[UI] New Solution for a dying game

The game is dying because big businesses like Bit Pointless get greedy and treat their core paying customers with disdain pricing them out of the game. There used to be hundreds of players on GB1 buying uri, whether it was £20 p/w or £35 p/w or even a fortnight or once per month, but BP in their greedy state have driven them out of the game with excessive overpricing. GB1 used to have a good 300-400 players on even at 4am most nights (back between 2009-2011) and when I went on there the other night I did a user search and there was 7 players on including myself, laughable!

Due to excessive overpricing on uri only items, especially the upgrades, cheating players prospering with next to no action taken against them because they spend a miniscule amount of money that BP is now desperate for, with other cheaters being allowed back in the game and allowed to keep everything their previous cheating helped them obtain, it is a slap in the face and insulting to honest players who have worked hard on their accounts whether spending here and there or not, gates not being profitable unless you have no life and can box/pally 4+ hours per day or do cubes all day, it has driven the core spending players out of the game, then no wonder the game is dead and no amount of events for the miniscule £150+ per month spenders will change that. Even events for the lower level players will not change that. Buying uri, you would get 550k on mhh with bonus now it is 495k with bonus, total con and just further proof of players being treated with disdain by blind greedy suits who are still scratching their head wondering why they have lost so many players across all servers because they're not intelligent enough to work out that they themselves are the problem.

I worked out that a single cheating player may buy prem for 12 months (because they need it the amount they get popped cheating on boxes even though they steal enough uri to pay for repairs) while buying box doubler every 8 weeks, BP gets £107 from that one cheater alone yet BP in their wisdom have unnecessarily overpriced the game forcing millions of players to quit playing, which tens of thousands of them would regularly spend on a mhh every week or fortnight or once per month, when just one of those spending players that quit would easily spend £400+ per year with prem for 12 months and once monthly uri purchases (not to mention the players BP have lost that would spend £35 per fortnight spending £800+ per year) as well as any doublers/rebates they may have bought back prior to 2011, so times that by thousands of players who have quit then you can see why the game is dying and why BP have let all the cheaters back in the game because BP would rather have what little money the cheaters do spend than not have it at all while the game still remains excessively overpriced with all those spending players BP have lost still not returning because they refuse to play a game where they would spend hard earned money on stuff while cheaters get the same as them for free not to mention the programs other players use for fighting.

Most of the money spenders were never big spenders either, they just spend a little here and there to help them along, but losing those core spending players in their hundreds of thousands has hit BP hard and they sit around their board room table scratching their heads wondering why the majority of their core spending players have gone and because they have become so blinded by greed they think events that focus on the ever-shrinking money spenders will rescue the game, erm, nope, it will not. Even stuff for non-spenders will not rescue this game. The only way to rescue this game is to do away with all the cheating players once and for all (7 of them in the top 10 of the hall of lame on GB2 that need to go for starters), zero tolerance on cheating, reduce the cost of overpriced uri only stuff which is basically everything really, reduce the financial cost of buying uri or increase the uri amounts for the existing money because it has never been value for money, and increase odds of getting good stuff from booty chests and gates (and reduction in spins to build each gate), be a bit more generous with bonus boxes all year around. There will always be players that cheat in some form so it is up to BP to pull their head out the clouds and start cracking down on the cheaters who are being allowed to cheat and permanently benefit from it because they spend a bit of money on the game and BP are getting desperate for the revenue now because they've driven their core small spenders from the game while the big spenders shrivel up also and the small spenders outnumbered the big spenders as for every big spender there use to be 10 small spenders. But these sensible things will never happen so the game will continue to die until one day there is not enough revenue to keep servers running and what was once a great game goes offline forever... Another victim of the greed destroying machine...

Edit: The ever-increasing cost to reset pilot bio to do different things. People having to spend a million uri (and still increasing beyond that) to reset their bio in some cases because they have reset it so many times now. It would be better to allow separate pilot bios per hanger so you can have ships set up for different things, like you could have your veng/spear set up on pilot bio for boxing in one hanger with your goli/aegis set up in other hangers for NPCs/pvp. Obviously this would require the obtaining of new log disks for new player points per hanger/pilot bio. At the same time, reduce the cost of log disks from 300u to 250u or even 200u to make them a bit better value for the long-term in setting up different bios for different hangers.

