**** something happened to the thread (player count) as i was typing. But this is important topic of its own right. So making a new thread.
**CASUALS are the ones who make money **
Yall forgetting the only thing that matters. That is money. Returning players means nothing if you cant make revenue. One of the reasons games like fortnite make so much money using MTX is that they target CASUALS. Aka average people who are more likley to spend.
The current approach on focusing on hardcore players means pushing away a large portion of people. Since about 10% of spenders are large spenders, and 40% are small spenders, you want to max the player count for largest amount of hits. This means focusing on front loaded content.
Main take away here, is relying on whales is a bad idea, as amount of whales has not grown, and their attention is split on the most popular game. If LE wants a future by MTX. It needs to put on the big boi pants, and start making casual content
That is something I do agree with OP on, they are focus a lot of what id call âstreamerâ content or âredditâ content that a vocal minority very clearly wants, but the numbers do reflect that. My friends dont care about bosses. They dont care about âpinnacleâ content, they care about running around with cool new skills or a new build and trying out new cool builds. if the builds stagnate or there is no quick fun entry level mechanic, they have no reason to come back.
The majority of players to this day even in PoE, dont do pinnacle content, they just run aroudn low maps having fun. And as offputting as PoE is to new players, it does have hooks to bring them back, new skills, the league mechanics are useful and indepth from the leveling experience etc.
I donât like going the âtroll-harderâ route, but this really, really needs to stop.
Tell me, are you more personally upset that Last Epoch hasnât given you a substantial sum of money making static cam âcontentâ videos or are you more upset that EHGâs legion of pirate lawyers havenât personally bankrupted every RMT seller in existence and saved gaming for everyone?
EHG has a road map. They prominently displayed it. I have no idea, and no desire to know, what EHGâs finances are, but the dev team is clearly confident in having a stable, long-term release cycle each with major upgrades for both endgame players and casuals alike (1.2 is adding more story, something that casual players care a lot more about than the ârush endgame as fast as possibleâ crowd). They have a CPU team (presumably) working specifically on engine upgrades; smooth gameplay is just as vital for casuals as it is for hardcore players. The team would not be publishing years-long plans if they were worried they didnât have the money to staff their tea,m with the talent they need to recognize those plans.
And donât tell me you know EHGâs financial outlook, because you donât. You have no idea about the funding behind the game (other than âmuh Tencentâ), their margins, or how they choose to allocate their resources. You have no idea how to make a game in an engine and how to upgrade said engine to optimize performance. This isnât about people in a company being âsmarterâ (spit) than you, this is about people who are making their livelihood in this company who can clearly communicate how to reach their goals without your input.
It makes no difference to EHG whether people bought their game in Kickstarter or 1.0 release or buy it in Patch 1.1 or 1.4. This whole âgames as a live-serviceâ nonsense has really brought out a swarth of ignoramuses who think companies need to constantly send out surveys asking âare you liking how youâre playing our game right now?â Who the **** cares about steam charts and daily concurrent players? You really think thereâs a team in EHG whose job is solely to look at daily player charts and send doom and gloom reports that losing players = losing money? They donât need to constantly look at whoâs playing their game, itâs called having confidence in your craft.
If I had to bet between EHG and a bunch of forum warriors spamming the âdead gameâ emote, Iâm sure as hell betting the farm on EHG. I already bought their game, they have my money and my respect. People who think that going on steam stats and comparing concurrent players and constantly gloating about how right their doomposting was only get ridicule and scorn.
I can see why you may think i am Doom posting but i aint. I am providing feedback about what may come should the devs not recognize the importance of casuals. The devs likely have 4 years of funds from the 28M they made from the box price. However, that does not mean they got Cart Blanche, for not focusing on some of the things that should be prioritized
Ok, did you read the thing you linked? In the first question he says that in F2P mobile games, the distribution is slightly towards the âheavy payerâ (55% of revenue) compared to the medium spenders. Then he extends that to F2P PC games which is more poignant & there, âheavy payerâ make up 60% of the revenue despite only being ~10% of the population. Interestingly, they donât split the data for whales out.
So while the medium spenders do make up a large less-tapped market, upping their spend is likely difficult.
Also, âcasualsâ arenât going to be the ones who spend much money, those would be the ânon-payersâ in the linked graphs, or the bottom end of the medium payers. If you could figure out a way to get people to happily (the key part) spend more then yes, you should do that.
No, they target the medium spenders, not the non-spenders.
Iâd trust the devs more than you. No offense.
