The key take-away for the moment is the bit about the “revised roadmaps” in my original post. With stuff that is not planned long-term, like usability improvements, bugfixes etc., we usually don’t have a fixed plan but decide on the spot which gets priority in the regular maintenance patches. That also means this isn’t a “secret” as much as it is simply unknown.
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The issue with this two large server approach seems quite large to me. Firstly cost. Servers don’t run for free. People will also massively prefer the ‘Old’ server. I also can’t see people being happy if there’s a bug or glitch in that one even if it’s called the Test server. I’m also not sure a solution to the apparent QOL issue is to double the amount of universes people have to deal with.
Martin I think has explained it well that initially there was a preference to get overarching content out as a leading priority and sort things along the way. This was fine but left the current universe a little shaky as it went on far longer than expected. They also fully intended to work on QOL and such features highlighted here (Martin is currently working on some major backend restructuing of core elements from my understanding of devlogs). However, they’re running out of money and it seems they either pull First Access forward sooner than wanted or they cancel the whole game.
My main concern at this point is :
Shipbuilding should have been released before Populous.
Ignition will need a lot of Engineers and Scientist production, and that is currently lacking due to populous. I lost more than half of my engineers due to populous, AND due to people building new engineer buildings and thus “stealing” away even more workforce.
This will only get worse as more people want to get into shipbuilding, slowing everything down even more. There is nothing you can do against losing this workforce to other people.
I’m trying to build out pop infrastructure on the planets where I have engineers / scientist, but I really hate it that people just come join the planet, plop down an SD or whatever, stealing my Engineers, and NOT contribute to pop infrastructure, while I spend millions on it…
So Imho, it was a bad move to release populous before Ignition…
6 Likes
How I think about it, and what I would do is:
Can we wait until all issues are solved to launch a subscription model? No! Company has ran out of funds.
Ok, we launch it then, but … are we resetting the server right when the launch? Well, we first need to test Ignition, and it only makes sense to do so on a developed server, so I don’t think we can wait.
Ok, we do it on our current server, but … will people pay the subscription on a developed server and with concerns about the game? Most likely many will leave, running the risk of never coming back… I mean, new&mid-tier players wont be encouraged to pay knowing that their progress will be deleted quite soon, and advanced-players are demanding a set of changes that are costly in development time.
So what do we do? We launch a New Universe! Fireworks and Confetti! We will be encouraging all current players to move to a new universe, who wouldn’t want to be the new Mad or Carepanda ? In the midtime, as a thanks to FA Supporters and a way of testing Ignition and further changes to Populous, we will leave current server online for some time, giving the chance to the few people that still have some stuff on their bucketlist to go crazy.
This will buy us 4 to 6 months of distraction! And more importantly, precious dev time to fix and tune, and get everything ready for the next big update.
1 Like
Hey,
I agree with the different points especially the ones of 777 and thuan. I will add 2 things.
You can’t release a game when the displayed travel time of a ship isn’t the one of the ETA. It is one the first action of a player … this bug should have been corrected a long time ago.
The universe doesn’t seem logic for the lore and economy. Especially with the new population system :
- you don’t know if the universe is already populated or it is empty and you will colonize it. If it is already populated, there should be infrastructure on the main planets. If it is empty, population cant appear by magic. You always need to ferry it as it is a “commodity”.
- the space is divided in entities with a money but they are useless at the moment. They just buy a fixed list of things on CX and throw money in this universe.
- for the economic side, you have a population which you fulfill its needs to make them work. But they don’t need get paid or buy anything. Hopefully, they can use some infrastructure to be happy… Are they all slaves ???
- CX : some items can be sold to the “universe” but it creates inflation. As you want a player driven economy, the number of items bought for endless money is limited but it also limits the item proposed by players : no need to produce some items if nobody buy them and you don’t use them.
- Monetary base : at the moment, it only seems to increase. I don’t know if the money disappear in this game. It will lead to problems and a unfun game between new players and old ones. Salary would also help with deflation.
