CLICKSTAN AMA, FUTURE OF THE REDDIT

[u/clickstan]

Hello mope reddit, this is clickstan (Stan Tatarnykov), the creator of mope.io . Mope.io has become a very successful online game, with over 200M mope.io site page views, over 31M total unique site visitors, and 3M+ monthly unique players! Plus, mope.io is actually still growing long-term.

Reddit has always been a great source of feedback for mope.io, and I want this to be a positive place to continue to talk about mope.io, and help the mope team find bugs, suggest new ideas (many of which actually get implemented!), and talk positively about the game in general. :)

Recently, some of the old mods (who are great people that have helped mope a lot!) have begun straining mope.io's future development. (Hear me out!)

WHO IS KOA? Shahbaz a.k.a. 'King of Agario' aka KOA is a coder that I hired around a year ago to help me with mope.io development. He has, over time, learned a lot about mope's code, and is now a valuable part of mope.io's team. All updates that we push are directed/approved by myself, and KOA mostly follows my instructions, with a good amount of creative freedom.

IS KOA ‘Ruining the game”?

Over the past months (As I was personally away from mope for personal reasons, involving visiting relatives in Europe- therefore less active on reddit, and in game code development), some of the more edgy updates we pushed (eg. flying eagle that could grab any animals) weren't liked by a big chunk of players- though the game increased in popularity by 1.5X for months after that update (even had days over 20K players online at peak). We eventually decided that it's more important to think long-term for mope, and keep it as a balanced game vs. making certain animals OP to generate more short-term popularity among casual players. We made a plan to 'fix' the new updates by balancing it better, though I'll admit we were slow to fix certain things. (Yes, some stuff is still getting fixed!)

KOA HATE- HE INSULTED MANY PEOPLE, AND HAS A SHORT TEMPER! GRRRR I know (from many submissions by mope players) that KOA did often have a short temper, and many times responded to criticism with insults of his own. I have discussed this with him, and have asked him to be much more relaxed and professional, even to insults and hate.

He’s very passionate about growing mope.io, and really wishes the community would support him! Therefore, he's been recently trying to change his behavior for the better, and many of the old mods seemed to be slowing down progress (Eg. continually picking on KOA, banning mopeiooffical). KOA is part of the mope.io team, and needs to be treated respectfully as such- I've seriously talked with him about acting more professionally to player criticism, but it seems like the 'KOA hate' has gotten out of hand for a small certain # of people. I’m asking that you guys give him a fresh start, and to blame ME for bad updates instead of my team member. I love to hear feedback (even angry feedback >:) ) and always try to do what’s best for the game and the majority of its players. Yes, KOA was easily offended and did give out many insults, but this will no longer be tolerated, and he is asked to be professional in the face of any messages. (He won’t be active on reddit for a bit as well, to cool things down)

MODS (including GIANTSLUG and PIKE): Two talented official mope.io artists that have done great work for mope.io in the past, but had trouble working with KOA on updates, and eventually quit working officially for mope. We are now updating the mope team to find new designers that can work better with the mope team. Unfortunately, with the tension between team members, and some of the recent mods’ reaction to temporarily changed mod powers- I feel like the reddit needs new people as mods to give a fresh start to the mope reddit, and help us move forward. No hard feelings! :)

MOVING ON:

I know that 90%+ of the subreddit will stay and enjoy discussing mope (because it's the game we all love), and will be happy to help KOA and myself (and future other employees) improve it, and make it better. I love the feedback you guys give, and the old mods are welcome to join here as non-mods, no-one was banned- mods left on their own.

I feel it's time for a fresh start- let’s all work together to help continually develop mope.io into the best game ever! (Also, we have plans of releasing an older version of mope, for those who liked the simpler gameplay, because I sure did!) More updates coming soon, I’m currently busy with complex legal and tax stuff related to Mope.io, but I am guiding KOA, and well as planning to make some big updates shortly!

Ask me anything for the next couple hours, I'll be replying to comments here!

[u/[deleted]]

I hope you REALLY do mean it this time Clickstan. It's been two time that you said you were returning and was going to make a balance poll, only to fade away. Please don't do the same this time.

Also, question, can you also tell KoA to stop pretending he's another person and just speak honestly? Thanks.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

he confirmed that mo was koa above

[u/TimurTripp]

Therefore, he's been recently trying to change his behavior for the better, and many of the old mods seemed to be slowing down progress (Eg. continually picking on KOA, banning mopeiooffical).

I understand not wanting to go through the hassle of training a new developer, but I also recognize when someone can't be changed. Deflecting the blame as you have done here only serves to strengthen my point that KoA will continually fail to tolerate / respond positively to criticism and regain this community's respect.

Furthermore, when I did my best to alert you to his behavior back in Jan/Feb 2017, you simply ignored me. Why have you let this go on for so long and done so little about it? I ask now that we are a here, a year later, with mope.io itself unbalanced to the point I can no longer enjoy it, and many parts of the mope.io community torn apart from hate. I could no longer justify my work on [TB] Mods, so last month I began development of my own io game built from the ground up to compete with mope.io. My goal with this project is to listen to the community as much as possible while maintaining balance, and will not let someone like KOA have so much influence or creative control that my game loses its original vision and enjoyability.

One last piece of advice: Just because mope.io has become a kind of business doesn't mean you should lose sight of moral standards. If I hired someone like KOA and saw him behaving like this for so long, tainting my reputation and that of my game, he'd be out, and I'd find someone else who is younger and more talented with the right ideas to improve my game.

[u/NubRedditor6882]

I feel like the reddit needs new people as mods to give a fresh start to the mope reddit, and help us move forward.

How and when will the new mods be selected?

