Testing things in BETA is fine, but the ideas should atleast be thought out and honestly, right now most of their ideas don’t seem to be well thought out when they implment them in-game.
I’ll say. Past 5 or so patches I’ve done this every time I entered the game:
Isn’t the correct term *facedesk*?
Headdesk, facedesk, deskpalm, whatever. It’s just what I’ve been doing. I’ve lost millions of brain cells over this game and will probably lose a few million more before I just decide that this game is irredeemable and leave for good.
EDIT: I don’t use a Mac, either. The new Mac Pro does look very interesting but unless Apple decides to give them better gaming support/graphics drivers then I’m just not going to buy one.
EDIT: Nevermind…
Textbook - really didn’t need to remind publisher about it considering they do dabble in mobile app games.
Still considering whether to bother typing out my thoughts on it or not coz my input requires changing things around drastically - although technically not difficult.
but say if I was given a 10 minute presentation to their board my talk would center around 3 points
#3 will open up possibilities for
A. pay to play
B. pay to compete
Anyways - progression capping and any form of artificially trying to extend game shelf life is
lazy game design
unnecessary for Star Conflict (which has high replayability to begin with)
limiting their own income … BY ALOT
progression caps is a dying formula that is being proven ineffective over and over in countless other F2P games. Tiers, pay to grind less, ship tree, synergy and what have yous is yesterday. Value Added content is still the way to go, always has been always will be.
* I would also advise them to get a proper AI team in place as it can open up PVE monetization which is significantly populated.
I can see the recommendation system being easily abused. Alternate accounts. I made my account in march this year, so I’m not sure if making an account is that simple anymore. But that’s not even steam. You can make an alternate account on steam, and seeing star conflict is free to play… yeah. Other than that I like the ideas, keep up the good work.
problem with recommendations is they are abusable.
also, allowing to earn in-game currency is bad. then people will complain about the amount they are earning :\ in fact the game does give you some couple hundred free currency. enough for some paint jobs or 1 premium module, or a few looting attempts. but nothing more. and for pete’s sake… remove the premium missile/ammo rewards…
also, highly agree with the DLC portion. creating exclusive items available only to some users might draw a small crowd, but it will cause dissent among the general population due to perceived ‘imbalances’…
and the part about if we say it’s overpriced, that is probably the final matter on the subject. lmao
i also see you got some of your talking points from that lengthy youtube vid someone posted… haha ‘never sell power. ever.’ endquote
I took most of it from extra credit.
If people start complaining about how slow they’re earning GS, the counter is simply: ‘At least we actually allow you to earn it. Consider yourselves lucky.’ Like I said, there’s no good business reason not to allow players to earn it in game. I gave 5 points there which all make it particularly viable, especially point 4.
I actually posted the video on another thread. I believe it was Jasan’s…
Earning premium currency in-game is a viable method to INCREASE overall sales of said premium income. It may sound counter intuitive but if you scan over some successful F2P’s you’ll see it happening. My explanation to the phenomena would be:
That said - earning premium currency directly isn’t necessarily the best thing to do, instead allow players with time to ‘farm’ game content that players with money are willing to purchase using GS might be alot better.
Things that might be worth the money can be considered Pay2Win if sold directly
Anything less and people might not fork out the cash
Making it a transaction between players creates an ‘opinion’ buffer made even more effective if both sides stand to gain eg.
Purple loot for GS
Seller earns GS that he can use to buy other purple loot
Buyer gets purple loot paid for by cash
Pay2Win if sold directly
Somewhat OK if done between players
You could argue that it’s selling power but it really isn’t
That purple loot already existed in-game
GS was merely used to change ownership blablabla.
And the fact that players WITHOUT money are able to earn GS (from selling loot) and use it to buy power loot that they want sorta even things out etc.
Say there was a Marketplace Menu and you see all these rare modules you really want listed for GS - don’t tell me GS revenue won’t skyrocket. Dev have to spend alot of time thinking about how to limit multi-accounting and ‘outside’ sales but it can be done. etc etc.
I’m slowly putting together the ideal SCon experience in my head after carefully scanning over all these threads. I’m even considering Luckyo’s frigate hate, just so I know how to bring that down. It’ll take a lot more time, but I’m determined to do it.
Not doable without access to sales data which no one will ever get to so … it’s still up to Gaijin. They have all the resources to make thing better and player feedback in this area of the game is really shooting blindly in the dark. I wouldn’t bother.
I said I would take a long time. If I can really make something that would pull this game right off the route it’s taking I will, even if it takes me years.
Earning premium currency in-game is a viable method to INCREASE overall sales of said premium income. It may sound counter intuitive but if you scan over some successful F2P’s you’ll see it happening. My explanation to the phenomena would be:
- Ice-breaker - It encourages non paying players to make purchases and open themselves up for future purchases independent of free premium currency
- Goodwill - one of those weird human factor things that helps people open up their wallets more when they don’t feel like you’re forcing them
gimmick… they only thing that will actually entice users to spend money is if they use your store or transaction service for the first time.
which means reducing premium ship prices across the board, to make them more appealing to users and providing low-cost, low-level options, with only incremental increase later on.
if the user spends 5$-10$, they are more likely to use the transaction process again since their info is already stored, and they feel comfortable using the system.
but if there is no reason for them to use the system initially, then you’re SOL. btw, that’s what a microtransaction model is… nobody is going to pay 50$ for a T4 prem with exp mods when they can get a complete game for the same price. buying 4-5 ships would be your yearly gaming budget…
also, this free currency system you speak of… i’ve seen it… and in general it doesn’t work. it just annoys users to the fact that they cannot get what they want with the little amount of currency they are given. and this is always the wrong approach. you never want to annoy users into buying items, you want to make them feel as if the current items on offer are worth the cash you’re spending on them…
yes, i saw that when you first posted, and i don’t agree with everything in there.
i think the small amount (couple hundred) standards you get for free in SC is fine… other games also employ this same approach. but handing out free credits continually is annoying at least, abusable at most.
