1206 jackpot

[time4fun]

Just as a reminder- This is a business, not a charitable enterprise. If you want GS to stay around, it needs to pull in enough money to convince Stillfront it's worthwhile.

[Stumplicker]

Just as a reminder- This is a business, not a charitable enterprise. If you want GS to stay around, it needs to pull in enough money to convince Stillfront it's worthwhile.

Stillfront group publishes its earnings and profit margins for each of its subsidiaries. Gemstone has the single highest subscription price model with some of the lowest server upkeep of any online game. It pays its customer service and development departments in in fairy wishes and good vibes. Their profit margins make Indonesian sweatshops jealous, and that's before you throw their casino crap into the mix. But let me guess, you have a master's degree in business you haven't told us about yet?

[Neveragain]

Just as a reminder- This is a business, not a charitable enterprise. If you want GS to stay around, it needs to pull in enough money to convince Stillfront it's worthwhile.

You could host this game from your closet on a server from goodwill.

Shit, you can play private server WOW for free and they do just fine on community donations.

[audioserf]

I think at this point the only choice is vote with your entertainment dollars. If you don't like how Simu are conducting themselves and the direction of GS, stop paying them money. Ie, quit, or just do F2P if you still want to play but not give them your money. They're going to do what they're going to do and freaking out about how you want the "good old days" back accomplishes absolutely nothing. The "good old days" are never coming back. Micro transactions are not going away. They aren't going to shut down the SimuCoin Store because people make mad posts about it. I don't like the slot machine stuff, but it doesn't bother me enough to quit, so they're still collecting monthly sub money from me. Be the change you want to see in your archaic text based nerd game.

[Methais]

I think at this point the only choice is vote with your entertainment dollars. If you don't like how Simu are conducting themselves and the direction of GS, stop paying them money. Ie, quit, or just do F2P if you still want to play but not give them your money. They're going to do what they're going to do and freaking out about how you want the "good old days" back accomplishes absolutely nothing. The "good old days" are never coming back. Micro transactions are not going away. They aren't going to shut down the SimuCoin Store because people make mad posts about it. I don't like the slot machine stuff, but it doesn't bother me enough to quit, so they're still collecting monthly sub money from me. Be the change you want to see in your archaic text based nerd game.

^

Simu's not gonna be like "Oh, people stopped buying into our truck stop casino racket. Guess we'll go back to ticketed events!"

What will happen instead is Stillfront would probably just shut the game down, and then you'll see a level of crying that would rival all the crying that's taken place since Trump got elected.

I suppose it's possible that Stillfront would just cash out and sell GS, but that's extremely unlikely I'd think.

[time4fun]

Stillfront group publishes its earnings and profit margins for each of its subsidiaries. Gemstone has the single highest subscription price model with some of the lowest server upkeep of any online game. It pays its customer service and development departments in in fairy wishes and good vibes. Their profit margins make Indonesian sweatshops jealous, and that's before you throw their casino crap into the mix. But let me guess, you have a master's degree in business you haven't told us about yet?

You've never been an acquisition, have you?

Your whole "highest subscription price/lowest upkeep" point is forgetting one key thing: number of subscribers. This isn't a huge population- it's a tiny game compared to their headliners. (Candidly, it's a tiny game compared to Simu's headliners)

Sever upkeep isn't the only cost. GMs *do* get paid more now than before (though I'm sure it's still not a lot), and we have one full-time staff member. So here're the possible options:

1) Stillfront decides Simu doesn't bring in enough money and decides to sell it off to raise quick capital for another acquisition- in which case we all just *pray* that the new owners don't say "WTF are we doing wasting time on a text-based MUD? No more full time staff and stop paying the volunteers. Just let it do its thing until it dies"

2) Stillfront decides GS doesn't bring in enough money, and they decide to can Wyrom and bring someone in whose sole purpose is to squeeze as many dollars and cents out of GS until it dies. OR who moves to an entirely volunteer model, and things die faster.

4) Stillfront decides GS doesn't make enough money and cuts the pay to GMs who then gradually start to quit

5) Stillfront decides GS makes enough money, and it leaves GS alone to do its thing

6) Stillfront realizes GS is bringing in A LOT of money per subscriber, wants to start making efforts to bring in more subscribers, and dedicates resources to it.

7) Stillfront realizes GS is bringing in A LOT of money per subscriber and decides we need a full-time developer too, and we can afford it because we're bringing so many people in AND keeping them around.

Decide which of those options you like and act accordingly.

[Stumplicker]

10) We realize we exist in the real world where Stillfront Group is not the Brawndo corporation performing auto-layoffs when a spreadsheet shows a decline, and Stillfront reels in the extent of the microtransactions back to a level that's acceptable to the playerbase.

It's already been shown to work in the gaming community, and on a much larger scale. The fact that Gemstone has a smaller playerbase than another success story, like Star Wars Battlefront II's loot boxes is a benefit, not a hindrance. It took a huge public smear campaign against EA for them to remove loot boxes from an otherwise fun game.

