Skepticism

[Callonia]

Well, looks like logress read mah solar kingdom thread.

[Peralisc9001]

Yeah Pherals what are you even doing here? You haven't played this game since like set 4, you don't really contribute anything, you just run around trolling people with incoherent posts.

Wtf are you doing here! You are basically a troll on PMS, you can't even cheer up for 1 second anymore.

Also there is basically nothing coherent IN ANY OF YOUR POSTS, for the past few years. It's the opinion of everyone here, at first when i checked the chat again after a while of inactivity, i couldn't believe it. Still incredible how much that account has changed, it's like a different person behind it.

My question, is of course... why not try to change the ecosystem? Which is basically my whole plan. Changing the ecosystem means more than just adding some shop options.. ER, well yeah... I guess we could all just look up the definition of "ecosystem". Anyway, there are symptoms like how victory is so sweet and anything else is so bad... and the only way to get more victories is to get more cards (effectively punishing you for buying avatars), How FM is kind of useless since there isn't much to buy with it and you can grind gran, how if anything goes below a certain price everyone can grind/recycle for it, how there is not really any reason to buy anything but cards, how grinding can actually make the arena a worse place to be, how there really isn't much to do with guildmates and friends in game, how the poor "new player experience" kind of screens out more "casual" players so everyone is hardcore, etc, etc, etc...

WOW! You actually address the most important aspect that needs to be addressed? Unbelievable, got to see this!

[GonFreeces31]

[Logress]

Unfortunately, in addition: for to each person we lost from cpc, we lost 100 from bad new user experience. Also, I think with a little hard work and some luck I can convince a good amount of those who left for cpc to give us another shot, but the users who left from a "bad new user experience" are gone for good.

The "content" of "cost per content" is a pretty good example of an ecosystem problem. Right now, the game's only "content" is "cards", "playable decks", "Events" and "other players." Tournaments are too infrequent to count, really. Events run hot and cold and require a lot of man-hours for such a temporary gain. Improving the amount of "other players" is more of a result than cause, that will go up if other things get better. "Playable decks" is the content that matters most in reality. The number available at the top-top tier varies a little bit based on balance, but usually playable just means strong files that get reasonable wins, like Martial Artists, Undead, and the pre-builts. These have two ecosystem challenges: first, based on what data I have, it seems users are not motivated by playable files, at least in terms of spending. They are motivated by cards, which is not the same thing (meaning someone would mostly want a single (unusable alone) copy of Dio then an entire, fully playable monster file). The second is that most average players have zero motivation to have more than one playable file at a time (although they might be interested in upgrading their present one some how, or replacing it if it becomes obsolete). Ecosystem changes can help this. For example, LoL handles this by periodically releasing OP units that are susceptible to a specific strategy (to promote using it). This way, it's good to have at least one unit for each of the major strategies. Underdogs and Achievements also helps this, but they need tighter integration. Some games (including Altiel 2, strangely) have daily events that ban certain units, again to make it good to have a secondary or tertiary playable file. Anyway, there are lots of ways to deal with it, but we can't forget that even CPC is part of a larger ecosystem.

For a game people have spent anywhere near as much as they have on, there --generally speaking-- needs to be dozens of interesting, compelling things to do in the game all the time. And that's a better ecosystem-wide definition of content.

[Callonia]

Replays also help the ecosystem, especially when its weak files beating up evil and op files. With that said, i cannot wait to rewatch my replays logress, i itch for them, it sbeen too long since i last viewed them

[GonFreeces31]

Very nice post Logress. I liked the distinction between pay for cards and pay for playability. Also the distinction between cpc and bad new user experience. It looks like you're doing an excellent job conceptualizing the problem and working towards implimenting holistic fixes.

[Logress]

test

[methebest]

test

[Peralisc9001]

best >

[Logress]

Since I still have this post in an open window (do I ever restart my machine?) may as well re-post it...


Yeah, I've been bad about keeping you guys up to date the last few days. I got slammed with details, some issues with replacing a developer, and family stuff. 1-2-3 punch. We've got a new version of the contract with everyone's changes, and we're mostly just waiting for the signature to go down, should happen in the next day or two. I've also got my lawyer skimming over the final version. Mystryman is debugging the new login system, we had to change our angle on the security at the last minute, etc, everyone's putting in the time... I feel like I'm on one of those reality cooking shows like Chopped, only instead of making food, we're making a game work...