It's that we'll be able to land on planets, but no oxygen so we die as soon as we exit our ships.

That's why they're also turning our ships into transformers so that we don't ever have to leave them.

Can we have midget transformers fer Savet?

Dammit, I wrote a response to this on Sat or something, which somehow I.. didn't post? Or something?

It is nothing as awesome as speculated. It is F2P model monetization stuff for mobile, to try and improve our reception there (and hopefully revenues) before the next big launch. It will be invisible to subscribers and has no impact on them whatsoever.

Sorry, it really isn't very exciting to you guys, but we have to get this out the door ASAP, due to timing on external promotion offers and other things. It's a lot of work and internal changes, and testing, so it's taking awhile.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that it'll help us with a bump of revenue so we can get back to gameplay/Steam stuff quickly.

No PONIES?!?!?!?!

/me rage quits

Philosophical query: As the game enhances it's Free to Play model that limits ships, equipment, licenses and other aspects of what players can use and do, have we not in fact become Pay to Win?

only if somehow there is a "Pay $1 to beat 1 foe no matter what" option

Skill still triumphs no matter what someone buys

Philosophical query: As the game enhances it's Free to Play model that limits ships, equipment, licenses and other aspects of what players can use and do, have we not in fact become Pay to Win?

Not if we allow people to earn a separate currency (which does not replace credits, but is in addition to it) that is also needed to purchase higher level items. Then it becomes the same time-vs-money tradeoff that is the mainstay of most F2P business models.

Last Sunday I met a guy in Verasi. He was complaining on the limitations of Lite sub. He was asking what he can do with his limited levels.

Lite sub is cheap, but it lacks availability of cool weapons and so on. I see the same in other subscription games, where "premium" aka regular rate subscribers get access to all items based on their experience stats. So lite subscribers think their sub sucks so they quit as they have no more money to spend on a full sub (1$ vs 10$).

I know young people want every game to be free, but in that case who the hell finances the dev's costs.

Well, that's basically why we're trying a new version of the business model, for F2P people. We'll see how it goes.

The big difference between other games with "premium" content and VO is that you have to layout real money to get the premium content. In VO, you currently have to pay a subscription for full access, but that doesn't get you anything else. You still have to earn the things you want. There are no shortcuts here. If anything, the Lite-subscription is more of an enhanced trial.

Yeah, we aren't going to do anything to shortcut the level system in general, or other basic gameplay access mechanics. But I'm fine with bolting other, additional requirements on top of them (specific to F2P tiered people).

Enhanced trials are stupid though, especially where you have to pay for them. The market price for playing a full version of an online game is $0/month. Game developers deal in value added extras, 'personalisations' and optional buy-in products and it's been said to death.

It's pretty clear VO would have died long ago without the hardcore return addicts buying multiple subs. The reason they buy multiple subs anyway is for an in-game advantage so what's the difference? It's just designing the game to do what people have been doing in a sort of odd hacky way. Like where people pay for spy bots, xith bots or pay for trident loader subs.

The game could be released for free on PC and you'd only need to bring out 2-3 value added extras per month that all your hardcore fans buy and you'll likely end up making even more money.

I don't pay anything at the moment because I've exhausted all avenues of kicking people's asses here. But if you open up some new avenues for me to kick their asses I'd spend the dosh to compete.

Like for instance if you made a micro-transaction for an ARF-seeking missile. Like a special supermissile that has a warp drive or maybe an aerna seeker that goes to ARF's location and kills him.

I'd buy that.

Or like a special beam that you can fire at Jallik barracks to eject draugath from the station, that'd make a killing.

Or like a special blaster that instead of damaging ecka's ship, it removes credits from his account on a 1:1 ratio. That's actually a worthwhile economy balancer too.

It's pretty clear VO would have died long ago without the hardcore return addicts buying multiple subs.

We value the support of our hard-core players, and we need all the income we can get. But no, multiple-subbing players are not what has kept us alive for the last five years. Or.. ever. Multi-subs are a very small percentage of subs overall, so it's never been a tipping-point thing for us.

Anyway, you can all wait and see what's coming, I'm sure there'll be more specific feedback at that point.

Aha! gotcha! So you have been spending all your time making other things! I meant hardcore player subs AND the ones that multi sub. So if you dont need the income from hardcore subbers, why not just F2P it all. You can't win remember :P

I'd ask for a TheRedSpy-seeking missile in return, but I'd never get to use it since all he does is troll the forums and cry about IRC anymore. :)

Anyway, you can all wait and see what's coming, I'm sure there'll be more specific feedback at that point.

That's what we've been doing for a few weeks now.

Oh well. I guess I'm not going to resub. I'll wait until you guys push out the update with the stuff and I'll try hopping on board for a few months.