In the case of Simutronics, it would take 150-200 people. That's about 1/5 of the average monthly unique logins (not accounts, logins, by Stillfront's numbers). 150-200 people all cancel their accounts on a single day, along with an email to the CEO of Stillfront corporation, whose personal email is listed on their website by the way, with a brief summation of what change you would like to see, and you have successfully enacted that change. That change includes getting rid of Mario, who absolutely is at the helm, and reigning in the pervasiveness of the mechanical benefits for dollars racket.

It was shown on a smaller scale within Gemstone to be successful already, when Simutronics accidentally released 6x HCW weapons at DR. 20-30 people complained and the company reversed its position. Nobody can argue microtransactions out of the game entirely at this point, but each time they hold an event, they become more and more bold. Individual currencies for every event, the same items costing more and more of those currencies at each subsequent run. Hell, for the last several events they have been selling EXP for dollars in the form of "roleplaying award" orbs.

[Hymore246]

You've never been an acquisition, have you?

Your whole "highest subscription price/lowest upkeep" point is forgetting one key thing: number of subscribers. This isn't a huge population- it's a tiny game compared to their headliners. (Candidly, it's a tiny game compared to Simu's headliners)

Sever upkeep isn't the only cost. GMs *do* get paid more now than before (though I'm sure it's still not a lot), and we have one full-time staff member. So here're the possible options:

1) Stillfront decides Simu doesn't bring in enough money and decides to sell it off to raise quick capital for another acquisition- in which case we all just *pray* that the new owners don't say "WTF are we doing wasting time on a text-based MUD? No more full time staff and stop paying the volunteers. Just let it do its thing until it dies"

2) Stillfront decides GS doesn't bring in enough money, and they decide to can Wyrom and bring someone in whose sole purpose is to squeeze as many dollars and cents out of GS until it dies. OR who moves to an entirely volunteer model, and things die faster.

4) Stillfront decides GS doesn't make enough money and cuts the pay to GMs who then gradually start to quit

5) Stillfront decides GS makes enough money, and it leaves GS alone to do its thing

6) Stillfront realizes GS is bringing in A LOT of money per subscriber, wants to start making efforts to bring in more subscribers, and dedicates resources to it.

7) Stillfront realizes GS is bringing in A LOT of money per subscriber and decides we need a full-time developer too, and we can afford it because we're bringing so many people in AND keeping them around.

Decide which of those options you like and act accordingly.

I agree with a lot of this but I have a hard time believing 6 or 7 will ever happen. A lot of money has been made from paid events like DR and EG in the past few years but it only seems like the money goes towards MORE paid events instead of into the game itself. Updates to the base game seem few and far between. Outside of the failure that is F2P, I can't think of any attempt to try and get more people into the game either. At this point, I feel like GS4 is functioning like a mobile game. They want to keep their "whales" happy and they market towards them almost exclusively. The prices GS4 requires for subscriptions and paid content is absolutely ridiculous compared to all other games. I'm certain we have people spending several hundred dollars a month on GS4 stuff and while that their business, it's clear the GMs are more interested in pleasing them instead of the rest of player base.

I'm sad to see that 1206 really was just a way to get more money. It strikes me as tone deaf and disrespectful to monks and the whole player base. I mean, you could have just moved 1206 to the Arcane circle and explained that it would be better for all pures to have limited use of it instead of giving it to a profession that doesn't exist and a profession that can't use it.

Regardless, I agree that GS4 isn't going to go back to the old days. Honestly, I think it will just decline until simu decides to pull the plug because they can't squeeze any more blood from the GS4 stone.

[audioserf]

I agree with a lot of this but I have a hard time believing 6 or 7 will ever happen. A lot of money has been made from paid events like DR and EG in the past few years but it only seems like the money goes towards MORE paid events instead of into the game itself. Updates to the base game seem few and far between.

Agreed. I think case "5" is the current state of affairs and the best we're going to get. Stillfront wants to forget GS exists as long as it keeps making adequate money. I do not expect them to ever dedicate enough interest to actively try and put money back into the game. That just seems unrealistic to me. GS is a line on a Stillfront spreadsheet that's expected to meet X threshold, and as long as it does that or close to that, it'll get left be.

[time4fun]

If the average sub price for GS continues to rise- they may very well decide to try to increase the number of subs. If it stays very profitable- they have a vested interest in keeping it as such as long as they can. If not, then they have a vested interest in ignoring it until it dies- or- selling off Simu to raise quick capital.

F2P wasn't a failure, btw.

As far as dev priorities- yeah, it's always going to go to what makes more money. But I'll point out that for the first time in a while, they're actively recruiting more Dev GMs. And we've seen some great development going on the last few years- better than the years prior, from what I gather. (I was gone, so it's all second-hand)

I'd love to see us get a full-time development resource at some point. But we'll need to make sure GS is very profitable to do it. And if not that, a much larger pool of volunteer developers (which also cost money). For that, GS still needs to show it's profitable enough to warrant that.

That's just how this stuff works, for better or for worse.