Reward/Monetization in Star Conflict is utterly frustrating.

Game Discussion Levelling and Economy
1

Are you perhaps familliar with the “rested xp bonus” or whatever it’s called in World of Warcraft?

Let me drop a cool little story related to it on you:

 

When Blizzard initially tested their XP system, it had a stamina function, where playing for extended periods of time would lower your XP gains. It was, and I quote, “a xxxx Disaster”.

People “felt like xxxx”(another quote) when their stamina ran out, and would drop out of the game to wait for it to refill.

In an attempt to remedy the situation, someone came up with a brilliant idea. They made a new baseline for the system roughly equivalent to the ‘penalised’ state, and turned the old baseline into a ‘bonus’ you could earn on top of it. 

It was a glorious change, which made people feel great about comming back to the game, instead of feeling bad about leaving it.

Not only people would play the game more, but those that only played as long as the bonus experience was available would leave feeling sattisfied with their efficient use of time.

 

 

Currently, Star Conflict has a mildly frustrating baseline, which additionally makes you feel bad about losing, and worst of all, it has mechanics(a new one recently added) that make winning feel like xxxx as well.

By the power of bullet points, here are Star Conflict’s Reward and Monetization issues, and how to fix them(two point wonder version at the end of the post).

 

  • Maintenance fees are frustrating.

You know what’s worse than losing? Having to pay for repairs using your already lower earnings. Especially if you had your ship torn up trying your best to win.

 

Just flat out give us less money per match, and let us crash our ships as many times as we want while trying to win.

While you’re at it, just turn missiles into “missile modules”. Give us an infinite supply, and limit us only with the number fired per spawn. You don’t charge us for fuel and ammo, so for consistency sake don’t charge us for missiles.

 

Sure, some people will cry for a bit about how they earn less money, but at least people will be allowed to have fun again with their expensive ships they worked so hard to earn.
Meanwhile the overall economy will be roughly the same.

 

  • Failing on a loot search is even more frustrating.

So you win a match, and you get to loot stuff. One of your attempts fails. The signal you get is that you got less loot.

 

Why in the world would you do that?!

Looting after a won match is our moment of triumph. Don’t spoil it with a stupid red marker and a penalty buzz for finding no loot.

Again, lower the baseline, and eliminate the failure penalty. Overall economy is the same, but players don’t feel like they got screwed over by chance.

 

  • Failing to claim loot you already saw is even more frustrating than failing to loot!

For the love of god, revert the recent module looting change.

Why would you chose to tease your players, when you can offer them incentives to play more, and pay more that aren’t frustrating?

 

Putting a pop-up demanding money for a chance to get something nice is not how you make money. That’s how you alienate the playerbase.

And you don’t just wave a shiny gun in front of someone’s face and tell them that they may or may not get it. Just give it to them straight away! They’ll feel awesome! They’ll want to play more!

 

If you really have to monetize looting after a battle, you chose the WORST way possible, that is not how you encourage impulse buying…

How about a button after a lost battle asking us if we’d like to “rent a stealth probe” to “try cutting our losses”? I know I’d pay a small fee after a bunch of losses to treat myself to some compensation loot.

Or maybe a pop-up that would let us spend a dollar/euro or two to “scan for valuable components” which would highlight a green(with a chance of purple) item before our loot attempt? That’s a ton of impulse cash right there! And nobody would feel bad about it!

 

  • Losing your premium status after a week is a major downer.

First impressions are very important, and it might seem like it makes sense to let the player feel how good it is to have premium time early on…

But your first impression should be of the game how it is for a free player!

By giving us a whole week of premium time, you calibrate our expectations at a state that’s meant to be a bonus. Much like the WoW stamina anecdote, you make us feel xxxx about not having premium, instead of feeling good for having it.

 

Start a player off with no premium time, and give it to them as a reward for their achievements. Give them 3 days once they reach level 4(1 day for each level gained), then give them 1 day whenever they advance a level. Maybe give it to them for earning a number of achievement points.

 

Just don’t start them off with it, all it ends up doing is adding an extra reason to leave, on top of the current T3 balance issues(and the gnereal spike in T3 “difficulty”).

 

  • Almost nothing in the shop is worth the price!

Okay, so 50 cents for 24 a hour License is pretty rad, and you can get an even better deal if you buy GS in bulk and make a long term commitment. You probably can never make an effective use of the full duration, but it’s still a good deal.

The stickers are a minor detail, but there is enough of them and they’re cheap enough for everyone to feel special…

 

And that’s it.

 

Smaller versions of my Premium bonuses that are proportionately almost infinitely more expensive? Pass.

