Circle of logic

Tree fiddy

In the intetest of fairness the "billion dollar game" is funny but it is not applicable in almost any case wherw it is used in reference over the last few days.
Businesses dont work that way. Businesses work off 'productivity' which might equate 1 work hour to 'x' thousand dollars of in-game revenue.
At that point, the amount of money beijg brought into the game is far less relevant as you are always compared to you productivity number, if it isn't hitting targets then you need to improve what you're doing.
What this means is that equating a days worth of in-game take to a salary is irrelevant. When they say expensive they mean it could take 1000 hours of work time, that isnt $50,000 if the people working on it are making $50 an hour, thats millions and millions of dollars that they can't directly and immediately justify to their superiors as cost-effective. That much time spent on GLs they obviously can.

Having said all this, yes the game has made enough money and does on a regular basis to have a higher % poured back into the game, the dev team needs more help or better management or something because the rate at which they get things done and the quality of the product delivered is not justifiable in itself.

I too found that odd.

We cant cater to small desire but we can cater to a small subset on old phones. Lol good call

"Jakdnels;c-2097961" wrote:
I assume it's the CG Defense Front or somesuch, which doesn't seem necessarily pejorative

CG Defense Force.

Yes, it was pejorative when it was used originally, so we took ownership of it.

"Iy4oy4s;c-2098078" wrote:

"Kyno;c-2098052" wrote:

"Iy4oy4s;c-2098045" wrote:

"Kyno;c-2097911" wrote:

"Iy4oy4s;c-2097728" wrote:
When someone holds all the data and won’t share said data, they can say whatever they want about that data. This coupled with the CGDF, the community loses every time.

calling them names, and saying they dont care is a winning strategy for the community?

I wasnt calling anyone names in the negative sense. Based on my data, CG is wrong on the sandbox issue.

yes, i acknowledged that. I didn't mean to imply you were.

I agree they should not close the door on this, even if its not slated for "the now".

that said, i can understand the choice and how they got to it from the data they can collect from the current state of the game.

But how can they collect data on whether or not a sandbox mode would be used if there is no sandbox mode? You cant compare any event so far to what a sandbox mode would be or what the community wants it to be. GW is a joke and is worthless for testing anything. None of the LS/DS nodes have any enemies with relics. Ahnald is having to use the arena with help of his shard mates to get a "sandbox mode" at the cost of crystals to test team comps. So the whole, "we looked at the data" argument falls really flat.

It just comes down to it not being "free" for them to create as they said. They should have just left it there instead of trying to justify their choice because of "data" Remember their data showed them that we LOVE relics because of the high engagement with them.

they do have some data to work from and they have many feelers out there that they use to talk to players on many platforms.

do they have direct data, no, at least not from this game. 100%. that doesn't mean they can't extrapolate and make educated guesses at what will happen.

we have marquees that went from 1 and done, up to 5 free attempts. I would say that those probably showed almost very little "signs of engagement". sure, they are not what "we want", then they add the JG and still "not it". as a product developer, that would be a scary proposition (with "supporting data") that says its a big risk to try and introduce something with "no incentive", because every thing you miss or dont get right, just lowers the amount of players that will use it, since there is no other incentive. so yes, even with marginal data it is an up hill battle to say, let do it, it will work out in the end. and if you put that against development of every other game mode or event that has been complained about but still has "high levels of engagement" due to the incentives they offer. that seem like an easy choice of where you should focus the effort to maximize the player engagement. is that the end all be all, no, but it does make sense. i'm just speculating, but thats where my head goes on all this.

do you disagree that it would take resources to develop anything useful as a sandbox game mode? I can see that, so yes its not free. They said that in the context (which is always what everyone forgets) of saying that it has a cost which takes away from development of other aspects of the game. if it were free, then they wouldn't have to do that.