 

In my opinion all the players stopped playing is because they were botting all the time. They were outside, they were with friends and the bot makes uridium for them so why dont play a game where you dont need to spend money? Now, there are no more bots and if they dont spend money they are nothing because the "normal" guys are outside and they are doing sth. better as play DarkOrbit to be better.

Thats it.

 

ÐΣŞŤЯØYΣЯ♥Schøki, are you German?

If they surprise the players with this, they will earn so much money in a short time, because the players will be overjoyed and spending more money to have more advantages (=>Kuiper Gate bonus boxes).

 

Yes, I'm german. Why? xD

 

Your name ^^, I'm surprised that so many Germans look sometimes in the English forum.

 

For other countries, English as a second language is mandatory in school. That and the American military give them lots of practice in the language. On the flip side, I being American like to look at the German and Turkish forums to try to see what we are being left out of. Thank goodness for browser translators. lol.

I fully agree with this. The game just seemed to be busy with the bots running around. There was lots of fodder for enemy players to shoot, but it made it hard for the true, normal, players to get things done. On the flip side, I think there has also been an age shift. Players have gotten older and with that comes a priority shift. Not being in school anymore gives players more options as to what they can do. Now instead of just playing DO, they can go out, see the town/country, visit friends, in order have a life in the real world instead of being like us closet cases.

Dark Orbit has to figure out 2 things:

1. How to bring in new players
2. How to get the players, new and old, to stay interested in the game and purchasing stuff.

300-400 players at 4 am on a server sounds like either college kids from that country or players from across the pond taking advantage of a time difference.

Anyways, back to the grind.

 

Since there's rebate on GG i'll continue to buy premium and -25% rebate 1 milion x4/day too good to be truth

 

Yup, uri has never been value for money. I wouldn't give BP £70 for that silly 330,000u. To be honest I wouldn't even give them £50 for 330,000u. Most I'd be prepared to pay for 330,000u is £40 and that would be once in a while on a mhh or a helix event. BP really needs to address their greed in over-pricing things which are not even real. Most new players to the game give up within a short space of time because the learn quickly that they cannot realistically get anywhere without either having no life and spending 8 hours a day playing the game (doing NPC's which is hard work for miniscule uri when you're below level 12, pallying and getting popped a thousand times or boxing) or spending stupid amounts of money on stuff that is not real!

I would drop the price of 75,000u to something like £10/£12 while dropping the 150,000u to £20 and dropping the 330,000u to £40. Or, as greed is the prevailing wisdom with BP which is destroying the game by their own hands, permanently double the uri for the existing prices. Either way, better value for money equals increase in revenue for BP with players more willing to part with their money when they feel they are getting a better and fairer deal. A permanent reduction in the cost of uri only items would hugely benefit BP in the long-term especially in building gates, booty keys (dropped to 1k u), log disks (200/250u), upgrades (a good 50% reduction) and boosters. Everything is just over-priced and most people just will not spend anymore (or to begin with) or just do not have the time to spend on this game either to earn uri for free.

Cost of gates is ridiculous when you break things down. On a gate sale spending on average 40-45,000 uri to build an alpha to only get around 26,000 uri back in return, it is laughable. Then easily spending 100,000+ uri on other gates to not even get half your uri back in return, and as for Kuiper, I've lost count how many times I have done that now and only ever gotten 200k uri once! Gates are the biggest con in the game so you can see why so many players cheat on boxes stealing uri and gate energy (and the pally botters) to steal gates and all the rewards.

So players like me ask ourselves, why should we spend our hard earned money to do and get things other players are either cheating to get or have no life so can sit there for 8 hours boxing/pallying/cubing because they have no job and/or no life (big spenders not included, more money than sense there). We just give up spending on uri or only buy uri 3 or 4 times per year while all the other small spenders in larger numbers quit the game altogether and BP never learn because suits on boards of companies live with their heads in the clouds and they look at the constant loss of revenue and think of new ways to generate new revenue and they just keep introducing new over-priced nonsense that is worthless at the end of the day.

