Reading between the lines, although the player base has enjoyed modest growth, the average kill per player has gone down...........
This means that the average fun per average player has gone down..............
on top of this the kill spread has shifted to favour a smaller % of experten....
If community spirit is poor or medi-ocre then what incentive is there for non experten to stay?
New subscribers most definately come under the heading of non experten
The above would cause a high turnover of new subscribers............ retain the new subscribers for a longer period and modest growth becomes more significant growth.
HT would know the effect on his business model if he could just retain each new subscriber an average of # months longer than he does now.
If there was something he could do to brush up the welcome mat and create more fun for new subscribers he would do it.
All very interesting..........
except I cannot see a firm correlation between the above and how it is served by EW, MW and LW (MA) arena's.
What I do see is that these arenas effectively enlarge the usable plane set. They make ac that are not viable (in the old MA) into very viable and fun rides within their own arenas.
This effectively gives us more choice.....hurrah
1)I think there is too much choice for off peak periods.....low numbers effect game play
2)I think the ENY side balance incentive is presently poorly implemented for lower numbers.........
3)I think limiting the arena size of the LW is an error. (although I can see the incentive I do not think you can force folk into other arenas and sustain it)
4)I think there are some errors re the ac allowed in the EW and MW arenas.
However all of the above can be adjusted as HTC fine tune what they have done....and 4) may be just my opinion.
This still leaves the original challenge however.......how do we make it more fun for newbies?