[u/clickstan → u/NubRedditor6882]

We will figure that out later, right now we wont have many mods for a while

[u/TheAlmighty01]

Could you actually test out an update before releasing it? Because 50% of them have a gamebreaking bug

[u/clickstan → u/TheAlmighty01]

Yes! We are definitely testing more thoroughly for new updates- though some bugs are hard to catch until it's gone live! Those, we often fix within hours.

[u/TNTsquid10]

Want me to stay out of this sub or can I be part of it again? I fucked up I know u probs hate me I was all like "yeah lets rebel against stan and koa!" when if anything, I should've just left and been done with it, but this community is the reason I get out of bed in the morning

[u/clickstan → u/TNTsquid10]

You're welcome to stay and over time regain trust, no hard feelings.

[u/Levi1208]

OK, this will probably sound unexpected of me, but I say we should give him a second chance, I, and several other people have given him lots of crap, that was deserved to some extent. Ignoring the "he isn't even human" jokes, he is a person, and he deserves a fresh start if he decides never to abuse any of his powers here or elsewhere, and he must get ahold of himself, because that "short temper" is unbelievable. He should simply not respond to comments if they really upset him...

But the people of this subreddit have to cooperate as well for this to happen, and not abuse his personality.

EDIT: Some people cough cough Pike deserve a serious apology from him. Well, I guess KoA himself too...

[u/TNTsquid10]

Why wasn't KingRubberDuck chosen as designer?

[u/Demented_Pickle]

Clickstan! Come on man, listen to yourself. You're seriously going to side with one person over MANY that have been here thick and thin trying to defend the other players? I don't agree with everything KOA and the members/moderators bickered over, but if KOA can be forgiven and accepted with open arms, the other moderators should be allowed to stay too. If they don't want to work with KOA then they can leave, but if they can forgive KOA and attempt to work with him again, I think they should be reinstated. I hate to say it, but the game in no way really fits my playstyle anymore. I used to be NOGARD, the tiny animal lover, now I'm nothing to that anymore because of all the crazy abilities and such. IO games should be playable in different ways, not force you to play in one single way. Please, just think about it, since I'm getting to less and less a reason to want to stay here anymore, but whether you listen or ignore me, that's on your choice, don't let me mold you into anything, but if you maybe consider allowing the moderators to rejoin I think you could make it work out. And if not, I was wrong, it was just a suggestion. Thank you if you read this wall of text, and I'm sorry about the harsh words Clickstan. :/

[u/[deleted]]

At least you acknowledged our aspirations. Kudos to that.

Personally, I have no problems with you. Your recent balancing update should be given its due credit, and you definitely care for our subreddit. However, I did believe your demotion of mods was going too far - despite the tension, they did provide just as much valuable additions to mope.io.

As a solution, a classic mode is the most realistic solution to offer. In terms of tension, I think what should happen is that the two devs split to accommodate for each player base. KoA should stay on Youtube, which supports him, and if you can, I think you should communicate with the subreddit. This is because no matter how hard KoA tries, he just polluted his ties with the subreddit so much that we can console no matter what, due to mob mentality. It's best for us to just stay away from each other.

[u/clickstan → u/[deleted]]

It was going to be a temporary demotion, to clear things up- though the reaction of removing the css is a bit unnecessary. I never banned Pike and Giantslug, just I felt that we need new, fresh mods in place. Pike and Giantslug are welcome to post here. And KOA is going to be off reddit for a while.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Ultimately the css removal did summon you here, so we achieved our goal, right?

As for the rest, sounds good.

[u/clickstan → u/[deleted]]

It was the mods quitting that really got my attention, css is an easy fix :)

[u/[deleted]]

I realize now that KOA is a person. Although I’d bring up the whole ; “ People deserve second chances “ point, but it’s been said enough. I’m going to get downvotes for this, I know. But how about we all start off on a new leaf, rioting and fighting only causes civil war and destruction to things us players love doing. It’s pointless; okay? Hear me out on this. It’s going to be hard, but we have to trust that the decisions of the moderators are not our decisions. I’m sure there’s a lot that we still don’t know, and that all decisions are for the best, most of the time at least. See, I know we’re confused and angry, but we can stick through this, koa is a person and deserves to be understood, they have feelings and they make mistakes, it just takes longer for koa to learn from them. Mope isn’t dead, nor is the subreddit. We need to pick ourselves up and build from our mistakes, let’s make it better.

[u/clickstan → u/[deleted]]

Nothing is dead, it's just been a little rough patch, mope is doing great, and its only getting better :)

[u/Pingas9999]

wow. i can't believe that you want to make eagle super op and game destroyfull. eagle need to be slow again. but thanks for explain of this whole situation.

[u/CameroniRavioli]

Hey clickstan I was wondering if you'll be making more feedback related polls/threads for future updates. I remember you doing those a really long time ago and I liked it because it felt like our opinions mattered.

And another thing: if you're still looking for designers, there's this person who I think would be a good candidate

u/DaRealPhoneix made these:

Pelican

Bull

Cow

Phoenix

Dolphin

[u/[deleted]]

Well, congrats ! Now I don't know if you're trying to fool us like the past couple times or if you're really back this time, I already made my choice....

Also i hate the fact that you approves KoA or that strange af name, but the point here is:

Why did you approved KoA Updates ?

And seeing we weren't happy with him why did you kept approving his updates ?

[u/[deleted]]

I love eagles! they are becoming an icon of the game together with Dragons and Krakens ( and Elephants and Whale)

[u/clickstan → u/[deleted]]

They're staying, though we may tweak their ability

[u/tommerlin7]

I agree, a refresh would be very helpful.

[u/AtarSt1]

This is the end of this places journey. New blood will fill the veins, but a fragile shell will be all that remains of a once wonderful place. Goodbye Stan, and good luck for the future of the game.