They havenât, but what you think should be prioritised isnât what the devs think should be prioritised and, again, Iâd trust them over you, since this is their job & they have access to actual data rather than facebook/youtube âresearchâ.
I use the term casuals as the general public, who have left the game out of the 1M people who bought the game. And hardcore players as the 15K who stayed the mostly the entire time, and actively participated in polls.
If you manage to keep the large portion of the people, you increase the probability that more of them will be spending money. The idea is similar to throwing more darts and hoping some stick.
Your right that the research is imperfect- as last epoch is NOT a free to play game. It is a game with a box price. In my opinion, them making it boxed, may have killed a lot of peopleâs desires to spend on MTX in general, as now every MTX is compared partly against the box price of 35$.
I would have rather, suggested using an expansion model. But that is a different convo for a different time.
Setting aside the fact that usually half of the people that buy any game doesnât even finish it and never plays it again, what makes you think LE doesnât cater to casuals?
Itâs very easy to make a build, to get gear to enable that build and clear campaign and normal monos. Which is what casuals care about.
And itâs very hard to get BiS gear, which is what the hardcore players care about.
1: Specifically, a lot of the neat gear is back ended. The gear at the start and combat is very slow. When you focus on casuals, you want to give large dopamine spikes at start. Some times called Mobile-esk tactics. A portion of people, may quit there and then.
I would have made a lot of the weaker uniques that no one uses, and just toss them for free at the lvl 1 vendor for 20 gold. And have them drop sets at lvl 1-5 with 40%. Make the first 10 hours of power gains, be substantial instead of locking it behind 20ish levels.
2: The game gives skill points at equal level. Games that focus on casuals do this in reverse. Up to lvl 10, you would gain 5 skill points per level. Then from 10-25 you would give 4. Then from 26-40, you would give 3 skill points per level. Then from 41-55 you would give 2 per level. Then from 55-70 give 1 point per level. Then from 71-88 give 1 point every 3 levels. Then from 89-100 give 1 point every 5 levels.
Yes this requires changing the skill tree, and allowing some skills to cost more then 1 skill point. As well as adding more branching paths. Means reworking tree making it less chaotic and more linear from down-to-up.
3: End game [monolith] is revealed to you after the campaign
4: cant join faction system until about 80% done the campaign. Want to front load it, and provide the strong benefits from tier 1-6. Then provide less rewards from 7-12.
COF:
1: You get 20% to make commons into magic items - and they roll twice
2: You got 20% to make magic items, and lower into 0LP uniques.
3: you get 100% chance to get rune of Ascendance, on kill of an elite mob. [lower the drop rates of 1LP items with them]
4: You can not get affixes lower then tier 3 on all slots with exalts and above
5: Exaltd items have a minimum 1 tier 5 affix 20% of the time.
6: Exalt items have a 60% chance to have at minimum a tier 2 sealed affix, of common rarity and above, and 1% chance to have a sealed tier 7 exp affix.
7: Set items gain 20 charges of weavers will with 1% spawn chance
8: Uniques have 30% chance base to roll as 1LP, and 2x to be 2lp
9: Uniques, will roll implicit twice and pick highest
10: Uniques will drop minimum 2LP every 20% of the time in corruption 200 and above
11: The 1st and 3rd affixes will always be transferred first with forge for legendries
12: all base items gain +30 for crafting potential.
Mobile games are highly successful for making money. It would be silly to not take some elements of them. Especially since they are played by the most lucrative demographics and make the most revenue.
We need revenue for the game to grow and for more content. Simple fact of life
Mobile game tactics only work for mobile games, though. Many PC games tried to make similar things and were shot down by the playerbase.
And that is because there is a very large playerbase that only plays mobile games and doesnât play PC/console games. And there is also a very large playerbase that only plays PC/console games because they donât like the monetization of mobile games.
Players will tolerate SOME amount of monetization in PC games. Cross the line and players shoot your game down.
What you propose would kill the game, unless they ported it to mobile and focused solely on that market.
EDIT: an important thing to consider as well is that the devs havenât set out to create the best selling game of all time. They set out to make the game they (and other like minded players) would like to play.
So as long as theyâre making enough money to keep growing the team and the game and keep the lights on, they donât need to compromise the game identity (which is something you actively seek to change all the time).
Probably, yes. But it also gave them some cash up front to fund development, so it was probably a lower risk option.
There is downsides to that though, such as splitting the community (ie, probably no seasonal model), expansions are more likely to be more expensive than an MTX so youâre âforcingâ yourself to rely more on the heavier spending side of the market.
