[UI] Moving In The Right Direction

Hello,

I have been watching for almost seven years now as Dark Orbit has gone up hill and down. I have watched some great updates to the game and some frankly awful updates. I have seen staff come and go and I now feel it is time that I put my two cents in.

So for starters I want to go ahead and pick at what I think is fundamentally broken with Dark Orbit in its current state; it's Business Model.

For the last few years many games have adopted a business model of making the game essentially free-to-play as far as equipment and having access to the games content.* The game then makes money through the purchasing of cosmetic and conveince items and consumables. These are things like ship designs, paid boosters, ammunition. Dark Orbit has these already but compared to other games these are in there most basic form. A more in-depth understanding of this is a game will allow a new player to create an account and then provide them the equipment and knowledge of the game through quests and farming at a level that keeps the game entertaining and **moving** this is key, if a new player starts a game where it takes A. Considerable time to learn basic game concepts or B. Considerable financial investment to permit endgame style gameplay they will lose interest and move on to games that have these initial gameplay concepts setup already.

Dark Orbit tries to make its money off of everything they can possibly think of charging money for. This creates a problem where the game is virtually free-to-play as far as making an account but pay-to-play once the account has been created. Now this is not a rant about how much a game costs to play or how Dark Orbit is robbing people blind. This is a business and they are here to make money. But at the same time Dark Orbit is missing out on the big bucks. By trying to make money off of everything they costs themselves money.

Games like League of Legends use a Micro-Purchase Business Model. Essentially the game makes its money by allowing new players to advance rapidly from newcomer on the block to fully geared and ready to fight endgame players. But the catch is the game offers Micro Purchases to speed it along even faster, allow the player to customize there appearnce (designs) have access to better ammunition (notice this is not the equipment to use the ammunition but the ammunition itself) and conveince items such as the ability to purchases an item that allows them to go directly to a specific location or allows them to heal themselves instead of relying on others or allows them to spawn certain things outside of normal requirments.

By adopting this model the game truly becomes free-to-play. The money lost from charging for equipment is gained through a constant influx of new players particitpating in micro transactions (micro purchases). This is also of benefit in that once equipment is gained it creates a demand for new equipment to be realeased in order to keep existing players that are endgame equipped already spending money. With micro purchases as a business model the developers no longer need to focus on the next big equipment and can instead focus on things like designs that make the game visually appealing, new maps, new npcs, new quests, new systems or improvements to existing systems, new UIs and much much more. By introducing these micro transactions existing players will have to participate or be left behind.

By moving Dark Orbit away from this business model of making everything something people need to spend money on and towards a micro transactions business model. Dark Orbit will make more money, the game will become more active and the game itself can move away from the life support it is currently on.

I will post further thoughts and update/edit this thread to make it easier for others to understand. Feedback is appreciated.

 

Really like your post Full of good ideas

 

Agree to your Litany..scholarly said..congrats,,

 

micro transactions yeah because it worked so great for EA didnt it

 

they do need to lower in game costs so new players can get stuff quicker to survive and be competitive.

to buy a Goliath-X ship at 150K uri, that's $50 real money equivalent (buying the $99 330K uri package)

now people will say you can farm that in game, but that's a lot of acerage to farm

 

tbh they just need to lower the price of everything honestly because if they do i think more people will put money into the game with a much fair prices then 100$ dollars usa for just 330k urid that wont get you crap

 

I agree with much of what has been said above in this thread. Micro-transactions is a non-starter based upon the huge back track of EA, which was caused by a player revolt.

Looking at DO, it has made everything about money. You want to transfer 2k rocks to your ship? That's two hours wait or almost 2k URI. Did you really want to play tonight, lol?

How about your PET? Does it go for the newest kill drop first rather than the oldest one - yes it does, to lessen your drop box reward. Not to mention how PETs fly into line of fire even when there are drop boxes to be picked up. Sigh. PET is engineered to be against player that owns it, by design. Now, go buy some more PET fuel

I watched the YT video from today or yesterday all about how DO is getting better, and I lol. The server merge is probably going to drive players away due to loss of everything worked for during their time in game. Missions become a joke the farther up you progress - there is one that wants 10,000 PvP kills. That's not a mission, that's a career. That is really really unimaginative from a game design point of view. Rather than come up with something new and interesting, lets just up the kill count for most of the missions. Lets make a mission take a Month or more of game time, rather than an evening or two. Total fail IMHO.

From a players perspective, or to be true, my perspective, I just see a lack of imagination combined with desire to make players pay for everything. I understand DO needs to make money to stay in operation. I still like this game and I support DO. I've been a paying player for some years now. But at this point I am so disappointed in this game.

On my server I find bots every day. When you see bots everyday that means cheating is okay, right? Must be so because lack of action from DO is a tacit approval of cheating. Disgusting. Chat is full of pilots that don't speak the language of the server. No moderator to be found. Not that a mod can really do anything anyway. Real problems are referred to devs, which in my experience are never in game and never respond to any problem reported. Great job DO.

If you spent some time playing the game you created you might begin to understand the concerns of your players. I mean play it as a new ship and try to build it up, not as a moderator or developer using some ultra powerful ship. Start with a pNut, and get back to me in a year when you are FE or UFE. That's if your spending money, see you in a few years if you try to do it w/o paying the DO cash machine. I hope you do try that, and I wish you luck, it will take you a long while. You lack game perspective, and that is why you are in the problem you are in today.

So I hope things are moving in the right direction. I have my doubts. And so far nothing I've seen gives me confidence in the promised upcoming changes. I'll wait and see, of course, but any lack of real positive change will send me away to something more fair and fun to play.

anduril

 

I don't think considering few months spending time on bonux boxes will take that long, especially when you can easily survive without doubler. I am not going to judge your post or anything, most of these are facts, but I need to say that I am then a very special player if I can manage myself UFE without taking a year on it. Ofc, my latest account is 8 months old and spent only 270 hours (which is less than an hour per day btw), with a one and a half month break on it, yet having Drill, Moth and Diamond as a formations, first 4 drones were bought with Uridium, made 3 Zetas which 2 of them were free due to compensations and activity on boxes and yet having again 76k Uridium without touching to bot or spending more than 10€ in the game (in fact, I've wasted 4€).

It's only about choices. Most of the time on this game you come up with questions "What to do next, should I spend my Uridium to drone formations, upgrade drones or do gates?" and you need to think what is the most efficient way for you. There isn't really the right way to do anything, as for one player some things in this game might be suitable for him and become faster UFE than you with a same way. Choosing wisely in this game is the keyword for success.

The attitude matters. There's a lot of stuff which might become boring: shooting Kristallons daily, collecting bonus boxes, collecting Palladium... if you get bored, switch to do something else. If the game is boring, then it's not made for you. There is a lot of grinding I agree and the gap is getting bigger and bigger by new lasers and ships, but right now the way is that you need to pay a lot to get the oils for a ship. Anything else you must do by yourself.

You can choose to pay 1000€ in the start and get yourself into UFE, but you lack the experience in the gaming in general.

 

or you could just grind and be like skm clan on east 1 sitting in 1-7 top left portal everyday all day killing bks and that's that

 

§PĄÇΣ™ŞŦŘłKΣŘ™ and Anduril fantastic posts both SPOT-ON! Now hope somebody is listening and DO SOMETHING! DeathByCheetos yours may be worth word count Forum points but nothing more.