Can you do a mega sale on Steam and get us some players?

[fuquashawn]

I don't play the PVP side so all I offer is opinion. However I feel this subject will assist both non-pvp as well as pvp servers. I don't believe lowering the cost will achieve much. This game has been out a good long while, only so many potential players left to grab. I have to agree with MrDTT on this one. At this point in the games life content will be the only real numbers boost. You say a "just few older players" KeithStone but that potential is numbered in the thousands. I do agree with your statement "more money = better gameplay" but with Xsyon making that leap of faith to Buy To Play the best solution for him would be anyone enjoying the game long term, simply assist him. On your accounts page is an option to extend totom time, on the homepage of this website is a donations button, If you are looking for another account simply buy it at full price. This is what will fund our game at the current status. It does not have to be half your paycheck, donate a dollar, two, three. If everyone helps small it would be a large difference. I'm not shooting blanks. I just bought an account the other night at full price, I have four I already don't need. I donated 20 bucks a few days ago, and I loaded my totem with time and honestly I don't even need it, i play daily. You enjoy the game? You sticking around awhile? Like to see this thing get off the ground? Donate. It's not about what you can get, it's about making this thing happen.

For anyone who read this post thinking about buying this game, It's a blast. The non-pvp server is growing steadily. There are groups on all hours just waiting to add to their ranks. Give it a try you won't regret it.

[xyberviri]

Well it is on sale for 25% off right now till the 12th.



Anyone here ever read "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brooks? It's a book on software engineering and project management, whose central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".


There are 3 key take away points which are:

1. It takes time for a new developer added to a project to become productive, this is known as Ramp up time. This requires diverting resources already working on the project, temporarily diminishing their productivity while the new workers are not yet contributing meaningfully.
2. Communication overhead increases as the number of people increase, everyone working on the same project needs to stay in sync with each other and that means spending time tring to figure out what everyone is working on.
3. Adding more people to a highly divisible task will decrease the over all duration of a task, ie picking corn from a field, but only up to the a point. ie Until the workers start getting in each others way. But some tasks can't be divided, you cant assign 9 women to birth a baby in 1 month.

Simply put hiring another developer wont speed up development today, maybe 16-24 months from today, but not today, not next week. That's not even counting the amount of work they are going to create just by touching stuff.


The problem is unless you have self motivated people, you can't have a sandbox with out some basic carrots(goals).


Today the carrot is: Hi welcome to Xsyon, a world where you can do anything, you just have to figure out what you want to do.


At a bare minimum:
In a traditional RPG there would be a NPC Guide on founders island that would do some typical "Hi there, do you know your name?" introduction. the NPC would explain that they were given a second chance so their memory of their former life was lost. Then the guide would assist the player in doing some basic survival techniques such as fishing foraging, cooking, gathering and some crafting. Then they would be sent on their way.


We dont have any of that and a lot of the types of players that don't need it are far and few. No one wants to read the tutorial because the text box is too small and its over 100 pages of clicking.


In a perfect world the player tribes would also have a "guide" working the welcome station so that the moment a new person showed up they would do the same thing. (instead of inviting them to a tribe and saying "great to have you, do what ever").

[KeithStone]

I don't play the PVP side so all I offer is opinion. However I feel this subject will assist both non-pvp as well as pvp servers. I don't believe lowering the cost will achieve much. This game has been out a good long while, only so many potential players left to grab. I have to agree with MrDTT on this one. At this point in the games life content will be the only real numbers boost. You say a "just few older players" KeithStone but that potential is numbered in the thousands. I do agree with your statement "more money = better gameplay" but with Xsyon making that leap of faith to Buy To Play the best solution for him would be anyone enjoying the game long term, simply assist him. On your accounts page is an option to extend totom time, on the homepage of this website is a donations button, If you are looking for another account simply buy it at full price. This is what will fund our game at the current status. It does not have to be half your paycheck, donate a dollar, two, three. If everyone helps small it would be a large difference. I'm not shooting blanks. I just bought an account the other night at full price, I have four I already don't need. I donated 20 bucks a few days ago, and I loaded my totem with time and honestly I don't even need it, i play daily. You enjoy the game? You sticking around awhile? Like to see this thing get off the ground? Donate. It's not about what you can get, it's about making this thing happen.

For anyone who read this post thinking about buying this game, It's a blast. The non-pvp server is growing steadily. There are groups on all hours just waiting to add to their ranks. Give it a try you won't regret it.

Xsyon has only reached thousands of players, the steam community is in the millions.

I understand it's a niche game, but I don't believe for a minute that this game has already been viewed by the majority.

My point wasn't really about getting more money for devs, my point was about getting new players to see/purchase the game and become long term players.

For any game to keep a healthy population you need a steady flow of players coming in. Now that the game is b2p, with a few sales we should be able to get new players to stick around.