Why did this game fail to retain players?

[Weylin]

I'm curious to know why other players lost interest, why it didn't become a game with a sustainable base. When I last checked a few months ago, the server was practically empty, which was very sad to see, especially when I had been here near launch, and saw the many hundreds of players helping each other out.

[irk]

I stopped playing because I died and lost everything enough times. Sure it didn't take long to get to lvl 20, but after getting to 20, the upgrades are hard to get or minor. 1% increase to defenses and maybe some materials to upgrade your ship items. All that work can be gone in an instant. It was fun at first, then it became tedious. Too hard to upgrade and then lose it all.

I am aware the penalties were less after some patches, but I had already moved on.

I thought the game was fantastic, very fresh and fun solo or with a group. Just harsh to die and hard to get ahead.

[[A.] KSib]

I stopped playing because I felt like I had no idea where I was supposed to go or do. The new player experience wasn't that great.

[Madfish]

Originally posted by A. KSib:

I stopped playing because I felt like I had no idea where I was supposed to go or do. The new player experience wasn't that great.

This. The gameplay design was not helping to really get into it.
Also reliant on master servers gave me bad vibes. GG to everyone who invested money just to get the game shut down.

[Antiga]

Stopped out of frustration over the premium currency prices and mechanics. That's after spending on them, which made me realize just how much I wasted for how little in return. I don't remember exactly, but €20 for a small increase in plane/storage slots, or something. What a joke... Who in their right mind would do that? In a moment of weakness, I did. And I am sure some others did as well, but like me, most of them probably regretted it.
That's not how you earn money, silly devs!

[Hiruz]

Most of the players at the time were rotmg players and were trying this new alternative given the fact that DECA was not doing much with the game. This game was awesome, there were fame trains 24/7, you could trade items with other people, the game was an actual bullet-hell where you actually had to dodge, lots of elitist players wiling to trade gold for weapons so that you could increase hangar and inventory capacity as a f2p, and there were not that many bs 1-shot mechanics that could kill you. Not many people complained about not having enough inventory space or hangar space because it is the same in rotmg, you have limited inventory space and character slots, hence why people whining about this were a minority, but what killed the game was the fact that they basically removed the most important element of the game, and that was permadeath. As I said before, most players at the time were rotmg players and were attracted to this game because of a similar premise that rotmg offers, but once you take out the most important element out of the game, as I said, most people who are attracted to the initial product will most likely quit. There were also some server related drama, I think some players got their server shut down and promised to be given back in the future, but all they did was to open an Asian server and never gave back that other server, or so I heard.

[Crescent_S]

It was fun and very chill to play, and now I want to play it again.

However I stop playing it because life became busy, and I didn't find any friends to play with, so I was always on my own.

[Dan_The_Noob]

it was basically realm of the mad god with more complicated progressions.

[FUS]

I'm happy that this game died cuz I'm sick and tired of those devs that tries to suck money from the kids and their families.
I hope, devs will understand that "play demo buy if you liked" style was better idea to develop a game like old school.
Note: I stopped playing cuz of the paying wall + as #2 op said I didnt understand anything about the game play. 2 hrs blind played to get something but no.

[AlabasterSXS]

It died because they removed the MMO free-fly aspect and replaced it with these dumb mission lobbies with join window countdown and maximum players of like 10. This killed the game instantly.

[Sweagen]

A lot of reasons tbh, hard to narrow it down also it';s been a long time since the shutdown I don't remember all the reasons perfectly clearly ^^;

[RagnCharran]

I left, after putting in 100+ hours, when they implemented forced teams.

I wasn't pleased when they changed permadeath, but I already had all the planes unlocked so the grossly increased level grind didn't really impact me the way it screwed new players.

But I liked being a lone wolf and taking that option away killed it for me. And likely scared new players away.

[WHiZ]

personally i liked it when they got rid of permadeath. the fact was it was not a large enough audience from rotmg to sustain the game,

they needed to make it appeal to casual players to open a wider audience. granted they couldda done this by just opening a casual server so both hardcore and casual players could play as they liked rather than removing it for all. the game was way too punishing for us casual players,

i had stopped playing after losing everything too many times.. i came back once they rolled that back some, but the game still suffered from the other major flaw.. crappy monetization..

i realize it was slightly better than rotmg so the initial audience liked it, but it was crap for anyone not from that game/more casual games. i would have preferred just a flat 10-15$ price and everything was unlockable/craftable.