Sprint #3 11/30/2012

[Callonia]

Thanks mysteryman, and, I think the reason why prebuilts lost alteil money is cuz they was being sold for 500 gran for the first week.

Everyone who wanted them, got it during the first week. Later comers just shrugged and bought it at full price.

[AqvasFire2]

The whole "we sold prebuilts for 500 and net revenue went down", well, no sh!t? They're in range of free spenders (the entire bloody point) with some recycling, and anyone who wants to spend won't wait for them to go up to $15, which is a massive ripoff. The entire point is for the average spending per spending user to go down, since that means you're making the game more accessible.

Look, if you want to run a F2P, you can't simply have a game in which spending's a massive gamble and you need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get some viable tier-1 meta going. Also, you can't just errata cards that people shelled out exorbitant resources to obtain and give them no compensation for their loss, either.

[GonFreeces31]

You coulda released the prebuilts but not sold them for $5

[Peralisc9001]

The whole "we sold prebuilts for 500 and net revenue went down", well, no sh!t? They're in range of free spenders (the entire bloody point) with some recycling, and anyone who wants to spend won't wait for them to go up to $15, which is a massive ripoff. The entire point is for the average spending per spending user to go down, since that means you're making the game more accessible.

Look, if you want to run a F2P, you can't simply have a game in which spending's a massive gamble and you need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get some viable tier-1 meta going. Also, you can't just errata cards that people shelled out exorbitant resources to obtain and give them no compensation for their loss, either.

Exactly!!!

[Scientiafide]

I think it's worth mentioning your total profit probably would go down if you lower the prices while having such a small playerbase, because the only players around to spend are the ones who were willing to pay the exorbitant prices to begin with. The eventual objective is to have a large playerbase which would mostly consist of light spenders. You'd make a lot more money with a playerbase consisting of 10s of thousands of players spending $1-5 here and there than a few hundred players willing to spend $50 here and there. There are more people in this world who fit in the former category than the latter.

As it stands now, you're hampering your growth with these ridiculous prices. Over the time I've played alteil (about 2 years), the number of newbies I've spoken to who were uncertain about the pricing in this game are innumerable. I often never hear from these players again.

I think the best way to go is to just get rid of the randomization aspect of acquiring cards, and instead have a card catalogue of sorts players can use to buy specific cards. The prices should be close to their recycle values. The collectors will still spend tons of money acquiring all the cards and will be a lot more satisfied because they'll actually succeed in doing so, getting exactly what they want (instead of giving up due to diminishing returns and losing money via recycling). The low spending and current free players will also be more compelled to spend, as they'd be able to easily acquire the cards they want. You'd also encourage players to often buy impulsively considering the low prices of certain cards (5 to 30 cents for 1 stars through 3 stars). Most players will not hesitate to spend a single dollar to get a couple cards to try out new things (and this is the type of business model a lot of successful games follow). With this current model, those are spenders and purchases this game is losing out on.

Most players would be much more likely to spend if they're thinking, "Oh that card looks kinda cool, hmm 5 cents/10 cents/30 cents/$1.50 is not too bad" as opposed to, "Hmm, $50 for 24 cards I don't have."

[GonFreeces31]

Players in other game forums call Alteil players "cash warriors" or something like that.

[AqvasFire2]

Players in other game forums call Alteil players "cash warriors" or something like that.

That's surprisingly accurate.

[GonFreeces31]

If you really want to foster new players in this game, you might really want to consider an alternative game mode than playing in Folrart. This game has a stable veteran population, that's gotten quite good at playing the game. It's a really daunting experience for new players to come in and repeatedly play these advanced players in matchups they will likely constantly lose. You might consider adding a more casual game mode - like napoleon heroes or something, to give players a way to get interested/absorbed into the game without the stress of the competitive nature of folrart.

[Peralisc9001]

That's why i suggested 2v2, LH and napo over and over again.

Well all there is is the promise and the wait requirement.

[Aoi]

As one of those low lv people, having some more game modes would be nice, Folart can be pretty intimidating. By the way what is that Napoleon Hero mode?