Sandbox mode

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    • Sandbox mode

      I think there should be a sandbox mode where we can play the game indefinitely without stopping and conquer the whole map entirely. That map should not have anything unlimited. And the sandbox map should be for just one player only so that a player can see what happens when he conquers the whole world etc. Maps with an end are not able to provide that. i hope a developer sees this. :thumbup:
    • I have - so are you willing to subscribe for a monthly 4-5 bucks for this?

      Cause you know we need to pay for traffic and servers and work and maintenance and coffee and kids school fees, and cat food and all the other nice things in life...
      "Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion." Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
    • 4-5 dollars...
      They should be raking in a lot of money with 4 to 5 dollars a month. Knowing a lot of people play this game, and would like a sandbox mode.

      4 to 5 dollars! Not as bad as a Netflix or Paramount+ account.
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    • playbabe wrote:

      ...
      reason? server issue, my guess is the $4-5 /month isn't enough.
      Hmmm, My guess would have been the software development, admin, and maintenance costs, and (perhaps) the accounts receivable and customer-service costs.

      After I rented an Amazon (AWS) setup for a few months very cheaply, I tend to think of the computing Hw (CPU, Storage, Ntwk) as one of the smaller expenses, especially when compared to anything that involves a human.

      Am I underestimating what the hardware costs are for a business like Dorado/CoN?
    • KFGauss wrote:

      playbabe wrote:

      ...
      reason? server issue, my guess is the $4-5 /month isn't enough.
      Hmmm, My guess would have been the software development, admin, and maintenance costs, and (perhaps) the accounts receivable and customer-service costs.
      After I rented an Amazon (AWS) setup for a few months very cheaply, I tend to think of the computing Hw (CPU, Storage, Ntwk) as one of the smaller expenses, especially when compared to anything that involves a human.

      Am I underestimating what the hardware costs are for a business like Dorado/CoN?
      Keep in mind that anyone playing Sandbox most likely would be one less to play publics.
      I am The Baseline for opinions
    • Teburu wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      playbabe wrote:

      ...
      reason? server issue, my guess is the $4-5 /month isn't enough.
      Hmmm, My guess would have been the software development, admin, and maintenance costs, and (perhaps) the accounts receivable and customer-service costs.After I rented an Amazon (AWS) setup for a few months very cheaply, I tend to think of the computing Hw (CPU, Storage, Ntwk) as one of the smaller expenses, especially when compared to anything that involves a human.

      Am I underestimating what the hardware costs are for a business like Dorado/CoN?
      Keep in mind that anyone playing Sandbox most likely would be one less to play publics.
      Yep - That too.

      I would be doing both often, but I'm probably not Dorado's typical customer.

      On the other hand - If you converted many non-paying Public players into paying Sandbox players that would create extra revenue.

      On the 3rd hand, if you took away too many public-game prey, the Gold-using public plyers might start paying less for their contests and victories.

      On the . . .

      When Dorado opens their books for me, I'll get the answer(s) and report here. ;)
    • KFGauss wrote:

      playbabe wrote:

      ...
      reason? server issue, my guess is the $4-5 /month isn't enough.
      Hmmm, My guess would have been the software development, admin, and maintenance costs, and (perhaps) the accounts receivable and customer-service costs.
      After I rented an Amazon (AWS) setup for a few months very cheaply, I tend to think of the computing Hw (CPU, Storage, Ntwk) as one of the smaller expenses, especially when compared to anything that involves a human.

      Am I underestimating what the hardware costs are for a business like Dorado/CoN?
      I have the exact same opposite experience, where AWS S3 + Lambda + Cloudwatch quickly jumped me into something like 3 $ a month per active user. Hopefully Amazon is pretty generous with its free credits for individual projects, but still, it's easy to pile up "functionalities" that one by one aren't heavy, but scale up automatically.

      Without "sandbox free credits", it would have been :

      1 000 $ per month of AWS
      200 $ per month of MongoDB
      100 $ per month of Twilio
      150 $ per month of Meteor Cloud
      100 $ of google adwords

      All this for a 500 active user for a service that i would myself not really pay for ( twas a prototype for an idea of mine : a tricount taking income/spending habits, using bank APIs, to establish coefficients of shares. In other words, friends establishing a shared spending would be allocated according to their respective ability to participate. )

      If i was to work full time on it and pay myself at the minimum wage, it basically means i would need to have 100% of users suscribing to the service and accept to pay 6$ a month.