Oh, and BP, £19.99 for 1,500 galaxy gate energy? You smoking the Dagobah herbs there. Average of 800-1,000 spins for an alpha gate (cost me 900 spins last night with 100 spins just for one part) and an average of a minimum of 1,600 spins for some other gates, that's ONE expensive gate to build for £19.99! Make it 25,000 galaxy gate spins for £4.99 and you have got yourself a real killer deal - I'd buy 100,000 galaxy gate spins then. This would be a right money spinner for BP once a fortnight or once per month - value for money or you can keep driving your customers out of your game, the choice is yours and we all know you'll choose the latter.

No more bots? You're having a laugh, pop on GB1 and GB2 and I'll give you a tour of the maps and we'll have some fun popping the bots, well, players that actively play and then bot when they go "offline" or claim to be "AFK" while their ships still fly around the map when we all know to be legitimately AFK then your ship ain't moving nowhere

 

As has been pointed out in other threads, making purchases of anything other than Advantage Packs (Special non-SHOP items excluded) and Uridium from the Uridium Page is purely flushing your money down the sewer. It is cheaper to spend your in-game Uridium for the Log Disks, E E, Booty Keys, and anything else offered in both SHOP and Flash Sales when they have been discounted (% sale) when you are spending MHH Uridium having the further discounts of the Premium and Rebate to reduce the rate even further. G G M as low as 40 Uridium, Upgrades at 52.5% on U B H, buy the BK-100's in the shop is cheaper than the packages (too bad Red and Blue are Payment only), buying the other stuff in AUCTION is much cheaper in credits than Uridium (even at 40 mill for a BO-2 Shield).

I would only buy Uridium on MHH and purchase items with it when they are on discount. Instead of building and doing gates one after the other, a person builds 20 gates (2 each) at 40 Uridium a spin then on Kronos Day you run the 13 gates needed to build the gate and do the 3 others toward the next Kronos (would need to build a third Lambda for complete Kronos Gate) plus the Hades and Kuiper that do not work towards Kronos. Even if it took 1600 spins (usually less than 1200 spins average) it would only cost 64,000 Uridium to build a gate so one MHH would get at least 15 gates built. Of course the priority on completing gates done would be the gates that need more than 1 done to get the Kronos open (Alpha, Beta, Epsilon, Kappa, and Lambda+1) then the Gama, Delta, and Zeta 1 time open the Kronos that has been built and then redo the other 3 again then do the Hades and Kuiper and the open Kronos gate (22 gates total if you are quick enough to do them in one day LOL). Stock pile BK-100's for the purpose of LF-4 and Zeus Days when they are discounted in SHOP. Buy PET items when they are on % off days only. Tired of being out bid in Auctions buy BO-2 Shields when they are % in SHOP. And only Upgrade during Upgrade Bonus Hour. If you followed this routine you would spend a maximum of $150 USD a month (average first month may require 2 $100 USD MHH purchases) buy your Premium (annualy or monthly) and the Rebate and Box Doubler (assuming you are doing stuff in the maps other than G G's) every other month.

 

°URANUS°™, I don't understand your marked quote, did I do something wrong?

The last step is waiting for the amazing double GG reward days.

 

Hi. Me and my friend just came back to the game form a long absence. We’ve played it before, and we think it’s a fun game to play. But we are not so content with what we have found once again:

As lvl 15 golis, we are not entirely noobs, but we are far from UFE. It almost seems like an unreachable dream just by looking at the auction. We have not completed Iris, and the odds are we will not until the end of the semester. We don’t give the game a 24/7 attention rate, but we try to stay active. Even so, we find really hard to feel the progress as we play. The game turns repetitive Kristallon after Kristallon, and there is no safe way to try with a Cube.

What to do? Buy uridium? It’s expensive and not really worth the expenses, for 90 000 uri are not really a game changer. Get it form NPC’s? Sure we do, but it’s slow.

At this point we realized that the Uri problem is economical. Uri is hard to get in space and flies away when you go to the shop, so players will buy Uri form BigPoint and improve the account. Everybody wins. Except that...no. My friend bought 90 000 Uri. That is no little amount, and still, that is not a game changer…

But developers are real people (at least we hope so) that need real money. And the vicious cicle goes on. We want to suggest to the developers to readjust the value of Uri so the game moves a little faster. We want to feel the progress. We don’t want the game to be easier, we don’t want uri to be free. (Well we do, but that’s not the point) We want to have fun playing and rising to be UFE, we want that not to be a dream.

