phakh the best thing about this thread was that it was a troll, and you tried to logic with that

I played Idle for a like half a year and then quit because I got fed up with it. I don't touch that thing and I tell others not to play Idle. If more people boycotted Idle, maybe Fizzer would get the message.

I think Fizzer is a busy person and I refrained from spamming his in game mail. But if people on regular basis pointed him out (through mail) about ridiculous prices and lack of care for Warzone classic, maybe he'd get the message. As far as I know, it's not against rules to send suggestions to Fizzer.

If Fizzer is short on money, he should be up front about it. He could make a fundraiser and raise some money for further game development. There are plenty of players who care about the game enough to send Fizzer a donation.

Community and Fizzer does not have to be at odds, we can figure things out together. Fizzer does not have to make all the decisions himself. For example, some of the players could be real life marketing workers for, Fizzer could really receive some good hints if he payed attention to the community.

phakh the best thing about this thread was that it was a troll, and you tried to logic with that

I've been playing this game since it first came out on Kongregate ~10 years ago. I like this game and I don't want it to get worse. I don't care what others think about me. I've been seeing this game change its direction and I'm not the only who doesn't like how things are developing. Majority of players are not fans of this "idle era". If we don't speak our mind, things could get worse. It's better to act later than never.

Edited 9/18/2021 19:32:27

Fizzer made Warzone Idle because he likes idle games and wanted to make his own.
There's also a revenue component (as stated on stream) that motivated its creation. Idle is quite obviously also there to make money and remove coins from the market; it's a pay-to-progress game (pay-to-win when it comes to Idle Battles) and has one of the 2 WZ purchases that can't be made with coins (Super Army Camp, Name Change).

Phakh is making his case that this revenue component outweighs the motivation that you described. Simply pointing out that there's another stated motivation doesn't really respond to his point, because he's clearly aware of that if he's arguing that revenue is the real motivation.

over 100,000 people play this game
Peak MAUs were 80k (see: Warlight's response to Activision's motion to dismiss Warlight's countersuit). Current MAUs are probably around 60k (see: Semice's datadump). Note: the charts below are from Semice's datadump, not from official sources, and I make no guarantee of their correctness.

But in terms of the activity, a massive share (probably the majority) comes from the visible highly-active players: 40% of accounts (pre-Idle, probably higher now) quit before Level 2, 50% before their 4th multi-player game (again, pre-Idle).

This is what the activity distribution looked like (again, pre-Idle):



So really, 60k is a wildly inflated number if you want to estimate how many people actually play this game vs. people who check it out for a bit and then leave.

That 60-80k includes new joins. Going by pre-Idle rates, there were about 280 new accounts/day, so that's 8k new joins per month. Here's what happened to the new accounts that were created in a recent pre-COVID cohort:



The MAU number then also includes ~8k new accounts, of which ~5k join and permanently quit within the month (if this pre-COVID cohort is representative).

I think if you look at where the activity comes from, there's not as many "hidden" players out there as your figure implies. Given the activity distribution, I suspect that an average member of the visible and active community has pretty good visibility into the the part of the playerbase that regularly plays. Personally, I'd even make the claim that the community has by far the best visibility into what the active playerbase wants, albeit w.r.t. player quality-of-life improvements and not in terms of what would translate into revenue or activity.

Edited 9/18/2021 14:45:01

lmaooooo

There are plenty of players who care about the game enough to send Fizzer a donation.

So your plan is to... provide financial support to Activision even when you're dissatisfied with their priorities around Warzone? Your words say one thing, your dollars another!

you got so close!

Just forget about the small indie dev thing. Mom and pop shops aren't better than Walmart; they just trick you into thinking that 'cause they've got a human face. What would you do if it were Activision ignoring community feedback, rejecting all transparency, and focusing on the cash cow?

Think, Phakh, think!

What I say is that if Fizzer is having issues with money and that's his reason for this Idle thing, he can make things more clear. If Fizzer makes something good that people appreciate, he deserves money for it. If he makes something that is not desired, people have a right to boycott him financially.

If Fizzer implemented positive changes, added more features to Warzone classic and made idle pricing fair, people would be much more willing to support him. Positive actions deserve recognition and if Fizzer is really short on money, if he starts caring for community and proves it, I think he could host a successful fundraiser.

No Fizzer means no Warzone. No community means no Warzone. We need to come together and make things better together. If Fizzer really cares about money, then he needs to earn it.

No Fizzer means no Warzone.

[citation needed]

If Fizzer really cares about money, then he needs to earn it.

[citation needed]

i know several people who swore off the monthly membership because of this whole clan war ordeal... no telling if he will care about something like that

EDIT: When is this getting moved to OT? It's a troll thread.

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swore off the monthly membership

A (functionally) political boycott like this won't work because the Membership isn't a donation. It gets you a fair bit of value (posting memes on forum, accessing API, creating modded games, being able to create enough tournaments to run Captain's League) that most highly-active users would probably prefer over $3.99 (or however much it costs).

Suppliers are able to extract a portion of the value they create. IOW, if I sell apples, the maximum price I can charge you (and the maximum degree to which I can disregard your interests as a consumer) is bounded by the value the apple creates for you. In practice, apple sellers aren't able to take full advantage of this because there's a lot of apple sellers, they compete for your demand, and consequently they lower prices and increase quality.

But suppose there's only one apple seller in town. They can really milk their apples. Consumers could get mad and say they'll boycott the seller, but they still get more out of buying the apple than not. Buying apples is a positive-sum transaction- if you exchange $5 for a honeycrisp, it means you would rather have the honeycrisp than a crisp $5. When you buy the apple, you're not donating to the apple seller; you're pursuing your own interest.

So if you're mad at the apple seller, you'd need to think of something different. You could maybe take over the apple stand and make it a non-profit, detaching it from the system of incentives (but somehow creating new incentives that align with what apple eaters want). Or you could get other apple sellers to come to town and create competition.

Of course, you know this already. When the apple seller goes after the pear seller to make the pear seller pay them money for selling too similar a fruit, you actually do donate to the apple seller because they tell you the apple stand might close and that scares you. You know you have no leverage. You can't even imagine a world where the apple stand exists without the apple seller. The apple seller owns you.

Embrace it. There actually is no solution, because anyone who could sell apples could make a lot more money by selling guavas with the same skill-set and effort. That the apple stand exists in and of itself? Total miracle. You will buy the apples that are made available to you, and you will like them, because you still get value out of it. In fact, perhaps the only winnable scenario- in which you haven't already lost- is where you're somehow right about the apple seller's innate altruism. So maybe it's pragmatic to keep treating the apple stand as if it somehow exists outside the system of rational incentives. And to keep appealing to the apple seller as if he has your best interests in mind and is doing you a favor, even when evidence points to the contrary. Because if you're wrong, you've already lost.

Edited 9/18/2021 22:11:24

an apple a day up my urethra doesn't keep the doctor away

have you tried boycotting the doctor until he treats you better

sorry I'm French, I didn't think of that but I have thought of going on strike and asking the state to ask him to treat me better