      This would mean, of course, to just survive on minimal wage, with absolutely no ability to grow, or invest, or scale up.

      With more hard skills, i could have optimised, but i was playing around a bit recklessly.

      Pulled the cord off before i went to the end of my free credits, but it was an interesting experience (the kind that reminds us why start up need initial treasury to accept deficit to fuel growth).


      Back to CoN,

      I don't think the infrastructure is the bulk of the spending.

      My guess would be :

      1°) Human Wages
      2°) Office cost
      3°) Marketing
      4°) Virtual Infrastructure.

      They are around 20 at Dorado.

      With average wages in Malta, rule of thumb is about 400K a year. Let's hash this by a quarter because Dorado hires interns (as everyone). 300K
      Office Cost, 30K a year (for 200 square meters), add 15k a year for various office spendings, and another 5k for commodities. 50K.
      User acquisition is expensive (minimum 1$ per user, i would be on 2$ for a competitive market like online vide games). If 2 000 new users test the game each month, then it's 20-40k.
      Infrastructure, probably less than 3k a month, especially if mutualised (they are smarter than i was with code) : 36K.


      This could make a very rough and conservative estimate of yearly running cost of 526K. Let's substract another quarter for the sake of accountancy optimisations that often happen in big groups (which is one of their merits), and say it's a 400K yearly upkeep business (not gonna lie, i find this figure incredibly optimistic. From my own experience, wages should be spectacularly higher)

      Let's say we live in a dream world where all things are so cheap.

      Malta pays a flat 35% corporate tax on everything, so every dollar you spend is actually 65 cents.

      If 10 000 users play CoN actively : 4,5 $ a month per user.
      If 20 000 users play CoN actively : 2,25 $ a month per user.
      If 30 000 users play CoN actively : 1,125 $ a month per user.
      If 40 000 users play CoN actively : 0,625 $ a month per user.

      This is to recoup costs. Not build a treasury, not grow, not impress shareholders : "yeah we didn't lost money, but we didn't made any"

      Of course, this also starts from the utopian idea that in a world of Free2play, ferocious competition, and juggernauts of investments from Chinese Gaming Superpowers, everyone pays, no one quits.

      Let's increase those figures by 50% to ensure that the net benefits of the company allows it to grow and invest steadily. ( remember : a company that belongs to a group is expected to grow, as to give value to shareholders)

      You begin to see the problem, i'm sure... For relatively small indie games, there isn't just the demographics to generate such a stable "socially viable" income. Security Council is already only a drop in the income.


      Yeah, if we were able to commit to something like a brotherhood, and if 20 000 of us would say "we pledge to pay 10 $ a month", we would have some ability to propose to Dorado to shift to a pure "free and fair play" model of game with sandbox, single players, who knows. And you know what ? Pretty sure they would prefer to work on that too.

      The reality of F2P, especially since Asian mobile games normalise more and more P2W, is that the extreme minority of player (up to 1%) bring around 85% of the income, and the majority of players never spend a dime.


      You know, sometimes, i dream of having a map editor. For RP or tournaments, i would be litteraly ready to pay 250 $ a month for such a tool. And then i consider that even this price is not enough for anyone at Dorado to seriously consider the effort in another way than "entirely wasteful".


      PS : Figures for dorado's upkeep are out of my arse and aimed at presenting generic costs of a generic company. Don't take it for granted or representative, i have no idea of their actual running costs, and you can drink water before they will give this kind of information (strategic data).

      PS bis : don't get me started on "yeah but games with cosmetics" ---> they are the exact games that are made by gaming superpowers, with huge treasuries able to soak up years and millions $ of deficit before the curve grows back and then explode. It's the model.
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • Thanks so much @Opulon.

      For context - When I very briefly put my toe in the AWS water (several years ago), I only started up one computer (aka server) to be a computing-engine and webserver, and I only "bought" what was absolutely necessary from any of their other products.

      While I don't remember predicting the costs for my one computer would balloon later, I probably was being half-way seduced by some sort of free-credits or other discounts (It was a long time ago and I wasn't going to worry about $10-20 per month if that was all it cost me).

      Your info is helpful - Thanks again.

      PS: I shut everything down when AWS complained to me that my rented computer had been taken over by hackers and turned into a DOS-bot. Silly me, I thought it was Amazon's job to protect me from that sort of hijacking-attack.