Suggestion Ways for DSO to make more Money (1) - Communication

I do not like the way BP has decided to monetize this game. The All For None event has been the tipping point. I would like to offer suggestions that would make me more willing to spend money on this game or on mechanisms for BP to make money that I would find more tolerable to the game meta.

SUGGESTION #1: Massively improve communication between devs/DSO and players.

Recent communication failures:
1) The big 209 wisdom/group update was delayed many times with the delay notification coming days after the previously promised date. I am not saying DSO owes us this information, but providing it and sticking to it builds trust which in turn makes it easier for players to spend money.

2)PVP I do not play pvp, but I've seen enough complaints to know there is frustration.

3)The Big Game Hunt final community challenge. Not a huge failure, but it did not help.

4) The secret events that came with R209. They were not events. They were 10% increased group xp.

5) The universally hated All for None event. Test Server showed it was bad but nothing was fixed. Please tell us why you did this event.

I am sure there are more, but I want to move onto the suggestions.

How I think communication can be improved:

1) Make a roadmap. As it stands we only know the events and updates potentially coming for one month in advance. Why would anyone buy more than a month of Premium/deluxe if we don't have any indication of what is coming next. I am not saying post the exact dates of events in a year, or of even in two months but let us know stuff like which month will have Dragan, Infested, Dark Dwarf, etc. We can be pretty confident about Winter Solstice, and Ghost Festival I hope.

2) Once a month State of the Game address. The dev team letter was quite a while ago. I like the Youtube streams, maybe make those once a month. Last stream was 3 months ago.

3) Respond to feedback. Dragan minis were not improved. All for None was not improved from test server, if anything it was made worse. Tell us why.

4) Run everything through Trakilaki. Everyone in the game trusts Traki more than BP or DSO devs. He tests something on the TS, says its pointless, later everyone else agrees.

5) Explain everything more. Just give more information. Traki has kept the wiki up fantastically, but he can't tell us what is in BP's mind when they make an event.

 

how to make more money..
make this game so good that people will want to pay you

 

It's even more simple than that. All of the suggestions I have given wouldn't even change the game; they would just change the way the game is communicated.

 

Hello @KingKrazy1 and welcome to DSO English forum.

No you were not violating the guidelines.
However, we moderators, are trying to keep the forum neat and clean as much as possible. After all, we are the ones who are forwarding your feedback and suggestions on to dev team. Keeping things organized is helping moderators finding things easily and in same time helps the forum users read contents without going through more threads.
Because of that, and the similarities of the threads, they were merged together.
Once threads merged, there were two consecutive posts in the thread. Consecutive posting is not allowed, so the posts have been merged together.

Naming other games and companies is something we do not allow in the forum. Sometimes we can make exception, it is up to the moderator's discretion.
This rule is not imposed by Bigpoint but by the moderation team.
Why?
We are not experts in law or economics, we are only experts in Drakensang Online.
This way we are protecting ourselves from all implications that may come or not, in case the T&C or international laws are being breached and we are not aware of it.

In general, forum users are not allowed to edit posts after moderator's edit. That is because once a moderator read a new post, that post is marked as 'read' and it is hard to see if there is editing afterwards.
In this case, I am giving you permission to edit your initial post as you like, but only once.
You may start another thread, but naming them 'part 1', 'part 2', 'part 3' can lead to another big merged thread.

Cheers.

 

Thank you so much for the reply. This is exactly the sort of communication I want from DSO and I am already feeling better.

 

Well if dso wants to make more money its quite simple
Their website is not search engine optimized so whenever you search ARPG they do not pop up
This has been pointed out before
If they are nr1 on google they will be so busy they will need to acquire new servers

 

I have also noticed this. I have recently been on the lookout for another arpg that gives the same combat feeling as DSO but have not found one I like. DSO did not show up. I feel like DSO would really benefit from some sensible advertising.

If only they could have healthy monetization like a certain game set in space with ninjas.

 

Overall, I like your suggestions. There is just one small matter...

... They actually tried this during the time when Silver Ess Greg and Haruki were CMs. The only problem was, whoever is responsible for making the stuff could never keep up with The Schedule of Promised Things, so they would come to live server perma-delayed. This resulted in quite a bit of crying on the forums and social media, so I guess it got dropped when whoever is the new CM took over.

 

I think DSO's idea of a CM is vastly different from ours. We expect a Community Manager to act as a liaison between the player base and DSO/Devs. That doesn't appear to be the case (anymore?). Our current CM, if he is still employed, has shown up twice in the public eye.

Personally, I think we have a new set of Devs who have actually been trying to listen to us and have been making changes. Look at the ability to hold more essence per slot coming soon. For me, that clears up pages and pages of inventory. Hallelujah!

If our CM was involved in that change, he isn't doing much to make his impact felt.

I'd love to know we had a voice in the paid DSO world, and not just this 'free" one in the forums.

 

I completely understand that a "Schedule of Promised Things" would probably do more harm than good to our trust, as it did with the 209 Release. I don't want a Roadmap to be a schedule, promise, or any such thing. I would want it to be more of a look into the minds of the devs to see what they are trying to bring us. When they have done the CM streams they gave us a sort of roadmap, but with less explanation than I'd like and rare updates. Another example of a roadmap post would be something like their Dev Team Letter, which should also be updated every month. They must have an internal plan for what sizeable events get released in what month. They could say: August is Anniversary, September is either Event A if we can or Event B if we can't, October is Ghost Festival, November is whichever A or B wasn't in september, December is Solstice. This way, as they prepare to bring us these events, we can be more involved and say what we want to see more of. If people complain about event A because they really wanted event B, they can told to shut up, because it will be coming in two months. The principle for me is that the more information about the inner workings of the dev team I get, the more willing I will be to part with my money. I'm fine with delays when reasons and communication are given.

