My renewed argument for Free to play

[Schwalbe]

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Count me in to the gloomy choir here.

I'll provide a soundtrack then.

How many times the goddamn UI has been changed, I can count at least 2-3 times.

Five including small changes and one major fuck up that should've gotten the person who did it fired.

I can agree on matchmaker being some kind of necessity, but who asked for stamina?

Funny you mention that, because while the first is utter cancer from day one, the second turned out to actually be a very fine addition for me.

Also, Neddie, why are you complaining about second hand key market? From the point of customer it's a great thing

Let me repeat ad nauseum my response about this particular case from the standpoint of someone close to game dev business and communitfuck you, you knobheaded, shitfaced, dimwitted twat.

and nobody forces devs to put their game into bundles

Eeeee, a market that is promoting buying keys second hand for cheap. How do you want to sell copies of a game, when most people are used to games appearing on markets like this, and thus not paying the price? Or expecting games to go on sale?

I mean, yeah, I won't probably buy anything from anyone signed under EA (who are bunch of studio strangling cunts) or Activision (who forced my beloved even if flawed Troika to release Vampire in state so unfinished, the modding community is fixing it since 2004 till today and are far from finishing, and week before release of Half-Life 2, killing the sales), but goddammit...

That's how free market works.

Ah, the free market. A fine concept, suffering the same problem as both capitalis or marxism, or communism.
What is the problem oh so common to all those?

The fact that people are being fucking cunts.

Mr Disaster, even though I respect you as my friend, I am sometimes mildly annoyed how you just seem to accept that as something normal. I would've dwelled into personal discussions between us, but I ain't that damn stupid. I've already made myself a fucking jester for not holding what I think.

[Neddie]

While constant, aimless change will limit product success, so will failure to remedy flaws. Alliance has a number of aspects which should be improved, but the launch period was fraught with problems, and they can only go forward from there.

Also, Neddie, why are you complaining about second hand key market? From the point of customer it's a great thing (they can get games cheaper) and nobody forces devs to put their game into bundles, for instance ones that cost 30$ and have plenty of games. Of course people are going to sell that further. That's how free market works.

I neither complained about, nor offered any value judgment upon, resellers and the reseller market. My stances on macroeconomics, microeconomics and market theory are not disclosed, as they are not relevant to this discussion.

[Thalassa]

We know:

• Making the game F2P will cause a big inflow of new players for a while (new publicity and the like will get players to join)
• GOIO is unable to retain those new players, and the number of connected players will start to fall again once F2P-GOIO stops being a novelty

It seems quite clear to me where the problem is: what can be done to retain new players? .
Narayan is thinking hard about it. This post of him seem to address the problem I had when I started playing.

P.S.: The prediction of the OP has come true. Lately I only see ~20 players online. And those are divided between PVP and Coop, for which it is almost impossible to set up a decent lobby lately.