However, if players are willing to invest time and effort into a game and cling to it month after month don’t you think it’s morally wrong to deny them some of the content? Notice how I don’t say ‘premium’: no content should be locked away from the average player just because. I never said you had to regularly earn standards every day like the loyalty reward that comes into your inbox every time you log in every consecutive day. You could find them during loot sessions, like small ‘treasure chests’ of standards that may only be around 50 or so strong. Play enough and you should have enough standards after that time to buy yourself a nice ship or a few colours.
no, i don’t believe in free users being a source of ‘value’ for a game, even though they increase server populations. a small bit of currency is enough to give them a sense of having a few options before their time runs out and they have to refill their account. basically time is what it should buy you before you make a purchase decision, nothing more.
every attempt should be made to get users to spend cash on a game. but it should be made affordable to everyone, so there are both entry-level and higher-tier options available. but all options should be reasonably priced, none of this 32$+ for a fully exp fitted T4, or 64$+ for a T5, if they make an appearance.
that’s because servers cost money to maintain and games cost money to develop. if somebody doesn’t pay their fair share, then it’s as if a tax is being imposed on all of the paying players…
and who wants to pay for that… i’m not here to subsidize other people :\ plus i just can’t… pull the weight of everyone… and upkeep the servers lmao
they’re usually the ones begging for handouts in public places / global chat ;p
you know what you can do though… make premium ships available for a MASSIVE amount of credits. 10 times the normal rate. so people can’t complain about balance issues… R9 prem would be 32 million instead of 3.2. but in order to do that, you’d have to make sure you’ve plugged all farming loopholes and exploits.
oh, but you can farm in higher tiers to buy lower tier prems then… so won’t work… AND THIS is why you never implement scaling loot/reward systems…
just as an example: GW1 levelling system da best. on first playthrough you might take a week or more to max your level to 20. but on subsequent characters you can get that down to as low as a few hours, can’t recall how many, but like 5-8, when done properly. but you need access to all expansions or it takes an extra 1-2 hours. there was absolutely no gear grind, you could mod any weapon for any purpose. the only differences were custom skins, which required dungeon clears. so grind for aesthetics only, or unique items for prestige. but you could get the same stats on moddable normal items. they just weren’t as ‘cool’… and they were cheap. no armor grind… only aesthetics… but you can collect elite sets… so it was a choice thing basically. you can grind, but you don’t have to. although grinding had benefits.
kinda agree on principle but this subsidy you speak of is already factored in when devs draw up their costing.
in F2P PC/Mac it’s generally assumed that only between 10% - 30% will ever pay for anything (30% will pay once, 10% will pay more than once/regularly)
so when they set about pricing (to cover their costs etc) they’ve probably excluded the free users upfront so whether you like it or not you’re unlikely to get around the subsidy issue coz it’s been assumed.
eg.
playerbase 10,000
server cost $2,500 per month
I’m gonna break the cost down to 1,000 players paying $2,50 or thereabouts.
Agree on the price points tho… they really need kickass $5 items to sell. This DLC / Ships prices is mindboggling.
I mean they have dozens of ships they could potentially sell using the nice blue/gold formula they have but due to ship tree / progression / tiers they’ve artificially created unwanted / inferior content on purpose … wtflol…
of course you will never get around the subsidy completely, but you want to reduce the burden on paying users by providing enough incentive to get more users to spend cash.
also… the more subsidized ‘free’ users there are, the lower the server performance, which has to cope with increased load, with no $$$ to upgrade hardware/internet connections ;p
As I said, it looks like they’re trying to grab some of the World of Tanks crowd; a lot of features and monetization options are becoming disgustingly similar.
Also, no offense taken on the packs. They were worth it before the 0.9 update. Now I wouldn’t buy them even if they were a fourth of the price or at all actually.
I dropped out of WOT, despite being in a clan that routinely managed to hold land for several days at a time, because it became a farce. New trees would have OP tanks that people would drop 100 USD on to get right away and dominate, only to see some nerfed into uselessness in the next patch while others went untouched. They constantly struggled between making tanks match historical performance or making them balanced for the tier and type that the devs would arbitrarily stick them in. Some tanks were constant losers like the Lee, T34 US heavy and the M6. Others were so OP they had to tier them up or introduce more OP tanks in the same tier. I mean early on the IS4 was so good people would take it to clan wars over the IS7, which was a tier higher. Some premium tanks, like the Lowe, where amazingly OP cash cows when they were introduced. Other tanks, like the Shermans, where underpowered, but given a credit bonus to compensate, and then later they would strip out the credit bonus while not fixing the tank!
My biggest gripe was with the Hellkat. They wouldn’t give its historical speed of 96 kmh because of “game engine issues” and then introduced a russian scout tank that went faster and had a physics defying turning radius. When they finally buffed the Hellkats speed to 80 kmh, they nerfed the acceleration so much that you would never get to that speed unless you were going down hill with the wind. It was just a big xxxx from the devs, and I’m not the only one who threw in the towel because of that and a number of other stupid changes.
Poor communication from the devs, with no rhyme or reason on the nerfs or buffs to tanks in game coupled with a long, long grind to tier 10 made it a huge pain after every patch. It was like a lottery where winners get amazing and losers are doomed to fail, unless they pay up.