Iâm dying to see your attempt to take aaaaaaaaaall the vast knowledge and business sense you so clearly have and make your own game studio. Iâm sure it would be an overwhelming success.
Based purely on numbers it is true that casuals bring in the most cash, but a loot based character building game should never - EVER be built around them. Thatâs the dichotomy that is so hard to overcome in the current gaming industry landscape - how to keep a live service product alive without trivializing its design.
Thereâs a ton of accessible content for low-skill/low-effort players, everything else is for the rest who are more ambitious/dedicated.
As soon as you start catering solely to the first group, you not only alienate a still large portion of your player base, but also gut the longevity of your game. It doesnât matter how much more cash you couldâve siphoned from a dad gamer if your title suffers the death by a thousand cuts.
Not necessarily. Look at genshin impact. It is primarily a loot based game, with wifus as a skin on it. Is it that much different to an ARPG? Or take Isaki demon wifu. Which is almost entirely an ARPG, which is making so much money its kind of obnoxious.
I bet i could take unity, pay some one 10K to turn those AI made skins I make into an ARPG, and have the game do better then 99% of games on IOS/ Android [PS i dont have the money to do it, but if i had i would].
The fact no one has tried it does not mean it cant work. One of the most abnoxious ARPG that was made for casuals and made bank was Diablo Immortal. Yes even if it was massively hated. But companies care more about profit then anything else. Ignoring PR speak.
As to Last Epoch having accessible content. I disagree, Complaints about lagon in the campaign disprove that alone. Dungeons? Not at level they open. Monolith? maybe but its super boring content.
Exactly my point. Why we need front loaded content.
That game was massively hated because they caved and made a PC port. It was the loyal diablo fans playing on PC that flamed on the game. If they had only released the mobile version it would just be yet another p2w mobile game like thousands of others.
Limited and not entirely true focus on modern results which have been showcased to be true across the gaming industry.
No, casuals alone arenât the ones making money.
No, core-players arenât the ones making money either.
So whatâs left?
A combination.
You need a core audience which stays in the game, theyâre your feedback givers, those which showcase youâre âupholding your visionâ properly. If they get disgruntled the fastest way to ruin your game permanently is to disgruntle them for good. Why? Because theyâre the ones putting the most effort into the game. They give the most free advertisement, they are your content creators, they are your expanded developer team by finding every single wonky mechanic, unbalanced one and so on.
In comparison the casuals come and go, they donât stay⌠theyâre casual. They make it up with numbers. Itâs a fluctuating situation though. One day they might be happy and loads are there, the next thereâs a huge chunk of them missing and your income will plummet as well as word of mouth.
Good argument⌠absolutely narrow-minded though.
Thereâs long-term and short-term strategies in business. What youâre going for is the short-term strategy. Not what the devs want to do and not what the community of such a game needs to stay stable.
Sure, get your 5 million today! Loose out in 25 million for the next 5 years basically. Because it wonât survive 5 years.
Yes, I agree! Obviously Last Epoch shouldâve been a mobile game! Anything should be a mobile game or gatcha game. There is no place for other products, after all they need to make the most amount of money!
To make that you provide a product which has low effort and cost but a catching gameplay loop just enough to make people spend some money on it!
Overall itâs a really dated take, has no consideration for vision of a product and is purely focused about the âwrongâ aspects of capitalism. It reduces any notion of anything else besides pure unadulterated corporate greed.
Law of big numbers⌠less numbers means less chance to still make the relevant money.
LE is absolutely fine in terms of retention though. The âfloorâ retention has increased compared to 0.9 towards 1.0 and the retention of overall numbers from cycle-start of 1.0 to 1.1 is also more then fine %-wise.
The new mechanic for the casuals is having the Bosses changed to ward to not make it as awful for them as well as unlocking Harbingers when they close in on empowered monoliths.
Thatâs a 20 hour investment of time for the cycle, if you donât invest 20 hours in a grindy ARPG then youâre really really casual.
And no worries, thereâs something for them upcoming anyway in the roadmap with the whole Monolith rework coming up soon.
The core gameplay cycle for LE is substantial enough for a casual player currently, the top-end is the most lacking one. It had been a gripe for a long time and development was focused on the early parts of the games, you canât ignore either.
Terminology is important, thatâs the utterly wrong terminology.
A casual is a player with low play-time, how the fuck is someone supposed to know youâre talking about people leaving the game swiftly rather then casuals if you say âcasualsâ?
