Inside developer's mind

[Captain Jack]

Pirates Glory is a massively multiplayer online game or in an abbreviation, a MMOG.

There is a certain problem in modern day that affects MMOG's and leads them to extinction. Fortunately, PG is an EXCEPTION. The game is currently at its peak in terms of people playing it. Never before we had as many players as we currently have. In a game market that is constantly shrinking, we are increasing both the total players casually playing the game and the core player base (daily active players).

Still, we are facing the problems that every other MMOG faces. 10 years ago, we could have hundreds of thousands of players with the same game. So, it would be naive to claim that MMOG crisis is not affecting us. For us, it is important to understand what is causing this crisis and why most people avoid MMOGs lately.

There might be some of you that object with this. Let me tell you what modern day MMOG do as we are an old school MMOG. Modern day MMOG use the illusion of mass gaming. A modern day mmog might have 100k players but its biggest world might be less than 200 players. In most of the cases, the players are unaware of this little detail.

Let me explain it better though. In PG, we have 105,000 registered accounts. That's the number of people who have created an account in the game. Most of them have tried the game. A few of them, simply could not get past the character creation page.

We have 17,023 players in-game. That's players who have been recently active OR have been an important part of the game in the past. So, anyone that currently joins the game, joins a world with a size of 17,023 players. Any new player that joins in, will join the same world and compete with the these players. He can attack or be attacked, theoretically, by 17,022 players right now. I am saying theoretically because there are thousands of inactive accounts among them. Still, we are speaking of a lot of people. In fact, I will share our real statistics:

Code: Select all

Accounts Status
Total Accounts   105,769
Total Characters   17,023
Without Character   88,746
Characters flagged Active   7,924
Characters flagged inactive   9,099


That's what an old school MMOG like PG does. It puts them all in the same pit to boil.

Modern day MMOGs are, sincerely, more sophisticated. It is common knowledge to all developers that people want to WIN. They have no real interest playing a game where they are #500 in the rankings. Not even if they are in top 100, this is not really enough for a vast majority of people playing a game. Most of the players want to be in the very top.

So modern day mmogs serve this need. So, what they do? They constantly open new worlds. Every 3 days or a week. In our registration rates, we should open a new world every week. If we do this, we could half do what modern day mmogs do. Although they do it better;
-They hide full rankings. Why? Because they place like 1000 players in 100 worlds where about 100 are really active in every one of them. In the same time, they tell that they have 100k players. So, the guy competing for the top 3, thinks he is competing against 100.000 while he only competes against 100.
-In this way, they create high expectations which they exploit by offering special offers, consistently and on every front. When you are in the top 10 or in top 100, and the game offers you a "lvl 20 Frigate, immune to Leviathan" for 600 credits, well you got to take it! Right? 3 days later, a new offer comes in, "merchants bag" which generates 250k per upkeep, permanently, for only 250 credits! Well, you should take this too, right? Before you know it, you are competing fiercely against players with similar profile. It also feels exciting, as you are not really aware of the full scenario.

There is no point to reveal more "trade secrets". These should be enough to make our point here.

The point we wish to make is that we are actually different and it is not only us. We are just one of the few that remain strong. I have personally played a lot of great old school games that no longer exist or if they exist, they have no real player base.

This is our mind when we evaluate every new suggestion. A mind flooded with a gazillion of other things that we know and you can't know. However, since the community we have here is great and the best I have ever participated or moderated, you deserve to know more.

[Captain Jack]

There is another thing I want to post our mind about. This has to do with the creation of a second world. It's a very tough decision to make.

Here are the top pros and cons as we see it:

Pros
====
-There are currently players that want to try something different than their current course. A second world will allow them to do this.
-There are always players that want a new challenge.
-Economically-wise, it is better for us as not only the same people will spend more credits but also the playerbase will inevitably grow.
-It will definitely bring a few players back in the game. Some should be familiar faces.
-We can try different rules there, creating a slightly different version of the game which is a good thing as it can attract more types of players.