~3$ for a T1 ship I will never use because I’ll be way out of T1 by the time I decide if the game is worth spending money for? Nope.

~7$ for a T2 ship I will also never use, since the Premium afforded me enough cash to get the free ones, and I need them anyway for unlocks… Nope.

~15$ for a T3 ship that’s inferior to it’s free equivalents? I dunno, if I spent the cash on premium time, I’d be able to escape the tier quicker, and I’d still need the free ships to progress… 15$ is already streching it for a single item anyway.

~25$ for a T4 ship… NOPE! NO WAY! Not even that stupid horse in WoW was worth 25$.

 

The point I’m making here is that after you get your one favorite sticker, there is nothing interesting to get in the shop.

Premium ships are inferior, and don’t contribute to your progression.

Booster modules are something you’ll only fill with the credit bonuses that give you an edge in combat(paid for courtesy of bonus credits from the premium time). Their effects that are worthwhile would do better as impulse buys described in the previous point.

 

There is literally no incentive to spend money here, unless you really want to escape T3 and head for T4, in which case you can simply get an extra week of premium time.

The issue here is slightly deeper than the others, and requires a change in how you monetize your game to fix.

 

For starters, let us buy out ships from the regular tech tree. Just make sure you don’t overprice it. Best to make our progression through the tiers is a lot smother first(an issue for a separate post), or you’ll run into the problem of the system becoming a greater frustration.

 

Second step would be to enable ship skins. You could repurpose the current premium ships for that. Being able to make your ship look like any of the tiers, while still having the top stats would certainly be worth cash. Again, extreme care not to overprice. Around 10$ is an industry standard for cosmetics, though simply swapping a model for a retextured version of another ship should probably be cheaper(around 5$), with the full 10$ price reserved for truly unique/cross faction skins.

 

Third and final, make stuff cheaper! That Premium plasma cannon is no way near worth the 5$ you’re asking.

Hell, there’s no way in hell I’ll ever pay more cash to outfit my ship than I paid for the ship!

NO! MAKING THE SHIP MORE EXPENSIVE IS NOT THE SOLUTION!

ALL CAPS IN BOLD HELPS ME GET OVER THE RIDICULOUSNESS OF THAT IDEA!

 

 

Well, there you have it folks. The problems and solutions as I see them.

Probably won’t get me hired, probably someone will disagree.

Hopefully wasn’t a waste of time.

 

 

TL;DR:

  • Get rid of the  failure penalty , reward success. Keep overall economy roughly the same.
  • Make stuff worth buying , instead of forcing us to pay for basic things.
2

In concur with most of your opinions. This should probably be in the suggestions forum.

 

Hrmm…I never thought about missiles being a module /w infinite ammo and you could still have premium missiles cost real money. There is a certain balance in that if you use better ammo, it’ll consistenly cost more credits so in that regard it may be a planned credit drain.

3

The update to the loot system in 0.81 is going to drive users away.

 

9/10 times someone sees some awesome purple loot, it breaks, and they don’t get it.

 

That’s frustrating.  I don’t know why you would purposely add frustration to the game.

4

Get rid of the  failure penalty , reward success. Overall economy is the same. This is the key words.

 

Give us an incentive to spend money. I have not yet spent a single dollar on this game, although I did spend over $20 on Hawken.

It’s ironic how the game is free to play but tiny things are extreemly expensive. 

5

Gaijin - pls hire Naqel as consultant.

6

Word, listen to this man.  Sure pofits may dip for a week but after you start selling your products cheaper then you’ll have more people spending money.

7

im sick and tired of this game getting more and more and more screwed.

 

Its like they WANT to get bankrupted

8

Get rid of the  failure penalty , reward success. Overall economy is the same.

 

I am going to insert this into my original post as a TL;DR version.

9

I disagree with most points in the OP, and some of them are almost terrifying suggestions.

 

These are not in the order stated in OP:

 

  1. Relating to loot / maintenance:

It is all psychology, and I support raising awareness to little thing like this, so we could be above it as humankind. If the money net income is the same, what does it matter? Call it reward, or call it penalty, if nothing really is different from income point of view, what is the point? Its all in one’s head.

 

Maintenance fees support thematic / role-playing; don’t die a lot, it always makes sense in all games. Even the game you mention (WoW), has a penalty for dying.

 

  1. About missile -“suggestion”

“Liberating” missiles so that you could kind of refill mid-game makes game way way unbalanced and an minefield / missile spam fest. No thanks, please, lets have at least some skill involved in this game, where you actually have to make a skillful decision when to use and when to save your limited missiles.