- I haven’t followed all the discussion on shipbuilding but you can’t limit ship building on a space game. Players should be able to build some rather quickly (tier 2, 3 at most) but the first ship can be garbage (low storage and speed/high maintenance or fuel usage) to push players to higher tier.
- you should propose a AI transport system : add as many disadvantages compared to player ship as you wish but you need one. It would also help for deflation.
- there are no taxes. Only fees. Taxes would help to reduce the monetary base.
3 Likes
And I forgot about it as I have played for a longtime : The game is only playable because the community added 2 spreadsheet, a base planner with production/recipes and a list of planets with the resources.
A new player may try one time to find a planet to match a recipe he want to produce but he wont to do it twice : clicking on a system then on a planet to see the resources. Try it on a random recipe…
3 Likes
A thought or two. I have been playing this game since Sept/Oct 2019. I love it. But recently, I’ve seriously been thinking of quitting. Why? I have 23 bases; not many compared with some of you. Just to keep those bases, if I don’t spend an hour or more a day I start to get behind. So what do I do? Organise shipments, put up transports on the LM, manually add into my productions queues, and probably a few other basic things. That’s only less than 3 minutes per base.
Without these automated actions which have been spoken of above, for me I’ve got to the place where I’m saying to myself … “Do I really want to spend that amount of time each day just maintaining what I have?” Planning development takes even more time; something which now I’m finding very little time to do.
I understand that it may take a lot of work to add these automated things spoken of by so many above. But they really are necessary …
I don’t know enough about Early Access to how much of a view on that, except to say one thing … if the ship travel time calculator doesn’t calculate travel times accurately, and your planned routes etc all get messed by because of this, I don’t think the game is ready for EA. That is one of the most basic nesessities of life on PrUn. Please, please, please, fix it.
If the game is on the brink of collapse and money is needed, I think the solution is to ask. Ask me for a few € and I’d happily give it to keep things running; but I’m not sure I’d keep playing with a monthly subscription fee just because all I do now is maintain what I have; plus a little more when I can eek out a bit more time. But ask. Be open. Send a message to all the players about the need. Explain. Openness wil, I would imagine, bring in at least some money from those of us who have invested so much time in PrUn. Thank you.
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The Map function is hot garbage IMHO…I do not know the last time I used it, I just do not have that amount of time
McG
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1st I agree that the shipping display being this buggy is not acceptable in a subscription model.
Regarding the two first quote, i want to add that i feel that something is inherently wrong with the economic balance of the game.
Again, i m quite new, but i ve been talking a lot and learning with some more experienced players. Kudos to them !
I may have not grasped everything correctly for from what i perceive, the economy has several flaws :
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It is too easy to make a lot of money quickly. And that’s fine at the beginning, a new player, small fish, needs to grow fast to feel invested and not totally outgunned by the big fish. But the issue for me is that the growth seems to be an indefinite exponential function when it should be a logarithmic function. One new plant + basic hab pays itself in 6 days, which means once you have 6 plants, you can build a new one every day. I m not there yet, but i suppose the 2nd base is a big milestones in month 1 or 2, then you start building 2/3 new base every month, then every week and so on…
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Most people feel its mandatory to integrate vertically. While in game as IRL, that makes sense in certain situation, for ex a food processor decides to grow his own plants and produce his own water. In some other it does not. For example, being based on Prom, i thought logically that a nice niche would be to start producing NS and DDT en masse, since everyone is farming, the market should be quite fat, no ? Turns out not that much, my guess is that most big farmers has integrated that part in their production chain. Again it makes sense, because it s most efficient in the game to do so. The issue i have is that the game is a MMO, if chemists don t have a big market selling to farmers for ex, what difference is there with a single player. We should be interacting with each other, striking mutually benefial deals and partnerships, so that each players could focus on competing for their market share on their core business, instead of waiting a few weeks to have enough cash to integrate yet another industry out of their core, to make more money to integrate etc…
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A player mentionned to me that if they do not integrate vertically, nobody will provide the ressource for them. And i think we re reaching the core of the problem here. There isn t enough total players or there is not enough incentive for a minority of players to specialise in supplying the rest of the community in hard to procure ressources. The next issue is that if new players can t find a niche to grow past the basic plants, they ll leave the game and the game will consist of old timers and newbie who stuck long enough to integrate vertically themselves. At that point, it is hard to start say mining X rare mineral with the aim to sell in bulk on the market because most advanced players already mine that mineral. It s even harder to notice which mineral are good to look for, because most market nobody is buying (… because players … vertically integrate). It is also hard to start assembling advanced product while relying on a set of subcontractors, because there is no one selling at competitive prices on the market, most market consist of a few players (often the same few on every market that everyone lurking here could mention easily) trying to sell at inflated price their excess production.