Cons
====
-Development wise, it requires more work that might slow down development of entirely new features.
-There will be a playerbase split. Some of the existing players will revert their focus to the other world. This will deal a short blow to existing's world activity. There cannot be safe guesses on how it will gel for current world. The playerbase split will cause an earthquake in Avonmora for sure.
-Newly registered players will split between the 2 worlds. At current registration rates though, this is not a real problem as current world is not able to keep up with these rates.

I am posting this on the table. We are not going to take any decisions now. We are just sharing our mind.

[Captain Jack]

Some more thoughts regarding future development.

Right now, we average about 100 new players per day that join the game. Out of them, only a few remain. The few who remain are mostly thanks to the work of training guilds. The most quality signups out of these are usually the ones that have been referred by a friend (either using a link or not). This is after all the best way for a game to progress.

The rest, either find the game too complicated or not of their taste (PG is a brain stimulation game. There are people out there that prefer simplistic games, often called brainless). Graphics (text in fact) are also often discouraging.

So, one of the things we would want to see in the future is more people staying in the game in the first days. We need to find solutions for this.

Another thing we would like to give, are more options to the war aspect of the game. The war aspect of the game provides excitement. Right now, there are many options in the game and many ways to go but when it comes in war, we could use more.

Finally, we need to look after our long term players. Captain Dungeness, for example, is playing this game for years. We owe him a better game. For him and everyone.

[PhoenixKnight]

Well, I am in favor of a new world. People who opt to start in the new world, should opt to be allowed a limited number of resources they currently have as if it was an expedition. New players get to choose.

[Dmanwuzhere]

I come from a game that peaked with 700k online daily. The average spend rate for the players in the beginning was not bad. It was in fact a mix of brainless and brainiacs. You could tell the difference in success as the brainiacs crunched numbers and the ship builds they produced were far more superior. They had 100s of sectors in which players could bounce from. Once a week it was free beyond that moves required credits. These sectors are what you are calling worlds. As great as the game is and was for me it reached a point where cash became king. I will not divulge my exact spending but some could have had life improvements from my spendings on that game. "improvements" much like you mentioned in your ad example became the way of everyday play. New items which required cash to obtain became useless in a month when the new raid came out with new prizes. So it became a demand for money instead of an option. While I understand your plight I would caution against expansion with out some quality time spent in the planning stage. As I am sure you are aware every small detail can carry a much larger reaction than what was planned. I have gamed a long time and with many games. I have every current gaming console yet they collect dust. That is due to my ability to play games such as yours. While I agree that there is room for improvement to give Captain D a better game I just point out that some things are irreversible and damage to a player base is a hard thing to overcome. Currently the game I mentioned is at 170-200k daily with no hopes of getting the whales to return. They have only a handful of whales left and the majority are free players. I enjoy your game immensely as it is and I actively seek to bring others here and will continue to do so as it is a good game with a great atmosphere. It's complicated simplicity is its attraction. Don't be so quick to change what is working.

[Meliva]

I come from a game that peaked with 700k online daily. The average spend rate for the players in the beginning was not bad. It was in fact a mix of brainless and brainiacs. You could tell the difference in success as the brainiacs crunched numbers and the ship builds they produced were far more superior. They had 100s of sectors in which players could bounce from. Once a week it was free beyond that moves required credits. These sectors are what you are calling worlds. As great as the game is and was for me it reached a point where cash became king. I will not divulge my exact spending but some could have had life improvements from my spendings on that game. "improvements" much like you mentioned in your ad example became the way of everyday play. New items which required cash to obtain became useless in a month when the new raid came out with new prizes. So it became a demand for money instead of an option. While I understand your plight I would caution against expansion with out some quality time spent in the planning stage. As I am sure you are aware every small detail can carry a much larger reaction than what was planned. I have gamed a long time and with many games. I have every current gaming console yet they collect dust. That is due to my ability to play games such as yours. While I agree that there is room for improvement to give Captain D a better game I just point out that some things are irreversible and damage to a player base is a hard thing to overcome. Currently the game I mentioned is at 170-200k daily with no hopes of getting the whales to return. They have only a handful of whales left and the majority are free players. I enjoy your game immensely as it is and I actively seek to bring others here and will continue to do so as it is a good game with a great atmosphere. It's complicated simplicity is its attraction. Don't be so quick to change what is working.

