Does the game seem ready for a 1.0 release?

We're launching 1.0 in a few days. Does the game seem ready to you?

Well as you know I always get wild ideas for things to add and change but as it is, it's a great game. So if your body is ready why not press the big red 1.0 button.

I do feel if you are asking us you might have an idea that somehting is not ready yourself

Escrito por King Cow, 29.03.2011 at 07:52

Well as you know I always get wild ideas for things to add and change but as it is, it's a great game. So if your body is ready why not press the big red 1.0 button.

I do feel if you are asking us you might have an idea that somehting is not ready yourself

Well, we can polish the game and add new features for eternity, so in that sense it will never be truly 'ready'. However, we do feel we implemented most of the important features and the game is stable enough to finally get a proper release. So for us there's no question about it, and we actually set a date over a month ago, we just want to know what the players think

Well I will go ahead and vote yes then.

Well it seems than AW is ready for that so ill vote yes

I too think that the game is ready. Great work so far, even though there is a minor issue I still would have liked to be solved by you.

Is the game ready for 1.0 release? Yes. Is the game ready for monetizing? No. I don't think the amount of active Afterwind-players is enough for something like that. About ~175 players at peak times is not that much and I know from experience that adding features like micro-transactions always scare away small part of the user-base and maybe even a little bigger part if everything is done or designed very badly.

Like selling players things that make them more powerful or efficient. Or things like blocking off general features that players are used to get for free in free2play-products (a great example of this is World of Tanks that offers player-grouping only to Premium-account owners).

I really love the game and I congratulate you on your upcoming proper release. If you need any help or advice on the future of AW, your best bet is to ask from the fans, what is the best way to bring some income off the game.

Amazing game... Voting yes. As for profit-making, I say don't bribe by offering something like what Runescape did(members got better worlds, upgrades, etc.) But follow your gut instinct and do what you can!

Stability = Yes.

New features will always come, as you've said, so its best to just pick a point. One of the things that I think keeps gamers coming back is the continued attention even after official release, which I sense will be there with AW after 1.0

Escrito por Psychostick, 29.03.2011 at 11:00

Amazing game... Voting yes. As for profit-making, I say don't bribe by offering something like what Runescape did(members got better worlds, upgrades, etc.) But follow your gut instinct and do what you can!

They have already said no advantages to the paying members like that - it will be more things like you can host games on unique maps (that all players are able to join in).

No its not.
still have issues with a few things here is the short list but im shure with a few tweeks you will get them addresed in no time
1-game is all attack based, needs a better defence side.(or Unit maybe better defending militia)
2 Needs a Grow and go type of play right now is only land grab.(see #1)
3 New players will constantly hate the short game for about 2 weeks so needs a clock fix so advanced players can't turn the clock to 1-2min and enialate them
4 Late joins can still Blitz due to the ability to see the units on the map.(hide units from latejoins Add a choice button before you join that locks you out but lets you spectate)
5 defending ground troops should be hiting attacking ground troops before they are attacking air units. so that people NEED to have more ground units in there attacking bomber stacks then 1 milita.(Fix for #1)
6 boats are still alittle hard to move by denmark and Pen. USA (maybe alow boats to go though the land there)

thats it after those are fixed you get my vote. But i still give you guys 2 thumbs up for a great game:)

Paying for customization (with no real advantages in-game) is always the best choice to profit-making. Something like different icons for troops, colors, avatars, etc.

Escrito por Solidamus, 29.03.2011 at 10:49

Is the game ready for 1.0 release? Yes. Is the game ready for monetizing? No. I don't think the amount of active Afterwind-players is enough for something like that. About ~175 players at peak times is not that much and I know from experience that adding features like micro-transactions always scare away small part of the user-base and maybe even a little bigger part if everything is done or designed very badly.

Like selling players things that make them more powerful or efficient. Or things like blocking off general features that players are used to get for free in free2play-products (a great example of this is World of Tanks that offers player-grouping only to Premium-account owners).

I really love the game and I congratulate you on your upcoming proper release. If you need any help or advice on the future of AW, your best bet is to ask from the fans, what is the best way to bring some income off the game.