2 Likes
Pretty long post i had to take a break, but i guess everyone see where i m going there. Past a certain size, a player should not be focusing on growing anymore, because it s a chore and because the game should somehow offer them diminushing returns, and also because they should mostly be weary of keeping their good position on the few market they control. Nestle doesn t make circuit boards or planes. I m sure there s plenty of players producing their own ration or DW despite being chemist or fuel refiner. The main reason is that the game doesn t seem to offer anything else than infinite growth and the collateral infinite growing chores PrAdam mentionned.
I know i would have more fun talking and negociating with a couple of guys over my supply of X than setting a new base to get said supply. And i don t know about olders players financials, but my guess is they re all drowning in money already, helping new players with loans and good shipping deals and so on.
And here comes my biggest fear : the 2 ships per player were the ONLY limiting factor (other that time to do the “game chores”) to unlimited growth that was forcing players to cooperate with each other. I suspect that aspect i m criticising to get way worse and that the game could become some kind of universe where everyone is more or less solo playing trying to integrate as many industries to sell the higher end million credits products to MM. I can tell you that will not help more new players to join…
1 Like
Populous needed to come first as its in many ways a whole shift in how one should think about building, it’s a great concept for a really interesting and engaging feature which few games can even begin to match, every space game has shipbuilding. None to my knowledge have a dynamic population requiring real and specific space logistics. It wasn’t implemented the most smoothly but I think that’s partly down to a disconnect between the game being Testing and also Live. This is being addressed openly and honestly.
A lot of the other issues being sited (Issues with 23 bases, economic balance) are hugely down to the fact this game is not yet ready for a nearly 2 year old run (i think some people may’ve missed the Devs own responses). You’ve got to have content and balancing for players who’ve been playing near two years and those with 1 minute. That’s an incredibly tough sell even for multimillion studios. For a cash strapped indie studio? Well it’s broadly impossible.
So again what’s the solution? Having two severs seems to be the only suggestion of an actual solution. It doesn’t appeal to me because I can’t see it being cheaper and cost effective. Sounds expensive and splitting the server base.
My initial solution would be for players struggling with so many bases (and i know its not a long term solution, but i feel its a temporary issue for a temporary problem): Redesign your empire within the constraints of the current system. Take it as a challenge, play with the game not against. Focus on Lateral bases, focus on less shipping, focus on high skill.
4 Likes
I think the new system of ship is a nice content, but it will cause more issues in the long term.
I know that the universe is too old. But i ve talked to players that have a year of game time and they have 20 bases producing a lot of different products. PrAdam is the same situation. Surely you do not expect the final version of the game to look like that after one year, where the players that were there at the start are so overwhelming that you can t compete with them nor cooperate with them… And i also don t want to see a reset every couple of years because the game has become too unfair.
That s only my opinion, but what i would like to see in that game is a universe where almost every niche/market can/should be profitable if you play/cooperate well enough. And the player should only feel the need to diversify if he feels bored or if his market becomes overcrowded. We should be able to focus on mining hard to produce minerals and sell them at a huge profit margin. We could be a logistics company, with a fleet of ships, with a fuel refinery on the side. We could be food producer with a lot of hard to reach clients mining on god forsaken planets, with a small fleet to deliver the tacos. We could be chemist providing NS and DDT to those farmers. We could be ships manufacturers with a fleet of components subcontractors. But in the long term interest of the game we should not be able to do it all. And not because its a chore and we don t have time, someone somewhere will always have the time. Because somehow the game would be balanced around not allowing/punishing players that go above what a company should be able to handle.
