Forums » Suggestions
VO Monetization Change
Currently, VO's monetization is as follows:
Lite Subscription:
Price: $1 per month
Benefits: Allows you to pilot a Goliath capital ship
Premium Subscription
Price: $10 per month
Benefits: Allows you to pilot a Trident Type M capital ship; removes the hard-to-get and non-
transferable crystal currency
Liveries:
Price: $10 - $45
Benefits: Adds aesthetic value to the Vulture, Goliath or Trident, as the case might be
VO has gone through a variety of monetization models in its past. The current model has been in effect for about 2 years. This model puts capships, some of the most powerful ships in the game, behind a pay wall. The presence of certain trade-offs to capships prevents this from turning into a complete pay-to-win situation. However, it is to some extent approaching a pay-to-win scenario. The addition of capship commands has vastly increased the benefits of capships, and thus the downfalls of not having a capship. The /+ActivateTurrets command also unilaterally benefits capships.
It is obvious that if paying did not have obvious advantages, the revenue of Guild Software would reduce. That is not desirable by anyone who cares about the game. At the same time, the promotion of pay-to-win makes the game boring, which is also (I assume) undesirable. The suggestion attempts to find a middle ground.
So, on to the suggestion. I request everyone to read the whole suggestion rather than just a few of the more controversial points and raise objections then and there.
1) De-link capships from subscription. Capships are a source of power. Putting them behind a paywall in essence creates a pay-to-win. This change would have the upside of making in-game "power" based on in-game work rather than real-life paying capacity. A downside would be that multi-boxing of capships would become a lot more common. This would be fine in player-to-player relations, since everyone is on the same footing. But it might necessitate some changes to the environment and AI to respond.
2) Remove capship commands. Capship commands basically allow players some level of auto-pilot. I can load up my Goliath, travel to my destination in a Greyhound or better yet, teleport, then order it to follow. It is less efficient and riskier than piloting it myself. But using this I can simply go about my work for half an hour and return to ready hauled goods. Auto-pilot is something which the developers themselves have spoken against in the past.
3) Remove /+ActivateTurrets . When /+ActivateTurrets was introduced, turret bots were simultaneously disabled. Suggestion is to remove both turret bots and /+ActivateTurrets. Automated turrets decrease player involvement in capship defence, and also reduce the need for player cooperation in the form of gunners or wingmen. A solo pilot can take on a Leviathan using a capship and /+ActivateTurrets. Such a situation discourages player cooperation, as little as it already is.
The above three suggestions were to recover balance between capships and small ships, and to reduce the ability to acquire in-game power using real-life money. The following suggestions are to provide alternate means of monetization for GS.
1) Alternative subscription model:
Free-to-play:
Can pilot both capships
Has to pay crystals as is
Cannot occupy Commander post in any guild
Cannot customize their ships' looks
Do not have auto-fire
Has reduced (5000 cu) free station storage.
Lite:
Can pilot both capships
Has to pay 50% less crystals on all purchases involving crystals
Can occupy Commander post in a guild
Can assign 1 primary colour to their ships
Can choose liveries from provided options, though liveries have to be purchased on
individual ships using crystals
Has auto-fire
Has 15000 cu free station storage.
Premium:
Can pilot both capships
Does not have to pay crystals
Can assign two colours to their ships, one primary and one secondary.
Can equip provided liveries free of cost and also create custom liveries
Has 25000 cu of free station storage
2) Liveries:
The Trident Tech liveries and new Goliath Tech liveries would be purchasable for real-life
money.
The basic point of the two suggestions here is to put "real power" outside the paywall, instead placing QoL features behind the paywall. Personally I'd like more QoL features to be behind the paywall. While criticizing (as many doubtless will), please attempt to add some stuff there if you can think of it.
