DOOM? I Think Not.

"But sir, they have us surrounded!"
"Poor bastard, we have them right where we want them"

The Steam Summer Sale is one of the two largest Steam sales of the year, which normally results in a decent upturn in the number of users the game attracts, for a month or two at least, but this year the game is going into it with only a 50% discount and sub 50% favorablity rating. It's like they are not really trying.

 

Another mans take:

https://www.mmorpg.com/shroud-of-the-avatar/columns/layoffs-hit-portalarium-1000012812

 

I would hope that Darkstarr has insider information about the finances that the rest of us don't have

After all, he is the one who said we need 50k active players for this game to be profitable.

If you can't trust his take on it, then who?

 

I know this is beating a dead horse at this point. And some people like to claim "but most users don't use steam!" And that's probably true for old school players, but today's everyday gamer does. If this 3 month chart was a stock, I would have sold out a while ago.

https://steamcharts.com/app/326160#3m

And that's exactly the problem to some people. I initially sould out due to something I won't get into here. And I want to come back, I'm still willing to put my $10,000 pack in that I took out.

But not until the steam charts are going up for a few months. Again, just like stocks, the lower it moves over time, the more people leave and don't buy in, so it becomes a self fulfilling event once it crosses a certain point. IMHO, right now we are back to pre-launch numbers and sometimes below that even.

Why would I want to sink $10k into a boat with a massive hole in the side of it? BUT if those numbers pick up, I'd spend MUCH more than that. I am not alone in that line of thinking. I personally know people who are "whales" so to speak that say the same thing.

And they DO advertise, I see their ads at least twice a day on FaceBook, it just seems they hired someone who doesn't understand social media or advertising to run the ads. If i didn't know what SotA was, I wouldn't click on them, they look like mobile game apps and they offer NO EXPLANATION as to what the game is. I even had to point out typos and broken links in them...

I love the concept of this game, I love the feel of it and I love Starr and Garriott. However, this is a game that has a HIGH barrier of entry to get what I want (housing), so I'm going to not play it at all or spend a penny on it. Because if it vanishes, then I'd be heartbroken. If it took only say $500 to get situated in the game, then I'd probably play because that's not much to risk.

To keep the analogy alive here. ESO you can buy a massive house and whatnot for less than $50. In this game it'll run you $10,000+. that's fine, nothing wrong with that. But think of it like risking your cash at blackjack. You'll sit down at a $5 per hand table alone or with bad players, because your risk is minimal and you can just have fun. But if you're betting $500 per hand, then you will not sit at a table that's empty or with bad players, you will only sit down with other people who are strong players. you want to know your money being risked is getting the most security out of it.

That's how I feel about SotA. I'm watching, money in hand, but not coming back in unless the numbers look healthy enough for me to risk doing so. but all we get from Starr is "our non-steam numbers are great!". I agree with a lot of people in stream when he said that; "If they are so great, you'd tell us the numbers". Basic logic says the non-steam numbers are abysmal.

 

OH MY...

I don't use F***book so I didn't know that, thanks for the info. More of why the plane flew into the mountain I suppose.

 

Given that, unlike a great many people on the forum.. he actually works there and runs the project I'm pretty sure that he does. On that note, when was the actual number of active players last given anyway and what was it? I wonder how many actual people know?

 

IMO, the ads don't scream 'quality', ie. that this is a quality game.

The whole vibe from "Join Us, Avatar" and so on makes it feel a bit tacky, and equivalent to ads for dozens of tacky mobile games, which may happen to work for those games, but because you don't have to pay much for them if anything at all. Like I mentioned in my contribution to the thread How to make SotA great, I think the recipe for success in SotA is quality. To be quality, and to project quality in the marketing. I think that's the only thing that will draw people in.

But, in my opinion, the devs have been for a while trying to approach the game and market the game for the wrong audience.

Its one of the reasons the devs need to hook players on aspects of the game that don't deal with housing. And don't deal with the "social experience", either, IMO. If players are hooked on the idea of living and adventuring in the world in Novia, from a solo player experience, they'll want to join parties eventually, then they'll want to join guilds eventually, then they'll want to join a house eventually.

Especially because of the price of housing, but also for other reasons, I don't think the game can be built backwards. Community is built around a great game. Hook people on the gameplay, not the social stuff, and people will eventually put in more to buy in.

 

I wish I could like your post 50 more times, well said!

 

here's the thread I made about one of the ads (If you care to read more on it, if not, I understand, haha) and people also pointed out that one had a broken link as well. The ads have improved a bit, but still feel like a mobile game and not much information.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...s/so-that-facebook-ad-sota-is-running.109862/

 

That's a good question that I wish they would fill us in on.

Regardless, even the most optimistic of fans here knows we are not even remotely close to 50k

 

Really? I have no idea how close or far away we might actually be.. I see a lot of statements based on assumptions here. The whole thing reminds me of an argument I was having with someone I know awhile back who pointed me to an online article as irrefutable proof.. when read, it basically went like this.. A is similar to B so we believe C happened therefore it must be true. It wasn't evidence of anything at all.. just speculation based on a desire to think a certain way.

Now I'm not going to sit here trying to convince anyone that everything is absolutely peachy.. but to me a most of the pessimism sounds off as speculation backed by very broad, very generalized assumptions from folks, some whom haven't had anything positive to say for a very long time that I've been able to tell.

 

Waaahhhtt???

 

If we assume that people who play the non-Steam version will just click Play and not close the Launcher, which by default uses P2P to share the game files...so if you have a torrent client up, you can see how many are seeding the various patches.....................

 

Maybe ask a few of those who lost their jobs as a result of the failure to draw sufficient sales at launch if they are speculating or assuming that they are unemployed as is outlined here:

https://www.mmorpg.com/shroud-of-the-avatar/columns/layoffs-hit-portalarium-1000012812

I've heard of head in the sand, but this is head in the bedrock. How long can one's neck be?

Oh, and no one said it was "peachy".

 

So, this quote from the article:
Richard and Starr say that they believe their current challenge is marketing.

The game's not selling because of marketing? The active player count is low because of marketing? There are some 70k paid backers. When only a small percentage of paid customers is actually playing the game, is it really a problem of marketing?

 

Assumptions and speculations of what you don't know based on what little you actually do.. are still assumptions and speculations.

 

A somewhat odd conclusion to draw isn't it?

I remember hearing the reason for low population was that people who backed and weren't in game during EA were waiting for launch. Well, we're almost 3 months past, where are the folks who already paid for the game? It costs them nothing to play at this point.

*shrugs*

 

Not sure this logic adds up. This isn't a subscription game.. 70k paid backers is money already spent.. not guaranteed money incoming. The game needs new players coming in and buying from the store.. not simply playing. For that matter, we don't know what percentage is playing.

 

You are right we cannot zero in on the population. But we can get a good idea. There was a small poll of who uses steam and who doesn't here and you can find other data of general gamers.

But let's even for a moment pretend 2/3rds of people playing do not use steam (when it's normally like, 4/5ths do, again, let's put that aside). Right now SotA averages about 200 steam users online (and dropping, last month it was 240, month before (launch) 330, month before 207) so we do know numbers are dropping from steam. but even if the 200 is only 1/3rd of the players online, that's still 600 total players. We are currently #698 on the charts, right behind Farming simulator 15 and Goat simulator, I'm not even joking.

 

I will toss the anti-steam people a bone.

http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility

Eve Online currently has 21,000 people playing and only 3,000 of them through steam. This is because most players got it not through steam and SotA's best hope is steam right now (again, terrible ads).

So IF and I mean IF we follow Eve's %, there would be a total of 1,400 people on Sota during the average playtime.