General Category > News

Status update + input needed

<< < (2/5) > >>

King Leshrac:
Facebook could work.  I still think trading has to be worked in one way or another to maximize fun/profit.

Xaxyx:
Before you can choose between business models -- indeed, before you can even *define* them -- you must first necessarily define the game model.  The two concepts are intimately intertwined.

For example, if memory serves, you currently have two game models defined (I'll use the term "league" for ease of reference, though that may turn out to not be the most readily applicable term):

- Free to play league:  No ratings.  No trading.  No fatalities.  No victory migrations.  No activity migrations.  No population events.  Basically, a static, neutral environment.
- Paid league:  Ratings system.  Trading enabled.  Fatalities enabled.  Victory migrations.  Activity migrations.  Population events.  A dynamic environment, where players' ratings, as well as their kingdoms, are in a constant state of flux.

I would purport that this list of available league types is insufficient if it's your intention to attract a larger and more varying customer base.  For example, I'm quite confident that there are a significant number of potential players who would balk at the notion that they may pay money to play your game and earn spirits only to have those spirits taken away from them, either by the game or by either players.  Indeed, some players might object to the existence of any sort of kingdom alterations at all, preferring an environment in which all players used the same kingdom at all times, but with ratings enabled -- a level playing field, if you will.  And so forth.

Thus I propose that you consider widening your approach.  Consider having a variety of league types, running at varying intervals, configured with varying rule sets, perhaps even charging for differing costs depending on what's being offered.  Title them appropriately, make it extremely clear what's enabled and what's disabled for each league and how each feature functions, and charge for membership in each league separately.  Then, players can pick and choose which leagues are for them.

Examples of leagues for your consideration:

- Level Playing Field:  Limited duration, rated league.  All players start with identical kingdoms of spirits; these kingdoms never vary from one another under any circumstances.  (There could be population events, but these would need to be identical for all players.)

- No Trade League:  Limited duration, rated league.  Victory and activity migrations enabled.  Fatalities enabled.  Trading NOT enabled.  Thus, players' kingdom makeups are solely dependent upon individual performance, with a healthy dash of luck.

- Trade Only League:  Limited duration, rated league.  Migrations and fatalities NOT enabled.  Trading enabled.  Herein, players' kingdom makeups are determined solely by trade.  (More interesting might be to restrict trading to only the first week of play.)

From here, I'm sure you can imagine all sorts of fun variants for leagues.  A one week long "elimination league": where after N losses, players are eliminated; victory migrations are significantly increased; and the winner, rather than being determined by rating, would be the player with the largest kingdom at the end of the week.  A one day long "random league": where each game, rather than using decks built from kingdoms, players are instead assigned a random assortment of spirits to play with, perhaps leveraging many of the new spirits of a recent or upcoming expansion.  And so forth.

Each league -- or "event", if short enough in duration -- can cost a fee.  From there, the financial model is readily extrapolated.  Sell credits and spend credits on league memberships and event participations.  Or charge directly.  Or both.  But before you can establish a sound and practical business model, I would implore you to give some serious thought to your game model.  They are inseparable; and you have a tremendous opportunity here to accommodate a much greater berth of potential customers.

Psyclone:
Hello everyone, not sure if any of you remember me, my SW Members name was Kevin (not to be confused with kevincscott). 

I used to play SpiritWars a lot starting back in the "Trade" days in the late 1990's.  I was an annual subscriber a few hours after playing my first game and member up until the end.  I was 3rd on the list of most games played with over 5000 games played.

I'm excited to hear of the possible revival of SpiritWars.  To this day, it is still my favorite game I have ever played.  So far, I agree and shared the same opinions of what most of you have said.  With that being said, I definitely think there are a few things that might need to be changed to be successful in this day and age that I will go into shortly.

I'VE PLAYED A LOT OF CCG/TCG's ON THE INTERNET AND ALMOST ALL OF WHAT I MENTION/SUGGEST HERE IS THE SAME TYPE OF MODEL USED IN MOST OF THE SUCCESSFUL ONLINE CCG's.

