Cycle 7 - Changes

TL;DR: Monthly YCH auctions and Patron-voted Staff are coming.

Please leave your comments below so I know if you're okay with this or not, I'm open to suggestions and your feedback is important to help me make informed decisions.

Cycle 6 currently has 10 more characters to go through (not including the one I'm working on for the next update).  Once they've all had their turn we'll be starting Cycle 7 with some changes that I hope you'll all like.  This will take not more than 10 months as there will be a minimum of 1 Staff per monthly image update, it will probably take less time than that as I'll be using more than one Staff in some month's scenes.

Welcome To The Park - all patrons

The monthly updates on the WTTP comic will continue until the comic is done.  This is going to take a while since the comic is going to visit all areas of the park eventually and go into some of the mechanics of respawning and stuff.  Some months the pages will be slower than others, out of narrative necessity.

Monthly Sketches - Cake Trolley patrons

These will continue as they have been.  Usually four per month and while I do try and get them out once per week, sometimes the work schedule trips me up so release is a bit wonky.

Monthly Completed Scene/Comic - all patrons

These will continue as they have been.  As with previous Cycles, every Staff member has one turn per Cycle before we start again.  We will be having some new characters coming along, which you can help create, more on that in a bit.

Monthly YCH Auctions - Cake Trolley for voting, all patrons for the rest

The monthly sketches will be the basis for the new monthly YCH auctions.  I'll pick four sketches from the archive that haven't been used for monthly updates or commissions and Cake Trolley tier patrons will get to vote on which they'd like to become a YCH (Your Character Here) auction.  The winning sketch will then be available for ALL patrons to bid on.  If it gets no bids here then it will be released publicly.  Patrons will be able to have their character in any Staff role in these YCHs.

New Staff - all patrons

Unfortunately, the old Loyalty Bonus scheme turned out to be too much work as it scaled up with more patrons, something I hadn't expected.  Now it has closed it has left some rather large gaps in the staff rota with some departments now having no regular staff on the Cycle.  With this in mind, I'm going to start doing votes for new staff so you the Patrons will get to decide what species, body type, and department they exist in.  You'll also get to decide on their preferences and I'll draw up new reference sheets for them.  I'm planning on doing one of these per month until all the departments are balanced again.

Fresh Reference Points - Creator

I'm going to have to rework all the existing OC staff reference sheets to update them, and the voting artwork that I've been using for a while.  The quality and style of my work has moved on a bit and I can do them better now so it makes sense to upgrade everything alongside the Cycle 7 changes.  This is going to take a while, each reference sheet is usually 6-8 hours work and the first one I do is going to take me longer than that as I work out what's going to work best.  I might drop the voting artwork altogether and just rely on a text poll, or I might do a smaller, less detailed version, I haven't decided yet.

Work Load - Creator

The hardest thing to do is balance the work load on this project.  I want you all to have plenty of content to enjoy every month and for you to feel engaged with the OW universe while at the same time making sure I have enough time to complete it all.  Closing the Loyalty Bonus scheme helped me get back a lot of the time I needed and has given me the time to really think about what Cycle 7 should be and I hope the changes will be something you like and can enjoy.  Let me know your thoughts on any of this, your feedback really helps me figure out the best path to take.