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Any chance you guys could make a F2P shattered? Seems like that's a realm poorly populated and which would skyrocket with population if it was F2P. Might not make Simu a -ton- of money, but it would probably be a bigger trickle than the current subscription model.
I know if shattered was only $5 a month I would probably have never gotten rid of my account but I wasn't ever playing the prime account required to have it when my computer got broken and I didn't have the cash to fix it at the time. A lot of the restrictions wouldn't be needed in shattered as well on the F2P accounts in my oppionion. Maybe not a F2P shattered but separate pricing that didn't involve a prime subscription would be nice
$5 as the "prime" account time would make sense since there is never any GM events happening in Shattered. I mean they might open up the merchant shops during events, but they don't have GMs log onto shattered to do alterations and such, right? Also, I wonder how many active accounts they have that pay for the $5.00 extra shattered access?
I feel like they could actually get substantial micro-transaction interest from shattered players.
1. Societies - same thing as it is on the normal servers. Lots of people will pay the $2.50 a month for having multiple F2P accounts be able to use societies.
2. Implement a "Magical Awareness" token that lets you cast unlimited number of spells on other players for 30 days. MAers and player created "NPCs" would pay for that (if the price is less than $5.00 a month).
3. Bounty system tokens would drive some revenue.
4. Here's another shattered "loophole" they could exploit. No GM interaction, but you can earn Premium Points by converting Bounty Points with a simucoin token (say like 100 bounty points = 1 premium point). Which would force the Bounty tokens to become useful. I know... evil - but lucrative! There's currently no way to tier up your equipment past what the treasure system generates, so this would basically be "premium" for shattered.
It would take so little work to implement these kinds of minor tweaks, open up the shattered servers to F2P, and then start raking in easy money.
Of course I think the bank restrictions, locker restrictions, and EXP stuff is unncessary in Shattered. Just make some of the short-term stuff more available for longer periods since... it's shattered - and you'll see that server start getting populated with plenty of players (albeit many of them AFK a lot of the time)! It will seem like it's alive, at the very least. Right now shattered seems like it's mostly dead.
I feel like they could actually get substantial micro-transaction interest from shattered players.
1. Societies - same thing as it is on the normal servers. Lots of people will pay the $2.50 a month for having multiple F2P accounts be able to use societies.
2. Implement a "Magical Awareness" token that lets you cast unlimited number of spells on other players for 30 days. MAers and player created "NPCs" would pay for that (if the price is less than $5.00 a month).
3. Bounty system tokens would drive some revenue.
4. Here's another shattered "loophole" they could exploit. No GM interaction, but you can earn Premium Points by converting Bounty Points with a simucoin token (say like 100 bounty points = 1 premium point). Which would force the Bounty tokens to become useful. I know... evil - but lucrative! There's currently no way to tier up your equipment past what the treasure system generates, so this would basically be "premium" for shattered.
It would take so little work to implement these kinds of minor tweaks, open up the shattered servers to F2P, and then start raking in easy money.
Of course I think the bank restrictions, locker restrictions, and EXP stuff is unncessary in Shattered. Just make some of the short-term stuff more available for longer periods since... it's shattered - and you'll see that server start getting populated with plenty of players (albeit many of them AFK a lot of the time)! It will seem like it's alive, at the very least. Right now shattered seems like it's mostly dead.
I am not in support of any F2P for Shattered or any development for it. The server was created explicitly to not have GM involvement (which players applauded for PvP and scripting opportunity) and you want Premium benefits while also paying more than $5 or less? Or requesting fewer F2P restrictions so even less Simustore revenue comes in?
While some may have left due to pricing, I feel the reason it seems dead is due to afk scripting. After the initial excitement and dreams of unfettered PvP basically ended, there was little left. There is minimal community, outside of rare events. Even GMs that do drop in have a hard time catching anyone there. It is basically a test server to modify scripts.
I played for the first 4 months and watched it unfold, and it was fine because that was always the essence of the server. I just have a new appreciation for not allowing that to happen to Prime. It is basically the only way I'd easily walk away, when the gaming environment consists of non interactive characters.
While some may have left due to pricing, I feel the reason it seems dead is due to afk scripting. After the initial excitement and dreams of unfettered PvP basically ended, there was little left. There is minimal community, outside of rare events. Even GMs that do drop in have a hard time catching anyone there. It is basically a test server to modify scripts.
I played for the first 4 months and watched it unfold, and it was fine because that was always the essence of the server. I just have a new appreciation for not allowing that to happen to Prime. It is basically the only way I'd easily walk away, when the gaming environment consists of non interactive characters.
