Suggestion [UI] Game Balance...

Well, as we already know, one of the main problems in dark orbit is the lack of players, the less players the less fun it is (and the less players buy uridium, bigpoint~)

Players leave for several reasons, such reasons could be

• The difference in strength among players (probably the most important one).
• The difficulty to get new items (even cheap ones).
• "supernatural" powers in the game? Really, I've seen players hit more than 200,000 damage. That is more than the full shield of several players, there is no way for them to escape.
  
• upgrades... ah, the upgrades. The upgrades were one of the things that made a lot of players leave. The upgrades are pretty expensive for newbies, and because they cannot afford it, they cannot hope to fight invaders, sometimes they even have to sit in the portal because the enemy is just waiting for them. Even the upgrades for credit items are expensive.
• Lack of players. when Palladium maps came to the game a lot of players changed to the "dominant" company to avoid enemies while collecting palladium. This caused a huge difference in the amount of ships for each company. Before it was all vs all, now it is more like one company vs everyone else.
• probably the most important reason why players left the game was because of the updates to the game directed to UFE players without making the same amount of updates for Free players. (you know, you have to keep the balance...)

Those are some of the few reasons why players have left the game, leaving the current game with about 4/5 of the population it had in 2010, but the most important question here is not why the players leave the game, but why are new players not sticking around to get hooked to the game?
The answer is easy:

UFE ships

Seriously, it is incredibly unfair for the smaller ships in lower maps. These players don't even know what they are doing yet, however they get killed every ten minutes because some UFE is bored or wants easy kills for their missions.
I invited 4 friends to the game, they all liked it, at the beginning I was helping them but after I left them on their own they got fed up with the invaders and the huge difference in power. Then they left.

I don't think it is a problem if big point invests in their UFE players, after all, money is required to run the game, but it certainly is a problem if the new players are neglected.

So, I think the only way for this game not to die is to help the new players more, this way they would get hooked to the game and if satisfied enough they could in the future buy uridium and stuff. (if that is what concerns you bigpoint)

sooo, I will give some Ideas to help the players to grow so that the game starts to grow again.

1. Create "special maps":
These maps would be forbidden to the UFE players and only new players would be allowed to enter them until they reach a good level (level 15 maybe?) these maps could maybe, just maybe have aliens that give more credits than current aliens just to allow the newbies to get strong enough so that they can actually enjoy the game and think about buying uridium (you could also make some ammo that makes higher damage only to the aliens in such maps).


2. could the lf-3 be a credit item?
Come on, nobody buys it with uridium anymore, and if you transform it to credits item, you could even put a stronger laser in the store later. (just giving you an idea for the business bigpoint ) you could maybe do the same with the shield generators (just saying, I don't know if it is a good idea since players already upgraded them)


3. credit booster...?
I don't know, just saying. a credit booster could give you half the percentage the uridium ones give or it could give the same than the uridium boosters, but it would only work on company maps. That way the players could give some fight to the invasors (it could be even more entertaining for the UFE's)

4. credit upgrades
what is the point of the credit items being so expensive to upgrade? just one item costs
581,625,000 credits... Are you serious? with that amount of credits a player can get almost all the l-f3 from auctions in most servers. what is the point of making it so expensive? it is not as if dark orbit would lose money from making credit upgrades cheaper.

Clan diplomacy
Personally one of the things that bother me are the alliances with enemy clans, and multi company clans, that is why I prefer not to be in any clan so that I can actually fight the enemies instead of having to ignore them because they are allies or something like that.
(this one has nothing to do with helping new players but I will say it anyway )

5. skylab
One of the upgrades that could be done to the Skylab is to increase the storing capacity and the rate of seprom and promerium production, at the same time increasing the ship's cargo capacity and reducing the time it takes for the matter to reach the ship. This would not only help the new players to make more damage against ships and aliens alike or to get more credits by selling matter but it would also make happy the UFE's. I know several players that absolutely not play if they don't have seprom and since the skylab takes forever to produce seprom, they disconnect from the game and don't play until they have enough seprom (again, bigpoint if what concerns you is the uridium, see this as a way to sell even more Uridium. [if you increase the levels that the skylab can reach several of the UFE players are sure to buy and spend uridium to upgrade instantaneously their skylab]

6. Training arena.
A real TRAINING arena, this kind of feature would allow players to train only against ships of their same strength (this would certainly require an algorithm to determine if the ships have similar equipment) without taking away the ammo used in the battle (that is why it is called Training) this kind of map wouldn't give any rewards. and as an incentive for players to go and kill enemies in PvP maps you could increase the rewards for killing ships.

7. Time, Money.
In this kind of games there are two things that can be spent "money or time". a big percentage of players prefers to spend time in the game to grow and just a small percentage spends money (these are the ones that keep the game alive) this is never going to change.
But how do you bring in more players that spend money? by keeping the Free players happy.
How? well, the more players there are the more advertising and better reviews the game gets, and therefore more people come to the game, and because the game is good for everyone, a percentage of these people are certain to buy uridium. this is why LoL or WoW are so successful. Because they make all the players happy. Balance~

8. Uridium prices
This one is just as a suggestion for the company. think about it, if you reduce the prices of the uridium packs, you get to sell more, and if you sell more you get even more money. you want an example? there you have walmart, they use a low price strategy-high volume sales, a strategy that has been used for decades, and guess what, It works. maybe, just maybe you could try this strategy out and see how it works.

So, if you realize how hard it actually is to compete in this game you will know why players are actually leaving and not getting hooked to the game. It is like a drug, the better the drug the more hooked they get.

I think now would be a good moment to start some updates to the game. Now that there is this winter event, and that new feature of "cross-server PvP", the UFE's are going to be happy for a while, so now would be a good moment to pay attention to the the free players.


P.S help new players we need them!

 

I think in addition to the Cross server zone, they should have another zone for noobs only to go to that is demilitarized where they can do quests and get to a point where they can help themselves in the game

 

The biggest issue you failed to hit on is Game Stability. If you can not complete Quests or have items work as designed and it takes forever to have them fixed then even the BIG MONEY Players leave the game and what is left? A few hangers on that HOPE the game will return to its OLD glory.

Yes Upgrades need to happen to keep the game interesting (I am not disputing this) BUT when there are problems with an Update then it needs to have ALL HANDS ON DECK until it is fixed and not release any more NEW updates until it is fixed and tested with the Fixed Game Platform. If you do not then the New stuff may not handshake with the fixes of the OLD updates and then you are in a constant battle of Updates and Fixes.