November 28, 2023

Plans for Retiring the Legacy Version of AI Dungeon

It's almost time to say goodbye to our old friend, the Legacy version of AI Dungeon. Image of an older gentleman with a backpack about to depart on a journey as the sun sets on the horizon.

Earlier this month, we sent out a player survey so you could tell us how you feel about Phoenix, the newest version of AI Dungeon. We had over a thousand responses in the two days the survey was up. After reviewing the results, you’ve made it clear that Phoenix is an improvement over the Legacy version of AI Dungeon. The majority of players prefer Phoenix over Legacy, and most of the feedback we received for improving Phoenix is being addressed in updates that have already been released or are being released this month. We’re still listening to feedback, and we still have improvements we want to make, but you’ve given us the confidence to move forward with retiring Legacy.

With the success of the Phoenix update, we’re now ready to announce plans for retiring the Legacy version of AI Dungeon. Support for the Legacy version will officially end on Dec 1, 2023. On December 31, 2023, we’ll begin the process of shutting down Legacy.

Phoenix is the future of AI Dungeon and has already allowed us to develop new features we couldn’t have done on Legacy. With a small team, we’re unable to maintain two versions of AI Dungeon, and Phoenix is now superior to Legacy for features, stability, and performance.

65.5% of players prefer Phoenix, 34.5% prefer Legacy

Although there were a few bumps along the way, players generally consider the update a beneficial change. 65% of players prefer Phoenix over Legacy. With a change this big, it’s understandable that not everyone will be happy with the changes. However, the reception of Phoenix has been as good as we could have hoped for. For any of you who are still dissatisfied, please continue to share your feedback—we’re always looking for ways to improve the product.

How will you feel when Legacy AI Dungeon retires? 5% say "Yay, Good riddance". 31% say "Whatever, just let me keep playing the game." 49% say "Eh, kind of sad but understandable." 15% say "Super dissapointed and will probably stop playing the game."

As we said from the beginning, listening to and addressing player feedback for Phoenix was one of the most important requirements before retiring Legacy. We had a lengthy Beta period for Phoenix where we were able to collect player feedback through user testing, analytics, feedback on social platforms (like Discord and Reddit), and our support channels.

Some examples of things we added to Phoenix as a result of player feedback include adding a list view for content cards and Story Cards, replacing “Undo to Here” with “Erase to Here,” adding ChatGPT as the model for Story Card generation, adding the ability to upload custom images, and introducing themes and display options to the play screen. We also moved up the timeline for migrating Legacy worlds into Phoenix scenarios. We also captured and fixed hundreds of bugs and performance issues reported by players.

In the survey, many of you have requested features that will take more time to build. Some of the features we have either started working on or will work on soon include:

  • Adding a button for “Erase to here” (this is currently available as a command-based action)
  • Improvements to content cards (seeing more preview text, NSFW tags, play stats, etc.)
  • Better options for creating characters and using them in stories
  • Improved memory systems
  • RPG features like quests, inventory, or achievements

With Legacy retiring, our focus will shift to new AI models and improvements, AI Dungeon features and improvements, developing Heroes, and continuing to improve the performance and stability of AI Dungeon.

As always, thank you for your continued feedback and support. We are excited for what’s coming and look forward to sharing more details with you soon!