Topic: Root Issue: INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT
Dear DEVs,
After many discussions and interactions with many different players I have the 2 reasons why Perpetuum is not vibrant enough. "It's all about the dangling carrot. Do you feel you have something to work towards?" one of my corp mates said. Thanks Elric! You pointed out exactly what is missing in Perpetuum. INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT.
Problem:
1. INCENTIVES TO PLAY: Perpetuum's more EP-intensive and expensive bots are not worth the effort and time.
In virtually all MMOs, it's all about earning more powerful ships, gear, bots you desire. When you stop desiring the next shiny, that is when the game dies.
To give an example, people subscribe for months to gain skill points, and madly mine or kill NPCs for weeks to be able to use a Heavy Assault Cruiser or a Capital ship in stEVE. This desire drives long-term subscriptions, player retention for years not months and the cost drives the entire economy.
However, player after player I have spoken to in Perpetuum have expressed emptiness and meaninglessness after they have gotten into their Mechs or Heavy Mechs.
They are expensive, they move slowly and are sitting ducks and you seldom use them.
You need to make the more advanced bots cooler and stronger versus the basic bots or the the very reason to subscribe for EP and earn NIC for them disappears and the game and economy becomes lifeless.
EWAR light online is not going to hold long-term interest.
Make the more EP-intensive, expensive bots worth it or the game will die in months.
Disregard this if you will, but the number of players who mentioned this problem is huge.
2. INCENTIVES TO FIGHT: Insufficient Incentive to win Intrusions.
Fine, so you create the Intrusion system to generate beta corp conflict. Good idea.
Where it falls is there is simply no reason to own the stations.
Some puny tax is far far too weak an incentive to lose bots to win it.
Let station owners have rights to restrict the market to friendly corps or to restrict docking to friendly corps.
Then you will see some real fights.
Once again. INCENTIVES.
If you ignore these root causes of player disinterest, you are just making insignificant changes that have only small effects. INCENTIVES TO PLAY, INCENTIVES TO FIGHT.
Sincerely,
Container