So still not free to play?!?

[olElLI]

This is mostly to the devs of this (should I say) awesome game.

A pure online experience with no players online, apart from community driven events. How do you expect to sell copies anyhow with no-one online?

From that, I guess, you're counting on the random guy, and some sales, to buy your game. Well, it's clearly not enough, given this amount of time.

The game itself is great, just takes some time to be proficient.

So, why not make it free to play off steam itself, with steam promoting it for free.... then, you can upscale a sale from those wanting *more* perks -- and avoid a catch 22 situation with people NOT buying your game because there's no-one online.


P.S. your free website client, which only serve as hardcore word by mouth anyhow, is not enough...

[FRiENEMY™]

You can pick up the game for 1€, so...

[Kissamies]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Charlie Sheen:

You can pick up the game for 1€, so...

Yes, but what are the chances of a random aspiring player stumbling across such offer? Little better than finding the free demo on the game's homepage but not much, I think. It would be much better if the free version was right there on the store page here on Steam.

[Roy]

Agreed, make it f2p already, you can't milk it out anymore.

[FIRE DO CLUBE PINGUIM]

if they make it f2p, they better gimme my money back, i waisted 15 euros on this crap and it hadnt anyone playing.. i didnt know there was a thing called steam charts and when i played the demo the servers were all full.. 3 months later... 4 person peak per day.

[OkiDoki]

In this game I see a sad history. The original mod had so much potential, and were great fun to play, even if they were to never be improved. But even in those days of the Make Something Unreal contests, ABuc suffered from the same problem as now: almost noone playing. Even when it was at its hight there were fewer than 2 populated servers and from what I remember it was just a few real players and all non-english speaking. Red Orchestra had the same opportunities, and much less innovation, however it appealed to the much larger fps community that ABuc could not (unfortunately), so it won the contest based on community support, I imagine. Through the last decade Ludocraft kept the dream alive somehow, slowly building towards a commercial release, but the ripoff game Guns of Icharus managed to snap up the whole market of airship fps. (Even though its missing many of the features that made ABuc great, and focuses mainly on repetitive repairing). It is my theory that the only advantage GoI had over ABuc was marketing. ABuc has a better game and has had many more years to sell it and yet its such a forgotton niche - still in the mod realm of popularity. For games that are 100% about multiplayer, you must build the fanbase alongside the software, and Ludo seems to have completely neglected to do that. GoI arranged lets' plays and reviews on youtube, but ABuc didint make any attempt to get that kind of exposure.

It may be possible to salvage their dream by going Free to Play and then selling minor upgrades ingame, coupled with a massive media blitz - free copies to reviewers with all the unlocks, etc. Even if they went F2P with ads in the game, and a $6 fee to remove them, that would be acceptable. If they told the GoI fanbase that this is the 'original' airship fps and that it has boarding, swords, and all that stuff GoI doesnt have - they would jump on it if the price was low enough. Ludo has always just seemed to have ZERO interest in marketing - to the massive detriment of their own game and everyone who enjoyed it.

[Kissamies]

Yeah, it was kind of understandable why ABu never made big as a mod. There was dozens of competing mods because of the MSUC, and majority of the people people who owned UT2k4 seemed to be only interested in playing the vanilla game. Only Red Orchestra got any permanent following and even that community wasn't so big. There were countless of mods that never got any sort of community. ABu actually did relatively well.

As an independent game, ABu had every chance to succeed, but Ludocraft failed at promoting the game (they did try, but the efforts seemed misdirected to me, mostly showing up at cons, LAN parties and charity events... there was some lets plays and reviews tho), failed to make it accessible, and failed to follow up with support after release. I am guessing they didn't do so good with securing funding either. I think the whole perk/flaw system wasn't properly tested before release and therefore the release was rushed and dropping the support after few minor patches, even though there was many acknowledged issues, seems to support this theory.

In one of those previews/interviews, they did talk about a possibility of a Free to Play model. They actually kind of do have it in the form of demo version, but the download is hidden in the game's site where few people will come look for it instead in the Steam Store page, for example. Why they half-assed it like that, I will never understand.

[Zero]

Oprindeligt skrevet af MonoNatural:

snip

Let me point this out, the main reason people went for GoI instead of this isn't because of marketting alone. i didn't see anything on this or guns of icarus in terms of advertising.

the main reason why i chose that over this is simple; Ship design, most of those ships look like airships. while what ive seen of this... they look like wooden rafts someone decided to make out of boards in there back yard and strapped baloons to the top.

[Mrozek]

At least they should throw it on *humble bundle* or something.

[telamiina]

It is free.