Hmmm. I think you are more in the returning player honeymoon period. I get it. I've rode that train myself before.
IMHO, the core question is, why do the players who are not here not see AH as a good value at $15\month?
Why did virtually none of the 40,000 Steam trails decide to subscribe?
Why don't we have 600 players a night like we used to?
If you want to alter the trajectory, those are the questions you have to honestly answer without defaulting to defensive behavior. The old "if the other games are so great, why are they posting here?" is just a passive aggressive defense behavior. Attack the messenger so you don't have to face the uncomfortable message.
I liked you promo vid, but I think the issue is deeper than just exposure or you would have converted 2-5% of those 40,000 Steam downloads.
Companies have two choices. They can listen to their market and learn from what it is telling them, or stick to their guns and say the market is just wrong. If you can survive of the remaining hardcore players who have lasted this long, and if the kinds of changes needed to change things aren't really ever really likely anyway, then the second choice may work for you.
In the second case, it certainly seems reasonable to avoid dumping any more money or effort into the game if the remaining hardcore are locked in anyway due to their decades long social networks. It won't get you any more new players and the hardcore aren't likely going anywhere at this point. It appears to me from Lusche's charts that the decline has bottomed out. I suspect the remaining population is durable and will hang on until they drop.
Just keep the electricity on and chan200 working.
Nothing personal, you have your thoughts. Convos are good.
I'm not defending as much as I, and others, are pointing out truths. Those games have flaws and are not the type AH type players will stay in. The fun element is missing and everyone knows it. Its a different audience. I can concrete my point of truths and comparisons, but why waste the bandwidth. It all depends on how one squints their eyes just right. There are some who can't seem to post without mentioning other games. If the crowd was good it wouldn't need promoting in other game boards, besides other well made points. Just my POV.
I may have been in the honeymoon stage the first two weeks, but I've also been very deep and into the core of my two games in the past and now to know it can be done. It's really not that hard, IF we had help from the creator. It's not the game or the players, it's the creator problem. The players want it to pop again,.. and that is the momentum. You see old players coming back almost every day, you're still here
You're hoping too. While you see me as defending, I see some as doing nothing but ripping it down and selling another game because it's not doing all that well as it should be, expecting no push back of reality, it's selling another game. <shrug> I get it, HT did that to AW, but he did have a better product made of the exact same concept as AW.
All your questions above have legitimate answers and assumptions. A lot of games on Steam are fairly arcade-ish, a different type of player. Ah is a very deep game to learn and play. that's not for everyone, and they don't know until they try it. There are a lot for reasons, there is no single blanket answer.
We agree on somethings and disagree on others, that's ok, two sides in a convo are always good. HT seems to have gone from God to WTF. <shrug> Sorry Dale, great guy, very smart...this is not good biz.
