your Ko-Fi IMMEDIATELY (yes right now), unless you absolutely cannot stand or use Patreon at all.
- Patreon will be the only platform with tiers and rewards. - All backer rewards will remain active from today until November even if you cancel.
- If your sub runs out between now and then, no rewards will change, names will not be removed from shoutouts until Patreon is active.
____
What’s going to happen next:
So, after a huge amount of responses and some things I hadn’t yet considered, I have decided that the transfer to Patreon is going ahead, opening on November 1st unless they make significant platform changes between now and then. I will not be reopening tiers until late october to try and discourage people from joining early (as some of you already have, which is appreciated but unnecessary yet and I haven’t set everything up so can’t give rewards!)
Why we’re waiting:
I am delaying it until November because of some great points made in response to the last post. Specifically, we don’t know if Patreon can be entirely trusted yet, they may have rolled back the problems we had but there is nothing stopping them returning things to how they were before. They made the original changes on the 15th of September, so we’re giving it a good month and a half cooldown to see if there are any announcements or alterations. If they make significant changes before we swap platforms we will hold a vote. If you guys aren’t happy about the changes we won't finalise the swap.
What you need to do:
Cancel your Ko-Fi IMMEDIATELY (yes right now), unless you are not interested in rewards or tiers. Patreon will be the only platform with tiers and rewards. Patreon offers the ability to track rewards so I will only be doing it there. It has an actual built in tier system unlike Ko-Fi, and the systems I built were a complete failure, so keeping up with Ko-Fi rewards is extremely time consuming. As a result I will basically leave Ko-Fi alone from now on, I’ll give an occasional update and copy-paste behind the scenes stuff over there where I can, but I won’t be doing shoutouts or names or anything for Ko-Fi.
What about my shoutout/names/etc:
As I have to manually keep track of rewards and backer perks with Ko-fi all backer rewards will remain active from now until November even if you cancel right now. I won’t be doing a reset until November 6th rolls around anyway as that is when the current Ko-fi cycle ends. That also gives Patreon a couple of days to process payments and any delays that might occur. If your sub runs out between now and then, say tomorrow, no rewards will change. I’m not going to remove any names between now and Patreon.
What happens to Ko-Fi/What if I HATE Patreon:
Ko-Fi I am keeping as a platform for those who don’t want to support/cannot support via Patreon. I know there is some bad blood towards Patreon due to some of their policies (I’m poorly educated on this subject) so Ko-Fi is an alternative in that regard. I know that some regions/payment methods are preferable via Ko-Fis system then Patreons, so that’s also there for you guys as well.
____
I will ping the Discord and make a final Ko-fi post on the subject towards the end of the month when the Patreon page is live and polished and open for business!
To sweeten the deal, I’ve worked out some issues, and will hopefully be able to do the supporter sunday idea over on Patreon as an early exclusive, with public access after that! I’m still a big supporter of no exclusive content because it’s not fair on people who can’t afford to support a channel, but early access is fair.
And I think I’ve covered all the bases and feedback people sent in response to the last post. If I’ve missed anything feel free to scream and ping and kick until I see and can respond. I’ll add further responses to the posts on Ko-Fi/Patreon, and on Discord!
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Australian Bruce to Steve Job,
Hello survivors of the Patreon swap, you can feel really smug reading this:
Attached to this is a video where I give an outline of the situation and some general thoughts, but now I’ve had some time to consider things I wanted to discuss things in written form where I can give things a clear and concise outline - minus the rambling.
To give an extremely brief overview immediately and explain what this is all about: I’m considering jumping back from Ko-Fi to Patreon, but before anything goes ahead, I want your opinions and feedback on that. The simple reason is that all the problems that Patreon had, like taxes added to pledges and not having my local currency, are gone, so now we just have Ko-Fi which is an inconvenient and problematic crowdfunding method that we’re getting no benefit out of.
The following text is *quite* long. I’ve tried to put a lot of thought into it and I think I’ve covered all grounds. There is a strawpoll at the bottom of the post and I’ll be monitoring all comment sections wherever I post this and discussing things further on Discord. I would prefer no direct general PMs about this because I want everything to be out in the open (and I get a huge amount already) but I’m happy to answer personal pledge questions in DMs. Discussions will be had in the #supporters-general-chat channel on discord!
-
You’re probably wondering ‘Didn’t you give a very heartfelt and convincing speech on why we should leave Patreon for Ko‑fi only two months ago?’ and honestly, yes, yes I did. Let me reiterate some of the things I said during that video/post on why Ko‑fi was a better website for us.
