OGame.Org

if GF doesnt make money with a free game, they will think of a way to keep the servers running. I respect that.

no servers, no ogame and no forum to write bullshit in
what will you do with your life then?

I want to say thanks to Noldello

I really appreciate your efforts of communication, at least you try to provide solutions or negociations while others just make strike which doesn't solve anything...

Well the following is just my own opinion:

Like a lot of players I changed the name of my planets as well as my user name to show that I don't agree with the new officer options.

What I don't like is that this is a free game and people that would pay these new options would have an advantage to the others, meaning that it is no more a strategy game but a question of having real ressources or not in order to advance faster or not, that is inequality between players

BUT

I undestand that GF needs to make money for the game to survive and to pay poeple doing the maintenance/development.

I think that GF can improve the game in 2 ways:

Quoted

1. The part that affects everybody should remain free, like the introduction of the Battlecruiser (it's a chance that we didn't need to pay to have it by the way

2. The tools that they can provide to the players to make their life easier like the commander option and yes, this one I understand that they ask money for it if it doesn't boost the player paying for it.

Little explanation:
If you pay for the "Commander" option you can plan the next 5 levels on a planet if you have the ressources, but somebody not paying can reach the same goal logging into the game when the construction is done to start the next level. So paying is more convenient to evoluate without beeing online than for the one that doesn't pay, so you pay to be able to sleep more

So at the end of the day both players can be at the same level, one beeing online more often than the one paying for the service.

Now, with their current way of improving, why not to pay
- to be able to phalanx 3% more far per sonar level bought?
- to build ships 10% faster per high tech harbour level paied?
- to make 2% more damage per admirals bought?
- to have 3% less damage during a fight per building engineers bought?
- to make death star 10% faster per scientist bought?
(well, the list can be long you know... :evil

I think that this game can be improved with nice tools, like "planning fleet mouvments" an option that would allow for example to save your fleet or eventually to plan an attack or send ressources without beeing online and that you need to pay for, this would make player's life easier but the one not paying can reach the same goal if he is online, so it's not unfair...

Well, all this is a question of with what GF wants to make profit knowing that it's a free game, what players would be ready to pay for and why free players would continue to play against others beeing boosted because they pay for...

Hope that negociations with GF is possible like between warriors inside ogame


ps: sorry for my spelling or gramatical mistakes, I'm not english native

Alienator
R158/2924 - N.W.O ally - U17 ogame.co.uk
R780/7422 - 3U ally - U32 ogame.fr

Quoted

Originally posted by noldello
Like in marketing: you can't sell something to someone if he doesn't wish to buy it (no matter how much you would try)

Actually marketing works differently.
First you make a product you are really good at.
Then you find the people that want to buy it.

If its not you, then it will be someone else.
It all about filtering the willing from the opposed

Therefore, all the complaints and petitions and other bull wont help to keep the pay to play out.

Quoted

Originally posted by Rhodan

Quoted

Originally posted by noldello
Like in marketing: you can't sell something to someone if he doesn't wish to buy it (no matter how much you would try)

Actually marketing works differently.
First you make a product you are really good at.
Then you find the people that want to buy it.

If its not you, then it will be someone else.
It all about filtering the willing from the opposed

Therefore, all the complaints and petitions and other bull wont help to keep the pay to play out.

Actually noldello is right, thats called Market orientated sales policy, to keep story short, there hs been 3 aproaches in the last 150 years, one was Production (you produce what people needs, then people will come), salles (like you said, you produce something you think is good, then you go out and sale it) and market (you research what people likes and then you make it happend), being this last one the most succesfull one for a lot of reasons.

Although nodelo was right in this matter, and with all respect to your acomplishments in the field of computer science, i got to say that this is a managment desition and therefore should ve evaluated in that field, so i stand a few points:

this will be the outcome of this measurements, as i see it:

1. you know what happends to demand as prices rise of a non inferior gift acording to the neoclasical economic aproach, D= A - BP, so as P increase, D decrease and, as i think, this curve has a very narrow elastic part.

2. As this is a breaking point, GF will make money as people are paying for Officers, therefore GF will implement this in other servers as well.

3. People will start leaving, first in huge amounts and cancel commander, but Officer costumers will make for it

4. People leaving rate will slow down but will keep and important pace that will drive universes under 2k players (uni 22 had 3100 players two days ago, we are under 3k now)

5. People buying the officers will see that their marginal benefits of buying the officers dont match the economic cost they produce, therefore not renewving all officers.

