Two ideas for the Devs

[TopherW]

Hi all,
Not sure how easy/hard this would be but thought I would throw it out there.

1) Creating two servers out there at the same time, one is the two to three days between matches which we currently have and a second server which is every week. That way for those of us who want to get around 200-300 people we could join the weekly server and those of us who want a quicker/smaller game could join the semi daily server.

2) This is probably much harder. Would it be possible to create a freemium server for those people out there who are complaining about having to pay $2 without getting a demo. Let that server be full of people buying to win but as they experience it they might realize they would have more fun if they weren't facing people buying to the top. The other advantage of that would be to give the devs a little more spending money for their servers and incredibly hard work on this.

My background is in teaching so I have no idea how easy/hard both of those suggestions would be but I do love this game and want it to succeed so figured I would throw those ideas out there...

Chris

[Royce]

I would be so disappointed if these guys let freemium, pay to win stuff taint their great game, even if just on some servers. I honestly just threw up a little bit in my mouth when I read that.

[zarkwizard]

1) Creating two servers out there at the same time, one is the two to three days between matches which we currently have and a second server which is every week. That way for those of us who want to get around 200-300 people we could join the weekly server and those of us who want a quicker/smaller game could join the semi daily server.

Excellent idea. I think I'll pass that one off as mine.. ;)


2) This is probably much harder. Would it be possible to create a freemium server for those people out there who are complaining about having to pay $2 without getting a demo. Let that server be full of people buying to win but as they experience it they might realize they would have more fun if they weren't facing people buying to the top. The other advantage of that would be to give the devs a little more spending money for their servers and incredibly hard work on this.

We have discussed this at length.. here our are current thoughts:

1 - Have a server similar to the tutorial server, but with restrictions in place like - Max Tier of say 3, and an object cap of maybe 200 ships. This server would only be available for free players.

2 - Have the signups for a game open to free players the last few hours before the game starts. Free players would be restricted to the following:
- No chat or renaming objects/planets.
- They would have an object limit imposed maybe 200 objects.
- They would only be able to train to Tier 3

3 - Have a server similar to the tutorial server once again for free players that resets every 3 days.

We'd be open to hearing input on those ideas and see how everyone feels. We have no desire to go freemium. We would really like to keep the game a fair playing field for everyone.

[VanderLegion]

1 would probably be pretty easy to set up, I can't imagine why they shouldn't be able to have 2 servers queued for logins at the same time. As for 2, I'm with Royce. I hate freemium with a fiery passion, it's the bane of iOS games (makes money for devs, but I refuse to buy crap in freemium games, I'd rather just buy a full game and enjoy it as I wish). If they wan't something for people that don't want to have to pay the 2 bucks to try it out, I'd rather see them implement a limited free trial that only has access to the tutorial server or something.

[Royce]

A simple free trial server would be a good idea I think, but why not just allow a free trial period with download of the app?

[Leedot]

Just to contribute to this a little bit one of my big objections to having f2p servers vs. subscription servers is that the design needs of the two games are fundamentally different so it would be easy for the games to quickly become very divergent experiences to the point that we're balancing two different games after a time.

Regardless of what we do the end goal is to keep the subscriber experience the same and work backwards from that.

[Tsagoth]

A simple free trial server would be a good idea I think, but why not just allow a free trial period with download of the app?

People who play for free have no reason to behave and as we all know there are plenty of people who like to play the asshat in games. I won't permit an option that allows people to make paying player's lives miserable. That means whatever we decided to permit, they will be gagged, no question about it.

[TopherW]

Hi all,
Sorry if my second bullet came across as advocating for freemium. I was just trying to think of a better way to please the people who are complaining they can't try before buying. Zarkwizard's comments sound like good thought has been put into this one so I will say that that was my idea if he wants to say my bullet one was his idea :-).

[Velucritus]

In all honesty when you buy any mmo they give you a month "free" but really your box sale is just part of your subscription for the first month. I had no problem dropping 2$ for my first month to see if i would like the game, as i considered that my standard purchase. It's really no different than any other 2$ game on the app store with no lite version. You buy it, you hate it, you're out some cash. I think people just see the word MMO and the standards for that is to give you a free month, instead of the game for free.