/me braces for impact
Lite Subscription:
Price: $1 per month
Benefits: Allows you to pilot a Goliath capital ship
Premium Subscription
Price: $10 per month
Benefits: Allows you to pilot a Trident Type M capital ship; removes the hard-to-get and non-
transferable crystal currency
Liveries:
Price: $10 - $45
Benefits: Adds aesthetic value to the Vulture, Goliath or Trident, as the case might be
VO has gone through a variety of monetization models in its past. The current model has been in effect for about 2 years. This model puts capships, some of the most powerful ships in the game, behind a pay wall. The presence of certain trade-offs to capships prevents this from turning into a complete pay-to-win situation. However, it is to some extent approaching a pay-to-win scenario. The addition of capship commands has vastly increased the benefits of capships, and thus the downfalls of not having a capship. The /+ActivateTurrets command also unilaterally benefits capships.
It is obvious that if paying did not have obvious advantages, the revenue of Guild Software would reduce. That is not desirable by anyone who cares about the game. At the same time, the promotion of pay-to-win makes the game boring, which is also (I assume) undesirable. The suggestion attempts to find a middle ground.
So, on to the suggestion. I request everyone to read the whole suggestion rather than just a few of the more controversial points and raise objections then and there.
1) De-link capships from subscription. Capships are a source of power. Putting them behind a paywall in essence creates a pay-to-win. This change would have the upside of making in-game "power" based on in-game work rather than real-life paying capacity. A downside would be that multi-boxing of capships would become a lot more common. This would be fine in player-to-player relations, since everyone is on the same footing. But it might necessitate some changes to the environment and AI to respond.
2) Remove capship commands. Capship commands basically allow players some level of auto-pilot. I can load up my Goliath, travel to my destination in a Greyhound or better yet, teleport, then order it to follow. It is less efficient and riskier than piloting it myself. But using this I can simply go about my work for half an hour and return to ready hauled goods. Auto-pilot is something which the developers themselves have spoken against in the past.
3) Remove /+ActivateTurrets . When /+ActivateTurrets was introduced, turret bots were simultaneously disabled. Suggestion is to remove both turret bots and /+ActivateTurrets. Automated turrets decrease player involvement in capship defence, and also reduce the need for player cooperation in the form of gunners or wingmen. A solo pilot can take on a Leviathan using a capship and /+ActivateTurrets. Such a situation discourages player cooperation, as little as it already is.
The above three suggestions were to recover balance between capships and small ships, and to reduce the ability to acquire in-game power using real-life money. The following suggestions are to provide alternate means of monetization for GS.
1) Alternative subscription model:
Free-to-play:
Can pilot both capships
Has to pay crystals as is
Cannot occupy Commander post in any guild
Cannot customize their ships' looks
Do not have auto-fire
Has reduced (5000 cu) free station storage.
Lite:
Can pilot both capships
Has to pay 50% less crystals on all purchases involving crystals
Can occupy Commander post in a guild
Can assign 1 primary colour to their ships
Can choose liveries from provided options, though liveries have to be purchased on
individual ships using crystals
Has auto-fire
Has 15000 cu free station storage.
Premium:
Can pilot both capships
Does not have to pay crystals
Can assign two colours to their ships, one primary and one secondary.
Can equip provided liveries free of cost and also create custom liveries
Has 25000 cu of free station storage
2) Liveries:
The Trident Tech liveries and new Goliath Tech liveries would be purchasable for real-life
money.
The basic point of the two suggestions here is to put "real power" outside the paywall, instead placing QoL features behind the paywall. Personally I'd like more QoL features to be behind the paywall. While criticizing (as many doubtless will), please attempt to add some stuff there if you can think of it.
/me braces for impact
This was based on a discussion we had on discord where I suggested that monetizing "bling" and QoL (the latter only to some extent - the base game needs enough to retain players) is better than monetizing power and is widely unexplored in VO. The suggestion above is his alone though and I do not necessarily agree with all of the details.
I shall mention that until this post I did not even know you could buy liveries because that button is expertly hidden at the bottom of the billing options page (only visible when logged in) - somewhere I would never have thought to search for it.
Other than ship customization (can I haz nyan cat rainbow trails coming out of my ship for money? xD) you can also easily monetize stuff like (guild) chat flairs or similar things.
I fully expect this has been discussed before and I'll happily say that I have made no effort to research any of it.
I shall mention that until this post I did not even know you could buy liveries because that button is expertly hidden at the bottom of the billing options page (only visible when logged in) - somewhere I would never have thought to search for it.