My last point (finally) is that i tend to side with the copper cartel because of that. The game should look like that, a group of players trying to control a market competing against other players in that market. The other markets would/should be impacted in many ways :
- the cartel is too greedy, the market needing such product will see his margin shrink until a large chunk of the competitors goes under/migrate/unite in their own cartel, they would then have bigger negociating power VS the cartel and the prices should normalise in the long run.
- the cartel suppliers could have an understanding that when selling to the cartel, they should sell at an inflated price because they have fat pockets.
In the current state of the game, it is impossible, because the cartel likely has integrated, so they don t rely on suppliers that would try to gouge them and they don t negociate with buyers that would be impacted and react to their monopoly in different ways.
In my mind, installing and keeping the cartel in place should requite a lot of commitment and fund incompatible with vertical integration apart from a couple of markets.
I m so sorry for the big wall of text and i can t do a TLDR apart from game is not balanced, change balance.
If a mod feels the need that i m hijacking the thread, feel free to start another thread.
Thks for reading
Edit : of course, being new, i might have stumbled on what everyone already realised and knew, and thought i discovered the fire. But is there any plan of how that would be fixed in the future apart from a reset ?
So i just realized, that i posted a long wall of critics without offering a solution. So here’s what i propose, in two parts, the carrot and the stick :
The carrot, is to have the player have another bonus to productivity based on the average expert per base.
The stick is to have a shareholder system. Not in that we can buy each other shares. Rather make it so the 50k + cost of the base you start with is capital money that the shareholders invested and they want their return. Every set amount of time they expect a certain % (IRL between 8 and 15 i believe) on the ACCUMULATED capital of the company. It would depend on how you measure accumulated capital, but i would say that total value of all your assets (base/buildings/ships) would be a good start. That would allow money to get OUT of the system to combat the inflationist tendancies Zakmuk talked about. That would make it difficult for players to over integrate because they would lose their productivity bonus (so less profit) while the shareholders would ask more money because more base = more capital invested. Lets estimate the starting capital at 250k, the newb would have to fork 30k every period (week/months/2weeks???), someone with one full base (worth 1M), pays 150 k, i let all of you do the maths with your current setup 
Maybe we could forfeit the first couple of payment to get the new players going. But at a certain point in size the player should struggle to maintain its size, maybe sell/refund (they call it restructure) some bases to pay the shareholders, and focus on their most profitable activities.
That would create a certain tension and also cooperation. The only downside is that you have to expect that companies will for sure go bankrupt on a regular basis. But i would say an MMO economic sim where companies don t go bankrupt is just a sandbox in space, with chat buddies, and i do love my chat buddies…
Ofc the numbers are out of my head, it should be punishing enough that you can t overextend and need to rely on others to do for you what you can t do profitably and yet kind enough so that new players can join without feeling the barrel of a gun on the heads…
My 2 cts
Edit : tell me if i haven t made myself clear, i would gladly do a more lenghty explanation but i m not sure anyone wants to read it 
1 Like
For a more constructive discussion, what is the setup of you universe and how do you view economy ?
For discussion, here is a standard setup :
Three factions rule over core worlds. However these worlds are highly populated with a running economy (computer based buy and sell on limited number) and an existing infrastructure. Resources are not as abundant as before (low tier worlds) and plot size are limited (only 1 base per planet). Ship behemoths travel between these worlds (frequency depends on population size) and population moves by itself. Faction governors tries to keep the population happy by buying the infrastructure needs each day (CX is partly supplied by the computer but players can create shortages if they are rich enough). you pay tax on profit (high level). There wont be PvP here but you can play on the CX to get rich (after taxes).
