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Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
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Author:  NakiCoTony [ Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
Greetings,

Will this game stay as it is now, or does the developers have some great plans regarding the future of this game?
I'd like to see some response from a developer.

Before we call this game anything first of all, we have to find out what is the goal! :

Pay to Win - Casual steady player base : (current system)
If they continue the current system... In the end, if they are lucky, they will be bought by an Asian company and migrate to that market where this cash-shop system is accepted. One company I could guess is Perfect World.
I have to note here that even though PW cash in 300mill$ from all their games worldwide, they gain most of their income from the Asian territories. Now Perfect World is one of the big companies that has/had a huge player-base, but it is decreasing slowly as the players are migrating to more casual social games. In response to that they are compensating with buying/developing new games into their franchisee.

From the look of this game model, I think this is a highly possible assumption that PW or some other companies will merge this game into their franchisee in the future if the game stays as it is, and it will never reach it's full potential.


But it's Free to play!!! :
Now in my point of view there are two kinds of Free to Play scenes on the market :
Casual F2P - like most western mmorpgs, Team Fortress 2 basically every f2p games where players can buy "time" or gameplay changing virtual items without restrictions.
and
E-Sport/Hardcore F2P - League of Legends, DotA2, Path of Exile etc.. where they have huge restrictions, and gain their income from Virtual Item Sales where the items are mostly cosmetics, Advertisement, Subscription model (200% exp/gold etc) and Merchandise. Oh boy.. and they cash in on those..!!!

All around the F2P market Virtual Item Sales are the 85% of the total income. Casual market has a steady income that is slowly draining while on the other hand hardcore market has huge potential as long as it is fully supported and handled professionally.

Lets see some examples that state that flying unicorns are more profitable than subscription or Pay2Win :

Okey, lets start with one of the biggest nosedive in video-game history : Diablo3
( well to be honest that's it.. i think the name in itself is enough... but lets pull out some data. :) )
After the ridiculously short content, the real money auction house with the Pay2Win shadow in itself delivered the final blow to our beloved game. The game population dropped in a rate that now it lost around 65-70% of their initial player-base.

Team Fortress 2 : after they enabled custom content publishing Gabe reported that a hardcore visual item makers gain 500k$ a year. That is one person who makes in-game items that (s)he sells in the store. I won't be surprised if the same thing happens with DotA2. This shows how successful cosmetic items can be.

SWToR : after going free to play they doubled their monthly revenue, and managed to gain back some of the player base that they lost. Even though they are slowly draining, this at least shows that the F2P is now the market standards even for AAA.

Path of Exile : an indie company that started out with 2000 players in beta, managed to take it's first steps on the route to success. They have a relatively huge player-base (2 million registered users), around 60k active ones in peak times and 20-40k in the rest. Only cosmetic cash shop items, no real money auction house like in diablo3.


If the developers of Panzar want to reach an E-sport standard with their game ( and I'd love that ), in it's current state it won't happen.
The steps necessary to reach that are :
Full Rework of the cash shop system, cosmetics only, character slots..etc
Character wipes with the refund of spent gems
Regular balance and day to day communication with the community.

I'd would be lovely to see some data of the matches it is probably too early to see what is op and what is not but i feel that this game carries that same P2W shadow that D3 had...

Phew thank you for reading.
Author:  Sindri [ Mon Jul 15, 2013 3:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
We will definitely never see (or, at least, in the next 2-3 years time) that the only thing that demands payment is cosmetic stuff (well, and premium acc. too). Up untill there are people that like pwning (such games like this one are made for those people), they will pay. Up untill some people pay, nothing will change. Everyone is happy and the balance is perfect. All the rest are just whining (as P2Wers and developres say).
Concerning cosmetics, developers themselves say that their stuff is low in numbers, so they can't make things fast. What about the community, they are on Russian forum everyday.
Author:  NakiCoTony [ Tue Jul 16, 2013 2:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
Honestly I don't think that it requires that much of a work. All they have to do is remove the level-up with crystal and the buy/upgrade gear with crystal.
That is it. Full character wipes, and than it is done. They can focus on blood raining emoticons, and non combat pets / rainbow fairy wings etc...

If they had a data analyst to do a background check.. they could realize that they loose ~70% of their initial player base just by the site of this Cash Shop System ( and ~15% of the rest on the way during the first quarter )

I really hope that they reconsider this.
If they are doing another "grab quick / cash in all" clone of a game, they are going to end up like Bloodline Champions. 1-2 years of existence. ( and BLC only got like 4-3k players at peak time in its prime ) // not sure on the profits. - no data

Here is a tip :
Go for ads in game and stuff like that.. I might as well watch an advertisement (video) of the new CPU/GPU during loading as long as its not playing before every game, and have a balanced community.

May I get an official response here?
Author:  JSarge [ Tue Jul 16, 2013 4:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
Greetings!

First of all, big thanks for the constructive feedback NakiCoTony! It's great to see this much interest towards Panzar, and we greatly appreciate the effort and thought put into your post.

We are aware of that the structure of the game as it is now, is far from perfect. At the same time, we are eager to develop it, of course, and will use all the resources we have available to improve the game on all fronts.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to share any official statistics at this point. What we can do, is to forward this feedback up the chain - with this presentation it will go far. :)


Thanks once more for the excellent analysis and feedback. Despite the issues with the game, I hope you'll continue enjoying it!
Author:  ComptonEMT [ Tue Jul 16, 2013 7:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
NakiCoTony wrote:
All they have to do is remove the level-up with crystal and the buy/upgrade gear with crystal.