BUSINESS MODEL
I think the "Freemium" model is the way to go and sell card packs as well as other enhancements (such as extra deck slots).  I don't think subscriptions are very popular and I think they're a hard sell to a lot of people.  Subscriptions may be beneficial to players who are hardcore and have a lot of free time (play a lot of games each month/year), but I think you're going to turn away people with limited playing time or odd/seasonal schedules who won't feel like they're getting their money's worth.

A "freemium" model will generate a larger player base, which (of course) is extremely important.  I've played a lot of other games, including League of Legends, Urban Rivals, TheFarWilds, Tyrant, etc.   They are all free-to-play, but offer bonuses/perks to paying customers.  As others have mentioned, I think the most important thing to be careful of though is to make sure that there isn't an enormous advantage to paying customers vs. free customers, but more of a convenience advantage.  Games that offer huge advantages to paying customers are commonly referred to as "Pay-to-Win" and usually die a quick death because of it.

I would definitely stay away from Facebook.  I think it could be very beneficial to have links/likes/updates to Facebook and a SpiritWars facebook page/fansite, but I don't think running the game on Facebook is a good idea for several reasons.  I think SpiritWars would be better off as a stand-alone or on a gaming network like Steam/Kongregate/etc (I don't know a lot about Kongregate, but I've played a couple different games on there from time to time).
SPIRITWARS IN 2013 AND BEYOND
I think there are a few things that turned players away from SpiritWars that might need to be addressed to be successful nowadays.  I think most people loved the concept and the game itself, but for some reason or another didn't get hooked/addicted and ended up leaving.  I will expand upon these as well after the list...


* Games were too slow or took too long
 
I believe SpiritWars falls into the CCG (Collectible Card Game) genre and that will probably be the largest source of players that will eventually become paying customers.  Most CCG's don't have a map, just a generic game board and the games usually take anywhere from 3-15 minutes to play.  SpiritWars adds the extra element and strategy of a combat map, which I believe it what makes it so great.  I think we will need to cut down game times to the 10-15 minute range or risk losing a lot of these players. 

I remember Randy mentioning or advertising that the average game time was 20-25 minutes. Some very competitive games took 40+ minutes and sometimes your opponent was just incredibly slow or afk, so even short games (not a lot of rounds) could take a long time.  I think the game times will have to be drastically reduced to keep a lot of players interested.  I think the biggest problem was sometimes having people take 1-2 minutes just to perform a phase because they were "thinking".  I "think" sometimes they were just afk tbh. 
 
Big lulls (pauses in activity while waiting on opponent) were definitely boring and took away from the enjoyment of the game.  There were definitely times where I was frustrated at how slow my opponent was.  I mean, c'mon, how much time is required in the Movement Phase of round 7 when you only have 3 spirits to move?  I can't tell you how many times (it was an insanely high frequency) I had to send a message to my opponent asking "are you still there?".

*** I think if you want to run tournaments and other events, you're going to need to speed the games up as well to make them run a lot smoother.  Nothing was worse than winning a game in your tournament and then having to wait 20 minutes for an opponent because your next opponent was still 1-2 games behind.
 

* Players didn't like losing spirits (members version issue)
 
I think a majority of players (especially paying players) would be upset if they lost their cards permanently, especially if they spent money on the game.


* Second turn advantage (imbalanced)

Let's be honest, there was a HUUUGE advantage to playing 2nd (Gold).  This was a definite turn-off for a lot of people because it had too much of an impact on who won the game. The were definitely some good Silver decks (player 1), but you had to have a lot of experience and the right spirits (cards) to pull it off.[/list]

Psyclone:
GENERATING INCOME/REVENUE
Require players to buy "SpiritWars currency" (credits) to purchase items/enhancements in-game.  This is how almost every online CCG I've seen and played works now.  I'll keep it simple and pretend a base of 10 Credits = $1 US.  Offer bonus credits for larger purchases, e.g. $5 = 50 Credits, $10 = 105 Credits (5% bonus), $20 = 220 Credits (10% bonus), $35 = 400 Credits (14% bonus), $50 = 600 Credits (20% bonus), $100 = 1300 Credits (30% bonus).
 