What about money for developers? How about publicity? I think you have tried that, but maybe you could display some when a player gets killed. Maybe that would generate some income.
Another way could be crowd sourcing. Players could donate little amounts of money as a way to thank for the great game you have.

Uri is your product. And i think is a great product, along with the game. But don’t overestimate your product, nor underestimate your consumers. Take Apple as an example, that american company earned a lot of money selling REALLY cheap music. Try making the game a little more friendly for your consumers.

 

BestGArenEUW: Nope, you never did anything wrong lol I was just replying in general to your comment on surprising players with a reduction in the cost of uri etc.

One other thing I was thinking about today is the players that will play for like 2-4 hours every day or every other day but bot most of the time outside of that, most don't do it every day because if they did it every day then there's a greater chance the script will catch them so they do alternate their cheating on boxes. I was thinking though, you have some of these players cheating on boxes for 20-22 hours in one day so that must pull in a good 5,000+ galaxy gate energy when you factor in their stolen uri has paid for maxed out level 3 salvage protocols on PET as well as their bonus box doubler for those that do buy it, not to mention the uri they steal on top from the boxes and the uri rewards they then go on to steal from the gates.

Kind of insulting at the end of the day when I have worked hard for 907k uri and blow it all on building gates on gate sale to only get 400k uri back? I do have a Gamma and Kuiper to finish (doubt I'll see 200k uri from that nonsense) as well as the uri from finishing the Kronos I have on the go. But I am like, seriously, why should I buy gates with money bought uri or work hard on NPCs or boxing/pallying for gates when these cheating players are getting it all easily for free and all they get when they are caught is a useless do nothing slap on the wrist.

Ultimately, this game is losing revenue big time. The majority of the regular small spenders are drying up. Big spenders are few and far between and not enough of them to keep the game afloat on their own. No amount of new over-priced stuff is going to save this game. No amount of new events are going to save this game. New maps and NPCs will not save this game now. You can't save this game when BP let players get away with cheating (because they spend a tiny amount of money BP is desperate for), get to keep everything their cheating has helped them obtain when 100% of everything should be removed from their accounts including all points earned. You can't save this game when BP keep constantly pricing people out of the game and it is those regular small spenders that keep games like this online because they'll always outnumber the big spenders. Only thing that is going to save this game is two simple things:

1: A fair reduction in the cost of uri only items (which will also include reducing spins required for building each gate because it is disgusting you can spend 150k uri builing a gate to get 45k back (delta) or less than that).
2: A reduction in the cost of buying uri.

If BP want to keep their heads in the clouds and continue on their current path, that is up to them, but at the end of it all, they'll lose the game through their own fault when the revenue shrinks to the point it is not enough to keep the game running. These types of deluded business people never learn and they keep making the same amateur mistakes over and over again by introducing unnecessary stuff and over-pricing it (like 1,500 gate spins for £19.99, totally ridiculous, I'd only give them £1.59 for that miniscule amount of spins). They'll end up destroying their own game through their own blind greed. All BP have done over the last coming on 6 years now is ruin this game and no amount of slapping them around the face is going to wake them up to their poor business decisions regarding this game. Only when the revenue drops to below the point of breaking even will they wake up from their slumber but they'll be so drowsy from their hibernation they'll make even more mistakes that will finish the game off for good.

It doesn't bother me one way or the other, plenty of other games I enjoy playing and still play that do not require endless hours per day of effort or silly amounts of money being spent. I still enjoy the NPC side of this game and box a little while popping botters but I am not going to waste endless hours per day doing stuff on this game and I am certainly not going to get drawn into buying uri every mhh like some players still do because they need to buy that false sense of achievement in this game to fill the void in their mediocre lives

If I owned this game, the problems would get solved (cheaters would get sorted too) and it would become more profitable than it has ever been in its entire existence because I would do what BP has never done and never will do - deliver value for money and value for uridium (which will bring old players back while bringing in new spenders) while also keeping new quests coming that pay better uri and honour for all player levels (especially new players to give them a much needed boost) and are not reliant on some silly event. I'd shake things up in x6 and x7 maps as well as doing something in the lower maps for lower level and not so strong players like those who are not even basic FE yet as they do not play enough. But as BP are too stubborn to listen to real business people like me that can see and fix the problems with this game then they'll continue sitting there around their board room table scratching their heads like monkey's as more and more players quit and watch their game crash and burn around them and I'll be laughing saying "I told you so" and then buy the game because it will be worthless and dirt cheap because of their poor management and poor decisions