Other than ship customization (can I haz nyan cat rainbow trails coming out of my ship for money? xD) you can also easily monetize stuff like (guild) chat flairs or similar things.
I fully expect this has been discussed before and I'll happily say that I have made no effort to research any of it.
I think decisions like this are best left to the game owners. We don't have any data to make an informed business decision and anything else needed.
We as players should stick to commenting on game play mechanics and so on.
We as players should stick to commenting on game play mechanics and so on.
-1
I don't feel that capship ownership is necessary, or anything close to "pay to win". We have quite a few major vets who have never bothered to build a capship, and just aren't interested.
I've written elsewhere about the possibility of offering non-insured capships on a directly-paid "In App Purchase" type basis ("buy" a Goliath, for dollars, that has no insurance), and we might still do something like that. But it's more likely than completely restructuring the game's business model the way this post suggests.
I also fundamentally don't believe that $1/month is a cost-prohibitive ask, at least in the developed world.
Similarly, while we do have the Crystal system, fully tuning currencies like that is a challenging thing (particularly with an evolving game), and it's still on-going. Crystal is not where it needs to be, yet. Subs are much more consistent and easier to measure, and provide a predictable revenue stream.
Also, while it's nice to say "just make lots of lifestyle / aesthetic options and then you'll monetize on that!", it's kind of naive. It's like the people who say we should just put ads into the game, but don't realize the incredibly massive number of active users you need to have to monetize meaningfully out of those models.
Obviously, we do have some aesthetic type options in testing, but the reason why they aren't very highlighted at present (outside certain OEM deals), is that the architecture of how to go about them was in question. Again, it's easy to say "add a zillion something-somethings!", but understand that I have a pretty modern phone, but I don't have enough free flash storage to install Fortnite, even with nothing else on the device (it requires ~26GB).
HOW you go about implementing this stuff is a really big deal. It's pretty easy to get yourself into a position where you have so much download space spent on purchasable "stuff" that no one wants to install the damned game anymore (there is increasing resistance to game installs around the 1GB mark). If your game is Fortnite and a massive success, maybe that's less important, but we still need new-installs.
Also, creating "aesthetic purchasable content" is also a big artistic undertaking, at least if the result isn't procedurally generated (which is still complex to engineer, to make it any good). Again, using Fortnite as an example, EPIC has both major internal teams, as well as something like a dozen sizeable external studios working on Fortnite content, full-time. I'd guesstimate around a thousand people?
So, to be clear, we are continuing to work on adding more aesthetic purchasable options for ships and the like, BUT, we do not intend to be solely dependent on that model. Not unless the scale of the game's audience drastically changes. Because, in order to be solely on an "aesthetics" model, you need:
1) A very large active userbase, as you only monetize a tiny percentage of the overall player-base, and it's non-recurring revenue, so unless you have a constant barrage of marketing about "season passes" and stuff (which also requires a lot of dev time), your chances of continued monetization of any given individual can be pretty hit-or-miss. This is why SuperCell kills off games in limited-testing, every year, that simply don't generate the level of "general activity" they require.
2) A large dev-team is needed, to constantly be generating a huge amount of new content, to make enough of it be attractive to your existing purchasers to continue purchasing new content all the time.
Basically.. this becomes a performance-marketing driven model. You cannot survive with a "small-but-vibrant community", instead the game MUST have a massive audience. You're doing the computation of UA-spend ("User Acquisition", marketing), versus conversion (tiny percentage who spend money), versus "churn" (people who leave, wasting your UA-spend), over time. If your revenue generated by conversion is not higher than your UA burn, you're in trouble (and UA costs keep rising, generally, due to competition and on-going advertising limitations). Then, additionally, your net on the UA-vs-revenue has to be a large enough in aggregate to pay all your salaries and such. Hence, only games with really wide appeal, that are successfully test-cased on large audiences with substantial conversion rates are likely to get larger marketing budgets. This is how "fully Free To Play" actually works.
I think decisions like this are best left to the game owners. We don't have any data to make an informed business decision and anything else needed.