 

There is ingenious balance in how the missiles are limited recourse in each one game. Think about it, and you will get it. All “suggestions” above considered, sounds like they’re aimed towards playing type, where people just could unbind their main weapon fire button, and just play using missile button instead, then die to re-spawn again (without maintenance fee, clever) and repeat. Would make dull games in my opinion.

 

 

  1. Rest stuff

Most other parts in OP’s post are about the company’s income decisions; pricing (gold stuff, licenses). On that I don’t have much to say. Sure, why wouldn’t anyone like cheaper stuff. But, marketing decisions are marketing decisions. Surely either a) prices will get lower if people think they’re too expensive as they will not buy them or, b) you are wrong, and (enough) people think the pricing is OK. It is pretty understandable that the company doesn’t want to give everything free.

 

 

One funny thing I would raise from OP’s post is this: while there is talk about rewarding instead of penalizing, there still is whine about reward being too small; so it would never end, “official whiners” will always whine. E.g. see the part where there is whine in the OP for the 1 week of license, which is totally and by any means a 'extra reward’ that the OP is kind of looking for: but no, thats not enough ; need more MORE MOAR!

 

I don’t support this at all.

 

 

EDIT: I stand corrected on one thing: the new “loot breaking” system is indeed a big nerf to PvE. No more 100% certain item, so yes, that is huge.

10

It is all psychology, and I support raising awareness to little thing like this, so we could be above it as humankind. If the money net income is the same, what does it matter? Call it reward, or call it penalty, if nothing really is different from income point of view, what is the point? Its all in one’s head.

 

That’s a very ignorant thing to say, both from a player and a designer perspective.

 

-As a player, you should rebel against anything that makes you feel bad for playing the game the way you want: Be it spamming missiles, or making suicide runs with via the way of Microwrap sniping.

-As a designer, it is the goal to craft an enjoyable experience. Last I checked, nobody enjoys a buzzing sound that announces falure, especially when they can’t influence it.

 

Even the immersion factor becomes irrelevant here, since economy isn’t a focus of the game(like it would be in a strategy game, or an RPG), or a part of gameplay. It’s there only to slow down your progression, which could have been handled much more elegantly(see, my massive post).

 

“Liberating” missiles so that you could kind of refill mid-game makes game way way unbalanced and an minefield / missile spam fest.

 

Then the option exists for them not to refill at every spawn, or to increase their cooldown so that the decision point moves from “do I use it at all”, to “do I use it now” , or something different still…

There are multiple ways of handling the issue, some of which I believe would be way healthier for the balance(like removing nukes entirely, seeing as their only purpose is causing frustration and making the self destruct module worthless).

That’s a separate issue though, as the core of that suggestion was to make missiles consistent with the other modules: one big unlock, instead of chipping away a smaller ammount with each one you fire.

Primarily so that they can be given a reasonable GS pricing, that dosen’t make you feel like your money is being literally fired off into space.

 

 

One funny thing I would raise from OP’s post is this: while there is talk about rewarding instead of penalizing, there still is whine about reward being too small; so it would never end, “official whiners” will always whine. E.g. see the part where there is whine in the OP for the 1 week of license, which is totally and by any means a 'extra reward’ that the OP is kind of looking for: but no, thats not enough ; need more MORE MOAR!

 

You either completely failed to comprehend what you were reading, or… no, you just completly didn’t understand.

 

If you’d seen the chat, or been on the forums on the 7th day after the game released on steam, you’d see a rather clear pattern: people were unhappy that once their license ran out, their progression came to a grinding halt.

By making the License a day 1 bonus, the game(and I’ll repeat my point from the OP) has calibrated people’s expectations.

Instead of getting a boost after playing for a few days, you get it from the start and then hit a brick wall. Nobody is happy when they hit a brick wall, especially when they’re going at full speed.

Pair that up with the game doing a rather poor job of explaining those things to the average Joe(the guy who skips tutorials and only knows where to get better guns/ships and how to join a match), and you have a recipie for a disastrously poor player retention, where people will simply quit after 7 days of having it easy, and suddenly facing the standard rates.

 

Hell, their leniency with the free License time(they just gave us another 3 days for free), is another reason there’s nothing worth the money in the shop! If anything, they should stop that, not give us more!

Not to mention increasing the base rewards for the weekend would do better as a compensation, as it would incentivise getting a License to stack it on top of the increased rates.

11

Seeing as though I dont see a developer responding to these posts, I assume they don’t care about the players concerns.  With that, this great game will not be a success and I will go back to playing freeallegiance

12

That’s a very ignorant thing to say, both from a player and a designer perspective.

