Well SK isn't drawing in that many new players, because it isn't very beginner friendly. I mean, sure it is easy, but when you first start playing a game, you feel like you should be able to keep playing. But it isn't so. Perhaps if SK had a free 10 day trial period where elevator costs for T1 were free... I don't know what it would do the game economy but that's how they'd need to bring new players in. The only reason I managed to get past T1 was that I dominated in bomberman so hard I could finance some 3* armor, and from there I could start doing RJP runs which let me play continuously.

@Luke Wtf would you do with 3 CE? Lol.

WTF would you do with 3000 CE? Lol. Yes this is a rhetorical question.

~Luke

Replenish the noob population or we will all starve.

@Orangeo I think a lot of the "calibur + proto gear" players are actually higher tier players that only have one or two low tier items left over, and don't want to play T3 lockdown. My LD loadout was a bit of a mess at first since most of my good gear was already levelled up to 4* when it came out. Took a few days of grinding to buy some 3* stuff again.

I don't think it's too hard to have fun in T1 lockdown with just proto gear. It's not nearly as dire as showing up in T3 with nothing but 4* gear. The biggest problem with T1 lockdown is that nobody plays T1 lockdown.

@Jim-Dale I'll bring the fava beans if you bring the chianti.

I (bunnies!) hate you people.Learn what the words mean before using them.

GM Edit: Language. If it is filtered in the game, do not use it on the forums.

Retort in disscussion with yer post @ Aljevoias.

1. CE is free if one crafts, sells, and uses crowns to buy CE from ppl who pay. Ye must find some manipulation on the market.

Feeling "jarring" to "pay" or more realistically, shunted into waiting a bit for more mist is a measure of patience. If you want all of it NAO, go play a subscriber game. Or send yer paypal to SK. Free or pay. Your choice.

2. Ok this could be several measures. A. Are other ppl in yer house running net gigs whislt you play? Are you current with yer systems ops updated? How much bloatware is huffing yer system resources: consider all the programs that load when you boot. Java client? Drivers for your video card? Are you wireless or running a matrix hardwire? There are many factors considering latency vs. lag vs. straight server skating. I suggest more research if you would really like to capitalize yer SK experience.

3. I have only seen one article with bad press considering this game. I and I truly do not believe the author played the game for more than one day. F2P players do that constantly. Yet, I would love for you to post your findings considering this Aljevoias.

Food for thought

p.s. @Nethereal don't stroke, bro.

It's awkward knowing that over 50% of T1 lockdown players are over T1.

He says, as we face a ton of proto nubs in yesterday's Lockdown spree.

One-sided matches much D:

Getting from T1 and T2 is a breeze: ample of cheap equipment on AH and if you want to craft it yourself, it's not too cost forbidding.

Getting from T2 to T3 presents a leap in difficulty and requires a lot more dedication. Because you need to upgrade equipment from 2* to 4*.

Alright, say the new players did make it to T3. Then when he looks into Clockworks, nothing seems out of ordinary except Vanaduke. OK, let's do Vanaduke and he has two alternatives: upgrade equipment to 5* (and hopefully he upgrades the right one) or find a guild that would carry him through FSC. But wait, my guild is not carrying me, what can I do? Let's look again. Well there is Shadow Lairs which even my guild can't handle yet!

Fine, let's try Lockdown. But how come I was listed in T3 and getting pwn'd by ultra gear players? Let's lower the difficulty and try T2, so at least I can survive for more than 1 minutes. Wait, what do you mean by "No I can't play T2?" Because I have 4* gears? I'm outta here.

Well, the problem isn't that complicated. With all the new contents being released, this T3 bottleneck needs to be average out. Perhaps make the current T3 into T4 and create a new tier in-between? Also, fix up Lockdown. This whole idea of enrolling 4* geared players in T3 and then feed them to fully 5* geared players is just plain BS. How about just create a separate tier for each level of equipment? e.g. 1-star geared players go to T1 Lockdown, 5-stars geared players go to T5 Lockdown. (And while you are at it, please give us a 5-star upgrade to Winmillion. So people who use Winmillion won't be lockout from T5 Lockdown.)

Xombie... you can't say the game needs more players and then say this game isn't meant for certain people. I feel like most of the people who will play with its current entry requirements are playing it. The only reason this game managed to pull me in was because I was able to skip tier 1 and go straight to tier 2 with bomber man (I also have tons of the PVP recipes prior to learning that you could sell mod calis, I made that much money off PVP that I could finance my operations without selling mod calis).

I can't honestly recommend this game to ANY of my real life friends with the way things are set up. A game where you have to grind to get anywhere end-game, but the game limits you from playing early on. That's just a recipe for dumb.

"I truly do not believe the author played the game for more than one day."

Yeah. And that's because the game only lets them play for a limited amount of time one day. The game shouldn't expect new players to spend money - the game should welcome them in, get them to tier 2 where they can make enough money to play continuously, and then say "Hey, you know what, you can get to tier 3 faster if you spend money". That's when I started spending money, tier 2, because that's when you realize this game is actually fairly good.

"OK, let's do Vanaduke and he has two alternatives: upgrade equipment to 5* (and hopefully he upgrades the right one) or find a guild that would carry him through FSC."

