I've spent a lot of time talking with game designers for some of the world's biggest MMO games, like World of Warcraft, and they have some hard stats that are interesting.
One that I remember that applies here, is that it's not as important as you think that content should have broad appeal. What works really well is niche things that most players won't be interested in, but those who are can really dig into, and the game should have enough different niches that there's a few things for everyone. So already they could be talking about Elite Dangerous, but they're not, they take it further; more niches with smaller (more niche) appeal.
They had stats about what percentage of players engaged with what, and of those that did engage, how much time they spent - how deep into the rabbit hole did they go, etc. And a surprising thing was that even the most popular and broad-appeal gameplay wasn't the driving force. People spent more of their time on their niche interests, but it's different niche stuff for each player.
Hence I think adding more niche things (like canyon rally racing) is the way to go. Most of the player base might only dabble or not be interested, but those that are interested will end up chasing improvement in their own best lap times for as many hours as they please, so the content is almost endless, and it involves optimising ships in ways outside the established trades which opens the door to a broader range of specialized ships.
According to one of the game designers, a feature that 90% of players are not interested in is actually pretty good; 10% interest is more than enough, keep accumulating rabbit-holes like that and you're golden.
They will support niches smaller than that. (As does Fdev it should be noted - eg. BGS, Canon, etc - but it's been a while since there was a new ship niche)
One that I remember that applies here, is that it's not as important as you think that content should have broad appeal. What works really well is niche things that most players won't be interested in, but those who are can really dig into, and the game should have enough different niches that there's a few things for everyone. So already they could be talking about Elite Dangerous, but they're not, they take it further; more niches with smaller (more niche) appeal.
They had stats about what percentage of players engaged with what, and of those that did engage, how much time they spent - how deep into the rabbit hole did they go, etc. And a surprising thing was that even the most popular and broad-appeal gameplay wasn't the driving force. People spent more of their time on their niche interests, but it's different niche stuff for each player.
Hence I think adding more niche things (like canyon rally racing) is the way to go. Most of the player base might only dabble or not be interested, but those that are interested will end up chasing improvement in their own best lap times for as many hours as they please, so the content is almost endless, and it involves optimising ships in ways outside the established trades which opens the door to a broader range of specialized ships.
According to one of the game designers, a feature that 90% of players are not interested in is actually pretty good; 10% interest is more than enough, keep accumulating rabbit-holes like that and you're golden.
They will support niches smaller than that. (As does Fdev it should be noted - eg. BGS, Canon, etc - but it's been a while since there was a new ship niche)
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