Seeing as FD posted a good profit this year(66 million pounds!), so obviously a lot of people are buying and playing the game (3 million sales last I heard!), your point is??
Is anyone else finding themselves playing the game much less since Arx came in?
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My point is to laugh at your business model analogies.
True. And the whiney 1% end up taking up more resources than the loyal 99%, while spending less per capita than the loyal customers, so they are really bad for the business, both from a staff morale perspective, and a sales perspective. They're pretty pointless really!
I own a business. Do you? When you run your own business you get a very different perspective!
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Nope I'm a corporate slave for big pharma.
So you own a videogame business? Or you're more like an entrepreneurwith big tools?
Edit - Working in Pharma it's a different perspective as well. Most of the work is quality related and whining customers can send you in prison.
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I'm actually a healthcare professional. Not that it really matters, all businesses are the same: you have to make more money than you spend so that you end up with a tidy profit. And for that reason I get rid of whiney customers as quick as I can, they are bad for staff morale, they don't spend enough, and they take up too much time, so they eat into your profits. Best to concentrate on loyal customers: they spend much more, they're great for staff morale and pretty much all the time I spend with them is on the services we provide, which we get paid very well for.
Have you heard of the Pareto rule? Or the 80:20 rule.
In this case it would be that 20% of your customers consume 80% of your time. It's a good rule of thumb, works in lots of situations.
I went on a cpd course years back and the lecturer was a very bright guy: PhD in metallurgy and a DDS. He invented pretty much all of modern dentistry (what he didn't invent, he borrowed from the Japanese, who were way ahead of western dentists at the time). He had the following advice, which has served me VERY well in business: you get a good customer (which he called "eagles"), who is impressed with your skills, give him/her a few business cards. Ask them to give the cards to friends and family. Because eagles fly with eagles, they will usually refer more eagles to you.
You get a bad customer (a "turkey"), obviously you don't give him/her any cards. Because turkeys can't fly, they hang around with other turkeys.
So I now have hundreds of eagles for clients, and no turkeys!
Are you kidding? With elite taking a rough tally it’s completely the other way around. At least 2 white knights proudly assert they’ll never spend money on micro transactions and never have. So they’re well insulated from any sadness impact (and keep their seats) even if frontier kills 1000 kittens. It’s more likely the people who buy arx complain because they feel they deserve better (and the cosmetics are premium priced in their market). The people who just disappear well they’re even less valuable because they don’t even care.
I think the customer market is interesting for games in that regard. Frontier have many different options to peruse with what they have, and running their business by the books as you would they’re obviously seeing much bigger new player churn revenue so going for that.
Building a tutorial that takes players over the 2 hour mark is probably worth quite a lot for them.
Yeah, pretty much all situations!
This white knight buys ARX because he feels absurdly chuffed that he only paid $60 for a game that has kept him playing for 1,000's of hours! That's about 1c per hour! Compare that with going to a movie: tickets, popcorn and coke all add up to $30, for 1 1/2 hours, or $20 per hour. I think video games have to be the best value purchases out there!
As for the new player (np) stuff: we all know that ED has a steep learning curve, which many of us loved when we started (for me it was equal parts terror, exhilaration and frustration!), but most people can't handle. So FD made the np experience a bit easier to improve np retention. This made good business sense in 2 ways: less ty reviews on Steam from np's who couldn't take off/land etc = more sales of the game; and increased retention = more sales of ARX (and the dlc if they didn't get that at the initial prchase). So it will be interesting to see how this contributes to profits over the next few years.
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Well from experience i can suggest that relative to ones personal measure, there's a tipping point where a gracious gesture turns into expectations if the spending keeps happening
Maybe frontier should issue a safe use warning on the arx buy button.. "if you keep going we're not like the others here" I don't like the movie comparison anymore because.. who goes to the cinema anymore for regular entertainment? Or as an alternative to games? That comparison started in the early 2000's when the cinema still played a part in societies. Its outdated and luddite and i think games should be measured relative to other games. Especially because the score dramatically changes when you line up apples and apples.
Being a 'white knight' and not buying cosmetics are not related. Sure those looking to point fingers will find a link but that is about it. For some, they just don't see the need to buy bits of fluff that really mean nothing in the game. Doesn't mean they don't support the game, there are other ways to show appreciation.
Very narrow view there Commander, very narrow.
Yes i agree absolutely. I did want to highlight the different types of support or appreciation available to elite though. Its not just one or the other..
and from a communities standpoint at least.. i dont think one is any less valuable than the other.
I think Frontier have their own opinions also, which are probably very different to what any of us are imagining.
ARX hasn't affect my playing and i can't imagine how it could.
There's another thread on hours spent playing ED cf. other games, so I won't go there other than to say out of all my fave games to date, ED has eaten up far more tìme than the others. You could see this 2 ways: it's better value for money than the other games (my view), or it's a bigger waste of time (my wife's view!).Well from experience i can suggest that relative to ones personal measure, there's a tipping point where a gracious gesture turns into expectations if the spending keeps happening
I don't like the movie comparison anymore because.. who goes to the cinema anymore for regular entertainment? Or as an alternative to games? That comparison started in the early 2000's when the cinema still played a part in societies. Its outdated and luddite and i think games should be measured relative to other games. Especially because the score dramatically changes when you line up apples and apples.
Uh no.. Yeah im the same. I have some relatives with steam accounts, and spied their thousands of hours on team fortress (just an example). I used to chuckle at how there were so many more games out there.. then elite happened.. now im embarassing.
I think elite is strange, there's one safe zone (likely because frontier dont touch it) which is the truck simulator + pottering around the sandbox play style. This core is immutable and works. The problems start as soon as you engage their marketing, because every single time it creates expectations in all aspects far different to reality and disappoints directly from doing this. I can only imagine its because their marketing thinks mainstream action oriented steamers are the people who play for thousands of hours, or at least they refuse to stop trying for that demographic. Only frontier know if their current approach is better or worse for them, but from a personal perspective.. truck sim in space works. Hype and following along with frontiers social experiments leaves you winded every time. If only frontier actually followed through with their marketing we could just shut up and move on. Just doing a quick account myself for every feature ive been around for... yep thats really how its been.
I would be very surprised if anyone has really quit playing solely because of the introduction of Arx. For starters Arx do not impact on gameplay, you see your balance before you log in and when you log out. If FD were really as mercenary as some here think they are then we would be seeing popups all during gameplay showing how many Arxs we have accrued.
For those that have quit, I suspect that there were other more significant factors as to why, and Arxs is just a convenient and topical excuse.
For those that have quit, I suspect that there were other more significant factors as to why, and Arxs is just a convenient and topical excuse.
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