Pricing for Alteil discussion

[Goryus]

The new pricing scheme is going to be a tough challenge for Sean and his staff to overcome. If you look at the numbers, Alteil actually made more money the more unfair it was. The more "improvements" they made to making the content more accessible, it actually resulted in revenue loss. People may say one thing, but how they actually behave is completely different.

I explained this already here. It is a result of the fact that the existing player base is skewed towards a small number of hardcore players. Those players are much more likely to spend whatever it takes to get the cards they want, so of course if you make the cards easier to get, they are going to spend less. And since they're the only ones buying anything, that means revenue will go down.

The problem is, this model dooms Alteil to forever being a niche game played only by a small cadre of hardcore users. Free-to-play games live or die on the back of having a large active player base, and in order to attract and keep the more casual crowds, Alteil is going to have to employ a different model.

[Icyman2]

And Rom can/did read it there :O

[Goryus]

And Rom can/did read it there :O

If he read it there, then his responses to the discussion in this thread are extremely puzzling.

[Romdeau]

I'm not sure what you're expecting from me, I'm just telling you the information I know-not possible solutions or what's wrong with it.

Also if you look at what I said, I clearly mentioned that this is a problem Sean and his team need to address. Now I'm the one who's confused.

[AngelicDeath]

Rom,

That is interesting but most likely true. I was from the opposite camp. I bought everything from set 2 onwards. I quit once I perceived that the leadership was no longer interested in balance and releasing sets at a regular interval.

It makes sense though. In a game where they make the cards extremely difficult to obtain and excessively expensive where winning takes precedence of playing then it forces everyone into an arms race to use the most "powerful" card available at the time. For the longest time there was no reward for just playing the game or for using underdog cards. Link treasure battles to winstreaks etc. no incentive for creativity or for promoting positive relations amongst the playerbase itself.

That is the long term cancer that doomed us. Not sure if they cancomeup with a model that will be successful but I'll stick around to see. 15% above strength imbalance ina card is ok. Having a card that solos entire files is not. Rewarding players for using said card is like letting the inmates run the asylum- it is not good for business.

Cheers,
AD

[fargone]

The game also had a big influx of players around set 5-6 compared to other sets. As it seemed nobody knew each other in real life (so little to no word of mouth), I wonder it this was the result of some other variable. It could have been advertising finding its mark, or even another game closing that pushed people into finding new games.

Im not so sure the influx of players was due to balance. However, I have some confidence that the reason many of them left again was the cpc and balancing issues already mentioned. Logress would have a better view of this than we can guess at.

[Romdeau]

He may hide it pretty well, but Logress is a pretty informed dude.

[gadu]

The way you wrote that is hilarious, but I know what you mean.

[Alexander767]

Agree with Goryous 100%

There are 2 big problems as I see them.

1) Random cards with no secondary market.
2) Very little reward for playing (and no reward at all if you lose).

Big, succesfull free-to-play games rely on giving you a reward whenever you play online, regardless of the outcome of the match.

Daily gran for playing mirage master daily? Who thought about that? It should be something like a daily gran reward for playing the first match of Alteil each day! (something like 5 gran for a lose, 15 gran for a win). The game should reward you for playing itself, not another random minigame.

This game is awesome, it has awesome ilustrations, and great, unique gameplay. I can't believe that random, nonsensical CCGs (like Elements) or cheap ripoffs (like Shadow Era) are actually more succesfull.

Blame the business model.

What worked for japan, won't work with an international audience. =/

[Romdeau]

You're about 2 months late for this discussion, it's time has passed and unless you inspire new, meaningful discussion I doubt this thread is going anywhere. I'm pretty sure we all know Logress is aware that the old model is destined to fail and I have an idea as to what his new marketing approach will be for this version of Alteil.