Announcement: 05/30/2022

Ahoy,

I wanted to take a moment to update you on our progress and what we’re working on now.

As of the short downtime we had in early May, we have finished the bulk of our infrastructure overhaul. The reason this took so long is we needed to not only prevent unauthorized access, but try to future proof our systems. This means we didn’t just fix the issues, but we looked at all of our systems to determine what steps we could take to make us even more secure. We migrated to modern services that come with enterprise grade security out of the box. As you can imagine, this was quite an investment of time and resources. Without giving out too many details, which could aid unscrupulous individuals, here are some of the steps we’ve taken.

• Moved just about every internal system to further insulate it from the outside world.
• Enhanced staff account security.
• Increased security for webtools or other items we use to manage the game.
• Created an entirely new website so that it uses the latest web technology.
• Created an entirely new tool for players to sign into the website or make changes to their account. How you sign in might look similar, but on our end it’s quite different.
• Improved the wiki software including tools to prevent the use of malicious scripts.
• Removed anything using outdated software created by another company or service. Often it’s impossible to make changes to these types of software and you have less control over any issue they might have. This includes our forums and blog. Neither of these items will be returning. They weren’t heavily used because gaming has changed a lot since we first implemented them. For now, we’re using our wiki to replace them, but are kicking around ideas on other options for the future.
• Conducting a further investigation into the services we are still running, to make sure we are fully aware of everything we are hosting.
• In the next month we will be posting a hiring notice for both an Engineer and a Support person. If you’re interested, please keep your eyes on this space.

We’re aware that these individuals keep making wild claims to try to scare players. If you come across any of this, please simply send it to support@puzzlepirates.com, and block them. Do not engage or allow them to continue socializing in your spaces. If they are harassing you in real life using information they obtained during the incident, please notify us immediately so we can add it to the ongoing investigation. While we cannot discuss details, I can say that we are taking the slow but necessary steps in the real world to deal with these individuals.

YPP Roadmap:

Now that we have a chance to schedule non-security work again, we’re shifting our focus back to our development roadmap. Typically we keep this to ourselves so we can both surprise players and we have flexibility with timelines. However, in this case we’d like to get some feedback from you about some of them.

This is not an exhaustive list of all of our plans, but more of a general overview. Some updates will be happening sooner than others and some will require a significant amount of time. Most of these items have been in progress for a long time but were delayed significantly by the constant attacks we’ve been enduring. All the updates you see here are in addition to our regular maintenance, security, and promotional work.

• Functional Furniture release: This is heading your way very soon . It opens the door for us to add quite a bit more to the game in terms of customization. New items here are some of the things our artists can work on while the engineers are hard at work elsewhere.
• More Security Items: We have some lingering items and regular maintenance items that we will continue to work on.
• Monster bash release:
  • This is an update to the art of our Vampire expo to make it feel more unique. Greenbones was in charge of the look and we think he did an amazing job.
    
  • Includes various goodies in the trading post for “monsters” and creatures in the game. This includes other fray type items.
  • A few other surprises up our sleeve. We can’t spoil the entire party, can we?
  • If you have suggestions on items you’d like to see in the Trading Post from any fray or “monster” type area, please post them in the game design discussion page. Please use the section for “Monster Bash”.
• Mercenary Update: We’re in the early stages of an idea we’ve wanted to work on for quite some time. We’ve posted about it previously and are now able to start working on it. We haven’t had the time before due to the persistent attacks, but we feel like we can now shift our focus to this project. It has a few goals:
  • Create a new class of NPC that can help you pillage, expedition, sail, and help you in a blockade.
  • Mercenaries will not be as advantageous as having a real human, but could allow someone to do more with fewer people.
  • We’ll create some in game items to help support these new mates. Their services will require more from you than just PoE. The goal here is to have their use not simply be a sink, but to have funds be distributed throughout the economy. A person/flag who has a healthy merchant empire will have an easier time supporting their mercenaries.
  • Mercenaries will provide influence in blockades. This might mean we have to implement changes to blockades.
  • If you have any suggestions for how you think these can work, post them in the game design discussion wiki page. Please use the section for “Mercenary Update”.
    • We’re looking for ways to limit someone from just coming in and buying their way to victory, especially in blockades. Maybe Mercenaries are more attracted (i.e. cheaper) to defenders. Maybe an individual mercenary provides more influence if the flag has X level of reputation. Maybe a flag can spend RMs to become more attractive to mercenaries.
    • We’re looking for ways for them to participate in the economy beyond being a sink.
    • How can we continue to encourage the use of actual humans over them without making them too weak to be useful?