On the outer worlds, small settlements exist but the population is small and infrastructure is a lot less developed. A few behemoth ships travel between these worlds and core world. some people come here to get a new life but you can help others to come. Resources are more available as some of the best deposits remain untapped. (low population and infra but better worlds. low taxes.) Governors are elected but their powers are some how limited as people had bad governors before so you can build more base but it is still limited. lower PvP here.
Far away lies the rimworld where no one has ever set a feet. No population (you need to ferry it if you gives them enough money or if the happiness is low)), “random worlds” but you should gets the best one here. Everything should be built. You can colonize a whole planet by yourself if you wish and you can lose everything here if you mess up with the wrong corporation (full PvP).
For a new players, there is the core worlds. You don’t really lose here if you don’t mess up but you don’t earn much. It can be seen as a tutorial or a solo experience if you don’t want to struggle with some part of the game play (pvp, player driven logistic, population, …). Faction can be neighbors or not.
Outer world can be less forgiving. Piracy/high fees by cartel/governors but you can earn more. You can set more bases on the same planet so a corporation might own it by itself.
Rimworld. You can do as you wish but you can be targeted (piracy/full governor’s powers). You can fully own a planet but all its problems are yours.
for the economic : how do you reduce inflation in your game ? It is the nightmare of the MMO economies.
At the moment, money is created when a new player joins or when you sell items at the Cx to the computer (infinity buy). Does money ever disappear (except CX computer buy) ?
What do you need to produce :
population that needs consumables but you can produce them so no money spent.
entry item : you can produce them so no money spent.
production fee. Usually it is cheap a few units. Governors gets the money I think.
As a result, you nearly don’t spend anything to produce. There no fixed costs.
For example, I have a base on promitor 3 rigs for H2O and a FP for DW. The buildings are at the lowest condition 33% and can’t go lower. The population live on the DW it produces and it still produce on average 6 DW per day. Each DW is sold for 31 (faction price).
profit = 631-64 (6 production fee of 4) = 158 profit per day…
How can you get bankrupt ?
I am a fan of the company expert idea, was discussed in another thread a bit with the devs seeming open to ideas of ‘corporate culture’ or even faction bonuses. I believe these are on the roadmap and would help with specialisation.
But I’m not sure this addresses the fundamental question of how to fund this game, given the current situation. I don’t think that currently a lack of specialisation and the relative power of vertical integration is a major issue preventing profitability. Definitely needs addressing down the line and I’m sure it’s being considered to varying degrees for even recent updates. Shipbuilding will involve such huge projects that one person cannot do everything for instance.
I like the shareholder idea as a future development, that along with independent bank accounts could really develop the whole financial side of things. But its not a priority to keeping the game going short term perhaps.
I must say I’m not sure inflation has been an issue in game, old players have too much money because broadly that’s how constant exponential growth for 2 years ago. DW is not suffering rampant inflation, nor is any good. Most broadly are trending downward from my understanding. This is partly why the game is so easy for new players. Things are cheap and readily available and shipping is hugely profitable.
I don’t see not being able to go bankrupt a problem, the game being relatively forgiving and difficult to fail is not a bad issue. It’s still challenging to truly succeed and achieve goals (I’m still struggling to lower KOM prices and i’ve been at it for months).
There’s a lot of good points about some QOL changes, and some great discussion about economic fundamentalities of the game. I am highly concerned that shipbuilding long term could drastically increase inequality and lock new players out. But that’s not a short term issue, it needs considering yes, but the game keeping its lights on is the priority. How can we do that?
I was thinking that if monetization is a big issue right now, it s because frankly the game is not at a point where people would pay 7/month for it. To be honest right now i wouldn’t. But for the potential of a challenging, competitive game, i surely would, maybe not 7, maybe a little bit less, idk really, it will depend on how much improvement and if i like the direction. I also think a lot of small QOL improvement could go a long way into growing the player base to a level where maybe 5/month would be sustainable, idk, i don t have the numbers. But you see what i mean better QOL, less punishing for newb, more players, more money and more game for us.
