A simple business plan for MindArk

Few Scars

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Bjorn Bjorn Longstaff
Reading the Compet webpage one thing stood out as a glaring hole in their marketing strategy. The expected 6 month player retention. This is very short sighted. The backbone of Entropia Universe are not the players who come and try it out for 6 months, have no money in real life and quit. The backbone of this game are the veteran players. The players who deposit.
Now you would think the executive would understand it's the veteran players who invest $1000s USD into the game every week. How are they rewarded for their loyalty? There are no loyalty benefits. Would it be wrong to give say an extra 5 points of agility/health/stamina to players for every year served? Would it not hurt to give storage bonuses to players who have deposited more than $500 USD in a 6 month period?
All the focus on the new player experience at the expense of the veteran player experience. Veterans have skills, they should benefit from them.
I think it's about time MA took a look at retaining it's veteran players. Listen to what veteran players have to say. If a veteran player sends in a support case, don't fob it off. Think oh shit, a valuable client isn't happy, we should address this. I can't even be bothered looking at Joakim|Calypso bug fix list as nothing has been fixed.
A note also to the Compet team. If you stick panda bears, and more cute creature pets ingame it stands to derail the whole theme of the game. The Kanin really, WTF are fluffy bunnies doing on the battlefield?

Get it together. Pick up your game, reward those who made your shareholders happy. Make Space competitive with the soon to be released space MMO which we all know is going to make Entropia Universe space look 1980s. You don't have much time, the most successful gaming companies do two things
1. Reward veterans
2. Maintain development and game theme! A game like VEV has 100 million active players, i don't see them adding bunnies and pandas to the game LOL.

Some respect to those who keep this game afloat.
Bjorn
 
I agree with you about rewarding long term players.

Honestly, I think they said 6 months because they were trying to show there could be returns on owning the deeds even if people didn't stick around long.
 
6 months is actually much closer to the average online game churn than you might think these days.

EU already works on micro transactions much like the FB model for games but with compet I believe they are going even more down that road(and in turn even more like FB) by having thousands spending 1 dollar instead of hundreds spending 100's of dollars..

And high churn is all part and parcel of that style of player.

Dont get me wrong though I believe their is merit in what you are suggesting too(EU players on the average are very loyal and long term players,more so than a lot of the MMO sandbox type of games) its just that I think MA is working from a different playbook with compets.
 
The whole Compets thing doesn't sound like a very sophisticated or challenging game. I suspect people will come and go pretty quickly. But, if MA can use it as a way to generate capital and hire more developers, it might not be such a bad thing for EU players.
 
You can't compare a simple mobile-phone game with EU, so the expected 6 month player retention for the pet game is not so strange. But I actually think that is a bit too high....
 
Don't get me wrong... I would like to see loyalty bonuses too. But future veteran players have to survive their start-up period too... And I somehow doubt many players here deposit 1000 $ a week. If I had to choose I'd rather cater the game to the players with a more moderate budget.

/sbi
 
I can't agree with Veterans getting preferential treatment regarding bug reports, they should always be treated equally no matter who reports them, it's just that at the moment most bugs appear to be treated as an annoyance and only get fixed if they're an issue with MA.

Any loyalty should only be based on length of time playing not just on how much you deposit. It's down to personal choice to how much anyone does spend.

A note also to the Compet team. If you stick panda bears, and more cute creature pets ingame it stands to derail the whole theme of the game. The Kanin really, WTF are fluffy bunnies doing on the battlefield?

http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/Buneary

Think of this, what does a mouse that can generate electricity have to do with a battle field? It looks like the compet team just simply looking at another game series and borrowing quite a lot.
 
IMHO level 100 professions coupled with uber gear should give you 100% TT returns on average. It wouldn't hurt MA, few will reach this goal and people would have something to strive for.