 

Even though I like some of what DO/BP has done recently. I fear they are still trying to hold on to the old ways
Plain and simple they need to do what URANUS said BTW Keep the chance aspect away from this game. I'm tired
of seeing it You guys sit there talking on your twitch stream spitting about "oh we have to look at the economy of
the game" "we don't wont to upset this or that" If you still don't understand what everyone is saying I tell you in plain
English. YOUR PRICES ARE WAY TOO HIGH.
.

 

Just to clarify - it's not that we're not hearing this message from your end. The "looking at the economy of the game" and "not wanting to upset this or that" is describing why it is taking time to provide a comprehensive set of changes that create an overarching solution - not our basic understanding of the problem(s).

We've been working on many changes on this front over the last year, but some of it is either not obvious, or work that has been done behind the scenes while additional changes and features continue to roll out this year.

Believe it or not, some of the additions like vanity / cosmetic item support and the Assembly system are part of this overarching process.

If it was as simple as just lowering Uridium prices, we'd do it. Analyzing and adjusting the cost of Uridium, along with the Uridium costs of items, and Uridium sources are all part of the solution - but it's not simply a matter of our making a conscious decision not to do the obvious.

I'll hit on some of this in the upcoming Producer's Update, but I'm sure it won't satisfy all questions. So, we'll keep communicating on this front until it makes sense.

@KrisKelvin, please correct me if I'm inaccurately expressing our situation & approach in my comments above.

Thanks!

 

, it's RickDekard. You are reading in the forum







(This shouldn't sound sarcastic/offensive. Really)

 

BP talk about economy yet their idea of economy is unaffordable to most people who play this game. The economics have already become unbalanced with people farming LoW gate, Bray's and Cubes because they appear to have nothing else to do with their lives. The economy of this game is over-price everything and drive people out of the game who have work and a life while those with no lives/work can afford everything because they're sat there boxing/pallying/cubing/LoW gating 8 hours a day! At the same time, most players left in this game that would have been regular small spenders cannot really afford to spend beyond prem membership and buying uri once every 2 or 3 months because uri has always been excessively poor value for money while all the good stuff is always excessively over-priced so even if you did spend £20/£35 per week to buy uri it would be gone in no time. The folk at BP need to wake up to the fact that most of the UK based people who play this game who are in work earn from as little as maybe £16,000 going up to maybe £40,000 per annum, and these people cannot afford to blow £20/£35 or £70 per week on this game with the cost of living and everything else in the real world draining away their income (mortgage/rent, food, TV/Phone/Net, car, having an actual life etc.) which they are left with very little disposable income which most people will not waste on this game.

BP talk of not wanting to "upset this or that" yet introduce a ship like the Cowardice that can repair multiple times during pvp fire while no other ship can. I say either ALL ships can repair once and once only under pvp or no ship should be allowed this cowardly unskilled ability. At least make this Cowardice ability like the abilities of the Unskilled Goliath's so it has a 15 minute cool down between uses. If it upsets a bunch of toddlers who hide behind its abilities because they do not have the skill to use a real ship, coughs, Goli, coughs, then tough - the reality is the didn't need these new silly player ships - the game needed new aliens, maps and quests - not everything revolves around PVP and a lot of players, myself included, have no interest in the PVP side of this game despite all the babies crying "but it's a PVP game wah, wah, wah!" It is not exclusively a PVP game.

Anyways, the reason for my coming back here to this thread. I have something to add regarding NPCs, quests etc. as I think it is about time a new alien species is permanently introduced - but in the battlemaps ! Yes, you read that right. 4-1, 4-2, 4-3 is where most botting takes places due to the high rewards from the bonus boxes in these maps and times that with stolen level 3 salvage protocols that botters use plus doublers they may buy, that's a lot of stolen uridium/galaxy gate energy for all those gates they are stealing.

Q: So what does the new permanent alien species have to do with botters in bmps (you players that bot in bmps will hate this)?