 

-As a player, you should rebel against anything that makes you feel bad for playing the game the way you want: Be it spamming missiles, or making suicide runs with via the way of Microwrap sniping.

-As a designer, it is the goal to craft an enjoyable experience. Last I checked, nobody enjoys a buzzing sound that announces falure, especially when they can’t influence it.

 

Matter of opinion, not a fact.

 

There are also people whom play games for the challenge, not to get higher self esteem from virtual hugs and kisses by the game, like being a part of a scientific Pavlovian reward-response -experiment.

 

I do respect that some people want games that just constantly pat you on the back for “being the best boy ever!”. But there are also players whom play for other reasons. This is me, as a player, rebelling against anything that makes me “feel bad” for playing the game you paint this game to be in OP.

 

 

.

I’ll skip the marketing decisions of the company part of your post, as I said earlier, I don’t have much to say on those from that marketing (gold) point of view. But I do think iPads and iPhones  should be a lot cheaper. Stupid Apple, for not obeying my whine of the matter on the Internets (luckily they still listen to the comments about bug fixes and features, at least sometimes) …

 

 

You either completely failed to comprehend what you were reading, or… no, you just completly didn’t understand.

 

If you’d seen the chat, or been on the forums on the 7th day after the game released on steam, you’d see a rather clear pattern: people were unhappy that once their license ran out, their progression came to a grinding halt.

 

On this I can partially agree. Surely it could be done so that it would cause less negative feedback raising from psychological reason (naturally no matter how illogical they seem from logic point of view). My last paragraph of the response (on the license issue) indeed was a bit off the mark in that.

 

That negativity related to their free-license could be pinpointed as example marketing failure by the company, surprising or not.

13

There are also people whom play games for the challenge, not to get higher self esteem from virtual hugs and kisses by the game, like being a part of a scientific Pavlovian reward-response -experiment.

 

I do respect that some people want games that just constantly pat you on the back for “being the best boy ever!”. But there are also players whom play for other reasons. This is me, as a player, rebelling against anything that makes me “feel bad” for playing the game you paint this game to be in OP.

 

Being reminded of poor performance, or randomly getting negative feedback on events you can’t influence is not “challenge”, it’s masochism.

Paying for repairs is not challenging, it’s tedious. Having to hold back on account of missile and repair costs is not “challenge”, it’s disempowering.

 

“Challenge” is to overcome obstacles and achieve, to always give it your best shot. There’s plenty of challenge to be had earning the rewards, there is no need to have the game remind you when you did bad, especially if you don’t feel like you did. The game should encourage you to try again, not have complex math calculating how bad exactly was your performance when translated to repair costs.

 

This isn’t some sort of “have cake, eat cake” scenario where you can only have one or the other. It’s, metaphoricaly speaking, about not having to separate your cake from crap that’s being served on the same plate.

14

The point the OP is making, for those who missed it, is positive feedback is always welcomed. One of the things I liked about the Assassin’s Creed multiplayer in later titles is their title system - even if you didn’t win, you might be praised as the “player killed least.” or “has the most escapes.”

 

The idea of this is simple; it goes through the players and says “you did something better than everyone else in the match.” That is quite a nice feature. I have had really bad games on Revelations or AC3, only to get to the end and get a little cutscene of my character beating the crap out of everyone with the caption “[my name] The Stunner : Stunned the most pursuers in a match.” That is a great feature. Anything that lets you walk away with head high and say “at least I did x” is always welcomed.

 

Star Conflict has none of that. The reward system at the moment is not a reward system at all - it’s a penalty system. Just consider the following two statements and tell me which one sounds better:

 

  1. You are entitled to find up to three scrap parts after winning a battle, each worth about 2-8K. Occasionally (about 1/20 chance), you will instead find an intact piece of equipment (shop value approx 150K - 200K, sellable for 1/10th shop value). If you do, you can keep the item and install it on your own ships.

 

  1. You are entitled to find up to three scrap parts / intact pieces of equipment after winning a battle. Scrap is worth about 2-8K, equipment has a shop value of approximately 150K - 200K, sellable for 1/10th shop value. If you find equipment there is a 90% you will break it upon extraction. If this happens, you automatically sell the broken item for 2-8K (about 1/20 - 1/100 shop value, or 1/2 to 1/3rd what selling the intact module nets you). It cannot be repaired.

 

Which one do you prefer? 

15

I hate to be the voice of dissent on the loot, but I like what they’ve done except the price of the 30% is too high. 

