Gonna try and speak in crayon for you:
[crayola]
H I T E C H is testing new radar settings and combinations of these settings. Nothing is permanent and we will more than likely see several iterations before all is finalized. There are several reasons why this is happening. One does not need to be in the "AcesHigh3 circle of trust" to figure most if it out.
You mean the 5 - 10 accounts that post on the forums and the same 5 - 10 accounts that would argue if someone called a skunk a polecat?
HiTech has to be loyal to his employees and that is only to the extent that the law makes provisions for.
As far as loyalty to the player base... . welcome to the real world. They NEED to keep the lights on, they NEED to pay employees, they DON'T NEED to make decisions for their company and product based on the views of a very small minority. They NEED to look towards the future of this sandbox platform and how to make it thrive regardless of the precious few that scream so loud about damn near anything that bumps their coffee mugs.
[/crayola]
I think the biggest hurdle for this game is, it takes its direction from a bulletin board which is highly regulated and some topics are off limits. I am a player on several other games that I played in tandem with Aces High. Several of these games rely on customer feedback in the form of well thought out questioners authored by professional pollsters that guide the owners in how to make changes to their product. It includes portions where the customer base rates from 1 to 10 different aspects of the game play. It also includes sections for the customer to voice their ideas that were not covered in the ratings sections. The survey I would assume was most probably done by professional pollsters, kind of like the surveys you get from companies that each one of us has had the opportunity to take in the past. Companies like Wall Mart and Amazon and others rely heavily on these surveys to evolve their companies into successful business models. I mean who knows better what the customer wants, then the customers themselves. Most of these surveys are anonymous, and are conducted by an outside company, and yield better results because most people only voice an opinion when they have a complaint, very few make contact with a company to praise them about their product. The games I play send two types of Surveys as short 2 or 3 question 3 or 4 times a year. They also send a more comprehensive one annually to poll their customers on how to improve their product.
I think it would be well served for HiTech to consider polling the current customers to find out what is keeping them in the game and what suggestions they might have to improve the product. You might also consider polling the former customers and find out why they left and more importantly would they ever consider coming back. There are two words that are very important to most businesses, Acquisition & Retention. It’s common knowledge that it cost It costs 7x more to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one. Running a business without customer feedback, is like driving cross county in a car, without road signs.