This is an understandable point of view. Quite frankly, the game industry is really difficult to understand as an actual business, because it isn't "one" business model, and it evolves drastically every 3-5 years. Just things like the recent iOS / Android advertising changes have had major, shuddering impacts and caused everyone to rethink their entire operational model(s) (can no longer track users, therefore marketing spend is less targeted, therefore it costs more money to achieve the same number of users who will actually "convert" to spending money).
I'm not aware of any other business on earth that's as chaotic and dynamic as the totality of the game industry.
This means, inherently, even aside from game-specific data, most players aren't going to understand the ramifications of their Suggestions, or related best-practices or requirements.
I'm not against people writing Suggestions on business-model stuff, but historically they haven't been that productive, because there's been too much of a knowledge gap.
I've written elsewhere about the possibility of offering non-insured capships on a directly-paid "In App Purchase" type basis ("buy" a Goliath, for dollars, that has no insurance), and we might still do something like that. But it's more likely than completely restructuring the game's business model the way this post suggests.
I also fundamentally don't believe that $1/month is a cost-prohibitive ask, at least in the developed world.
Similarly, while we do have the Crystal system, fully tuning currencies like that is a challenging thing (particularly with an evolving game), and it's still on-going. Crystal is not where it needs to be, yet. Subs are much more consistent and easier to measure, and provide a predictable revenue stream.
Also, while it's nice to say "just make lots of lifestyle / aesthetic options and then you'll monetize on that!", it's kind of naive. It's like the people who say we should just put ads into the game, but don't realize the incredibly massive number of active users you need to have to monetize meaningfully out of those models.
Obviously, we do have some aesthetic type options in testing, but the reason why they aren't very highlighted at present (outside certain OEM deals), is that the architecture of how to go about them was in question. Again, it's easy to say "add a zillion something-somethings!", but understand that I have a pretty modern phone, but I don't have enough free flash storage to install Fortnite, even with nothing else on the device (it requires ~26GB).
HOW you go about implementing this stuff is a really big deal. It's pretty easy to get yourself into a position where you have so much download space spent on purchasable "stuff" that no one wants to install the damned game anymore (there is increasing resistance to game installs around the 1GB mark). If your game is Fortnite and a massive success, maybe that's less important, but we still need new-installs.
Also, creating "aesthetic purchasable content" is also a big artistic undertaking, at least if the result isn't procedurally generated (which is still complex to engineer, to make it any good). Again, using Fortnite as an example, EPIC has both major internal teams, as well as something like a dozen sizeable external studios working on Fortnite content, full-time. I'd guesstimate around a thousand people?
So, to be clear, we are continuing to work on adding more aesthetic purchasable options for ships and the like, BUT, we do not intend to be solely dependent on that model. Not unless the scale of the game's audience drastically changes. Because, in order to be solely on an "aesthetics" model, you need:
1) A very large active userbase, as you only monetize a tiny percentage of the overall player-base, and it's non-recurring revenue, so unless you have a constant barrage of marketing about "season passes" and stuff (which also requires a lot of dev time), your chances of continued monetization of any given individual can be pretty hit-or-miss. This is why SuperCell kills off games in limited-testing, every year, that simply don't generate the level of "general activity" they require.
2) A large dev-team is needed, to constantly be generating a huge amount of new content, to make enough of it be attractive to your existing purchasers to continue purchasing new content all the time.
Basically.. this becomes a performance-marketing driven model. You cannot survive with a "small-but-vibrant community", instead the game MUST have a massive audience. You're doing the computation of UA-spend ("User Acquisition", marketing), versus conversion (tiny percentage who spend money), versus "churn" (people who leave, wasting your UA-spend), over time. If your revenue generated by conversion is not higher than your UA burn, you're in trouble (and UA costs keep rising, generally, due to competition and on-going advertising limitations). Then, additionally, your net on the UA-vs-revenue has to be a large enough in aggregate to pay all your salaries and such. Hence, only games with really wide appeal, that are successfully test-cased on large audiences with substantial conversion rates are likely to get larger marketing budgets. This is how "fully Free To Play" actually works.
I think decisions like this are best left to the game owners. We don't have any data to make an informed business decision and anything else needed.