[JetJaguar2000]

People who play for free have no reason to behave and as we all know there are plenty of people who like to play the asshat in games. I won't permit an option that allows people to make paying player's lives miserable. That means whatever we decided to permit, they will be gagged, no question about it.

This is exactly the number one reason to keep the game premium. I can't speak to the economics of it from the perspective of the devs, but requiring payment goes a long way to weeding out the clowns who want to be annoying and not take the game seriously.

Also, I find it bizarre that anybody has an issue with paying 2 bucks to try a game for a month. It's 2 dollars. I don't know about anyone else, but I have spent more than that on games that I've played for 2 hours and never opened again, and I'm pretty stingy about what I buy on the app store. Even if I choose not to continue my subscription beyond the first month, I've already gotten more than 2 bucks worth of amusement out of this game, which is more than I can say for a lot of garbage you can spend 2 bucks on (such as this revolting McDonald's milkshake I just bought on a whim).

[zarkwizard]

We would like to keep the game free as a download for a couple of reasons. I know some of us devs have sig others that have an iPad, and they maintain their own iTunes account. One thing we didn't want to do was force people to pay for another download on a different device.

Part of the issue that comes in to play is there is no way for us to tell if you bought a copy from the store, or pirated a copy. To the servers we just see the game connect. So we would have to assume if we see a new device you bought a new account. That would mean that any new device you install it on (let's say you have 1 iTunes account with 5 devices) we would have to assume you bought another month. There is no way of us knowing if this is the same iTunes account or not.

It just adds a layer of complexity that isn't required. Sure we fully expect people to complain and give us 1 star saying there is a subscription even when the first 2 lines of the description clearly states that. All we can hope is that people that like the game post a review to counter the 1 star free complainers.

In the long run we plan on doing something to let people try and play the game, but it will be in a limited fashion and they will not have interaction with the paying players.

[Tsagoth]

1) Creating two servers out there at the same time, one is the two to three days between matches which we currently have and a second server which is every week. That way for those of us who want to get around 200-300 people we could join the weekly server and those of us who want a quicker/smaller game could join the semi daily server.


We discussed this tonight, and I may have a way that we could do this without requiring dev time. I'm not saying that we will do it, but I'm going to play with the launcher over the next few days to see if my idea will work.

[ChickenHawk07]

We discussed this tonight, and I may have a way that we could do this without requiring dev time. I'm not saying that we will do it, but I'm going to play with the launcher over the next few days to see if my idea will work.

You sound really smart. I don't even know what a "trace" is (although I can probably giess) and you're able to pull up code and watch battles that have already taken place. It's like you're plugged into the matrix....

On a serious note though, I've posted a lot about my feelings on allowing non paying customers into a paying customer's server, so as long as you all are able to restrict non-payers, I'm all good with whatever you decide to do to bring in more people.

[TopherW]

Hi Tsagoth,
I appreciate the fact you all took the time to discuss my idea. That is more than I can ask for and if it happens great. If not, at least it wasn't just in my head and the idea was explored.

Chris

[WhiteLion]

It just adds a layer of complexity that isn't required. Sure we fully expect people to complain and give us 1 star saying there is a subscription even when the first 2 lines of the description clearly states that. All we can hope is that people that like the game post a review to counter the 1 star free complainers.

I never rate apps. Most apps are so bad they're not worth the time even saying anything about it. Other apps that may be "good" or "interesting" but I only use once in a bluemoon are also not worth writing a review for. Most apps are not worth the time it takes to rate and review... that's the bottom line. But there are some exceptions, and in this case... Eclipse is totally one of them.

I've been playing this game for about 24-48 hours, and even with all the glitches/bugs/disconnects I am facing I still feel this game is way above and beyond most apps/games out there. It's a no brainer that the game is going to be even more incredible down the road.

I work in the customer service field, and just reading through this forum it's refreshing to see how well Zarksoft is managing. Really a huge kudos to you guys, especially with your forum presence. It can't be easy, but I think you guys are doing a great job thus far.

As for the reviews/ratings, while there is no doubt people will rate the game poorly because it's a free download and they didn't read that it's a subscription to play... I think that the type of users the devs are trying to get via subscription are the same type that if the devs asked to rate/review the users would.

(and yes, I just went and rated 4 stars because it's still a fun game regardless of the current issues... and the current issues will be resolved in the future. Also because of the good customer service/forum presence).