Plus, this doesnt mean they cant still surprise us with things here or there.

I completely agree with this.

 

I also agree that communication is very important.

DSO is also communicating with us, it's just they are on a different frequency. So what we hear are all silence. Maybe we need some sort of a modem to actually understand them.

Regarding their financial status. I do some rigorous research to find if they are making money with the business strategy they are using.

The result is, they are actually making money more than we think. I run it in my spreadsheet and DSO financial status is infact optimized on every aspect. Like a very OP DSO player. It's true coz numbers don't lie.

The "Happy Customer = Profit" we know is an ancient business way. With this, the cost and effort is high resulting a less to no profit. A noob build like a Q4 set user. A mech that still use 3 pcs of bloodrune set. Very outdated.

However, DSO use a very modern approach to business. This is the,

Love + Hate = Profit colliding equation.

Developed by a popular business mathematician, Taylor Swift. A lot of successfull businessman are using it in their company. Trump and Zuckerberg are the great examples.

I want to discuss here the details on how that equation works but kinda off-topic and irrelevant moderators might delete it anyway. Maybe i can post it on Trakilaki's wiki if he wants to.

So I'll just give a very simple analogy here. The love hate colliding equation works like:

1. Parent-Child relationship. Whatever the child do and how the parents hates the child actions. Parents would always give love, money, raise them and hoping someday that child will change and grow big.

2. Husband-Wife relationship. Husband must give money to wife period. Even how bored you are, how hard you work, countless boring events with wife friends and so on. Pointless to question her she won't listen anyway. Wife needs money period. Regardless of wife's shortcomings husband loves her, support here, endure, and hope someday will be better and fun.


The love hate colliding equation is very effective. That's why DSO continously thrives.

This equation really works and found an ancient scripts pertaining to this equation and being used by very ancient people.

Read on Vault Track1 from Def Leppard. Here some of the translated writings:

"I don't wanna fight no more I don't know what we're fighting for
When we treat each other baby like an act of war
I could tell a million lies and it would come as no surprise
When the truth is like a stranger hits you right between the eyes
There's a time and a place and a reason and I know
I got a love to believe in all I know got to win this time
Without you, one night alone
Is like a year without you baby do you have a heart of stone?
Without you
Can't stop the hurt inside when love and hate collide"

That text says it all.

 

I agree they are on a different frequency, but I am more concerned with their frequency. By this I mean, I am ok if they continue to talk the same way to us, as long as they do it more often. Right now part of their communication is to just put out content 95%+ of the community hates and hopes the <5% spends lots of cash on it. What does this tell us? They are cashing in on the game.

How is "happy Customer = profit" an outdated strategy? Taylor Swift > Beyonce ?? I think not, even in simple terms of money.
How is Love + Hate working for that huge space opera film franchise about Sky walking? Compare that to the "Love + Love" model of the space opera with the tree and the racoon and all the other films associated. Or how about you look at what video games are the most popular these days, is the space ninja game using "love + hate"? Are the popular games in the battle royale genre using "love + hate"?

In order for "Love + Hate" to be better than "Love + Love" then making the All for None Event more like what the players want would lead to DSO making less money. Please explain how this is possible. I think they could have achieved much more with the same amount of effort.

Side note: Didnt Zuckerberg recently lose billions in net worth?

I actually would not be surprised if currently it looks like they are making a lot of money, but I would still say their financial decision worry me (as a player not as a BP owner). This is because I think that "Love + Hate" can only last so long. Eventually a parent will give up on their offspring, and eventually a spouse will get a divorce. I believe a couple that mutually love will have much better finances than a couple trying to get what they can out of each other (considering everything else equal, and not considering whether rich people are more or less loving). This is supported by my experience, which I know is not a substitute for actual statistics.

Going back to DSO, I believe the reason why it looks like they are thriving financially is because they are only investing in their payer base. Other than the wisdom/group talents/skills, I see no evidence that they are investing into long term player satisfaction. This means to me that BP has seen the end of DSO (dwindling player base), and instead of investing more, has decided to cash in on the investment of the past. It looks like BP does not believe this game will last more than 2 years into the future, so they are doing everything they can to squeeze the cash out of us until we finally give up. The future of DSO is a small number of End game payers and a small number of Newbies that don't know the game is comatose.

TL;DR The "Love + Hate" model in the case of DSO is a financially sound way to cash out of a dying game, whereas the "Love + Love" model would also be financially sound and would probably make DSO lots more money in the long run.

 

I've complained about the lack of proper communication between dso-ppl and players so many times For a moment there was a person willing to come here and answer some of our concerns, but I guess that person is no longer a member of the team, because the thread is abandoned. It's a pity that such a big game has so little to tell to its players.
What's the use of an official forum when CM is only communicating within some "crappy" instagram?

 

While I am in support of extra communication, it's also important to consider what we want communicated. I started playing this game a loooong time ago now, I vaguely remember the old patch notes barely told you what was going on. Nowadays, the patch notes are still incomplete (esp compared to some other games I've played in the meantime) but it's a lot improved.

Personally, I feel it'd be nice to get some official answers to some select questions at times. Maybe even some PR statements when the [EDIT] hits the fan with crappy events like the Anniversary one.