* Card Packs
 I think the most popular and successful model that I've seen for CCG's are offering packs of cards (spirits) for sale for either Credits (purchased with real currency) or in-game psuedo-money (I'll refer to it as "gold" from here on out to keep things simple).  Card packs aren't the only way to acquire cards, but definitely the quickest.  In a lot of CCG's, cards are also required by leveling up your account (via experience rewarded for playing games, winning tournaments, completing achievements, etc.).

Release an expansion set of new cards (around 40-60) every 3-5 months or so.  THIS IS NECESSARY TO KEEP THE GAME FRESH.  It will also generate more income as players will want to buy the new packs.  Make cards from the current expansion (and possibly 1 prior expansion) only purchasable with Credits.  It will also keep players who took a break to check back in and play again when a new expansion set is released.  Each new set of cards could introduce a new theme (i.e. - Mythical spirits) or 1-2 new abilities (i.e. - drain, leech, poison, disease, etc).  When a new expansion is released, a prior expansion packs are reduced in price and a prior expansion pack that was only purchasable via Credits is now able to be purchased for gold (at a higher price than other packs though, but reduce the Credit/Gold cost as time passes).

For example, a basic pack might contain 6 spirits (e.g. - 4 common, 2 uncommon).  A basic pack can be purchased (i'm making up numbers here) for 10 Credits or 2000 gold.  It should take a reasonable amount of time to acquire 1000g, maybe ~3-6 hours of game play.  This way, free-to-play players have access to the same cards that paying players have (with the exception of the most recent expansion or two), but they're just paying for the convenience of acquiring them at a faster rate (less real-life time spent grinding gold).

Offer different types of packs too.  For example, I just made up the prices again just for illustration purposes, and pretended the game is on the 4th expansion set...
 

* Energy booster - 4 Credits or 500g - contains 6 energy spirits, with 1 from each homeland (5 common, 1 uncommon and no rare/ultra rare).
 
* Basic Booster - 10 Credits or 2,000g - contains 15 basic/core spirits, i.e. - released at game launch (12 common, 3 uncommon and no rare/ultra rare).  People probably won't buy this pack with Credits, but that's ok, it's just a starter pack with some of the basic spirits.
 
* The Awakening (1st expanion) - 40 Credits or 10,000g - contains 15 spirits from the Awakening expansion set (10 common, 4 uncommon, 1 rare/ultra rare).
 
* Silver Pack - 30 Credits or 7,500g - contains 15 spirits from the all expansions excluding the 3 most recent expansions (10 common, 4 uncommon, 1 rare/ultra rare).
 
* Expansion Set #2 - 50 Credits or 20,000g - contains 15 spirits from the 2nd expansion set (10 common, 4 uncommon, 1 rare/ultra rare).
 
* Gold Pack - 40 Credits or 10,000g - contains 15 spirits from the all expansions excluding the 2 most recent expansions (10 common, 4 uncommon, 1 rare/ultra rare).
 
* Expansion Set #3 - 60 Credits or 25,000g - contains 15 spirits from the 3rd expansion set (10 common, 4 uncommon, 1 rare/ultra rare).
 
* Platinum Pack - 50 Credits or 20,000g - contains 15 spirits from the all expansions excluding the most recent expansion (10 common, 4 uncommon, 1 rare/ultra rare).
 
* Expansion Set #4 (current expansion) - 80 Credits - contains 15 spirits from the 4th expansion set (10 common, 4 uncommon, 1 rare/ultra rare).
 Obviously, a lot more cards will need to be introduced and in order to make them more unique, new abilities will have to be introduced and some of the old abilities will need to be changed to avoid the homogenization of cards. 

