the only future for OTC is reviving standalone multiplayer client

I got old friends to buy it years ago when MP client allowed try-before-buy

from Offworld Forums

The only future for OTC is reviving the formerly-removed standalone multiplayer client feature.  I would have played zero games of this with friends if they had to buy a license before playing, because it doesn't LOOK like a fun game.  However since they were able to download the client and play with me years ago, those friends bought licenses of their own after a couple games with me.  However in returning to this game, I see that feature has gone away and we're back to zero marketability once again.  Why hasn't this been a clear priority over the last six years?  It's not cutting into the company market capital ceiling.. it's actually enabling it to be bought freshly at all.  Run the numbers, and tell us how else you plan to sell real-time board-game rolling into Q4 without a risk-free way for potential customers to be welcomed in by existing community.

Offworld Trading Company Type: Discussion
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Reply #1 from Offworld Forums Top

For that matter, I have four of the six titles offered by StarDock.
Long-time buyer of Sierra, Blizzard, Westwood too.
This title is a gem but it's a difficult sell and I'm looking to see this be a viable game to share in the future.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

I agree with the mechanism and not with the word only.

A client that lets people fill a lobby before they own anything is the cheapest demo this game could possibly run, and it needs one, because OTC screenshots like a spreadsheet and plays like a knife fight. Nothing a stranger sees before buying carries the second half of that.

Where it gets weak is the part where you ask someone to run the numbers, because nobody in this thread has them. I do not know what share of people dragged into a free lobby went on to buy, and neither do you. My own sample is four friends I taught it to, two of whom bought it, and a sample of four is not an argument.

The other thing worth knowing before assuming neglect: multiplayer got rebuilt this year. There is a sticky in the support section from February saying they moved off deprecated Unity multiplayer services and restored ranked play. Whatever the old free client hung off is one network rebuild removed from what runs now, so the answer to why it has not come back is probably duller than nobody caring.

Putting it first on the list is still reasonable. Calling it the only future throws away the strongest thing you have, which is that it is cheap.

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Your own example argues against your title. They played for free, then they bought it, and what they bought is a game I have mostly played on my own against the AI. That makes the client a demo rather than the future.

Which is a reason to ask for it as a demo. Nothing on the store page shows what this game is actually doing, and that is not a multiplayer problem.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Manny1's demo suggestion is the part I would argue with. A demo works when the thing you are selling survives being packaged. OTC against the AI is not what people buy this game for, so a timed single player build hands a stranger the least convincing version of it.

What made the free client work in RushJet's story is not that it was free. It is that several people were in there at once. This game only reads as tense when the person undercutting you is a person, and there is no way to ship that in something somebody plays alone for an hour.

Where I would push back on Westbrook is the word cheap. A free lobby client is not an asset you make once and hang on the store page. It is a second build with accounts and matchmaking behind it, it has to keep working through every change made to the paid one, and the people maintaining it are the people who would otherwise be fixing the game. That is the cost the decision actually turns on, and nobody in this thread has costed it, including me.

The store page point stands regardless of any of that. Nothing on it shows a human doing anything to another human.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Fair hit on cheap. I was pricing it against the other things being asked for in this thread and not against zero, and I never said so, which makes it read like I meant free.

What I meant was the ranking. Put the three next to each other. A timed single player demo is a build, plus a set of restrictions somebody has to sit down and design, and Manny1 is right that it shows the least convincing hour of the game. A lobby-only client is a build plus the accounts and matchmaking behind it. A marketing push is spend with nothing left over at the end of it.

The line I cannot fill in is the one you named. Whether a lobby client is a second binary or the same one with the ownership check moved is the whole question, and it is the difference between a maintenance cost you barely notice and a second product to keep alive. Nobody outside the company can answer that, and I am not going to guess at it in a post where my whole argument is that guessing is the problem.

The February sticky is why I think it is still an open question rather than a closed one. They moved off the deprecated Unity multiplayer services this year and brought ranked play back. Whatever that cost, it is paid, and it is the stack anything like this would now sit on. That is not me saying it would be easy. It is me saying that whatever the answer was two years ago, the ground under it moved.

On the store page I have nothing to argue with. That is the only item in this thread that does not need a programmer, and it is getting the least attention of the three.