 

My problem with this patch is I need my ship statistics back…  So far I cant figure out how to view them

 

Woot, got my answer here: [http://forum.star-conflict.com/index.php?/topic/19792-how-do-i-view-my-ships-statistics-now-since-may-23rd-patch/](< base_url >/index.php?/topic/19792-how-do-i-view-my-ships-statistics-now-since-may-23rd-patch/)

16

gonna commend on Devs for actually taking the risk to explore alternative monetization models.

this is evidence that they are willing to experiment which game makers don’t receive enough credit for

imagine if Gaijin were too balless to find solutions for broken mechanic, that’s actually even worse coz that’s when the playerbase shrink permanently

 

that said:

unfortunately - the looting system is a massive fail

 

1. Real Money = Guaranteed Rewards

this is almost scripture in freemium models and Gaijin has blasphemed

 

loot recovery %'s are too low for both options anyhow, it should be closer to this:

 

1 in 3 chance for free recovery

100% for paid recovery

 

revert back to rare module discovery percentages if you need to, but once a player sees what he could get you need to up the chances of claiming said modules.

Is this pay to win?

 

  • some will say it is

  • but fact remains, you still need to discover those purples first before you can pay to get it with a 100% chance.

 

  • Tier relevant loot !

  • Tier 3 battles must find Tier 3 modules

 

now imagine when someone finds a tier relevant purple with a 100% chance of claiming it but he doesn’t have gold on him

  • this will raise revenue more than a 30% chance ever could coz less than 1/3 chances don’t warrant stocking up on Gold standards

 

Less than 100% claim chances can appease the anti-pay2win crowd but it’s harder to find the sweetspot % paying customers considers acceptable. too low and people will not stock up on gold for looting purposes. And there is nothing on your DB to analyze either because there are no identifying markers on gold purchases.

 

 

tl;dr

 

  1. raise chances for loot recovery across the board

  2. lower discovery % if you have to

  3. real money = real results; that means 100% chance or close to it

  4. tier relevant loot means better chance of impulse purchase

  5. scale gold prices to loot quality otherwise it’ll only be purple or nothing purchases

17

Hey there!

There were posts that developers don’t read a thing you are writing.

Sorry guys but we do =) 

And as we try to read it all… well… you Do see how much you’ve written over here, right? =)

 

So, what can I say for now:

We are aware of your frustration and discontent about new loot system etc.

And we also aware that some things need rebalancing and overall fixing. 

We Are looking into it, and Are trying to come up with a good solution as fast as we can. 

18

Hey there!

There were posts that developers don’t read a thing you are writing.

Sorry guys but we do =) 

And as we try to read it all… well… you Do see how much you’ve written over here, right? =)

 

So, what can I say for now:

We are aware of your frustration and discontent about new loot system etc.

And we also aware that some things need rebalancing and overall fixing. 

We Are looking into it, and Are trying to come up with a good solution as fast as we can. 

 

Well, let me start by saying that I am very happy that you’re not only reading, but also responding here on this board.

Opening up actual communication with your playerbase and talking to them is a great step in the right direction - thank you for that.

 

If we players often sound angry or frustrated these days, much of it still has to do with the feeling of being ignored by the devs in the previous patches. Starting with patch 0.7.10 which brought the loyalty nerf iirc we did a LOT of posting and tried very hard to reach you developers with our concerns.

After that, there was a series of patches which often brought controversial changes, some of them not even mentioned in the patch notes (reimplantation cost increase anyone ? just a smalll point among many).

We talked, we posted, we tried to exaplain how both the player community and the devs would profit from the game becoming a great success.

But very often, the thing we wanted most, we didnt receive: a reply form the devs.

We lost a ton of old vets, some corps lost the majority of their members, and many of the old names have vanished from the game.

 

What should have been a success snowballing into a huge playerbase by word of mouth recommendations soon became a struggle to keep the player numbers at the same level despite there being a constant stream of new players trying out the game from the steam release. And still we received no answers. It might have been different on the russian board maybe (I dont know how things are being handled over there) but this is how a lot of us felt here.

 

So I’m happy we finally seem to be entering a dialogue with the devs now, and I hope you will have the patience to keep communicating with us even if some of us still show that frustration in some of the posts.

Noone expects the devs to slavishly do what the players want, but by communicating with each other we can both profit and hopefully improve the game together.

19

I’d like to see some actual improvement, not just talk

20

First off, thank you for playing our game, we are happy and proud that you are so passionate about it. 

And again - we do have a suggestions section.

 

There will be improvements, but dates are unclear to me at the moment. I’m trying to get more info, and as soon as things will get clear I’ll try to inform you.