A casual is a player with low time-investment into the game. 1-2 hours a week? Maybe a bit more? Not much though.
Then speak about player retention and please inform yourself on how player retention in those types of games work as well as what the pitfalls are for data analysis in that direction.
Yes, it also keeps the player numbers lower, absolutely true! It guarantees a baseline investment per customer higher though. Unless PoE which can have a myriad of non-spenders Last Epoch is guaranteed to have at least low spenders. And psychologically⌠no, youâre wrong with the assumption that someone whoâs paid a box-price is more unlikely to pay for higher priced vanity items in the game. Itâs the contrary. âIâve already spent money, a little bit more doesnât hurt.â
F2P games have the trouble of acquiring that âfirst paymentâ, inhibitions to spending are vastly reduced when initial payments are made. LE frontloads that and hence removes that aspect for them.
Yes? Welcome to a progression based game of any genre? We have a good chunk of low level uniques which have very interesting mechanics, showcasing the opposite of your argument.
No? Thatâs a design choice which specifically caters to people not staying. It is the antithesis to retention time. If you make people get not only the initial levels faster but also more valuable then the later ones then the inhibition for the sunken-cost fallacy gets reduced in their mind. The chance for them to go âAh, itâs not worth it to push furtherâ is a lot higher.
You achieve the opposite of what you try to achieve since âwhy push further if I already have most of the power now?â.
No, itâs revealed to you at Act 2, very early in the campaign.
This one I agree with 100%! Factions should and need to be far earlier in the game, not the end. Act 4 or so would be good, giving people enough time to get used to the mechanics and then add a new one like this.
And have a massively bad rep for a reason.
Predatory business practices should be outlawed, law isnât holding up to it nowadays though. Just because something is lawful doesnât mean itâs ârightâ.
If you use predatory business practices willingly then you pervert the meaning of what games are supposed to provide. Fun. Instead you create real-life problems for people susceptible to those practices, at worst destroying their lives.
Hence the usage of those isnât in any form ethical.
Sure, allowed⌠makes you not less of a piece of shit doing it though, and the need to call those out is a given socially spoken.
Itâs like creating a MLM company⌠theyâre garbage as well and everyone creating them will be for a reason treated as social outcasts when it starts to crumble and they loose all the people theyâve stripped off their money.
Exactly!
Give me a singular piece of âfunctional paid contentâ beyond box-costs and subscription costs and youâll loose me as well as everyone in my social circle. Why my social circle as well? Because Iâll damn well make sure they donât buy into shit like this.
Itâs⌠a gatcha game⌠not a loot-based game, absolutely not.
It gives you the sense it might be⌠but all the important stuff is hidden behind limited available content and demands you hence to pay for it. Not even upfront paying for it⌠nono⌠outright âpaying for the chance of getting somethingâ without guarantee.
This is similar to lootboxes and should be outlawed. Having such gaming mechanics existing is a disgusting thing to see, no matter how well made the game itself is.
Go ahead, do it, then show us the results. Until then youâre simply being treated like a âknow it all smartassâ like thousands of others before you with the same notion.
âIf something seems simple and profitable then it likely isnâtâ. Is what a friend of mine which has a business going for himself, successful one as well, which kudos to him for managing that. Combined with another of his sayings from a while ago âIf you can easily make money from other people without much effort then itâs likely illegal or an oversight from the lawâ. Which yeah⌠also right.
You compete against everyone else, someone without knowledge and putting in effort into something hence canât compete in a market, by design, unless they find a specific niche which requires effort to find in some way.
So if youâre not going into a specific niche, itâs easy and oh-so-doable⌠youâve likely stumbled into illegal territory or a gray-area, and those being such for a reason.
Then capitalize on it, why havenât you?
If itâs such low effort high return⌠why havenât you? It should be a given to do it.
But you want to make other games like it? If youâre not behind your own product the whole ethical aspect of providing it is already a no-brainer, and youâll be called out for this as has been done.
You join factions in the first town, though. You canât use the faction mechanics until act 9, which is dumb for MG, since they get no rank benefit, but for CoF you already have benefits throughout the campaign.
His strategy isnât even that profitable in the short term. Just look at Undecember player numbers. Itâs a game that follows pretty much all his proposed philosophy. And yet, 45k players at launch, 3 months later itâs 11k, these days it barely reaches 4k. Even new season peaks are low.
Itâs quite likely it wonât stay around for much longer.
But your reaction is valid. The game is horrific from a players perspective. But damned, it is lucrative.