Making it an MMORTS?

[Tiletron]

People may or may not already be familiar with Age of Empires Online, an attempt to revitalise the franchise that was lost when Ensemble Studios closed its doors. Like its predecessors, however, it suffers from forcing people to purchase expansions, whilst TSO provides the whole game to users through a learning experience, and offers Gems through both playing and microtransactions.

With so many other great ideas to make the game better - seasons and weather, nighttime, improvements to the interface, expansions to the water, etc - would it really be that hard to make The Settlers Online a proper MMORTS, but Free-2-Play where the microtransactions help fund its development? That way the game's universe would still expand, except the only money people would pay to expand their gameplay experience is gems, which they would be free to use on the resources/upgrades already present in the Trader area. It wouldn't be mandatory to purchase gems either; they could still collect them as normal, but all the people who purchased a certain amount could be flagged ingame and on the forums as Contributors towards its development pipeline.

This would depend on community support and the studios desire to make the full transition, but it's still worth consideration.

[Tierarzt]

people who purchased a certain amount could be flagged ingame and on the forums

Bad idea.

Just because someone does or does not buy gems, does not make them better or worse than anyone else. We don't need to start arguments and segretation based on who does or does not buy gems. It happens a lot in other games and we don't need that here.

[Tiletron]

I'm not trying to segregate people who purchase gems from those who don't. I'm just saying that instead of purchases of gems going to the studio just for revenues, it could go towards funding features that users on the forums could vote to be added to the game, and an MMO-template could be adopted instead of one or two players in teams against AIs/each other.

The entire list of available structures, save a few special ones only in the Trader area, are unlockable through players levelling their account. That can also stay as-is.

[Candy-Bear]

Bad idea.

Just because someone does or does not buy gems, does not make them better or worse than anyone else. We don't need to start arguments and segretation based on who does or does not buy gems. It happens a lot in other games and we don't need that here.

i would have to agree with Tierarzt here... it would cause segregation of the player base but also some people may not want that knowledge available to the entire player base

[Kiaa]

It wouldn't be mandatory to purchase gems either; they could still collect them as normal, but all the people who purchased a certain amount could be flagged ingame and on the forums as Contributors towards its development pipeline.

I'm just not sure if tagging Contributers publicly is a good idea. The rest is a good idea, but in saying that, I will still continue to play even if it doesn't happen.

[Qualan]

also to consider is how far can you take a flash based browser game in eyecandy and gameplay without it keeling over.