I would agree but I do see other games with a smaller user base charging a decent amount up front. A problem might be people are not used to paying for games that act a bit like a board game and with simple graphics.

I always have to remind my self that the vast majority of the market is single player and not online... Which I am also sure will have an impact.

I think its fine to charge now for things like SP and funky maps but it has to be done really carefully, in fact I think it's almost impossible to do it without pissing off some people.

To be honest if the cards will be implemented I see this as the best option to charge for money. people are more used to paying for cards in games I think... It has allot of great potential...
I like the card system they use in Stronghold kingdoms. You can buy cards and you can also get a few random cards every week for free.

It might work something like this.

1 card free a week : get to rank1
2 free cards : win a game
3 cards : join a world game
4 cards : get to rank 4
5 cards : make your first payment to amok and Ivan & co (could be a very small amount)
6 cards : join a coalition
7 cards : get to rank 8
9 cards : second donation to the after wind company (could be a very small amount again)
12 cards : get to rank 15

You would have to unlock 4 cards before you unlock 5 etc.
This way everyone would get some cards, not sure if this would work or even if it fits with the plans the devs have for cards but it's something that comes to my mind. Ivan and Amok I think have said they plan for people to be able to find cards at random when they cap towns like special units...

Please add a flattr button for donations.

I think you need to finish the hp to make it ready but thats my opinion.

Yes, to me it seems developed enough for a version 1.0. This really is a great game, and finishing the beta-phase might as well attract more players who elsehow would be scared away by the "beta"-tag (I know, some people are strange ).
But there is one thing I would like at least to be considered: as I already suggested in the topic "Advanced upgrades", I think that it would be a good idea to arrange the upgrades in upgrade-type related columns for more clarity. It might not be important enough for the beta-phase, but I am sure that most players would appreciate it.
Anyhow, thanks for this amazing game!

What are you projecting to occur with the transition from Beta to Full Release?

Have you prepared the monetizing systems that you wish to implement?

Is there anything else?

Escrito por n00less cluebie, 30.03.2011 at 18:07

What are you projecting to occur with the transition from Beta to Full Release?

Have you prepared the monetizing systems that you wish to implement?

Is there anything else?

A lot of questions
We're projecting the "1.0" tag in the title and heavy promotion (so the updates will slow down for a while).
Yes, we are prepared for monetizing - we'll announce all details in a couple of days. All current players will get the full game for free.

Escrito por Ivan, 31.03.2011 at 02:23

Escrito por n00less cluebie, 30.03.2011 at 18:07

What are you projecting to occur with the transition from Beta to Full Release?

Have you prepared the monetizing systems that you wish to implement?

Is there anything else?

A lot of questions
We're projecting the "1.0" tag in the title and heavy promotion (so the updates will slow down for a while).
Yes, we are prepared for monetizing - we'll announce all details in a couple of days. All current players will get the full game for free.

im so glad that i got in to this in 2010

I could throw in some more ideas about micro-transactions and income-plans I have been thinking about after I saw this poll and commented on it.

Now the most neutral thing to sell would be something completely non-gameplay based like Pinheiro's idea on customization of unit icons, player colors or maybe even a cool evil looking skull instead of their original rank sign. Anyone can get behind premium-products that won't affect the gameplay at all, not leaving the community just because they don't want to pay.

Next I try to tackle King Cow's post and try to express my own opinion. First of all, selling SP wouldn't work because that is the score, the resource and the reward of players accomplishments. If you can just buy SP, the real idea behind it would completely change to a statistics on who has the most wealth to use on the game and it breaks a huge part of the game and the whole progression system.

Now what could work would be some kind of "SP Boost" I have seen in a lot of F2P-products. You can buy, let's say a 15% boost to your SP income on all matches for a week. That way you you still have to earn all the SP you want but its a little easier with the boost.

About the card-system. The idea behind it sounds great and scares me at the same time. Creating a monetizing system behind a card-game is risky. It will certainly scare away a pretty big part of the community but it still might work for the rest of the clients if the cards are priced right compared to the amount of cards there are in the game and to the amount of cards you can use in a match. I don't know if this would be the right way for AW because of the already pretty low active user base. Yesterday the peak of online players was around ~100 players.

