GeneralButtNaked
ZionTCD
Legacy Rising
243
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Posted - 2013.03.25 06:21:00 -
[2] - Quote
mollerz wrote:Why wouldn't it?
They have too much going for them to long term fail on it.
Growing pains alway super suck until you quickly can't remember ever caring about it.
They could do things better for us as a community, but they have weird **** to tight rope walk.. and it matters in the long run as much as the ridiculously amazingly PRESENT much less persistent core game mechanic bugs.
Once it really takes off and starts rocking... you'll have been a beta tester and been there from the start, no?
Look at it like evaluating a stock... do you think they can accomplish their goals or not?
ME? I think they not only will, but drive a lot of competition to shi ttheir pants. Shortly.
Accomplishing their goals or not is not actually the issue. There are two main thrusts to my doubts. The first is the economics, the second is the philosophy of CCP as a developer(or maybe the tpye of player the have gotten accustomed to, not really sure on this one).
The economic concern is that in order for a F2P/microtransaction model to be viable, it requires a large player base. Not all players will invest real money into the game. So the revenue stream only comes from a percentage of players. In order for that revenue stream to be large enough, the percentage must come from a large enough base. If you had a 40% investment rate(percentage of players regularly investing money) then you might need a player base of x to support the game. If you only had a 10% rate you would need 4x players to make the same revenue. CCP needs to find the right balance of casuals and vets to make that revenue stream a reality. Can they do that with the game as it is now? No way. Can they do it with what is planned over the next year? Maybe, but that is highly dependent on the number and quality of any updates. Right now, there does not seem to be a large player base. I say that only because I do not see that many different people throughout my several hours of play everyday.
Keep in mind that the numbers that are thrown about for player counts are highly misleading. When someone says that say 500,000 accounts have been made, that number is not accurate as a representation of the real player count. I, for example have multiple accounts, some for future espionage, some for gaining passive SP to test out alternate skill sets before I start investing SP on my main. These are not alt toons on this PSN ID, but separate PSN IDs. So unless we were to have a better idea of how CCP is counting their player numbers, it would be hard ot get a real gauge on the number of actual players.
The concern regarding philosphy stems from the fact that the game is not at all friendly to newcomers. Maybe that will change when PC hits, but it could also happen that there will be plenty of people who although they pack the SP they will not have the raw skill to be an important cog in the PC wheel. These folks will get shunted back to pub matches, where they will punish noobs as hard as they can. People who are used to playing balanced(or simple) shooters will have a difficult time trying to adjust, and many of them will not even bother to adjust their mindset to the New Eden way of thinking. This bodes ill for that economic factor I was talking about before.
With that said, I do think that CCP has a plan. I wish I knew more about it, but I am really hoping they have thought all this through, and have clear goals relating to how they are going to increase player retention, and provide enough incentive for people to invest real money into the game.
CCP has shown a willingness to tough it out and keep developing until the get something worthwhile. The real question is what type of playerbase they will be able to retain by the time they get there.
Make no mistake though, the clock is ticking, and unless CCP really goes all out on the next build, I am doubtful about the long term viability of Dust. CCP wouldn't put themselves in financial jeopardy over a side project. If push comes to shove they will bin Dust and go back to Eve if they had to.
Lets be optimistic and hope that next build is a rocker. |