A: There will be a frigate size ship, a little bigger than the pirate's Anni, hit points similar to Sibelon with shields equal to its hit points, doing the same damage as a Boss Kristallon but it also has the ability to lay emp mines and other mines (DD etc.). The botters will get uncloaked by the emp mines as they will always plough through them as they are not under any direct human control. Then you create a new starfighter class for this alien species, about the size of a Saimon but with the hit points and shields like the boss kristillin but doing the damage of say the prots in Beta gate, while this new alien starfighter has equal speed to a prommed max engine spearhead - bye, bye botters from battlemaps as they'll be constantly getting uncloaked and popped by this new alien species. At the same time, we get a new alien species and new quests in existing maps. Could also give this new species a ship along the size of a mordon as well but with hit points and shields and firepower equal to the Uber mordon. You'll be able to jump from the pvp maps under NPC fire but not under PVP fire.

To shake things up in uppers, I'd slap 4 cubes in all x7 maps. Why not? it's basically the same as 2-6 anyway with the same NPCs so might as well slap some cubes in there too. At the same time, permanently introduce Boss Cubikons. One each on x6 and x7 maps. The Prots will also be bosses in their own right. Make them so they only spawn like 7 or 10 mins after being popped as this will cut down on excessive farming in what is now Farm Orbitville I'm also thinking a cube for each company that is like half way between boss and uber or just make it uber , but it jumps from the x6 map to the x7 map and back etc. so when not under attack it moves between those two maps.

I'd think about creating a new pirate map which would be the mirror of 4-5 but will obviously be 5-4. It in we'd have Boss and Uber versions of all the pirates including Boss and Uber battlerays. I would remove the instashield nonsense from ALL battlerays though, stop the farmers. Or, if BP want to keep the isntashield, remove the constant re-spawning of interceptors, make it so the interceptors only re-spawn once and the battleray then has to be destroyed or no more interceptors. And ironically it has always mainly been cheaters farming the Bray on GB2. In fact, this one time, I saw two players in 4-5, near rad zone and they were just sat there and I watched and watched as their PET's kami's kept going off but nothing was there! Then it clicked, they had the deadly battleray there but it had managed to jump and their ships were still sat there Kami'ing well, the vacuum of space and then I popped them both

Quests are always an issue. There's just no decent quests, especially for the new and generally lower level players (who do not play much and takes them 2 years to get basic FE) and most quests they do have pay poorly. So we need some solid quests like popping 100 saimons and 100 mords, then 250 of each, 500 of each, 750 of each then 1,000 of each which decent final rewards like starting at 1k uri going up to 8k uri, and you can do the same with the different Streuners in x1 and x2 maps while doing the same for the Lordakias, as new players will benefit from these quests in the long-term as long as the rewards are decent like the old school quest rewards - today, BP are just too tight for their own good, it is like they do not want anyone playing their game and getting anywhere . Most lower level plays have the strength to pop these ships. New quests for x1 and x2 maps as well for such players to do the new types of Streuner ships. This game under the old quests use to pay out some decent honour and uri rewards but now the quests are rubbish and the rewards are rubbish. Devs need to stop messing about with useless events and focus on the core of the game again. I'd like more Uber quests as I have done them all including the Player 4, Press Start Quest (400 Ubk). If you're going to have Uber quests to do 1,000 or this and 2,000 of that and 500 of this and 750 of that, then you can do it for quests in all maps (lowers/uppers) just make sure the rewards are worth the effort of doing the quests.

 

I loved this game but the 2010 version of it where there was no cheater that could come back at game ,when you doesnt had to spend that much to open a gate like 3000 energy for K and in the end it doesnt gives nothing, where you shoulden had problem playing at all on pirate maps ect ect. The fact is that i play on EG3 and trust me is the worst server ever. To many players but of that kind that gona lock at you as soon as you jump on their map ,that gona leave you almost kill a bos kristallon and than gona shoot at you and steal it, that gona call other company clan members and gona kick your a>> and you just can see them doing all they want , that you gona farm pala with spearhead and a player is always gona kill only you and you gona wonder( why me damn) or (how is it posible i had ultimate clocking).Well guys this is why the game is dying and not becouse it is hard to find lf4 .Btw why for good sake is even possible for players of the same company to shoot each other? Is a myth i would never gona understand why the 3 different kind of company exist if you can kill everyone you want !!!!!! cheers