"Ckingera;d-228249" wrote:
Ps. Just want to say it didn’t sit well when they said “ it’s expensive” and “it’s still not free”. The game is now expensive to play. It has earned over a billion in revenue and is estimated to make 75k a day. That probably a team members salary a day or at least close. Makes me wonder if EA/Lucas arts gets like 85% of the money and the game is running “paycheck to paycheck” per say. A lot of money, little to show for it lately. If any one has a “reality check fact” to explain it would be appreciated, like how much it costs to run a server like they have that would make the math make sense. Thanks for reading guys, be nice in the comments, it’s a pandemic out here

Poking around, standard payroll expenses for a healthy business are somewhere between 20-30% of gross income.

Let's accept your assumption that total payroll expenses for the average employee come out to 75k and they make 75k per day. According to LinkedIn, Capital Games is a 75-200 employee studio. So let's assume 100 employees.

That would mean 100 days' gross income out of 365 days per year goes toward payroll expenses, or 27.3%, which is in the expected range for a healthy business making adequate money.

If CG has 125 employees, that means 125 out of 365 days' income goes to payroll, making 34% of gross income in payroll expenses. Above our 30% range, suggesting that their income may be below what is healthy for a studio of their size.

Mind you, this is all assumptions and napkin math, but signs suggest CG is probably doing alright, but not rolling in that filthy lucre.

And while the word "expensive" may rub you the wrong way, keep in mind it refers to more than just money. It also refers to time and labor. They can only work on so many things at once, and only so fast. To create some manner of sandbox mode would mean personnel are not working on something else. It would require its own infrastructure, mechanics, visual assets. To give us guild PvP, something else would have to be canceled, or everything would have to be delayed. Perhaps the most comparable project would be grand arena, and that was the main product for the better part of a year. Putting them side by side, what's overall more important to the game; guild PvP for no rewards that most players will muck around with for a couple minutes here and there to futz with a new team but otherwise mostly ignore, or GAC which has become one of the most substantial modes in the game with regards to gameplay?

That's what these expense questions come down to. Feature X or Feature Y. It's not, "We'd rather pocket that money." It's, "We'd rather spend that money, that time, those man hours on a different feature that we think will do more for the game."

Agree with pretty much all of that.

They using the whole "play base numbers" as a convenient way to say "we can't make money off this so no, we aren't doing it".

It's funny that they not only haven't given any content in a $1b dollar game in months but they also think everyone who plays it is as bright as a piece of plywood.

The general disrespect that CG shows its player base is insane and I'm really hoping that in later years they develop a similar game without a Star Wars license and see how far it gets them.

@Lysandrax thank you for that insight that actually helped make a bit more sense of the money part. The reason I chose to bring up the one billion figure was just to add a little perspective. To kinda further that thought a tad more, starwars mobile games in total earned roughly 1.01 billion in revenue From 2016-2019. That puts in in line with the earning of battlefield 3, twice the revenue of elder scrolls 1-4, just shy of Skyrim, just shy of every single mortal kombat since 2002, and almost identical to SSB ultimates earnings. All massive triple A titles. It seemed like a fair reference at the time of writing.

I also appreciate the insight that “expensive” is referring to hours of work not amount of money for the infrastructure of a project or addition. I never thought of it like that

"Its_not_a_moon;c-2097643" wrote:
I don't see any of the employees of CG driving around in their 2020 BMWS or Ferraris, while living in their mansions, so it safe to say they employees get salaries from EA while all the money made goes to EA and they don't invest anything back into the game from the looks of the things, however next month will tell the truth, we will see if what they are planning is worth saying no to everything else

I feel that man. We been riding on hope for a good while now lol. I always am hopeful that something good will happen. Just discouraging when they tease and don’t deliver but I also feel bad when they tease and hit a roadblock from something we will never see or know and have to back track on what they said. They catch a lot of shit from us, but passion players keep the game Alive. Even if we are harsh, it’s all usually out of love for the game.. usually ;)