A company not wanting to growup their player base is a bit weird. Something very fishy must be going on so that they don't want an increase in number of costumers, after all these costumers are the ones paying for all those failed side projects, staff salaries, servers maintenance, office rent, etc. If they didn't want more players why then paying to
Youtubers to promote their game?
When I started in 2008 there were times where I couldn't even reach the craft machine. I remember trying to craft at TI server was a pain because the huge amount of players inside the service center and I couldn't even reach the craft machine because of all the players on the way. It's their own CEO that claim that they make money from the millions of micro transactions happening in game.
One pet spawned it making money. One VTOL flying back to the hunting field is making money. One attempt of selling on the auction is making money. One used auto loot pill is making money. These are all ways to reduce the amount of PED in the game. Like BlackHawk said:
I do not believe MA makes profit, as a company, from decay, as it makes profit from deposits and interest they get on your deposit. From what I've seen in financial reports - and I may not be that smart to understand it all- all deposits are counted as income. The income is not the decay inside the game in accounting papers. Withdrawals are expenses. You have no contract to get 90% back or 100% back or even 10% back on any specific activity.
I do also believe in this. They
really make money when we deposit period. They could give us 200% tt returns, yet if we did
never withdrawal, they would still technically making money because in game it's all bits and bites, what really matter, the real money, is on a bank account or invested in any crazy side project (actually I really hope not!). So taking this in account every PEC that they can make evaporate from the game is a win for the house. Being it a little nutrio bar from the spawned pet, a fee from a failed auction or the 1% over a 40K PED withdrawal (400ped fee).
You know how much ped
evaporate when you upgrade a Maddox IV? I did the math last night, it's around 1500ped TT (150USD) out of the system. It's a win win situation. Mindark get TT value out of the game and at same time the Markup of item raises, so whoever buys it have to put even more money inside the game. It's also very similar with the tier upgrades.
With so many mechanisms to take PED out of the game why can't we have tt return more close to 100%? I'm the one being naive here? I'm the one being greedy here? When we have plenty of missions to kill 16.600 of a type of mob? Aren't all those mechanisms already sufficient? Why the need to have 90% tt returns where it's almost all shrapnel.
Taking in account the example of the Maddox IV upgrade, 150 USD is a bit of money if play traditional games. How much does it last on WOW? A full year of play? Have you noticed the lowest value of HOF in mining and hunting? If the highest HOFs are lower that means the incentive to take them out of game will be lower. Getting a 2k ped HOF is probably being pumped up again into the system, now if that was a 40K PEd HOF...
- Yes we need
more players! Special with this kinda of loot 2.0 system in place.
- We need
more stable returns, more close to 100%, so new and older players have confidence in the system and not need to wait years to see that number.
- The fees for depo and withdrawal are already enough,
why do we need to wait 3 full months? (So they can "play" with depos vs withdrawal and don't need to touch the money already invested)
To those talking about the cost of the support department, they don't even work on weekends! Plus as we saw on the recent issue the information don't even reach the responsible team.
I have to agree that this recent CEO is making some good difference, 3 VU's in one week! WOW Some years ago we had Christmas threes still spawned in May!
We need decent HOF daily and weekly, not only on craft but also on mining and hunting. Why give a 400K mining HOF and then
months on end without even see a 40k one? What kind of algorithm is that?
Keep the dream alive! We the best community ever deserve much better.
Thanks for all the replies so far!