This is an understandable point of view. Quite frankly, the game industry is really difficult to understand as an actual business, because it isn't "one" business model, and it evolves drastically every 3-5 years. Just things like the recent iOS / Android advertising changes have had major, shuddering impacts and caused everyone to rethink their entire operational model(s) (can no longer track users, therefore marketing spend is less targeted, therefore it costs more money to achieve the same number of users who will actually "convert" to spending money).
I'm not aware of any other business on earth that's as chaotic and dynamic as the totality of the game industry.
This means, inherently, even aside from game-specific data, most players aren't going to understand the ramifications of their Suggestions, or related best-practices or requirements.
I'm not against people writing Suggestions on business-model stuff, but historically they haven't been that productive, because there's been too much of a knowledge gap.
Quite not true about capships being p2w.
I mostly find a capship being more like a child you have to look after all the time. Not really something you can call p2w.
Real pay 2 win is disastrous.
I mostly find a capship being more like a child you have to look after all the time. Not really something you can call p2w.
Real pay 2 win is disastrous.
Well, looking at recent developments like Diablo Immortal, GS need to bait just one whale to make the game astronomically more profitable (just on reddit, there are numerous posters who claim to have spent, individually, more than $50k on a shitty p2w mobile game). From business perspective, that's a win. From players' perspective - an abomination.
Anyways, the OP made a ballsy suggestion.
IMO, VO simply needs more marketing. Sooner or later, people will get tired of being treated like cash cows. And then, the VO should strike.
Anyways, the OP made a ballsy suggestion.
IMO, VO simply needs more marketing. Sooner or later, people will get tired of being treated like cash cows. And then, the VO should strike.
I have to also vote a no on this. Capitols are still uder work but def not pay to win, any good pilot can kill them with many loadouts. Also the income of this game is based around this and i want to encourage the game developers to spend as much time as possible on makeing the game better especially on capitals.
-1. Capships are fine as is, nothing wrong with the pay model either. While I myself never built a cap, as I am just not interested, I don't think they are majorly OP. I would probably +1 an idea to limit the amount of VO instances one can have open at once to 2 or 3, however.
-1 to OP and wall of text...
TJ said it well as Goli is like a big baby that will easily die if not watched after/left alone because bored players, AI bots and unrats got nothing better to do that go after them. Not even remotely.close to p2w. Besides, who stuffs a goli, jumps across the verse, and just "hopes" everything turns out well? Just asking to get nuked.
+1 to Inc response. Damn that was well thought out and thorough.
TJ said it well as Goli is like a big baby that will easily die if not watched after/left alone because bored players, AI bots and unrats got nothing better to do that go after them. Not even remotely.close to p2w. Besides, who stuffs a goli, jumps across the verse, and just "hopes" everything turns out well? Just asking to get nuked.
+1 to Inc response. Damn that was well thought out and thorough.
> Also, creating "aesthetic purchasable content" is also a big artistic undertaking, at least if the result isn't procedurally generated (which is still complex to engineer, to make it any good).
You already have players create the missions, no reason they could not do the customizations. Other games have been doing that very successfully. The client size concerns are valid (as well as the rest of your response) but could be managed.
You already have players create the missions, no reason they could not do the customizations. Other games have been doing that very successfully. The client size concerns are valid (as well as the rest of your response) but could be managed.
You already have players create the missions, no reason they could not do the customizations.
Of course. But that creates a different problem. Now we have to make some kind of content editor and submission system (and judgement oversight). To be clear, the mission editor and related mechanics have been very complex to build and maintain, and honestly the "ecosystem" around it (submissions, discussion, community) is not very well-designed at present, as it's mostly a bunch of internal tools that were "exposed".
The cohesion of the current PCC would be much better if the community experience were more fully-integrated into the mission-building process, which basically means it still would benefit from a lot more development.
So, anyway, building a mechanism by which players contribute content, and trying to avoid an influx of "penis" or "nazi" ship-skins and surreptitiously politicized content and other issues, has its own inherent burden, which has to be factored in.
Other games have been doing that very successfully.
Keep in mind, most other games do not have a unified single-universe, with a single persistent community. It's a lot easier to have player-created content on a title that only randomly gathers groups of people together briefly, who then never see each other again. Community in an MMORPG is a different ball of wax (both good and bad). Our administrative overhead is much higher, for instance.