I still dont get why the ability to do these 2 things is such a big deal. It should simply be time or money. Leveling up with money gets you nothing besides going to max level without having the experience or gear to be there. Buying gear means you dont have to grind for it.

Time or Money. People need to stop calling that P2W

with no doubt there are some things that need to be remedied about the crafting system but for god sakes people... stop claiming "Time or Money" setups to be P2W... its pay for impatience or pay for advancement. Either way your paying with your time or your money. Some of us dont have the time to play because we have busy lives. some of you have tons of time to play but no money. This system makes us equal. We spend what we have more of to get to the SAME PLACE as each other.

TLDR?
Some people spend time to get things and others spend money. They get the same exact gear. Not P2W
Author:  NakiCoTony [ Tue Jul 16, 2013 7:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
Thank you JSarge for the reply.

ComptonEMT wrote:
I still dont get why the ability to do these 2 things is such a big deal.
Time or Money. People need to stop calling that P2W
Not P2W


@ComptonEMT: I did not said that it is P2W! I said it has that P2W shadow like D3 and... well... we all know how well that one turned out. ( AND THAT WASN'T EVEN A PvP GAME AT THAT TIME!! )

The fact is, that this "feature" splits the community. ( RADICALY!! )

People like to be competitive, its in our psyche our genes. The current system creates a gap so huge between F2P-ers and the.. well lets call them Premium Players, that at some point it stops being challenging to the player. And with the challenge, drops the interest. F2P-ers will feel like a grind and eventually came to the conclusion that this is P2W or Grind2Play..

There are topics all ower the web, comments under reviews that states that this is a major balance issue.
The game is gear oriented, and ofc. the medals are one of the true game changers...

I'd say that the current matchmaking system doesn't inculde individual player power calculation.
What is that?
In short, a mathematical equation that determines the player's power from his/her ELO, Level and "GearScore"... thus making sure that all the teams are balanced during matchmaking.

But for that system to work Panzar would need to have a large and active community. :/
Author:  ComptonEMT [ Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
The problem is in the crafting system currently. Once that is ironed out it wont be much of an issue. Besides the issues with the crafting system there is no difference between players paying with money and players paying with time. The same gear is acquired either way. The same levels are acquired either way. And heck... enchanting is only by gold. Enchanting is where the real power comes from. that unfortunately takes time (and a bit of luck) no matter which route you take...

Plain and simple... once the craftomg is ironed out for the western market there will be no gap what so ever. Right now the only gap is amulets as they take a lot of time for upkeep as a free player.

as for the "shadow" you talk about... i've seen people whining about games that are pretty darn far on the "free" end of things that people have claimed are P2W and have been in that cloud. Its mainly how much the jackholes who cry P2W want to yell. Diablo 3, your main example, suffered from a lot more than that. It was just one of the many MANY things that made people leave. It had other issues that were a lot bigger than "the shadow" which you reference

.:EDIT:.
BTW... i know people bitch about grind heavy f2p games... grinding is a time investment which works right into the time or money idea.... also think about your $60 retail games where there aren't microtransactions... EVERYONE has to grind in those... so technically a grind heavy F2P game is still half the price as you only have to put in time OR money... not both...
Author:  NakiCoTony [ Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
I use D3 because it is the best example. If a group wants they can play it in their "forced closed community, and not use (RM)AH." If you think about it, it didn't even had normal PvP, nor competitive aspects, and yet the playerbase gave up on it. Okey they got some pushes for other reasons like the content.. ( not to mention the f'ckd up AH and bots and dupes )

Well its hard for a mid sized company, especially these days. But lets hope our best that they sort it out in time.
Author:  Sindri [ Wed Jul 17, 2013 2:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
@ComptonEMT
Right. But there are also people who not work, but have money and time. Such people turns "[damn plenty of] Time or Money" into a kind of P2W. Still, there was a stream last night concerning patch 31 that will bring us reworked craft and upgrade system. So the game will be improved a bit in that way (still P2Wers got their benefits, but it's easier to reach the same).
Author:  NakiCoTony [ Wed Jul 17, 2013 9:26 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Future of Panzar - ESports Rework?
Sindri wrote:
@ComptonEMT
Right. But there are also people who not work, but have money and time. Such people turns "[damn plenty of] Time or Money" into a kind of P2W. Still, there was a stream last night concerning patch 31 that will bring us reworked craft and upgrade system. So the game will be improved a bit in that way (still P2Wers got their benefits, but it's easier to reach the same).


In a competitive game, when each player has the same progression both in level and in gear than the only thing left that can decide who is better is Skill.
Now they say that with this cash-shop they can save "time".
In an ideal situation gear should not influence the skill of a player. (that much) The players who have more time to play will have better gear but will not necessarily be skillful.
The problem comes when the better gear compensates for the lack of skill, and a player who cannot even use the block but have full gear has a positive win ratio. ( again it comes down to "lets check the statistics" )

My main problem at the moment is the progression curve is a mess with the craft and all... Sorry, there is no way around it. Sadly I could not find any topics regarding Patch 31. so i have no data. At the moment you level up way faster than you can acquire materials to craft gears for your bracket. (unless you "twink")

Plus due to the low community and the current progression the Premium Players own the F2P-ers thus making them quit the game.
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