Launch Update, Damage Control
What a whirlwind these past few days have been! Lots of things have been going great, and a few things not so great. In particular, we feel we dropped the ball when it comes to introducing some parts of the game to new players, ESPECIALLY those who haven't played AirMech before.
What a whirlwind these past few days have been! Lots of things have been going great, and a few things not so great. In particular, we feel we dropped the ball when it comes to introducing some parts of the game to new players, ESPECIALLY those who haven't played AirMech before.
A recurring point of feedback is "pay 2 win" or "feels like F2P". We were not getting this kind of feedback from players ahead of leaving Early Access, but we didn't change anything in this area. So we're taking a fresh look to see where we went wrong.
Originally, we made great efforts to remove the premium currency from Wastelands, even though you can use your AirMech Strike account and inventory. This was confusing to players--"where is my stuff?" It tied right into the Player Market, as people owned lots of stuff, and it didn't matter to them which game they were in, they wanted to be able to buy and sell their stuff.
Then players wanted to be able to use their Strike currency to buy things in Wastelands. And also have new exclusive things they could get. Makes sense, so we keep adding stuff. Over time, we added quite a bit, but were not sure how brand new players would see this. So we give anyone who buys Wastelands a big stash of Diamonds--in our minds more than they should need, so they can participate in the fun part of the economy and not have any reason to buy Diamonds. It was suppose to be the best of both worlds.
But as we see, that doesn't come across. And I don't blame players at all--there's so many games that do sketchy stuff with F2P and premium spending. The reason we use a premium currency and not cash is because we do give it out, and there are even Quests that can give some Diamonds. Things that cost Diamonds in Strike are able to drop sometimes in Wastelands.
So we know this is a problem (our recent Steam reviews point this out very well) but we're debating the best way to fix it. We don't want to make a change that "fixes" it but makes the game worse. For example, stripping out all the Diamond things, hiding the Player Market, this would probably help a lot for first impressions, but it would reduce the value to the players--and many existing players would be very upset.
Do we just ban all Parts from the Player Market? How to let the players who would want that part of the game there, but not show it to the rest? It feels like a tricky problem.
We want your help! Suggestions, especially from new players, and also tell us what currently confuses you, or what you figured out over time. We're going through all the reviews (good and bad) gathering feedback, but talking to us here or in the forums is also great.
We'll probably start with some simple things like disabling buying Diamonds for new non-Strike players, maybe making the Player Market show up later, and reconsidering what we allow players to sell on the Player Market. But we want more suggestions please!