For example, Flatlands/Wetlands/Woodlands/Drylands all have scouts (vision=3, movement=2) in Sicilian Scout, Barbarian Raiders, Spotted Leopards and Desert Jackals.  Highlands and Darklands don't have these types of scouts by design and it should stay that way, otherwise all the homelands will lose what makes them unique.

New abilities can be introduced to spirits with each expansion set to keep cards unique.  For example, here's some abilities that are common in many CCG's that could be added to SpiritWars...


* Armor (x) - Unit blocks (x) amount of melee damage. Does not block spells or ranged and magical attacks.  Armor above 1 should be very rare.
 
* Pierce (x) - Ignore (x) armor.
 
* Resistance (x) - Unit blocks (x) amount of damage from magical attacks and/or spells.
 
* Spell Penetratation (x) - Ignore (x) resistance.
 
* Sweeping Strike (x) - Attacks also hit enemy units adjacent to both attacker and defender for (x) damage.
 
* Spell Penetratation (x) - Ignore (x) resistance.
 
* Disease (x) - Any unit damaged by a unit with disease ability has all healing received reduced by 1 until the debuff wears off after X turns.
 
* Movement (x) - Unit temporarily gains +X movement range when in its homeland. For example, Stygian Rats with +1 Movement would get +1 movement range if it is moving from Darklands to any other space.  If it lands in Darklands again in the future, it will regain the buff.
 
* Thorns (x) - Any unit damaging another unit with the Thorns ability will take (x) amount of damage in addition to attack damage from the defending unit.  This might be an ability found commonly on Plants and work similar to a defender spirit but could work against all attacks even when not defending or be a good counter for First Strike ability.
 
* Regenerate (x) - A free and automatic heal at the end of each round.
 These abilities would of course open up all new spells (both on a Combat caster spirit and Spell spirits). For example...


* Cleanse - Removes all debuffs from a spirit.
 
* Rust (x) - Removes (1/2/all) Armor from a spirit.
 
* Dispel Enchantment - Dispels an enchantment.
 
* Dispel All - Dispels all enchantments.
 
Once again, a lot of spirits will be needed to keep the game fresh and growing.  Another option for spirits would be adding another category of spirits - ENCHANTMENTS.  These would be temporary or permanent buffs/debuffs.  The could be single target or global.  Some "Spells" in the game would already be considered enchantments, but this would allow for them to be dispelled also.  A couple examples of a global enchantment would be...


* Tailwinds - Increases the movement range of all spirits (friendly and enemy) by +1.  This effect lasts 2 rounds.
 
* Dense Fog - Reduced the vision of all spirits (friendly and enemy) by 1, this effect can not reduce vision to 0.  This effect lasts 3 rounds.
 
* Tournaments
 Hold various tournaments that require Credits and/or Gold. Hold various types of tournaments with varying rulesets.  The most popular tournaments in CCG's are Sealed.  Some examples of tournaments types and their entry fees...
 
* Standard - 2k-10k gold or 2-5 Credits - Players use their own decks with gold award to players finishing in the top X%.  This will be a big advantage to players with the strongest decks and won't be as popular with newer players.
 
* Sealed - Varies - In sealed tournaments, players get to open 4 packs to use in the tournament.  Players can be provided with 6 random common energy from each homeland to make sure their decks are playable.  Players will get 60 cards from the packs, plus the 30 basic energy, so this should be plenty of cards to make a deck with.
 
A Sealed Awakening Tournament would have an entry fee of 5,000g and players will open 4 Awakening packs for the tournament, but the players do not get to keep any of the cards opened in the packs, they just get to play for the gold. 
 
In addition, any player who wishes to keep the cards can pay an entry fee of 20,000g or 160 Credits (the cost of 4 Awakening packs) and will get to keep all the cards they open. So essentially they will buy 4 packs of cards and get to enter the tournament for free.  The player must decide to pay the entry fee before seeing which cards are in the sealed packs of course.

