Allegiance

[Dome]

Another year has passed and we are still here, only in fewer numbers.

This is a great game. This may be the greatest game.
So why then is it so hard for us to keep it going? We can only barely stem the tide.

Allegiance has changed. Oh how it's changed. In player base numbers, in core modifications, factions, in leadership, in what squads exist... in all of the personal relationships we have developed and maintained along the way.

The only thing that hasn't change is the feeling of playing the game. This experience is both excitingly familiar and truly unique every time. Take into consideration real life emotions, ever changing real life expectations of the game, real life technical capabilities, then add team dynamics, commander strength, settings, factions, etc, etc, etc ad nauseam.

Every single game of Allegiance that I've ever played has been different. No matter the factions, there are always many things that make Allegiance games unique. Add to that competition... ranking. A will to win.. A will to improve. This is what Allegiance is to me.

This game is the best platform for experiencing an immersive competitive team real time strategy game play that I have not found with any other game up to this point.

We are now at a cross roads. In the coming months Allegiance and its players will be tested. We must first accept and adapt to current conditions. Then we have to do whatever we can to keep this going!

Ideas are welcome from any angle. Marketing, fixing the game itself, events, whatever. The die hards are still here. Squad games will continue at least. Events will continue. You will always have a reason to play if only at certain times.

[raumvogel]

This is the point about this game that made it #1 for me right at the start. It's just like real war. It is totally UN-predictable. It is complex.It depends on many factors to determine how the game currently being played pans out.
I think we are going through a tough time only because the general public is just getting used to computers and the internet.It amazes me how people are so willing to dump big money into technology just to play lesser games.
I consider myself to be part of an elite group of people who "got it" right from the get go.

[Saikon]

Perhaps port the game to a Windows Phone App. It is a Microsoft game afterall.

I'm returning to this game after being away for a couple of years because it is the best game ever and everything else bores the hell out of me!

[dusanc]

QUOTE (Saikon @ Jan 11 2013, 06:23 PM) Perhaps port the game to a Windows Phone App. It is a Microsoft game afterall.

I'm returning to this game after being away for a couple of years because it is the best game ever and everything else bores the hell out of me!

[Spunkmeyer]

1- First, we need to stop discussing "what's wrong." - that's just going in circles, we know what's wrong. We can't stop people from quitting - we have been beating this dead horse for years. People will get bored and leave, that's natural. The problem is precisely lack of new signups.

2- Of course that's partially because Allegiance is an old game, and we have no control over that. What we have control over is marketing. I'm pretty sure raum *is* our marketing at this point. One person.

3- I also have a problem with the "free space game" approach. That's not necessarily a failure, but it vastly undersells Allegiance. What Raum said above is far, far better. I've also used "X-wing vs Tie Fighter, except bigger, with commanders and real tactics".

We need to put together an agreed-on marketing plan and then recruit people to help with it. Without marketing nothing's going to happen. We need traction on google, forums and social media. We need to be able to get some SEO on the main website. We need to see what's going on with Google Analytics and revise accordingly.

4- Once we are marketing, we need to work on new player retention. Note, NOT player retention, but NEW player retention. And that's better documentation, better tutorials/videos, ease of setup, working links, removal of outdated stuff, ease of access to mods and such.

5- A big part of that is we need to get the new release out so we can have the default keymap and training fixed. For that we need a push to play more on the beta server. so we know it's bug-free

6- Anything more will need more development, which will require, amazingly enough, developers. (I'm personally out of time at least for the next two months, RL is kicking my ass.) If we can get AI up and running it will extend the lifetime of this game at least another year if not more. Other effort can go into making the game easier to get into. But we don't have the resources and I don't have an answer to that one.

[KGJV]

QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Jan 12 2013, 12:37 AM) If we can get AI up and running it will extend the lifetime of this game at least another year if not more.

AI ?! what for ?

IMHO the game lacks single player content (like a story driven campaign). Sure at heart it's a multiplayer game but when there is not enough players to provide the minimum 'threshold' required to keep new players interested then you need something else to hook them.

Lack of comms and balance in pickup games is also another issue. It leads to long delay between games and then to crappy games which repel new players . The game needs a new mode, something between DM and Conquest, with no comms but with still a strong RTS component. Something where tech "auto-advances" when sectors are conquered for instance (having X players in a sector for Y minutes could be a way to conquer a sector) and income depends on the numbers of sectors each team has. tons of ideas have been discussed here. Games with comms should mainly be squad only.

Finally, remove these damn hiders , it's long overdue. I still can't believe the people in charge haven't understand how badly the hider system damaged this game. it's not rocket science to understand that.

[HSharp]

So some sort of DotA like game for Alleg?

[Cadillac]

A good idea put forward by OMB I think was to have some sort of survival mode.

Perhaps an extension of the training mode where you have to defend miners against waves. Just spitballin'.

[Spunkmeyer]

QUOTE (KGJV @ Jan 11 2013, 06:02 PM) AI ?! what for ?

Exactly for the reason you state - to keep the game going when you have less than 15 players on (which is at least 80% of the time). You say single player content, I say AI to replace human players till numbers pick up. It doesn't matter if the AI is retarded (which it will be) as long as the game maintains an equal number of retards on each side. What we need here is a layer that will automatically add or remove a pig on each side, maintaining a constant minimum player count.

I'm not interested in Allegiance without comms, but then I'm not interested in 5-a-side Allegiance either. So there is definitely room for a no-commander mode.

You need to make a good case for removal of hiders if you expect anything to be done on that front. We've always had hiders ever since AZ died. I'm not really sure what the problem is.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves a bit with development issues. It's irrelevant without a decent marketing effort. You can make this into Natural Selection 2 and still nobody would come to play.

[KGJV]

QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Jan 12 2013, 02:09 AM) You need to make a good case for removal of hiders if you expect anything to be done on that front. We've always had hiders ever since AZ died. I'm not really sure what the problem is.

good case?! I thought it was obvious that hiders have hurt a lot this community and repelled tons of new comers.

You can't have a healthy and growing community if new people can identify who is who, if people who behave badly can just hide and still play.

I thought the whole point of ACSS was to have SSO between this site and the game and no hiders. "1 callsign to rule them all". oddly, we still don't have that. I wonder what the 3 years it took to make ACSS are for then. I'm puzzled here.

I find that strange that even you don't see that. "We've always had hiders ever since AZ died". Well may be that the reason, you're so used to have hiders that you don't even see all the harm they've done to this game since AZ died. Take a fresh look at this and you'll see why.