A) Ko-Fi allows me to withdraw in GBP, which means each pledge only has to go through a maximum of one currency conversion per transaction. Patreon, when subscribing converted the currency to USD (if you were outside the US) then it was converted back when it was sent to me, meaning Paypal takes a significant chunk of cash as conversion. That meant if someone from the UK (approximately 25% of the audience) backed me on Patreon it would be converted from GBP to USD, then back from USD to GBP.
B) Patreon added an inclusive tax on pledges. Therefore a $15 pledge on the page appeared as a $16.05 pledge (for example) which could be incredibly misleading to those who aren’t familiar with how Patreon operates. When coupled with the previous point, this meant those outside of the US were being double screwed on their pledge.
Those were the two major points on why I swapped platforms.
To be clear, there was no monetary reason for swapping over - I wasn’t upset about missing out on approximately 7% of pledge totals, I accepted that as a cost of doing business. What I was annoyed about was that the 7% was being leveraged against you guys, upfront, somewhat nebulously, and that there was a good chunk going to PayPal for the purposes of changing numbers into other numbers.
There were several other reasons as well, like Discord roles becoming inactive on occasion, and some Patreon features going unused.
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So what has changed to make me think of swapping back?
Well, to be honest, both of those points are now irrelevant. On the 16th of this month, Patreon announced a reversal of the tax added to the pledge. We received this following email essentially saying that the changes had been fully reverted and no action was needed:
Then on the 30th of September Patreon announced that they now support currencies other than the USD, specifically the currency I want to use - GBP. They specifically call attention to the currency conversion fees in the email below:
The other point I mentioned is that Patreon takes a cut of all pledges, whereas Ko-Fi is a one-off yearly subscription. What I didn’t realise at the time, during testing, is that Paypal takes a small cut of monthly donations as a handling fee - which was still far better than Patreon AND Paypal taking a double cut on the Patreon platform, that was until this morning with the currency changes implemented by Patreon.
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So with these changes taken into account, Ko-Fi and Patreon are now identical in how they handle money; both use my local currency, and both have the same service fee per pledge.
To be clear, this isn’t me trying to convince you all that a move back to Patreon is the right move. I know what I would like to do, but I am not always right, far from it, and what I want is irrelevant when it comes to a crowd-funded website. Let’s be extremely cold and calculated here and say that from a business perspective a move back to Patreon is, without question, going to cause bad faith amongst a lot of people who swapped over platforms when asked and inconvenienced themselves, and some will not follow over. Secondly, moving from somewhere and then back to it has essentially stifled all growth that it would have had in those two months. There isn’t an easy answer.
Now we have to look at both services and ask ourselves which website is better both for you guys supporting me and for myself as the content creator - forgetting all monetary side effects. To put it bluntly, Ko-Fi does not compare to Patreon at all in that regard. Let me give some clear pros and cons, with your feedback included over the past two months of Ko-Fi.
To start off with; actual features. I’ll be blunt when I say that Ko-Fi offers absolutely nothing that Patreon doesn’t have, but that is the point of Ko-Fi. It is supposed to be a very simple, straight forward, and clean way to connect you with a creator. All Ko-Fi is there for is to initiate the handshake.
So I’ll list things Patreon has that Ko-Fi does not, seeing that vice-versa is not applicable:
- Message Center: You can directly message me independently of Discord, which I know a lot don’t have, and I already receive upwards of 50 DMs on discord, so I might be slow to respond. The closest Ko-Fi offers is the ability to leave a message on a donation but paying per message is not convenient. I can also create big group messages on Patreon for polls, feedback forms, or general announcements.
- Pledge Manager: The biggest complaint I received with Ko-Fi is the lack of a pledge manager. With Patreon, you can see your pledge, reduce or increase it, or cancel it altogether and Patreon will handle it. With Ko-Fi you have to go to your active Paypal subscriptions and cancel the payment and make an entirely new one if you want to adjust.
- Tiers and Rewards: Probably the biggest headache for me was working out a similar method to Patreon tracking rewards and tiers. The method I created myself and only briefly trialled was a tremendous failure and didn’t work at all. Some of the responses I received were incorrect, in the wrong order, or people confusing tiers.
- Dynamically Updated Supporter Lists: This is, personally, my biggest want for moving back platforms. Ko-Fi does not have a dynamic list of active subscribers. All it has are people who pledged in a particular month. A bit useless for people who pledge mid-way through a month, or for payments that are declined, or for one-off payments. That, coupled with no way to get in contact with me, is a disaster when it comes to the shoutout lists, I now have to juggle four separate name lists and compare everything manually.
- Discord Backer Roles: This one I’m quite annoyed with Ko-Fi for, they advertised Discord role integration as a feature that was ‘coming soon’ on an article from August 2019 with still no Discord role integration, this means that the Discord moderators, who very generously offer their time for free to help manage the server, and myself have to manually give out rolls and had to prevent all of the supporter rolls being removed automatically.