The client size concerns are valid (as well as the rest of your response) but could be managed.
Certainly, but again, that goes to my earlier comment:
the reason why they aren't very highlighted at present (outside certain OEM deals), is that the architecture of how to go about them was in question.
Ie, we started out just using "unique texture sets", but then realized that storage of high-quality textures was going to become size-prohibitive.. which then led to building our own in-game skin-compositing system that could be stored very lightweight (vector data, even) and then "cooked" out to textures on a runtime basis, allowing for a great many more potential "visual skins" derived from limited stage.
But, again, this is a complex task to complete, there's a lot of testing involved to make sure it works everywhere, across all platforms and APIs, and in the meantime you inevitably have other priorities arising (serious server challenges, desired gameplay changes, etc).
So, it isn't that any of these discussion points are "impossible" (quite the contrary, we're actually trying to work on a lot of these things, and have been for some time), but they do often present their own challenges.
Of course. But that creates a different problem. Now we have to make some kind of content editor and submission system (and judgement oversight). To be clear, the mission editor and related mechanics have been very complex to build and maintain, and honestly the "ecosystem" around it (submissions, discussion, community) is not very well-designed at present, as it's mostly a bunch of internal tools that were "exposed".
The cohesion of the current PCC would be much better if the community experience were more fully-integrated into the mission-building process, which basically means it still would benefit from a lot more development.
So, anyway, building a mechanism by which players contribute content, and trying to avoid an influx of "penis" or "nazi" ship-skins and surreptitiously politicized content and other issues, has its own inherent burden, which has to be factored in.
Other games have been doing that very successfully.
Keep in mind, most other games do not have a unified single-universe, with a single persistent community. It's a lot easier to have player-created content on a title that only randomly gathers groups of people together briefly, who then never see each other again. Community in an MMORPG is a different ball of wax (both good and bad). Our administrative overhead is much higher, for instance.
The client size concerns are valid (as well as the rest of your response) but could be managed.
Certainly, but again, that goes to my earlier comment:
the reason why they aren't very highlighted at present (outside certain OEM deals), is that the architecture of how to go about them was in question.
Ie, we started out just using "unique texture sets", but then realized that storage of high-quality textures was going to become size-prohibitive.. which then led to building our own in-game skin-compositing system that could be stored very lightweight (vector data, even) and then "cooked" out to textures on a runtime basis, allowing for a great many more potential "visual skins" derived from limited stage.
But, again, this is a complex task to complete, there's a lot of testing involved to make sure it works everywhere, across all platforms and APIs, and in the meantime you inevitably have other priorities arising (serious server challenges, desired gameplay changes, etc).
So, it isn't that any of these discussion points are "impossible" (quite the contrary, we're actually trying to work on a lot of these things, and have been for some time), but they do often present their own challenges.
Inc... I like your idea about being able to pay for a capship... my other alt would like one sometimes.
I'd also be willing to pay extra to allow my owner key to my capship to be flown by my other alts. consider...
full/premium.. as it is now...
premium silver allows owner alts to fly capship with owner key...
premium gold allows other players to fly capship with owner key... this could open up renting capships as well for in game currency while bringing in more revenue for vo and allowing us to leverage the assets we built. With gold... it be nice to have expiring owner keys.
If you'd like... you could even create a mission to allow owners to rent their trident out of any capship station where owners can rent their ships out for a period of time. If they don't have the credits in game... they can use cash that goes to you that rents out our built ships for the in game credits we request. This allows us some opportunity for in game credits if we have a premium gold account and cash income on both ends for guild software.
I'd also be willing to pay extra to allow my owner key to my capship to be flown by my other alts. consider...
full/premium.. as it is now...
premium silver allows owner alts to fly capship with owner key...
premium gold allows other players to fly capship with owner key... this could open up renting capships as well for in game currency while bringing in more revenue for vo and allowing us to leverage the assets we built. With gold... it be nice to have expiring owner keys.
