RE: DrugWars - News, referrals, sunday event, and some other updates!
Great points, but also irrelevant. I've talked about this as well. However, they are going to be forced to change the payouts in a big way over the coming weeks as the prize pool gets drained 8% a day.
20% was not unreasonable considering they thought the game would be less popular. When the prize pool gets drained and the game loses some steam (and Steem) they will change to rules to promote onboarding more new users. As it stands now they haven't even scaled to the users they have so it's not worth complaining about.
They should be raking 5% in my opinion (10% max). This puts the game on par with online poker and would allow players to go pro with enough strategy added to the game. The draw of players going Pro in a shitty pay-to-win game would be legendary, making it the best pay-to-win game of all time because all the good players at the top are actually getting payed-to-play. The carrot at the end of that stick is enough to make the game go viral.
But again, they don't even have the scale for the number of players they have now, so it's not worth complaining about yet. Also, you can't compare a game like this to a shitty dice game. A dice game is obviously way more boring and mindless than DrugWars. Every pay-to-win that came before DrugWars took 100% of the prize pool. DrugWars takes 20% in the first week and the community is up in arms? That, quite simply, is not appropriate given the context.
Blockchain breeds healthy competition. @drugwars has zero competition so they get to do whatever they want, for now.
20% vig is to high a take to talk about the game going viral imo.
It's not, because every game before it has taken 100%, and they can change the numbers at any time. Also, 5% of that 20% goes to referral codes.
The difference is every game before doesn't use actual money to entice players.
5% of 20% is 1%. So it would be 19%, assuming all players have referal codes, which is also not the case, so 19.xx%.
It would be great if they lowered the rake, but it's still nice to see a game sharing some of their revenue back with the players. Drugs for the win!
No, it's not 5% of 20%. It's 5% of 100%, aka 5%.
I can see how my wording was confusing.
Regardless where it goes too, it is considered the 'vig', which in this case is 20%.
As a World champion poker player, I am very familiar with how players will approach a game that involves money and one that is purely for entertainment value. The set of expectations varies greatly between the two.
I know poker players who spent insane amounts of money on clash of clans. I'm sure they would love to have the ability to get any financial reward back.
Maybe they should VPIP the implied odds Pocket Rockets EV.
Don't you think?
You won't be able to get them to look past the ROI.
;-)
Boy was I right about all this!
They could add some ads to sustain it better. Give small bonuses for watching video ads like all mobile games do and you can take less from the pool while still making a decent amount of profit.
That's a very constructive comment, but I maintain that we are all just really impatient and "want it now". None of this really matters in the long run.
If a game like @drugwars can be created by one person in three weeks, someone is going to come along and make a similar game. That game will take a 10% rake instead of 20%. Then someone else will come along and make their game. 5%. 3%. 1%. 0%.
The Race To The Bottom is real.
Open source wins.
I 100% agree with added ads to the edges of the home page. Those spots would sell for mucho $$$ Seriously, it could also bring in off blockchain sponsors!
At this points the game was released too early and lacks any of the usual “pride in achieving/leveling up” and subsequent “butthurt when attacked which pushes to invest” psychology.
Good thing: first such game on Steem
Possibly bad thing: people may have moved on by the time the curve (and safety levels) is focused more on staying in game for weeks and months.
I’m five days in and next drug production upgrade will take me 2-3 weeks. Mostly because I first need to upgrade storage levels and then booze and weapons. But at no time will I ever be able to “sleep well” because I will need x5 possible safe storage. By the time I can finally get that upgrade... daily production is at least x2.5-3 already so at best I will maintain my actual level. At best.
I even can’t afford one troop. And why would I? First visit of a bigger stakeholder and they’re all dead and I stay with very small amount of resources which were protected. Can’t heal troops and rumored next resources protection will cost only more and set my drug production upgrade back another few weeks.
I get it... the cartels are brutal. But the psychology of achieving progress is not there and as a small “bottom base the big drug lords need to justify their continued spend” I’m already at 8.5STEEM for that next upgrade.
I don’t care making pennies a day, if at least I can see that I can level up and make progress.
Too early with IAP, IAP too expensive, levelling up too slow... hasta la pasta?
Not sure what you are talking about.
Battles are disabled.
I'm running six accounts with zero defense.
It takes around $2.20 - $7.70 to get a good running start per account.
Playing the game for free was never meant to be viable.
That is the hook. Pay-To-Win.
To assume that this game isn't going to alter its mechanics drastically over the next few months seems incredibly short sighted to me. Development chugs on.
DrugWars Early Access V0.1.5
Not sure why your answer seems that drastically on the now when I say the game lacks the psychology to keep people.
Yes, I spent close to $50k on GoW. For $0 return but few hundred million kills. I understand P2W.
To assume that people will stick around if they can’t grow, i.e. 0 sense of achievement is ludicrous. Yet it I still the bottom level players you need to constantly go attack for resources.
The game is based in mathematics. It does not matter what level you are, if you defend your resources with more troops than the resources you are banking are worth, it is not financially viable to attack that account. It's people that are greedy that get attacked, no matter what level. This, of course, assumes that the motivation for attacking is based on pure greed and accumulation of wealth. There will be plenty of people that attack for other reasons.
That all depends on the pitch.
If the pitch is “earn from” it becomes a math game. That will implode. Because that will shift the focus to user acquisition to maintain sufficient investment every day to keep the top players vested enough to keep spending on those expensive high levels. People will do math and with ever growing total production and thus lower daily rewards, that also due to the evergreen rewards, they will become disinterested very quickly. Because math = “too long for ROI”.
If you make it a MMO, then you have a longer chance of survival if the achievement curve is more satisfying. People will he more vested in their empire. Emotionally, beyond the actual spend.
User acqui still becomes an issue and most similar games have been “reskinned with slightly changed mechanics” at some point to start all over again. Operating 3-8 similar games simultaneously.
Check out Gabe Leydon. He’s been at it since before Mafia wars. Nobody understands the MMO psychology model as well as he does.
After less than 3 years, MachineZone had received 4x in funding what’s currently STEEM marketcap.
He never published many insights but he’s spoken at many a gaming conference. His insights are liquid gold.
PS: I’m not complaining about returns. Early to the game and spotted the attractively priced LaCocina. I’m rolling in the profits. But at this point any curve is too long and because the game pitches earnings... I do my math differently than I would if the game pitched a differently play. If the devs want to achieve longevity... they need to fix the achievement psychology.
Otherwise... early release can also massively backfire and many may have long left before the game reached close to what it wants to be.
What businesses do you want to see on steem? 5 Minutes of fame models, until newest shiniest thing or developers/entrepreneurs who can say they bought a car, house, and one for their mom too from Steem?
PS: Fixed some horrible typoes. Low battery not too powerful iPhone, mix of Siri autocorrect and autosaving editor does horrible things if in power savings mode. Apologies.