Each player will get a completely random set of cards from each pack they open (i.e. - each player won't get the same cards as other tournament participants, so there will be a lot of variation of decks from player to player).
 
* Themed - 2k-10k gold - All players are provided with the same themed population of cards and have to make a deck out of it.  Same as the themed events ran in SpiritWars in the past.
 
* Draft - 2k-10k gold - Drafts are 4 player tournaments.  Draft Tournaments start with a drafting phase. Each player is shown a pack of 15 cards and picks a card from this pack touse to build their dungeon (deck).  All 4 players will be viewing a different pack at the start and they are the only ones that can see the pack initially.  After they pick 1 card that pack is rotated to the next player and they get to choose a card from the 14 cards remaining in the pack that was passed to them.  The packs rotate around until all 15 cards are picked.  Then a new pack is given to each player and the process repeats. You open 3 packs this way (3 complete rounds of drafting).  Once you have picked your 45 cards you build your deck.  Your deck must be at least 25 cards and can have any of the cards you drafted. Once each player has submitted their army, players will play a match-play "head-up" tournament similar to US sports playoffs.  These tournaments can be either single or double elimination.

During the draft phase, in each of the 3 rounds players are given ~15 seconds to make picks for the first few cards of each pack, then 10 seconds each to pick the remaining cards each round.  The drafting portion should take about 8 minutes total, but is extremely fun, so time flies.  The entire draft tournament should be completed in less than an hour, closer to 45 minutes.
 
The Sealed, Draft and Themed tournaments will be the most popular because they put everyone on a level playing field.  I played in some CCG's with Draft Tournaments, those were always my favorite and I think they'd be very popular in SpiritWars.


* Other Enhancements
 Allow players to buy other enhancements or upgrades that don't necessarily affect the game play.  For example...


* Extra Dungeons - Allow players to purchase extra dungeon slots (saved dungeons).  For example, when SW is relaunched, let's say each player can save up to 2 dungeons by default.  This enhancement would allow players to buy additional dungeon slots.  Allow a couple to be purchased with gold, but require Credits to unlock even more.
 
* Campaigns (Scenarios) - Assuming an AI can be programmed, allow players to unlock campaigns in which they fight against a computer opponent in great ancient battles or against raid bosses.  Completing campaigns can reward gold, a unique spirit, etc.
 
* Experience or Gold Boosts - Assuming an experience/leveling system is implemented, allow players to gain experience or gold at an increased rate. For example, +50-100% experience for 2 weeks or X games, +50-100% gold for 2 weeks or X games.
 


[/list][/list][/list]

Psyclone:
@ Neo Pain... I think I agree with just about everything you've said in you last message.
 

--- Quote from: Neo Pain on October 22, 2012, 08:20:50 AM ---Free to play. This is by far becoming one of the most popular concepts in gaming now. League of Legends is the BIGGEST online game... bigger than WoW because it is free to play. They make their money on non game impacting sales. They (and I) agree that if you can use money to buy things it shouldn't be to give yourself an advantage over those who cannot afford to buy shinies. Even as I say that i could see selling small packs of cards with maybe up to uncommon rarity (like MtG). Cards that would help build a deck but not be game changers in themselves.
--- End quote ---

I think free-to-play (f2p) is the best way to go as well.  I think one thing that hurt SW before was that the free-side and member's side were completely alienated from each other.  I've played a lot of League of Legends over the past few years, although I haven't played it much lately (I think I last played about 6 months ago), nevertheless, LoL is a great game with a great business model and they've been extremely successful with a free-to-play model.

One thing I wasn't clear on was... are you suggesting a) that f2p players can buy cards up to uncommon rarity (and allowing paying players to get rare/ultra rare in their packs); -OR- b) only paying players can buy packs, but only with common and uncommon?