If you'd like... you could even create a mission to allow owners to rent their trident out of any capship station where owners can rent their ships out for a period of time. If they don't have the credits in game... they can use cash that goes to you that rents out our built ships for the in game credits we request. This allows us some opportunity for in game credits if we have a premium gold account and cash income on both ends for guild software.
> Keep in mind, most other games do not have a unified single-universe, with a single persistent community. It's a lot easier to have player-created content on a title that only randomly gathers groups of people together briefly, who then never see each other again.
You mean more difficult with respect to staying true to a unified artistic vision of the game? Because the urge of players to become visually unique and thus recognizable in a persistent single universe should be much higher than in lobby games. The games I was mainly thinking of were actually all persistent.
Thanks for your well thought out and very informative responses by the way, it's a pleasure to read them.
To land on the opposite end of that: I'm still sad my well presented disco lights suggestion never made it into Star Conflict:
(while I was and am joking, I would also certainly get this if it was actually an option xD)
You mean more difficult with respect to staying true to a unified artistic vision of the game? Because the urge of players to become visually unique and thus recognizable in a persistent single universe should be much higher than in lobby games. The games I was mainly thinking of were actually all persistent.
Thanks for your well thought out and very informative responses by the way, it's a pleasure to read them.
To land on the opposite end of that: I'm still sad my well presented disco lights suggestion never made it into Star Conflict:
(while I was and am joking, I would also certainly get this if it was actually an option xD)
You mean more difficult with respect to staying true to a unified artistic vision of the game?
There can be a variety of reasons why a community might react poorly to content changes, with "artistic vision" only being one issue of many.
But a broader big-picture challenge is that persistent world communities (in general) tend to be more intense, opinionated and organized than their "lobby-style" counterparts, which has both benefits and drawbacks. At the very least, "community engagement" by developers is a much higher burn in the MMORPG world, than it is for those who solely build lobby-style or single-player games. Community-blowback, on any issue, similarly includes a much higher cost for MMOs.
Beyond this, persistent worlds also just have different problems. Ephemeral, randomized groupings of players in a Fortnite-style game will not build up long-term enmity towards one another, nor will they engage in long-con behaviour to troll one another. Trolls in persistent worlds can be far more subtle, nuanced and targeted in their choice of "weaponry", and this can make monitoring player-created content more complex.
Because the urge of players to become visually unique and thus recognizable in a persistent single universe should be much higher than in lobby games.
I understand why one would assume that, but the most prominently successful titles doing "visually unique content" are all currently "lobby" games, Fortnite again being the obvious example.
Of course, "lobby" games also tend to have a higher daily active user count, which gives a lot of opportunity for monetizing.
Conversely, some "lobby" title players tend to participate with other people they already know; so the community they're aiming to impress with their custom visuals may not be the random mix of "other people" in the game, but rather their existing friends playing with them.
Thanks for your well thought out and very informative responses by the way, it's a pleasure to read them.
Happy to help; I try to be as candid and informative on here as I can be, so people have some idea of what drives some of the decisions and priorities.
There can be a variety of reasons why a community might react poorly to content changes, with "artistic vision" only being one issue of many.
But a broader big-picture challenge is that persistent world communities (in general) tend to be more intense, opinionated and organized than their "lobby-style" counterparts, which has both benefits and drawbacks. At the very least, "community engagement" by developers is a much higher burn in the MMORPG world, than it is for those who solely build lobby-style or single-player games. Community-blowback, on any issue, similarly includes a much higher cost for MMOs.
Beyond this, persistent worlds also just have different problems. Ephemeral, randomized groupings of players in a Fortnite-style game will not build up long-term enmity towards one another, nor will they engage in long-con behaviour to troll one another. Trolls in persistent worlds can be far more subtle, nuanced and targeted in their choice of "weaponry", and this can make monitoring player-created content more complex.
Because the urge of players to become visually unique and thus recognizable in a persistent single universe should be much higher than in lobby games.
I understand why one would assume that, but the most prominently successful titles doing "visually unique content" are all currently "lobby" games, Fortnite again being the obvious example.
Of course, "lobby" games also tend to have a higher daily active user count, which gives a lot of opportunity for monetizing.
