how ever you think it works, and the boundries between the F2P, freemium, subscription are increasingly blured, they are still doing alot better than little MA. the reason there isnt many "data points" for RCE is that its really not a very good model.
understand that i recognise RCE as a core part of Entropia. however the point i made was that marketing the game in the way described would be a bad idea (except for the existing base if it affected them - that questionable given what we put up with over the past few years.)
Look, I agree we should move away from advertising the game as an RCE model as a primary vehicle for driving an influx of currency.
We should not ignore it. It is the cornerstone of this platform. But we do need something else.
A freemium model however does not fit. It simply does not. How can you promote freemium in a game with no subscription fees? By exclusionary reward practices? Psh! That's not a carrot on a stick. That's a barrier. We need to slow down and think this through, if we want to discuss this rationally, and not play the part of the reactionary.
What we need are more free outlets, to drive player satisfaction in between deposits. This will increase retention on all levels, and will supply players with reasons to deposit, instead of reasons to shy away.
Because players will gladly pay for something they enjoy. Exclusion does not promote an enjoyable experience. It promotes an elitist environment.
The key is to focus on the virtual world, the complete sandbox experience. Activities to enrich towns, like Fishing, Laser Tag, Stock Exchanges, Society specific quests, Faction Points... these are what we need. The token system can be expanded, providing an in-game secondary currency with no real world value that expands and contracts in value based off supply and demand from the players themselves. MA loses no money. Deposits still drive the economy, and players on all levels are encouraged to participate in either the gathering of tokens, or the purchase of them.
Keep token prices on items high, providing incentives to gather plenty of them, create better token based items, and create free systems to supply small amounts of tokens in the form of daily, or weekly repeatable quests.
Vigorously pursue the creation of multiple accounts, making it a priority of MA to eliminate farming, and move the economy forward using a dual currency system, while never excluding the free player from participating in any aspect of the RCE system -- instead increasing the value of the free player to the depositor due to the time investment required to procure sufficient amounts of tokens to be of benefit.
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