The 2nd issue I see is a mid/long term one, about the balance i just talked about. Say in a 6 months/ a year, someone joins the game, in a year old universe, either he can make profit and grow exponentially just fine and it would be a problem imo because the game wouldn t be challenging enough, either he can t because it s too challenging and the older players have already grown for 1 year and they can’t find their little market in space to prosper. And we will need more player trickling in because players will inevitably leave little by little. And that has an impact on our decision to pay 7/month right now, if we foresee the game being dead soon, maybe some of us won t jump in now.
And regarding inflation :
The shareholder idea is just a fancy name for what would finally be an “asset tax”, and that money would be taken out of the game. It would keep the established players on their toes and providing them a challenge, because the more they grow, the more they pay, and eliminate a huge pile of cash regularly from the game economy.
To be honest, i don t think anyone can go bankrupt even with the asset tax. And I m 100% sure the devs don t want anyone to ever go bankrupt, i can t blame them…
But what the game should have is a way to punish the medium/big players, by forcing them to scale back their operation if they overextend and lose too much profitability. Have a mechanism that would force them to sell/get rid of a bunch of bases/ships to pay the asset tax if they made bad choices/face a stronger player or a more specialized one
But honestly an MMO economic simulation where you see everyone making a lot of money and growing exponentially is not really an economic simulation, at worst it s a sanbox, at best a logistic nightmare.
And putting most the difficulty of the game on “chores” is not my definition of challenge and i suspect not the one of some other here. I seriously spend to much time worrying about consumables and i only have one base. I don t think Microsoft CEO spends everyday worrying about the price of grain and water and how to get them to their employee. I get that is part of the economy, but there should be a creative way QOL to make it better and even better to make it better while improving the game.
When you think about it, we re playing an economic space simulator and most of us need an excel spreadsheet to function. I don t mind planning with excel in my core business, but regarding the chores i want an option that says no i don t want to deal with that. I m ready to pay my ration 50% more to have a space IA or another player/company to handle it.
But I agree with you, i ll go post it in the newly QOL thread and stop derailling this one. Apologies
Microsoft CEO does not have to worry about Grain or Water price as he does not get that to the employees.
He gives them money they buy it from someone else…
PrUn is actually running on slavery… or forced labor…
2 Likes
But to respond to @777isHARDCORE 
- It’s a niche browser game with loyal player base. It’s not everyone’s meal.
1a. I have to agree, however, having one more dialog box - what Shar suggested - doesn’t make it better either.
1b. What you “need” in 10 days? Would you like a dialog option also to ask you if you will provide luxuries or not and factor need based on this? I disagree. Improvement here would be a TOTAL for the population screen for each consumable. If you dread this then try stay away from Eve online where it’s 3x worse and game been around for 17 years.
1c. Yeah. I used to play settlers online - they have some explorers 50+ of them that can be sent every few hours on tasks. 300+ clicks. One of those explorers can cost up to 10$
Play smart and queue long.
1d. This should maybe be the “economics” screen with total inputs/outputs for a day.
- I haven’t participated in any pre-early access games so I can’t share any insight. However, I noticed in paid games they do not care what community actually says and push hated changes regardless until they alienate entire player bases.
2a. I haven’t been around for some Populus fixes but it make sense for me that you’ll never have only engineers on a planet just because good education. You are the test server, really
2b. I would like to stop pointing you are the honeytrap for bugs being in a test server.
2c. Assumption that pre-Alpha methodologies will apply to production systems. Most developers throw content and let players explore it and let it mature naturally in environment. I like bizzare and would hate spoiling the fun of exploring it. Isn’t that what games actually are?
- Well sure. Did I mentioned being the lab test rat to iron out functionalities and content with player interaction?
3a.
3ai. Sure check education statistics. For example approx 700k students finish university each year in UK out of 66mill population. That is 1%. Welcome to information age issues where no more dumb labor is required and qualified technical staff has dried out while average complexity doubled in a decade.