Conversely, some "lobby" title players tend to participate with other people they already know; so the community they're aiming to impress with their custom visuals may not be the random mix of "other people" in the game, but rather their existing friends playing with them.
Thanks for your well thought out and very informative responses by the way, it's a pleasure to read them.
Happy to help; I try to be as candid and informative on here as I can be, so people have some idea of what drives some of the decisions and priorities.
> I understand why one would assume that, but the most prominently successful titles doing "visually unique content" are all currently "lobby" games, Fortnite again being the obvious example.
I think as far as monetization goes PUBG is the king now, isn't it? Anyway, it's more complex than just the player count. Your own character is always persistent to yourself, regardless of the game, so the desire to personalize it always exists. I think the crucial difference is that through a number of factors these games constantly expose you to new "content" that you see on other players and bait you with it in the game's built in progression systems. So changing your visuals becomes part of the game, making it a lower hurdle to want to change them even more. Something like that is not as easy to implement in a game like VO (if at all).
Other factors like the young age the player base in those games or the heavy role streaming plays in marketing them, certainly do not hurt to drive both conversion rates and sales volume.
> [...] long-con behaviour to troll one another. Trolls in persistent worlds can be far more subtle, nuanced and targeted in their choice of "weaponry", and this can make monitoring player-created content more complex.
I had not actually considered that but in a game called Vendetta Online that does not seem entirely undesirable and might drive sales to groups of people holding a grudge against each other. At least as long as the troll part is "subtle and nuanced", as you said.
I think as far as monetization goes PUBG is the king now, isn't it? Anyway, it's more complex than just the player count. Your own character is always persistent to yourself, regardless of the game, so the desire to personalize it always exists. I think the crucial difference is that through a number of factors these games constantly expose you to new "content" that you see on other players and bait you with it in the game's built in progression systems. So changing your visuals becomes part of the game, making it a lower hurdle to want to change them even more. Something like that is not as easy to implement in a game like VO (if at all).
Other factors like the young age the player base in those games or the heavy role streaming plays in marketing them, certainly do not hurt to drive both conversion rates and sales volume.
> [...] long-con behaviour to troll one another. Trolls in persistent worlds can be far more subtle, nuanced and targeted in their choice of "weaponry", and this can make monitoring player-created content more complex.
I had not actually considered that but in a game called Vendetta Online that does not seem entirely undesirable and might drive sales to groups of people holding a grudge against each other. At least as long as the troll part is "subtle and nuanced", as you said.
I had not actually considered that but in a game called Vendetta Online that does not seem entirely undesirable and might drive sales to groups of people holding a grudge against each other.
Actually, it's a bit of a nightmare. If I could get rid of toxic, long-term trolling by changing the game name to Fluffy Carebears Online, I would do it. Except then we would get sued by Mattel or a greeting card company or something.
Anyway, this is all skewing pretty far from the OP topic, to which my response is still that I don't see the current game/model as P2W, and I cannot go down the suggested road without a much-improved Crystal system, among other things (and it would still incur a lot of risk, for us). But, we're always re-evaluating the business model.
Actually, it's a bit of a nightmare. If I could get rid of toxic, long-term trolling by changing the game name to Fluffy Carebears Online, I would do it. Except then we would get sued by Mattel or a greeting card company or something.
Anyway, this is all skewing pretty far from the OP topic, to which my response is still that I don't see the current game/model as P2W, and I cannot go down the suggested road without a much-improved Crystal system, among other things (and it would still incur a lot of risk, for us). But, we're always re-evaluating the business model.
Thank you, Incarnate. My suggestion was with all good intentions, but I can see from your explanation that it was missing a lot of info which made it an unviable alternative for the incumbent system. Whether capships are P2W or not is subjective, and as far as the game is concerned, it's your opinion that counts. I don't think it's pay-to-win to the extent many other games are. Way less actually.
I agree that the crystal system needs a lot more work, and I hope we players can be more contributive to that end. When we know what exactly the Devs are looking at, we can look in that direction and help (as much as we can) with that.
I agree that the crystal system needs a lot more work, and I hope we players can be more contributive to that end. When we know what exactly the Devs are looking at, we can look in that direction and help (as much as we can) with that.