Business Financial Profit Consideration for CU Developer

  • @administrators @Developers @Moderators

    Dear Game Developer,

    I hope you read this message and see as a positive and fair challenge to hurry up and improve and get better and turn us naysayers into your biggest fans. I will be the first to tell the world when that day comes to shut up once and for all and get with the new program. We aren't there yet! It remains very obvious that the user experience of CU is still very inferior to playcatan.

    I do get the impression your team is working hard. Your hard work should be paid for. You deserve a big paycheck if you could improve our playing experience. When I say improve, I do mean improve. I loved playcatan, but really felt several things could have been better:

    1. Like the option to design my own board
    2. The UI prompts were annoying
    3. Would be nice if an AI player subbed for a real player who quit in the last 1/3 of the game
    4. Would be nice to increase point count to 24 (this is one CU advantage BTW - thank you!!)

    As a developer myself I know this stuff is HARD. Making a simple UI for a complex game, ridiculously HARD. Simple is HARD. So please take my candid comments in the correct spirit.

    I also can say (before you think it). YES I have tried really hard to figure out "is it just me not wanting to change" - in short the answer is no. While I have gotten slightly more used to CU, it's clearly a very inferior experience. Specifically, it still is slow and hard to navigate the screen and I can't imagine playing a live game given this slowness. The AI is barely bearable - currently plaing multiple human users (which honestly is what I need to hold my interest) would be too slow.

    What I can't understand how this is financially better for you guys than a catanuniverse monthly subscription (yes even with server costs and the cost to comply with new EU regulations considered). Perhaps you ran an ROI and reached a different conclusion. But can't see how this would be the case.

    Specifically, I paid $15 bucks or so for a one time perpetual license. Cool. I am okay with 15 dollars just to try it out and give you some feedback (not sure it will be my go to game any more, finding myself playing more pokemon go and ARK). I KNOW for now I def. wont give any more.

    On PlayCatan I would be happy to pay you $15 per month just to bring it back.

    I know that you cannot keep the old Java based platform alive forever, but why not do a survey on here and the group on Reddit and see what kind of response you would get for a 1 year pay-per-month extension and then in the mean time try very hard to replicate the UI - keep the good stuff, eliminate the bad stuff and listen to us playcatan veterans very carefully - we will even keep testing for you (I will at least). I will give honest, fair feedback and have already done a ton of that if you read my posts. After 1 year, prove to us that you have made the experience superior and turn the new platform into a monthly fee (maybe go $10 bucks to entice new players or $15 if you need to).

    Over 1 year my investment would be 12X. Over 3 years your revenue is 36X.

    I would probably pay this for 10 years+ and I am sure so would many many people. That's me giving you $1,800 vs. a one time $15.

    Just my 2c


  • @tbt

    I totally agree. An official poll asking the community what they want would really brighten the mood of the community. It shows that they are being heard, and we have hope that what we want will be implemented. I, too, would not mind paying for extra to bring back PlayCatan. Although I'm sure the developers have heard this, I think they'd be quite surprised by the actual amount of people who would be willing to do this.

  • Catan Universe won't last for 5 years. They are getting the money from the new players and that's it. Putting a one-time label on something attracts more players meaning more money in the short run but much less in the long run.

    PlayCatan business plan was to give the base game for free (with random map, allowing to play with friends and all that stuff) and asking subscription fee for access to expansions. Not how CU is advertising "free base game" without actually offering everything you would get if you actually buy the physical board game and play with your friends.

    There is no viability in getting a one-time $5-15 input per player and then running the servers with it, paying the developers to create new contend and fixing bugs...

    Let's be honest here. CU is just ripping people off with a rebrand of their old mobile app. I'm pretty sure a lot of players who had the old app didn't know they can convert that user into CU user so they bought everything again.

  • @tbt Thank you for your feedback.

    What we are currently doing (among many other things) is:

    We taking a close look at the PC UI/UX. Why are we doing this? We are currently working on a counter offer feature based on the learnings we had in our former Catan products and based on popular demand ;) And since we are working on that feature, we take a close look at the PC UI which has its quirks. For example, we aren´t happy with the way users currently have to buy or play the development/progress cards.

    So stay tuned.

    Regarding the business model: Monthly fees for one game and one game alone, isn´t what most users want and how they are used to pay for a game. In the golden age of MMOs, most users have been used to that but generally speaking... the tides have turned. We are aware of the fact that a certain group of our players would be willing to pay a monthly fee to play Catan online but the vast majority wouldn´t ever consider this as a valid option.

    If you say we would be surprised about the turnout of a poll, please keep in mind that this forum contains only a small fraction of the entire Catan Universe player base.

    Here are some numbers for you to consider. There are about 10K accounts registered for this forum. With about 100 to 110 users actively using this forum (assuming they should have - let's say - over 10 posts in their "lifetime").

    What I am trying to say here is: Yes we listen, yes we consider the suggestions made here( and we already implemented a whole bunch of them) but we have to weight them against what other users of Catan Universe want and need or as said above simply are used to.

    And @Stroom sorry to disappoint you (again). Catan Classic users have been informed and keep getting informed about it. And they use this option regularly. I guess we are doing a pretty good job of ripping people off by giving them free new software. We truly are the evil geniuses of game development :trollface:

  • @administrators

    I appreciate your thoughtful response.

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