3aii. More babies - more chances a new Einstein will be born.
3b. Ok, sounds like overpopulated planet Earth. Bad stuff.
3c. I suspect it is supposed to be a massive sink for growing populations.
3d. This is like having qualified personnel from borderline EU countries flock in more centrally developed after those states paid all their education fees. But I will admit it’s annoying in game where nothing can be done.
3e. I usually shoot pirates, but yeah. black lists and stuff. Meh.
Regarding the topic. I don’t know. It’s a browser game with subscription style, I haven’t seen one around that survived, but I don’t play so many browser games… Sometimes I even have issues to pay for such subs because of payment options available.
It also tries to stay true to the way of not being pay to win while opening the F2P model, so I have mixed feelings.
Anyway, I play because I enjoy the game and I actually like both POPI and coming Ignition.
I do feel sometimes the community feels just a bit too over self-entitled with expectations all over the place but I am old fashioned, so please pardon my abrasiveness.
I will add, focusing on the original question, that the game itself is worth £5 per month to me, however I stopped playing it a while ago precisely because I knew that if I kept playing it as it was I would lose sight of the fact it was early alpha and begin to devalue it in my mind.
I think the worst thing that could happen to this game is that it gets wide access too soon and get’s devalued. Managing peoples expectations at this stage is almost everything when it comes to selling the thing.
I am personally very interested in this game becoming popular and fully developed - it ticks so many of my game boxes that other games do not but it will go the way of so many other of those types of games if it is sold as a sub too soon.
A sub implies that it is now something like the finished product, regardless of how many disclaimers you put into the sign up screen and after a few weeks people will abandon it and not come back.
The game is like a jigsaw at the moment where there are enough pieces to see that it is an amazing picture but not enough to enjoy the view.
It is a difficult problem. Other long term games that have managed to financially survive and stick to their development vision are rare - think Kenshi or Dwarf Fortress. Many others die or turn into cookie cutter clones of the crap already out there in order to survive.
I will continue to support this game as much as I can financially until it is more fleshed-out. I believe in the vision and the team.
I think, to be honest that a voluntary sub model is best. Minimum $1 and max whatever you like. I think that those who value the game will pay more for it and those that are unsure will see the potential and at least pay a $1. But the main thing is that the expectations that come with a ‘the game is worth this’ sub will not turn people off.
6 Likes
$1 or $2 can easily justified, even in it’s current state. But $10 or $15 dollars, not even with a completed roadmap and all bug fixes and all player suggestions implemented could a price point that high be justified. I’d go pay that to Eve Online before I paid that here in heart beat and get a way more immersive experience. That isn’t to say there is anything wrong with this game in concept, but the question leans towards comparing it to other titles in the genre and at various price points. And unfortunately this doesn’t hold up to that sort of investment monthly, and will lead to its failure if attempted.
From what I can estimate there are maybe 1 to 2k users active per day with 100 to 200 active at any given time. Abstracted that means their operating budget if they were able to achieve a 100% conversion rate to a sub model at a $10 price point would be $10k to $20k a month. Now take out dev pay, office overhead, server hosting, etc etc and your budget is effectively cut by 1/3 to 1/2 easily if not more. That isn’t likely. Not to mention the fact that in no universe, not even this one would this game achieve a 100% or even close, player conversion to subscription ratio, that just doesn’t happen.
So, we’re looking at a train driving down a track that isn’t complete. And thats a damn shame because conceptually this game is brilliant. But as is tradition, poor development management and business decision will lead to it’s demise, at which point it’ll become pay to win, because they won’t want to lose their job or they baby once the reality sinks in. The compromises will begin and won’t end.
Best suggestion, enjoy it till the subs get implemented, unless implemented in a responsible way at a reasonable price point, and then go find something else to play because with all the time walls you’ll just be frustrating yourself with a spreadsheet simulator. At least Eves spread sheet sim lets you blow some of those items up from time to time.
That is all.