Physical Loyalty Reward Changes | Patreon Weekly #311

Hey Patrons, the beta for v3.1 is out, and the latest poll results are in! I’m going to talk about that in more detail next week, but here’s a quick look at the results:
57%: Thrown Weapon Sets
53%: City Quest
51%: Armor Expansion
27%: 3rd Caves Quest Variant
There’s pretty even interest for three of the options here! I do like the idea of making some thrown weapon changes first, as that will make for a quicker update, but will make more concrete plans and share them in the next weekly.

For the rest of this weekly, rather than going over Shattered stuff, I have some unfortunate news to about changes to physical loyalty rewards.

Loyalty Pins Are Now A Golden+ Reward

As of June 1st, only months spent at Golden tier or higher will count towards physical loyalty rewards; pins will no longer be offered to Silver Patrons. I've already updated the text on the Patreon to account for this.

I’m sorry to have to make this change, but it has become increasingly infeasible over the years to offer pins to people at $2/mo. The reason for this is sadly going to sound pretty familiar to most of you, the associated costs for the physical rewards have increased significantly in the years since I first started the pins. Currently a single mailed pin costs me an average of about $10 in direct costs, plus a significant time cost as I prepare every pin mailing myself. Back when I started offering pins both of these costs were quite a bit lower, as supplies/shipping was cheaper and I could dedicate more time to the Patron vs. other work.

You can read below to get more details on how this will work specifically, but I do want to state that I currently have no plans to significantly change other rewards. Every other reward has no direct cost, and a more static time cost (i.e. if the number of Patrons double, the time to make the reward doesn’t change, or increases by a smaller proportion).

More Details

Firstly, a recap on how the system works:

• I track every month that each person is a subscribed Patron, with a pin and a sticker being earned at 12, 24, and 36 months.

• These months do not need to be continuous! People are free to leave for a while, and their progress toward a pin is preserved.

• You can only get a pin if you have an address associated with your account, but you can add one any time and will get all pins owed to you.

As of June 1st, this is changing so that each month I will be counting people who are subscribed at Golden tier or higher, instead of at any tier. So, how does this affect people who've already been subscribed at the silver tier?

• All existing months spent as a silver supporter still count. If you've been subscribed at silver tier for 6 months as of June 1st, you would only need 6 months at gold tier to get your pin.

• Existing silver supporters who are within 1 or 2 months of a pin as of June will still be able to earn that pin if they stay subscribed as a silver supporter. I'm not going to hold your almost-earned pin hostage behind an upgrade.

• Existing yearly silver supporters who subscribed before this post was made (NOT before June!) will still have the rest of their current year of silver membership count toward a pin. Obviously a yearly subscription is exactly 12 months, so if you’ve currently subscribed for a year at silver tier as of this post, you still have your next pin locked in.

• If you already earned a pin as a silver supporter but never entered an address you are still eligible to get that pin if you add an address. (You may need to send me a message, I do not get notified when addresses are changed)

• If you have been a Shattered Supporter for an extended period of time but are currently at silver tier then please contact me. I will consider making case-by-case exceptions for people who have subscribed at more than $5/mo for a long time, essentially ‘averaging out’ your contribution for the purposes of earning a pin.

Feel free to message me about your specific situation if you’re unsure how this change applies to you.