You are a company,we know and understand that. We might not like it,but we do know it. We know that your main goal is having an income. Sure,some of your developers might be getting some ethical satisfaction out of their job, but the general strife is towars money.
So that gets us where? To the draconian diminishing returns that you have instituted upon everyone in order to counter bots who partially ruin your income.
I’m not sure what kind of economy advisors you have, but basic maths and logic say that losing 20% of a huge pie is less than losing 10% of a small pie.
Don’t act like you know everything on how to counter bots. Most of your players has been into this genre for more than 7-10 years and we all know one fact. That you can’t eradicate bots.
You want to earn an income? Then give your players an actual reason to give you money and stop punishing them. Instead of taking care of how to lose a smaller amount of your pie, why don’t you invest that time on making the pie bigger instead?
So here are some tips that will help you increase that pie and,trust me, that people will actually respect on your behalf. And that respect will also make them more prone on opening their wallets to you.
First of all, let’s start with basics. You want this game to survive out of micro-transactions. Right? Well, let’s pay a little attention to the name of the formula. It’s micro-transactions. That means small. And there is nothing small to having 10 euros as the lowest amount of gem purchase available.
So let’s start with this:
a) Introduce the options of buying gems with 2,5 and 5 euros.
Now that this is established, why don’t you give people something extra and actually useful to spend that money on. Not everyone is fascinated by walking around like a chef ya know, but you know, I’m willing to put my hand in fire that a big part of your playerbase has got some of the details wrong on their character creation. Small details, like making the head too big, like picking just a tone brigther colour or picking the wrong glow colour on a sylvari. Or are even unsatisfied with being male or female and want to change.
I’m also willing to bet that a large part of those players are willing to give you and you alone money in order to be able to fix those minor or major details. Not the gold sellers or anyone else, they are willing to give you money for a feature that you do not yet provide them.
So let’s get to:
b) Give us buyable features that are actually widely requested,like
1) Character re-customization
2) Male/Female change
3) Do a survey on your forums what else people want. This is what you have them for, to get feedback.
Yet you keep punishing them for something they are not responsible.
Exploiting dungeons, exploiting the grubs in Orr, exploiting whatever is a despicable act. But when someone commits a crime, you do not punish the whole city that said person lives in,you punish that person and that person alone.
This is a wake up call and I hope you get it. Start working on giving the players a reason to buy stuff off you instead of punishing them because a few people are taking some of your income away.
Unless you don’t want to keep your pie of money going, it’s already shrinking and I’m sure you have noticed. Don’t you think that this is what you should focus on? You can’t eradicate pests, so stop trying to save the rotten food they eat, try serving more fresh food to everyone instead.
(edited by Apos.5184)