6. People starts getting tired and finds out its not fun anymore, as that fun depends largely on the number of players of an uni

7. 4 months from now GF will see that they made a mistake, as in the long run profit will be, if equal, slowly decreasing

8. GF desition.

Now, what GF did wrong

1. Introduce the Officers arguing a succesfully research period of two days in portugal server, although we keept track of it and find out that was a lie, therefore GL looses credibility.

2. Introduce the Officers after the SC adition, too many changes in the game in a very short period of time

3. Not making any official statements uppon new to come officers in the proper way

4. Not paying staff (agency problems to appear)

5. Not making any official statements over the reclaims after the officers were introduce.

6. Not being open to discuss to the comunity about their likes and dislikes, so staying away from information that could give them something to improve their core competences.

What would i have done if i was in GF shoes and wanted to implement officers in the way they have done it (although i think its wrong, wrong wrong)?

1. I would started with a message in the forums, where i was to stand what was going to happend, a month before changes to take place, it would make things easier to be accepted.

2. Test the thing in a new universe in some server

3. Analize the results and uppon them take further actions


So, what would i do if i had to deal with this?

1. Take a word with the comunity and accept the mistake

2. Make officers available by rank, so:

a. * 4 free officers available to people not ranked
* 3 free oficers available to people in ranks 1500 - 900
* 2 free officers available to people in ranks 900 - 500
* 1 free officer available to people in ranks 500 - 200
* no free officer to people raked in the top 200

b. You can pay a fee, lets say something about us$10 in order to
have one oficer and only one above your officer limit by rank, so
if you pay the extra us$10, you would be able to have:
* 4 oficers (3 free, 1 paid) if ranked 1500 - 900
* 3 officers (2 free, 1 paid) if ranked 900 - 500
* 2 officers (1 free, 1 paid) if ranked 500 - 200
* 1 officer (1 paid) if ranked in the top 200

Using this idea, people starting would have some advantage over the stablished ones and old universes could gain some people, the ones who get used to the officers as they raise ranks will have a incentive to buy an officer and people crashed would have some help for rebuilding. keeping then yourself into the top 200 would then be an even better show of work and effort as people under you have an slight advantage over you. Also this measurements wouldnt uneven the playing field as much as current system does.

3. Let people sell accounts, by this i mean that GF could get in touch with, let say e-bay, and let people sell their account if wanted, so when retirement is a need, you wont loose all time invested in them. There should be then a gain for GF, so what would that be? they could ask for some % of the money made from the sold account (10%-20%) and that money would go directly to pay the staff avoiding the agency problems we have seen.

5. Look for sponsorship, i dont think an over 2 mill international comunity wouldnt be of interested of global organizations, coca cola, e-bay, for example could sponsor Ogame and give GF the money to manage forums and servers.

6. Get public, get noticed, get people to talk about Ogame in news, that would drive the attention to the game and let them make even more money on advertisements.

7. hire me lol

Well, i think there is a lot more to be said, but for now its all, lets see if i get some new ides in todays organizations class

P.D: Many people say you can be a manager if you're x thing, but cant be x thing if you are study managment, this is a outstanding prove that you can run a business but screw it up because of wrong managment desitions that could have been avoid by studing managment or making a MBA in a good university, take that in accoun when doing your own business, i havent met the first person that gets out of an MBA and says it was wasted money. cya

i beg to differ in the matter that greed is ruining Ogame, is the stupidity the one to blame. Greed can be both good and bad, depending on what its based on. Organizations are the ones that reduce transaction costs and therefore makes progress posible. There is something called social responsability, and current studies show that some measures that can be called "altruistic" makes business even more profitable. The problem is that when organizations have bag managment teams, this kind of desitions are made, so is not a greed problem, its greed plus incompetent managers that makes this kind of situations happend.

All that was said was said at the start.

Quoted

Nice work, but I don't think GF will read and. I don' even think they will know it.

Nice work, but useless work.

Only 1 officer is worth it any way. 10% to mines!

Roll all the officers / commander into one and ill buy it. It is about supporting the game, the benifits are not that great anyway, stop complaining.

How did Runescape get so big? People pay for it! I played runescape since it was 2d, i don't play any more but i saw it boom, just because they offered more to members than non-members. It is not like they are asking for a life savings, what do you guys live on? Air? $20 for three months or whatever it is, is not much at all.

Das ist gut!

Quoted

Originally posted by noldello

II. Denevracs, you know a lot about marketing, I disagree on a single matter:

Quoted

Originally posted by Denevracs
5. Not making any official statements over the reclaims after the officers were introduce.

i believe that it could have been better to advertise before placing into servers -> to analyze the reactions of players and see if it's a good idea

I think it would have been better if they made anouncements of new versions at least a month before changes.

BTW thanks for the compliments , its just the love for my career . I also think this could be a really great discution and relevant in case GF team liked to read our forum .