(22 Mar 14, 05:23AM)Foo Wrote: The less-fun, less balanced (again, IMO) gameplay has resulted in less player numbers.
not exactly. just because you personally, as well as some others, didn't enjoy the game much from 1.0.4 onward doesn't mean it is the primary reason for a net reduction in the amount of people playing. certain people have played less with the switch between every version, and this is because version switches aren't streamlined.
for example, in league of legends, version switches are streamlined in the form of patches, and rarely do people actually quit the game because of a patch change, despite major changes that sometimes make the game less enjoyable. even then, the people who do quit are offset by the great numbers of people that join.
I personally haven't enjoyed the game as much since 1.1, but that is because the version change disenfranchised me due to a lack of a streamlined switch. the actual game itself has, imo, experienced a net improvement, but that is completely irrelevant to our primary objective.
your suggested objectives need a refocus. concern yourself with the big picture. what the game PRIMARILY requires is net growth, instead of the net decline we've seen for somewhere around 5 years.
but undead, lord protector of AC, how the fuck can we do that?
i've gone through all of this before, but whatever, here we go.
lets objectively analyze the reasons for why we aren't seeing more people play the game. i'll be using league of legends as my primary example, because it is by far the best run game i've come across.
behold this glorious graph, that i have never ever seen brought up:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/actionga...2014-03-22
AC is receiving the least weekly downloads in its entire history. This is mainly because it receives very little popular attention. It receives no attention because the game itself is not even slightly competitive with other titles in the same bracket out there. as i have said before, why play AC when you can play every other superior game out there.
and yet, it still received 29,910 downloads last month. i don't even know how. If all 29,910 players played the game once a week, AC would be INCREDIBLY active. as such, AC needs to greatly increase its retention rate, before it even begins to focus on marketing through youtube/facebook/reddit/whatever. so, how can we increase AC's retention rate?
http://www.destructoid.com/ul/236618-rio...2-620x.jpg
case in point: League of Legends has 70 million registered summoner names, with 32 million monthly active players. that is a MASSIVE retention rate. even if my source is dodgy as shit, i don't doubt the retention rate is still similarly massive. AC has a retention rate of a mere fraction of whatever league of legends has. so, how exactly do we get people who download the game to stick around? this requires effort from the devs, or at least willingness for the devs to let other people do their homework for them.
league of legends has an INVOLVING and CENTRAL interface. http://i.imgur.com/nywPKAu.jpg LoL has a friends list, AC does not. AC's "interface" likely acts to turn people AWAY from the game. I would not be surprised if a large number of users uninstall because they don't understand that ESC brings up the menu. AC has no system to "motivate" you to play. no ranking system LINKED IN to the UI, no "news" on the game to relate to, it just seems straight up DEAD, and back when the game was "active", the game still seemed pretty dead to any outsider. on top of that, league still has a shit ton more features than AC. AC is simply not competitive, and the devs do not even make the slightest attempt to remain competitive.
thus, the easiest, and most immediate way to RETAIN people is to greatly overhaul the UI and, following on from foo's point, to INCORPORATE the community into the game internally. if you want to talk to your friends, you hop onto AC, not IRC or TS. IRC and TS should be supplemental to the game, not the other way around.
of course, the realists and cynics of AC recognize that this may not be possible. it requires capital to maintain more servers than the webserver and masterserver. this means that AC requires capital to grow, and AC has an oft-ignored way of manifesting capital. i don't see why the development team doesn't incorporate high-paying, annoying advertisements into the forums and the main website, and if you really loved AC, you could purchase something like ACPRO™ for $4.99 that removes ads and gives you some cool shit in-game. you also have the option of adding some dodgy add-on program to the installer (that you can untick, of course) in order to generate further dollars. these are just ideas to bring money to AC, i don't doubt that there are others. perhaps i've missed the technological specifics to some of these ideas, so someone with a technological brain can fill the gaps. every player who plays the game should somehow be increasing AC's capital.
match-making is another topic altogether, and requires a significant player base to incorporate, but i guarantee that something that incorporates CENTRALIZED and competitive levelling, or ranking, would GREATLY boost the games popularity. people fucking love progressing. why do you think people love playing on ladder servers?
there are sooooo many other issues too, and require a capable manager to remove them all. i don't doubt that the actual engine that AC is in, with its disgusting graphics, make it unattractive to most people, thereby killing retention rates, but i haven't seen anyone advocate for the move up to the cube2 engine or another engine that wasn't created in 2001.
certain newbies may hate the lack of weapon diversity. there is hardly an issue with incorporating new weapons into the game that are basically slightly modified snipers or ARs, as it wouldn't necessarily hurt balance. again, just floating ideas that may help to increase retention rates.
to summarise, AC's low retention rate is killing it. people are downloading AC in decreasing numbers because it doesn't get any attention BECAUSE the game itself is not competitive or attractive. this requires significant effort, either from the devs or the community, to fix the problems associated with the game and increase the popularity of the game. if not, this downward trend will continue and AC will remain on the same path it has always been on.
i would love for the devs to take my suggestions on board, but the main point of this rant was to frame what exactly the issues are and what needs to be done to fix it, not as a definite measure of what MUST be done.