The only other point of note, which for me is one of the other big reasons for swapping, is that Ko-Fi, or potentially Paypal in this situation but is still relevant either way, lost some pledges at the start of this month. This could honestly be for a multitude of reasons - declined payments, fraud alerts, mobile confirmation, etc. Call me overdramatic, but a pledging platform that fails to actually process pledges is entirely useless.
Thor (the Discord mod, not the god of thunder) messaged me about it initially with several others confirming it as well. To clarify, Patreon has done this in the past, however, Patreon notifies both me and the pledger, Ko-Fi obviously does not handle transactions so I had no idea, I just assumed I said something offensive in a video.
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Now for some personal perspective:
With that taken into account, I have to ask myself is the loss of goodwill, and the lost supporters along the way, worth transferring back platforms?
I could definitely continue on with Ko-Fi in its current form no question, but it’s getting to the point that if I want to do it right, and to the extent I’m happy with, it’s becoming too much of a stretch. I now have to manually keep track of all supporters, their pledges in case of another batch of failures, their discord rank, and their names for shoutouts and characters.
That, coupled with the workload I have currently, and tax season coming up in December, and moving house again in November, has basically pushed me into overdrive with the stuff I have to keep track of. As of this morning with the Patreon changes, there are also no benefits for you guys in exchange for all the extra workload, I’m quickly wondering what’s the point of sticking with Ko-Fi.
Again, in the interests of transparency - Youtube has been ramming every video with ads, I’m putting out 5 videos a day this week, plus the occasional Twitch stream, and we’re just coming down from the CK3 high, but still riding it; I can pay my rent this month no problem. This is not a financial move, the Patreon and Ko-Fi amounts are always visible and will always remain that way.
The only concern I have here is the loss of goodwill among the community. That’s it. A move over will make your lives a lot easier, and mine even easier, but it would also be significantly easier for you all to cancel your pledge and move onto a different channel. -
So, with that all being said let’s discuss hypothetically what would happen if we switched, having learnt from last time.
1) The move over would be announced before the 3rd of this month. The simple reason for that is that 80% of the Ko-Fi pledges are between the 3rd and the 7th of each month because we opened the Ko-Fi page on the 3rd of August. This means that almost all of you can cancel your pledges before another month is taken.
2) The Patreon page will not be reopened before the 1st of November for two reasons. Firstly that means those of you who happen to have pledged later in the month will still get a minimum of 28 days of ‘supporter’ time. Secondly Patreon charges at the start of each month, this means that you’re guaranteed to get an entire month before the next pledge. This, I believe, is absolutely the fairest and right thing to do here. Sure I might lose a few extra supporters who forget but I don’t want people doubling up pledges like last time, especially for a move back. Generous, but I’d feel guilty.
3) Ko-Fi would remain open for those who do not like or cannot use, Patreon. This is simply because the Ko-Fi page has gold membership and it would be a massive waste not to use it. The Ko-Fi page from that point on will be essentially completely unmonitored, I won’t be making posts, checking it, or updating it at all except to thank people in response for supporting it. I will make it abundantly clear that the Ko-Fi page is simply for those who want to support the channel but don’t care about rewards like shout outs or character names. Some RARE exceptions will be made to this rule if the pledge was made without realising.
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So, in conclusion, I am going to be collecting all the feedback from the comments on this post (both Ko-Fi and Patreon), along with discussing everything in Discord and going into more detail where necessary.
I have also created a strawpoll with a few options where you can quickly and easily leave your opinion without talking with strangers if you’d prefer: https://www.strawpoll.me/21027569
Overall, thank you for your time, and apologies about confusing the situation once again so soon after the previous platform transfer, but hopefully I’ve made a convincing argument why this has been on my mind recently, and I look forward to reading your responses!
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Cock Excellente to Dr Don, MD,
This is going to be a small bonus series as an extra bonus to those of you who backed for the last month of the active Patreon page! (The page will stay up as an archive, and for those who want to support the channel without rewards or anything, and don't like Ko-fi for whatever reason, but only with one tier).
This video I accidentally went very hard on showing off the unnamed fantasy mod I started, some features I didn't show off in the last previews, and where it stands currently since then!
More importantly I'm looking for feedback so we can focus on what's important - which features do you like best? Which are garbage? Do you have ideas that fit the theme as it is right now?
I'll get a second episode ready for the Thurnos and Betavengers mod as soon as possible, and then finally a deep dive into the Dungeon Master mod, some behind the scenes code (REALLLY GRIPPING STUFF) and some events that were scrapped and why!
Those of you here for Rimworld, sit tight, we have a 1.2 series right around the corner and we'll do some modpack explanations and the usual installation guides and whatnot, with probably a fancy animated intro like usual!