:twocents:
 
I totally agree that some sort of rewarding system for veterans should be implemented; that being said, MA is no different than any other business (read cynical, cold-hearted etc... I could for sure use other, better adjectives :laugh:).
Example: I've been with a certain Internet/Cable TV/Phone provider for 14 years and paid tens of thousands of $ so far. Every week I get snail-mail/email about the greatest promos. "Rent your PVR for $9.99/month now!!" WTH do I pay double???

It's really rather simple:
1. Companies want more profit, which is natural. They know that XX veteran reached their "potential". To have an increase in revenue, new clients are needed.
2. Not many businesses like a status quo; it's a short "sight-ness" that is rooted in the upper management: bonuses are based on the number of new clients. You can see it with MA where all they put in advertising is how big the player base is. You can also see it with anyone else: FB etc. At some point MA was saying they have x million players; while this may work in advertising and reports it's far from the truth. Nobody digs further to show that x number are multiple accounts, x are inactive and so on.

The funny part is that if ask new players about this, they always say veterans have most of the advantages, and it's not the right away to attract new players :naughty:
 
Very well said....
 
At some point MA was saying they have x million players; while this may work in advertising and reports it's far from the truth. Nobody digs further to show that x number are multiple accounts, x are inactive and so on.

The funny part is that if ask new players about this, they always say veterans have most of the advantages, and it's not the right away to attract new players :naughty:

Skills wise the older vet's did start at 20 for many skills rather than 0 but the newbies have it far easier to skill at the lower levels and at much reduced cost as they weren't forced to use UL at too low skill level.

A little extra storage for each year in game is all I need to deal with all the stackables they keep adding each year ;)
 
a good plan with rl items , from cheap to expensive stuff, with transport fee included , will bring hope and joy and new plans and new investments. Gl!!!
 
You can't compare a simple mobile-phone game with EU, so the expected 6 month player retention for the pet game is not so strange. But I actually think that is a bit too high....

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that their assumptions suggested that 20% of players would play and 80% would play free. That estimate is insane since the actual number for F2P games is closer to 2%.

MA has clearly indicated that they have no knowledge of the market they are trying to enter. It doesn't look like they are convincing many people to "invest"/take the fall for them so hopefully this doesn't bring Entropia down with it...
 
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that their assumptions suggested that 20% of players would play and 80% would play free. That estimate is insane since the actual number for F2P games is closer to 2%.

MA has clearly indicated that they have no knowledge of the market they are trying to enter. It doesn't look like they are convincing many people to "invest"/take the fall for them so hopefully this doesn't bring Entropia down with it...

Yeah, It's a bit hard to believe 20% would pay for it. But i guess we always have some few players that have money and will pay a lot more than the average player.
 
I don't think Compet target audience is same type of players at all, so you shouldn't really compare the two games or their player retention rates.
 
Clash of Clans makes $5 million a day.


Why are Mindark making Compets? Answer is in the line above. ;)
 
Clash of Clans makes $5 million a day.


Why are Mindark making Compets? Answer is in the line above. ;)

Indeed it is but clash of clans doesnt have a 10 year plus of fcuked up rep and a frustrated pissed off scammed felt like player base....so entering any market with that kinda rep backing you up hmmmmm not a good image or start....
 
Indeed it is but clash of clans doesnt have a 10 year plus of fcuked up rep and a frustrated pissed off scammed felt like player base....so entering any market with that kinda rep backing you up hmmmmm not a good image or start....

Apple used to have a tiny market share of the personal computer market. Macintosh used to be seen as expensive versions of PC's using proprietary hardware and limited software. Since innovating the Ipod, Iphone, Ipad they've grown to one of the richest companies on the planet.


Now of course, I'm not saying MA will achieve such stellar growth as Apple, but they are innovative, they watch market trends, see what works, and why wouldn't they develop a game that generates a seperate revenue stream from the smartphone generation?

Lets give it a chance eh? :)
 
i seem to remember chances have been multiplied by some digits in a version update here and then :laugh:
 
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