Feedback from Geocachers

Its been exciting for Monster Cache the last few days, after we sent emails to lots of geocachers.  We've had about 86 sign ups so far, and 25 of those have found a monster so far.  That's about 30%, which is about average, maybe a bit more.  So 136 on the Legends board now.

One critical thing an iOS user found right away was in the Store.  Since our in-app product of "Unlimited Nets" was rejected in iOS, I had just added more and bigger coin options.  I didn't realize that made the list so long that it scrolled off of the bottom of the screen on iPhones.  So the "CLOSE" button was not visible, so if you decided not to buy coins, you couldn't close that window or go to another tab, so you were stuck and had to exit the app.  Ideally, I would like to keep all the coin options and have that window scroll, but that means a new app version.  So for now I just disabled some purchase options.  Turns out there was the same issue on Android for my small phone, so I did the same thing on Android.

I also noticed that referral emails were coming from my kcwebprogrammers.com address, which wasn't good.  Google wasn't letting me authenticate with lanitek.com, and monstercache.com was still forwarding from GoDaddy.  So I had to set up a new email address on GoDaddy and do SMTP through them.  Worked fine, just took a while to figure out what was going on.

For the email fix, and to add an answer about binoculars to the FAQ, I had to do a web release.  Naturally, Windows Azure decided my release credentials had expired or something.  I'm really not sure why it stopped, or what credentials I had before.  But luckily I figured out how to create a certificate and found a good comment about where to upload it, so I got past it.

Last interesting thing (for now) was I got two nearly identical emails from two different people that were disappointed that they couldn't play forever for free.  Here is one, and the response I sent to both:

"This is going to be a very short lived game if the ONLY way to earn coins without spending real money is referring friends. What happens if your friends don't want to play or or you run out of friends to get signed up? The game HAS to be self sustaining. People will quit playing if they have to spend real money."

My Response:
"Hello,

Thank you for your feedback on Monster Cache.  Almost all phone applications try to generate revenue in some way -- either by advertising, or an up-front purchase price, or in-application purchasing.  For Monster Cache, we have chosen in-application purchasing.  We want people to evaluate the game for free, and hope that they will enjoy it enough to purchase more coins, or refer friends. If you feel that you did not have enough time to evaluate the game, then we are happy to give you some more coins so that you can play a while longer.  We have added another 100 coins to your account.  Also, if you reach Level 4, then there are some Treasure Chests with small amounts of coins that you can find as well.

Again, we appreciate the feedback.  Best of luck in your monster hunting!

Monster Cache Team"