An Update on Fun Maps & Expansions For Pack Owners

In the last 48 hours, we've received a number of messages from community members asking for clarification about what expansions and maps each type of pack owner will receive once the new store is released.

First off, thank you for your feedback - it was passionate and thoughtful and showed us for the thousandth time just how much you all, our player base, love and care about Colonist.

Secondly, we'd like to apologize for the lack of clarity around what the current packs offer. This blog post is aiming to clarifying any misconceptions and offering a new solution for how we can move forward.

If you have any additional questions / concerns, please don't hesitate to reach us at [email protected] or on Discord.

If you're wanting the quick TL;DR - here's what each premium pack owner will be able to purchase in our new store once it is released:

• Settlers - 1 expansion + 2 fun maps
• Colonist - 5 expansions + 5 fun maps
• Founder - All expansions + All fun maps

Please read on for details as to how we came to this decision.

Background

As you all know, we've been getting ready to build new expansions. The first step toward this is restructuring our current store, which means the current 'premium pack' presale will end and we will move to selling single expansions instead of packs.

In addition, you will be able to purchase fun maps, player colors, and a whole lot more. Players will be able to purchase all of these using our new in game currency.

Below we will walk through the origins of fun maps, the future of fun maps, and how each pack owner will be able to gain access to expansions and maps once the new store comes out.

Fun Maps - Origins

In December 2019 we started building the infrastructure required for new expansions. To test our new infrastructure we needed low consequence maps. We needed these tests to not be taken seriously because they would surely have something broken with them. So we called them Fun Maps.

We needed Fun Maps to be available to a small minority of players to get some feedback. We didn’t want to build a complicated access level, so we just made it available to all our presale pack purchasers. This was a win/win as it allowed us to both (a) provide additional content for our pack owners and (b) test the infrastructure and engine for all potential expansions.

The community loved these maps so, soon after, we officially added that all presale pack owners will have 'Access To Fun Maps' to the shop page. When we wrote this, we meant that pack owners would have weekly access whichever fun map was released that update. We did not mean that pack owners would have ownership access to all fun maps, though based on your feedback, that's how many of you took it. Our intention was never to deceive anyone, we're very sorry for the lack of clarity regarding this. As our community, you are all our lifeblood - we promise to think more deeply about how to communicate the features that come with anything you purchase moving forward.

As we wrapped up development for the store, we realized that we hadn't been launching any new free content to the community for a long time. We decided that weekly fun maps should not only be accessed by pack owners, so we opened weekly fun maps for every player in our platform. The goal of this action was not to deprive our pack owners access to fun maps, but instead made them available to everyone. We took a bonus premium feature and made it free and available for everyone.

This was all based on what we thought "Access To Fun Maps" meant, which we realize now was open for misinterpretation. We apologize we haven’t been clear enough about this, and we hope the below solution shows that we care and are trying to do right by you all.

Fun Maps: A New Hope

We're human and we make mistakes. We should have been clearer with the perks that each pack received.

What matters is that you all had an expectation for what you would receive with each pack and we want to honor that expectation. As such, we’ll be giving in game currency amount that will allow the purchase of new fun maps to all our presale pack owners:

• Settlers - 1 expansion + 2 fun maps
• Colonist - 5 expansions + 5 fun maps
• Founder - All expansions + All fun maps

Settlers and Colonist pack owners will get the in game currency needed to purchase the expansions and fun maps written above. Each expansion is worth 4-6 fun maps, and each player can choose to spend their in game currency on expansions, fun maps, or whatever else they would like inside the store.  

Founders pack owners can unlock each expansion and map for free. This is true for fun maps now and in the future.

Additional Pack Benefits & Notes

• Each pack will gain a single profile picture (hat) and player color. Additional profile pictures and colors released in the future are not included.
• The Seafarers will come with all 8 scenarios - those will be included. But all 8 scenarios won't be released immediately at launch.
• 'Custom Maps', which is listed as an expansion is not related to fun maps. It’s an expansion that allows you to place your own map tiles. This is mainly for people who want to study certain game positions and tournament boards. They’ll have a sandbox to experiment in. All of this is subject to change as we haven't designed the custom maps expansion yet.
• Some of you have asked why we would charge for fun maps at all. For us, creating and selling new fun maps to players is an important way to generate the revenue necessary to keep the lights on and fund our development and maintenance of the game as a whole. We believe that players who want to purchase maps get a great new experience that would not be possible in the real board game, and that this experience is worthwhile.

In Closing

Thank you for your feedback. We hope our response fulfills the promise and expectations that you felt were made to you while also understanding where we were coming from in creating the "Access To Fun Maps" perk.

In the future, we promise to invest more time, thought, and transparency toward these types of decisions. All of this takes time. We often focus our energy on writing code and making the game better, but we know communication is important and will absolutely make it a priority moving forward.

If you have any additional thoughts or questions, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or on Discord.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback: JemarkEarle, bodmontingz, Takeshi, Gigglestomp, dis324, Austin, Juan, Are_You_My_Dad, _Derf, Boston_Bruins37, Puzzles, and so many others who we spoke with in the last few days.