I suggested allowing paying players to buy all packs, but f2p players would be limited to using an in-game psuedo currency (e.g. - gold) to purchase packs, but limit the f2p players to only the older cards (don't allow them to purchase cards from the most recent expansion packs.  The gold that f2p players could earn would need to take a while to acquire, but not an eternity.  For example, the most basic pack might take a ~6 hours of playing to earn enough gold.  Some of the better packs would cost 2x/5x/10x/20x more, thereby requiring roughly 12/20/40/80 hours of game play or more just to earn a pack.  These same packs would be available for purchase via real currency for a fee of $2-$7 (depending on which pack) or something like that and be the only players able to get the most recent expansion spirits as they aren't available right away for purchase by f2p players (until 6 months later?).

This would allow f2p players to remain competitive, although they'd have to play a ton of games to earn the gold to purchase the cards.  Having a large base of players playing a ton of games is a good thing for everyone.  They wouldn't have immediate access to the new shinies of course, but it shouldn't handicap them.  New expansion spirits shouldn't be more powerful or anything, although there would be more synergy opportunities.
 

--- Quote from: Neo Pain on October 22, 2012, 08:20:50 AM ---League of Legends sale the new champions and different skins that are available for all the champions. But if you are like me and are monetarily challenged then you can earn in game "money" to buy champions. And even if you don't buy them all you still get opportunities to play them thanks to there being a "free" rotation of the champions you can use. Sooner or later you can play everyone.
--- End quote ---

Again, I agree.  This is similar to what I mentioned above about f2p players not having immediate access to cards.  League of Legends definitely has a great setup with their weekly rotation of champions.  This could definitely be applied to SpiritWars.  I would suggest leaving out all the ultra rares of course, but maybe have a weekly rotation of 10 spirits (9 uncommon, 1 rare) randomly chosen from all expansions except the most recent one, or maybe even better yet, a couple from each homeland.
 

--- Quote from: Neo Pain on October 22, 2012, 08:20:50 AM ---I think the biggest problem we will have this go around will be competing in an instant gratification world. Many of these games nowadays are short quick and simple. And you either win or lose in that same quick manner. As we all know SW often is not a quick process. However just winning was enough for most of us. Or having a great match. And then the victory mig was always nice as well.  We have to make sure that win or lose the game will keep people's attention.
--- End quote ---

Once again, I agree.  :)  I think the game will definitely need to be sped up.
 

--- Quote from: Neo Pain on October 22, 2012, 08:20:50 AM ---Possibly offer an in game currency that you receive. A lot on win... half as much with a loss.
--- End quote ---

I think I'd make it less than half for a loss, or implement a system similar to League of Legends that only gives full credit to both players if the game lasts a certain period of time (24 min in LoL I believe).  Something like this would need to be implemented to deter win-trading or players quitting the second they fall behind.  Maybe a penalty for players quitting early too.
 

--- Quote from: Neo Pain on October 22, 2012, 08:20:50 AM ---That way people with not as much money can still purchase in game content... just slower. Biggest thing is making sure to make it so money bought services has little impact the played game... i.e. he who has the most money can't just just buy the best deck.
--- End quote ---

This is a very important point!  I've seen a lot of games that claim to be free-to-play, but in reality they are pay-to-win and f2p players have absolutely no chance no matter how good they are or how long they've been playing.  Pay-to-Win games, games that offer way too much of an advantage to paying players, always fail in the end because it's never about skill, it's about who spends the most money that determines the outcome of games.
 

--- Quote from: Neo Pain on October 22, 2012, 08:20:50 AM ---But another thing is content would have to be put out on a regular basis. To keep the game fresh and evolving. In a way almost like M:tG. Up population sizes and see where we go. That was always one of the things I enjoyed doing... creating a deck out of all the chaos.
--- End quote ---

Deinitely.  Release new content every month or two if possible, not necessarily

I suggested raids, scenarios, expansion packs, etc. earlier in this thread.  Those are very common and popular with online CCG's.  I would try to spread content releases out as much as possible instead of dropping huge patches of new content all at once.

For example...

Week #5 - Release new scenario pack
Week #10 - Release some raids
Week #15 - Release expansion pack (30-50 cards)
Week #20 - Release more scenarios
etc.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page