Hi, actually i have tested more or less 10 games on beta see them grow and in most of the case make a great fail. So i will give you some good advice hoping that wil be usefull for your dev.
In game like this that are stuff based (ships, equips, ect) most ot the problems are always linked to the money: the temptation for the dev is to create every x time new ships new stuff overpowered, making people to buy it for be competitive. This situation point to the impossibility to keep a good balance in the game, to the people lose trust in the game ect ect. My advice is to make money with consumables objects. I don’t mean object for making expirience like the license (that will also bring the problem to make the game an infinite grinding to keep people buy that stuff) but i suggest to bet on consumables object for war (pve/pvp) like improved heal, improved damage, improved speed ect ect. An important thing is that these objects don’t have to be too powerfull or the game will be a pay for win, it would be good like 2 full equipped paying ships vs 3 not paying ships will be a draw fight. I also give you the advice to make a market to exchange credit for gold in an automated auction.
The last but i think more important thing is that to keep two eyes open on the cheat of the game that are the best plague in the f2p games where people have nothing to lose. Try to make all possible calculations server sided and a strong hash code verification of the files during the run of the game, in order to avoid injected and moded client. Also a strong check on the input device like keyboard and mouse will be fine in order to prevent macros and bot (disabling all the controls coming outside the game). Remeber that every single day spent on the dev of this prevention will be 1$ more in the future
Obviously English is not your first language so If i misunderstood something please say
- I dont know how you can give good advice by playing only 10 games
- you say you don’t want the game to be P2W, and in the very next sentence say you want “gold” consumables and 2 “paying” ships should be equal to 3 non “paying” ships. what that means is a “paying” ship is 50% stronger than a non “paying” ship
- Is not that the very definition of pay to win?
Totally agree everything that can should be server side
I don’t mind that it has the pay for stuff model. obviously we need to support the dev’s. the only problem i have is that the game is still in it’s early stages. and yes AGREED paid ships are much better in all aspects, but i refuse to spend REAL money on anything this early. for example if i buy a crazy good ship with everything i would like it to have then a month or two down the road the dev’s will nerf it or change it up somehow. then i’d be left with something i didn’t want. kinda like having a nice ten dollar bill in your pocket but instead you got 10 one’s which is annoying.
Paying for special ships is not “pay to win” and is cool as long as it’s “side-grades”, visiuals and and small extras. You still have the option to grind the fee ships tree and be competitive. I think the current solution is very good.
A market to exchange credit for gold would be awesome. It could be taxed and thus generate a direct revenue and prevent abuse at the s ame time
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Ironically, one of the complaints I’ve seen is that the paid for ships are not very good in actual combat. The verdict seems to be that they are, at best, mid-tier vessels that don’t keep up with the end-tier ships. Yes, they come with full Synergy and you don’t pay for repairs, but when the F2P pilots can kill you in a head-on fight with the closest equivalent ship 9/10 times you are going to need that free repair…