Thank you for your support, double thank you to those of your who supported Patreon for the last month while it's active rather than passive, and a triple thank you to those of you who swapped platforms early!
Tales of your misdeeds are told from Duran Durannis to Keith-Bob (Spoilers ;))
Sam Mr Streamer Roll1D2Games Mensa's Wrinkliest Brain Award - 2021
As some of you are probably aware I've been considering alternatives to Patreon for a while - to be frank, Patreon are, when compared to other platforms, massively unfair on supporters who are going out of their way to be generous and support a creator but are met with fees, sales tax, and currency conversion costs twice over.
On top of this, the page itself has always been a strange compromise for a channel that doesn't exactly gate off its primary content. Now don't get me wrong, I believe that Patreon has been integral to the survival of the channel, and I owe the platform massive thanks for helping get to where we are today, but I don't believe I would be understating it if I said they definitely earned a fair bit out of essentially hosting a one-page website.
I'm not an artist, I don't offer tier based commissions, nor do I gate my content off behind a paywall. Nor am I a musician, a designer, or anyone who Patreon is really aimed at. This platform, for those individuals, is invaluable - for someone who uses it as a supplement to combat YouTube's madness, it's quite an expensive middle ground for the supporter, and for me.
My issue with patreon is that people want to support the channel, they donate and it includes currency conversion fees into $, local sales tax as of last month, and a Patreon fee. When I get paid at the beginning of the next month, that money is then converted back into my local currency - Paypal have double dipped, local government took a slice, and Patreon took a slice, and of course all of this taxable for me as well, all for something that is essentially free to access on a separate platform anyway.
And it doesn't sit right with me that the supporters of my content should have to shell out more to completely unaffiliated third parties for the privilege of supporting content they enjoy?
As a backup thing for the many creations, videos, and other methods I have linking over to this page, the $3 will remain. This is also to offer a way for those who wish to remain on this platform. I also want to keep this page in case of an unforeseen issue, or perhaps if Patreon make some changes that are enough to lure me back!
I will also do some final behind the scenes patreon videos as a final way to give something back to those of you who supported things here!
I fully understand if you don't want to follow me over to a new platform, just know that your support was invaluable either way and the channel wouldn't be here still without you, so thank you. For those of you interested in where we're heading to, keep reading!
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Whilst this page will remain open, it will no longer be my primary junction of support due to the many hands in the honey pot, instead we will be moving over to the much more straightforward website Ko-Fi.
For those of you who haven't heard of this before, it is a very simple website that I pay a very, very, very reasonable yearly subscription to, and they host a page, that's it. No fees, no middle man, no invisible payments - if someone wants to send me £30 then I receive £30. Monthly subs are a thing and we will have the same tiers as what we have here.
Not only is this fair to the people who want to support the channel, but the whole process is much simpler and actually in my local currency!
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Quick Recap:
- Stinky Patreon charge a lot to supporters and makes me angery
- New platform is Ko-fi, much simpler but no fees, taxes, everyone saves money etc
- Patreon page will remain the same until next months billing cycle
- At the start of next month Patreon page will be only the $3 tier to keep it open and keep all the stuff I posted here alive and well
Thank you all for your support here over the past couple of years, I hope to see you all at the new platform!
Your nice friend and probably the coolest content creator in the whole world,
Firstly, apologies to those of you who have sent me a message in the past week or so and I haven't responded. Long story short, I haven't been able to receive text messages so I could get my authentication code to log in to patreon, turns out it was an issue with my mobile provider that I've now sorted!
Secondly, there won't be any content on the 29th of July at the regular scheduled time (roughly 38 hours from this post going live). Two reasons for this.
Firstly, my parents have booked time off and have traveled across the country to my house to come and visit and it feels incredibly rude of me to wok throughout that time when they've taken the time and effort to visit.
Secondly, I haven't had a day off in as long as I can remember. And with Rimworld, CK2, Morrowind, and the modding project we have going on, along with my heavily slowed work speed thanks to my graphics card exploding a couple of weeks ago, it's been a bit of a slog trying to do all of this stuff and deal with real life events. Plus this means that if I do get some time I can focus on releasing the Dungeon Master mod.
On the subject of my kamikaze graphics card, I requested an update and apparently it is with the manufacturer but could take up to 28 days before the repairs are complete, so we're not out of the woods yet.
Thank you all for your patience - I've stayed awake until 2am as of writing this to make sure you have content for tomorrow as a compromise for taking a day off the following day, a couple more hours of edits and we should be good, but after entertaining guests since 8am I'm absolutely drained, so apologies again if I'm slow to reply to things tomorrow!
Tales of your misdeeds are told from the hell planet to the Dungeon Master,
Your good friend and pal and all round nice (and handsome) guy,