The reason behind this might not work is the amount of players leaving when the monetizing begins and what amount of people usually buy things in micro-transaction games using real money. Reading a lot of interviews and documentaries on producing an f2p mmorpg has me understood that the amount of people who DON'T use real money is around 70-90% depending on the game.

Let's say theoretically, there is an 200 core player base that won't be online all at the same time but still play every day at least one game. We then introduce monetizing and count how many would buy a premium-product of the in-game store. Let's say AW has made strong decisions and the numbers float around 25%. So that 25% of that 200 core player base buys the first product introduced and that could be the SP Boost, boost could be priced 7€/7$ per week, now if all of those 50 players would buy the SP Boost once, It would bring in 350€/$ and some might buy it again after the week ends but let's not take that into the calculations yet.

Now 350 is always something, it helps a lot with keeping the servers up but it still won't bring in that much true income. But the 350 would be achieved with 25% percent of buyers within the core player base which is optimal, it always could be lower, even as low as 10% and we didn't remove players that dislike micro-transactions and left the whole community just because they don't want to play the game anymore with the monetizing-system added.

And this is just about SP Boosts, now let's go and add in the card-system. A radical change in the gameplay and it includes micro-transactions? A big part of the community is bound to leave and the core player base will be much smaller even after some new players join because the change is just so big.

After all this has been done it's time to count in the things that are mostly random. Some guy who doesn't even play the game that much decides to buy one week of SP Boost? Great, he might even start to play more because the SP-progression system is now faster for a week for him. But anything like this is not certain, the only thing certain is that the core player base has peaked under 200 and that usually only a quarter of them use real money to buy additional features, content or helpful items and boosts.

Well I'm sure people have lots of ideas but Ivan and Amok have not asked us for our opinions in this thread. (yes im guilty of doing this also)

Prehaps its better to wait and see how they implement it or start a thread on this topic in general discussion or ideas and suggestions.

I could be wrong but I THINK I remember reading that they do plan to charge for SP. Personaily I would rather people could buy a 'boost' to SP gain. Something like 2X the amount of SP you earn...

The cards idea I had might not be great but it is something I saw another game do and I thought it was a good way. Players do not have to buy them but it is really tempting, especially as after you get the long term reward of extra free cards. Not every idea is very realistic.

I really hope they won't charge for SP. That might work if they would change the progression system completely and add some other way to measure experience with the game, because if people could just buy SP, no one can really know if the person actually has earned that much. "A player with 500k SP you say? He must be a professional and know every pixel of this game in and out. We must get him to join our coalition! Oh, it seems he just bought it all because he is a rich bastard and likes to fuck with peoples heads."

Thanks for your suggestions Solidamus. I don't really want to disclose our strategy yet, but we think it would be successful while also being fair to those who choose not to buy anything. The extra features are mostly about convenience, variety and vanity rather than boosting your army strength. And no, we're not going to sell SP.

Also, we have a lot more ambitions than stopping at the current player numbers. 10x is the very minimum we're planning to achieve.

Escrito por Ivan, 31.03.2011 at 03:34

Thanks for your suggestions Solidamus. I don't really want to disclose our strategy yet, but we think it would be successful while also being fair to those who choose not to buy anything. The extra features are mostly about convenience, variety and vanity rather than boosting your army strength. And no, we're not going to sell SP.

Also, we have a lot more ambitions than stopping at the current player numbers. 10x is the very minimum we're planning to achieve.

Well that's a relief. Won't spam this poll-thread anymore after this but I still have to ask, can we, the beta-testers get a trophy to our profiles for making an account that predates the 1.0-release? First of all just because trophies are awesome but for mostly because it would help finding out how long a certain player has played this game.

Escrito por Solidamus, 31.03.2011 at 03:50

Well that's a relief. Won't spam this poll-thread anymore after this but I still have to ask, can we, the beta-testers get a trophy to our profiles for making an account that predates the 1.0-release? First of all just because trophies are awesome but for mostly because it would help finding out how long a certain player has played this game.

Damnit, this was supposed to be a surprise!

Haha, sorry for ruining your plans. It just seemed somehow logical thing to ask, because you just happen to have a Trophy-system in place and many games try to reward their testers when the game finally releases with small bonuses or a special title. Sorry again.