"I am not in support of any F2P for Shattered or any development for it. The server was created explicitly to not have GM involvement (which players applauded for PvP and scripting opportunity) and you want Premium benefits while also paying more than $5 or less? Or requesting fewer F2P restrictions so even less Simustore revenue comes in?"
Hold on now. No one is suggesting straight up "premium benefits". If you look at the pricing model for the suggestion made, you would find that someone in shattered would have to pay a fairly high premium - up front - just to get the benefit of improving equipment. GMs don't frequent Shattered, nor do they host events on shattered (that I've ever seen). There is absolutely no way to customize your equipment, so in order to have premium benefits - you'd actually have to have access to premium merchants. The premium point system is a tiny value-added feature compared to the constant influx of merchants that show up for premium only accounts.
Also bear in mind that a marketplace on Shattered, and the economy (or lack of an economy) is very limited due to the lack of gear customization.
1. RP players have zero interest in developing characters for a world where they can't customize (alterations) the look and feel of their characters.
2. Mechanical players have significantly less interest in a world where they cannot customize and improve their characters via gear upgrades.
I feel you overstate the how detrimental the scripting was to your experience, and ignored entirely the fact that there is absolutely no way for a player to feel like they can customize their characters - which is the primary reason people play MUDs to begin with...
There is practically no development effort needed to implement a solution to Shattered that would increase the value of the server to both Simutronics in general, and to the general players (and new players) interested in that kind of "relaxed ruleset" environment.
Hold on now. No one is suggesting straight up "premium benefits". If you look at the pricing model for the suggestion made, you would find that someone in shattered would have to pay a fairly high premium - up front - just to get the benefit of improving equipment. GMs don't frequent Shattered, nor do they host events on shattered (that I've ever seen). There is absolutely no way to customize your equipment, so in order to have premium benefits - you'd actually have to have access to premium merchants. The premium point system is a tiny value-added feature compared to the constant influx of merchants that show up for premium only accounts.
Also bear in mind that a marketplace on Shattered, and the economy (or lack of an economy) is very limited due to the lack of gear customization.
1. RP players have zero interest in developing characters for a world where they can't customize (alterations) the look and feel of their characters.
2. Mechanical players have significantly less interest in a world where they cannot customize and improve their characters via gear upgrades.
I feel you overstate the how detrimental the scripting was to your experience, and ignored entirely the fact that there is absolutely no way for a player to feel like they can customize their characters - which is the primary reason people play MUDs to begin with...
There is practically no development effort needed to implement a solution to Shattered that would increase the value of the server to both Simutronics in general, and to the general players (and new players) interested in that kind of "relaxed ruleset" environment.
<There is absolutely no way to customize your equipment>
There may not be an in game system other than dyer's tents or something but GMs do stop by, they just are not required to. Many have volunteered in the past though so altering and other services do exist, as you can see from some of the funny and crazy items in game.
Using the premium point queue though adds required work to the GM workload. Some of the ideas were ok and maybe if the Simustore price was high enough to compensate for a free 2 play environment. I'd just like to see other things developed first.
There may not be an in game system other than dyer's tents or something but GMs do stop by, they just are not required to. Many have volunteered in the past though so altering and other services do exist, as you can see from some of the funny and crazy items in game.
Using the premium point queue though adds required work to the GM workload. Some of the ideas were ok and maybe if the Simustore price was high enough to compensate for a free 2 play environment. I'd just like to see other things developed first.
When I was brainstorming the best way Simutronics could have taken GemStone IV to the mass-market as free to play, Shattered was what I kept coming back to. It looks like they went the cripple-ware microtransaction bait and hook approach instead. Time remains to tell which would have been the better way to do it, but this way Prime players will have a chance to interact with new blood, which undeniably strengthens their main offering. I feel Shattered -unfettered- would have been the way to mass market appeal and fun factor but Simutronics knows they'll never garner the popularity needed for cash flow from microtransactions to make it worth their time. I am sure they have done the market research. Also, in that approach there's the risk of Prime turning into a RP-enforced sideshow. It's late enough in the game to draw the conclusion that the free to play subscription level is never going to be anything more than it is now -- just a taste. Almost every game system is disabled; spells/class-specific abilities/treasure/economy/areas/guilds/CHEs/societies. They need to query that 1% of the population for ticketed events, plat, premium and SC store items. Simutronics caters to a very niche, specific clientele. Back in the GENie days, I've heard stories of individual people blowing tens of thousands of dollars on their products. Remember this is a business, it's definitely not all about fun. On the bright-side, hardware is powerful enough these days they can host GemStone IV's server on a $75 tablet using Google Fiber for less than $100/mo. So overhead is next to nil other than paying their poetic GameMasters and other wonderful team-members.
