Progress on Patreon Revamp

For those who are wondering "what revamp???" here's a post for ya that explains all the changes!

Things are going well on this end!! If all goes as planned, I suspect we will be doing the change-over before March is over.

Here's what we've been doing:

• We've rewritten and refined the Patreon front page copy, the tiers copy, the Rewards Index and FAQ copy, and the copy we use in the Foxglove Comics Discord. This has all been reviewed by Foxglove staff, edited, and approved.

• The Patreon API integration with our website is in the middle of being revamped and brought in line with the new offerings.

• The little Patreon advertisement comic has been rewritten, but still needs a couple of new assets made or changed before it's finalized.

• Fresh coupons have been made available in the shop, ready for when the Patreon goes live. On that note, one of the offerings -- one free TfT -- has had to change slightly due to limited functionality for coupons. Instead, you get $5 off any order with a TfT in it (once only). That's enough to get any TfT for free. It only applies as a discount to TfT's though so I think if you get a $3 TfT and another non-TfT, it'll only take $3 off. I'm still verifying this.

• The Tamberlane Patreon has finally left its adult status behind! That means we can have a shop on Patreon as well. In the future, once our revised versions of Chapters 1-4 are done, we will probably provide those through the Patreon shop for free instead of making y'all go to the main shop. This depends a bit on whether edited files are provided to anyone who "purchased" it even if they're not a current patron though. I have more research to do here.

• The adult rating being removed also allows us to have free trials on the low-level tiers. Very interested to see if there's going to be a noticeable increase there.

Tiers Update

We've renamed the tiers. Rather than following a character-centric scheme as we have been, we decided to change it to dishes you could get at Tess and Walter's cafe, the Bat and Badger. The line-up is now:

$2 - Cuppa Tea
$5 - Strawberry Pasty
$10 - Apricot Croissant
$25 - Chanterelle Scramble
$50 - Belfry's Bressert
$100 - Miss Cori Special
$150 - Full Fry Up

To explain why we shifted gears: with this revamp, the Patreon is geared much more toward supporting the comic/me/my team rather than receiving specific rewards. In the current iteration, because I chose a military-esque scheme, there's a sense of hierarchy among the patrons, that a Commander is better than a Cadet. But aside from me being able to remember which tiers are higher than others, I don't want any hierarchy in place.

For a while we tried to retheme with a friendly theme (Belfry Buddies! Piper Pals!) but even if it's not obvious for conscious logic brain, that implies subconsciously that all patrons are my Friends™️, which I also don't want to imply. I don't want to foster any parasocial relationships or expectations. We tried to think of other themes that still involved the characters for minimal art asset redo, but couldn't come up with much that satisfied all my requirements.

But then we decided to do kinds of food you can get at the Bat and Badger, because the value hierarchy is somewhat explicit (a Full Fry Up is going to cost more than a Cuppa Tea) but doesn't confer a value judgment.

I have been thoroughly enjoying my time painting tier images for this. It's been like a fun little treat in between comic work. Here's what's done so far:

Not to worry: completing these images won't block revamping the Patreon. I figure I'll just revamp without images and then when they're all done, I'll add em in.

Remaining Work

We can technically revamp without the comic being done (we can just remove it for now), so all that remains is:

MUST Be Done First:

• Finish the Website integration (hopefully done today but I'm not promising anything)

• Set up the Discord-related changes (roles, channels, etc)

• Write all the announcement posts for all the platforms (weeps)

Nice to Haves:

• Finish Tier images

• Finish Patreon intro comic

And... that's it. So I would expect a notification of a Twitch stream this week where we do all the updates live while we chat with you guys and have a little revamp party! I've loved doing this in the past -- it's always fun to get to hang out with y'all! Keep your eyes peeled and I'll keep you updated!

Thank you SO MUCH for your patience on this. The long lead time has really helped us take this at our own pace, and especially since I've had a really bad time with my health this last month and change, I really needed to take it slow. I'm feeling better now and still trying to be careful so I stay feeling better, and being able to do things slowly is a huge help for that.

So thank you all for your support and generosity during this difficult time. You guys, as always, rock. <3