As someone who never spends actual money on F2P games I really dislike many of them because spenders more or less always going to trump non spenders by a considerable margin. The only way non payers can even compete is if they put in much more effort then the spenders, and at that point its more like a job then a game. That's something I like about this game. Sure spenders still get an edge over nonspenders, but its not enough to make them dominate, And no player can ever completely obliterate another player.

Honestly I think having a new world would be a pretty great addition, I would DEFINATELY be willing to play on a second world as well as the first. However I also do not want this second world to just be a second Avonmora. I would be rather disappointed to join the world just to see the same map, same ports, and the only difference is its just new. I think perhaps having the current players come up with new port names would be fun, and maybe hold a contest for who can make the best map for a new world. Aswell as a contest for the new worlds name.

Edit- This is just something I thought up shortly after posting, But I think something that could be beneficial is for senior players from the first world, when enrolling into the new one to be able to take some assets from the first into the second on the condition that they use the assets to create a training guild in the new world to help new players there. Totally optional, but I think it would be a good incentive.

[Mugiwara]

same like dman i played a lot of different type of games.browser games,mmorpg,rpg,pg:) pay to play, pay to win, free to play. i must admit i found pg one of the best if not the best free to play game. my biggest excitement come from competition with old sea dogs and trying to catch them. i know new worlds always exciting and tempting, i cant deny i will grab that opportunity aswell but i can say based on my experiences opening new world not working 99% if not 100%.

At present i believe your active member numbers pretty good. well done for that. Also i think new players joining keeping old sea dogs more interested to play this game. also we have a lot of casula players in here. which logging once for every 3-4 days or a week and staying small amount of times and going offline again. with mixing new players and old sea dogs it gives life to avonmora. im scare new world will take almost all active members attention and will become their priority which will make avonmora silent. i know because its always same for most of us(gamers) always new challenges will accepted and new world will be priority for our time.

Pros:
excitement of New challenge and equal conditions
chance to try different playstyle.
No Fertile Lands which means it will be different for trading.
Big support for game.

Cons:
Very silent avonmora.
when people fail to achieve their goals they wont gonna re try instead of it they will ask for another world like usual.
for old sea dogs doing same process from the start may not be appealing.
1 year later will be same problem for newer players.


Mugiwara...

[Shadowood]

If we are allowed to play in both worlds I would be largely in favor of this. There are some down times that I would love to fill logging on to a new world/acct to play longer.

i agree that the new world would need to have some things different then the current one. (I believe your other game Zorg Empire has 4 different play styles/worlds??). But the core game model would be largely the same.

[Bmw]

if the other world was diffrent aka set in a diffrent time period and with a different map it would be nice. maybe advance the time period to when the industrial revolution started and instead of a mow as the ship you get you get an insanely fast high cargo ship.

[Maha]

old players crossing over to a new world bring their experience with them, this will help them to succeed against the true new.

i have an idea to use this as an advantage:
a new world is played on 2 levels; the first is for the true new and similar as the present world. the second is for 'crossovers' only. they are 'the masters', each of them is given 2 guilds (an merchant and a pirate guild) and a nation to lead. The nation and merchant guild are openly connected to the player, the pirate guilds alliance is kept secret. (three player ID#'s are needed per master) the masters game is to compete against the other masters. to succeed they have to recruit, train and motivate the true new players.

the true new are free to do as they like, just as in the present game, they can form their own guilds, start other nations etc. Masters get weekly points for the best nation, trade and pirate guild.

for this idea, only a limited number of masters (50?) can join a world, when that world is reasonably full, another world can be opened up. when new players join up they get 2 options: the 17.000 member old world or the new world which will be up to 1000 players.

to crossover a player must have been playing for over a year and accumulate a wealth in credits and prepare three fleets. those fleets will be the start of his three roles. Due to terrible storms and other calamities will most of his wealth be lost. each player who crosses over has exactly the same resources
and the three fleets to start with. no resources or credits can be shared between worlds.

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to keep the present world alive, some sort of meaningful presence there could be a requirement to continue in the new world.