Comments on: Oh, the Humanity!

By: deuce_for2

deuce_for2 — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:32:23 +0000

I have not asked Sony recently, but they used to say we could not sell items for real money that you could earn through gameplay. I believe it had something to do with how the items are represented on the server and not a generic philosophy, but I may be wrong. The thing that has changed since then is the creation of monetary systems by the developers. For instance in the Casino, you can buy and win coins. If you use coins as a medium to buy things, a la Cutthroats, then you have bridged the gap. There is a market for people to buy items that others will grind for. The problem is making sure it generates enough revenue to justify the game. Making a game for $300,000 and getting $20,000 back will lead to companies stop making games. That is the problem at the root of everything.

By: nDreams Joey

nDreams Joey — Thu, 30 May 2013 16:33:34 +0000

Some nice ideas.

SealWyf, turning it into a single player game would cost a considerable amount (even though it actually sounds relatively simple) and I think that is what a lot of Home users forget at times. It’s a nice idea and I think that was the original plan for CloudHunter but its not something we have gone with.

I think as a large amount of people hit 120 we will keep raising the level cap and offering more rewards (and never be afraid to say you think there should be even more rewards, the worst we can do is say no!!).

By: Snake_the_Great

Snake_the_Great — Thu, 30 May 2013 16:27:16 +0000

Free-to-play games need to provide the option to spend a lot of money, without forcing it. Perhaps you could spend a week of intensive playing to gather enough gold to buy a horse, or you could spend $10 to get a different horse instantly. I don’t have tons of free time anymore, so I’d take the second option. Consider bigger things, too- like spending months to save up for an estate, or spending $100 to get an estate and a bunch of other goodies instantly.

By: FEMAELSTROM

FEMAELSTROM — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:53:44 +0000

I am real cautious about calling for freebies, especially from nDreams. You guys are already sooooo generous, that I feel real bad even saying that word, but for the masses, it is a draw. One thing I really would like to see expanded is this: 2 friends of mine are level 120, so XP doesn’t help them, and I am a level 117, so I have very little to go. Maybe if you could put into the game something like the OMG Trap-o-Matic, where it reads if you get a free item or xp. It may bring people back to play to possibly get a free item or not, or if an item is one the user already has, then the user can get XP. RE: Deuce_for2, true the ‘abandon in place’ idea is not a safe model, but fortunately, we are on a media that allows for updates galore, so it is comforting to know that something with such potential can be updated.

By: SealWyf_

SealWyf_ — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:27:57 +0000

Joey, I wonder if there could be some way to play Blimps solo? A lot of the problem is that you need at least two people to play. Unless you go in with a friend, you quickly get bored waiting for other players. If there were no other players in the game, could we use the blimps to chase down AI blimps? Or even Orbs or cloud-squids?

Aurora XP would be an acceptable reward, I think. Especially if the level cap is going to be raised again. One thing I like about Aurora is that all the XP goes into one “pot”, leading to some awesome rewards for OCD XP collectors.

By: nDreams Joey

nDreams Joey — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:14:27 +0000

I can’t say it’s going to happen anytime soon but I wouldn’t be surprised to see something happen with Blimps in the next two or three Aurora updates.

We all know everyone loves rewards and maybe one way of bringing blimps in line is to add Aurora XP to blimps instead of it being it’s own standalone game with it’s own rewards. “play for 10 minutes a day and earn X amount of Aurora XP”.

Nice article Strom, it has brought up things we actually have discussed internally. The most interesting thing is the idea that rewards are things that are completley free, decent ones cost a lot of money to make which is why you might not see many developers going back to an old game to update it with rewards.

Interesting to see what HSM readers, and the Home community in general think -- does Blimps become it’s own game with it’s own rewards (we would need to find something to monetise then in order to pay for the development of that) or do we try and bring it inline and allow users to earn Aurora XP with it…

By: deuce_for2

deuce_for2 — Thu, 30 May 2013 10:09:53 +0000

Making money by making games in Home is hard. The reality is that a majority of the people in Home never spend anything. So getting them to spend something is hard. I think the major problem has been this free-to-play idea, not realizing that Home itself is free-to-play. Too much free and the need to buy goes down.

Another thing I have learned is that selling someone a better gun when they already have a gun is a hard sell. But selling them a gun when they have no weapon is easy. especially when everyone else has a weapon.

But you are right that this create and abandon pattern makes little sense. It is cheaper to fix a game then to write another.

By: Burbie52

Burbie52 — Thu, 30 May 2013 09:51:30 +0000

Good article Strom. I tried blimps once or twice but as you said there didn’t seem to be much purpose to it as no one else was there to speak of so no one to tag. Great suggestions, I think if they revamped the game a bit people would return to it.