My first vanaduke deathless solo was in 4* ash tail gear. Also, by the team you get to tier 3, you hardly qualify as a new player anymore.

I'm just saying that your argument of what turns players away is silly. Either they get turned away early on, or they get turned away from lack of content. I haven't heard anyone say they quit because the end-game was too hard.

Well I was just saying your counter-argument is equally silly. It's just one of those "if I can do it and you can't, it's because you suck in this game".

People are not being turned away because the end-game is "too hard". I'm basically going to assume that is a fact, since I've never, ever heard that. Most people leave because they can't play enough early on, because there's a lack of content, or that the game in general is just too grindy.

Why did Three Rings have to make the whole Energy system anyway l: ?

Most likely, because the cr<->CE exchange worked well for OOO's other major game, puzzle pirates. The problem is that YPP's economy was much better designed during its beta than SK's economy is right now. In YPP, you can sink the equivalent of CE on things like costumes that will never earn anything, but for the things that will earn you the equivalent of crowns, all those things can very very easily pay for themselves. You don't run into the problem of spending 10CE on elevators won't give enough crowns to buy another 10CE. You can even earn quite a few crowns without spending any CE, so puzzle pirates doesn't need the equivalent of mist because new players can never get in the situation where they can't earn crowns because they don't have energy and they can't by energy because they have no crowns.

OOO has made a really fun game with cute graphics, but they slapped on an economy that is poorly designed/thought out and the game suffers because of it. It is possible for the SK team to fix things, but it doesn't seem likely with the direction they are going. They have added lots of CE sinks, without many crown sinks, and they have added no additional mat sinks since the release. Worse, by adding big CE sinks, they come across as greedy, while crown sinks cause indirect CE sinks because the only way to fountain crowns into the game is to sink energy. OOO could accomplish equivalent CE sinks by using crown sinks and come off looking like they just want people to play the game a lot.

I think that the energy system is fine. Great even!

The problem is that nothing is told to the user about it. It was a few days before I even figured out you could even buy energy using crowns. Perhaps the first time a player tries to use energy and doesn't have enough, they should get some sort of pop-up saying "You don't have enough energy! You can buy energy using crowns or cash using the button in the bottom right!"

I think just that would help a lot.

Thats the thing with a novel system.... people always think its stupid if they can't understand how it works. The way the energy system is structured is, by far, one of the better F2P payment system I've ever come across. While not nearly as developed as PP, having CE as a direct part of the economy means any player can side step the restrictions by contributing to the market system in one form or another. Players that purchase CE with cash, funds OOO and creates the basis for the economy. Those players take up the role as suppliers, trading with other players for items of interest. (or speeding through content and binge play... which doesn't contribute to the economy, unless they want vanity items. Those people simply pay to play.) Everyone is the consumer... Eventually CE fuels their activities, and they contribute back though CE/CR trades. The only real costs they have is time and effort.

Every other F2P game I've played typically involves the bait and switch grinding, or Smurf berrying* the players. These methods are designed to milk players by luring them in, creating a dependency on something for advancement, while keeping the cash values as abstract as possible. It looks like a good setup for the players, but in reality its just trying to sell you a time share condo.

I used to play a game called Rappelz (korean MMO), that used an item called a Stamina saver, doubling your XP gain for an hour. In the later parts of the game you "needed" these items to make any progress, with steadily diminishing returns the longer you played. At around lvl 60 (on a cap of 100, then 120 after) you could advance 1 level every 2 dungeon trips (the only rewarding areas associated with your level) with SS enabled, and that starts doubling every 5-7 levels. Exploration was out of the question since anything with a higher level then you got a significant combat bonus, and trade was focused primarily on cash shop or drop-only items with huge price tags attached (the game had wild inflation the longer a world server was up). Free players only had 2 options.... Either sell some high ticket drops (like pets or rare armor/weapons) to get SS, or spend hours farming for in-game currency to buy them, so they could grind in dungeons. There was also huge pressure with some players since the exp and drop rewards required a party to be within a span of 10 levels or the game would impose huge penalties to stop power leveling. Soloing often wasn't an option since overworld monsters didn't give any significant rewards aside from quests.... there was pet farming, but your base odds were so low, it could take days just to find one. I eventually gave up at lvl 105 when the cost of progress was simply too high, even if I was buying stuff out of the cash shop directly.
/anecdote

The point being, players aren't used to the idea of something like this being upfront. So their first reaction is to think that its a blatant ripoff since most other games try to at least hide that fact from you.

*A critical resource that can only be obtained by cash, and is exceedingly difficult or impossible to trade with other players.

@winged I wish I get that now! It only drops and doesn't come back? Won't that scare a new player? But what if Players create other accounts to send over the armor to noob accounts to make the hard armors with the free 500 energy, if they don't do that already? yes, I know you said needs a few tweaks, but how about extra mist tanks? Or maybe not... :/
The game is not noob-friendly and only gets better when T2 starts because now you know how to manage energy and you know what you want and how you'd look like. At first, there's so much it's boring. I actually don't know how to fix that. How about double energy speed to refill ME for like a week or few days? And again, how does OOO stop players from creating tool'd knights to aid other knights with energy?