W3C - Game Update December 5

As for increased challenges and complexity, it does not really feel that challenging or complex because, for the most part as I said, unless you pay, the game is basically complete when you sign up as a Free Player. You are advised not to upgrade your indexes, raise social security or anything. You dont change your salaries, maybe change the corps but that is it. There is really not that much to do... which makes the fact that as a free player you are restricted in almost every way all the more frustrating. Maybe at least if there was more point to doing anything, the Free game would be more tolerable to the average player, but as it stands basically everything in the game is locked behind a paywall.

(By no means does this mean I dislike the devs or dislike the game. I think Simcountry is a unique game and its devs have great potential, but they are floundering it by adopting a hostile anti-consumer strategy)

I think if the game moved away from a subscription based model it would be better. Players should have to pay gold coins to keep their CEOs and empires alive. The amount of gold required should be based off of the size of the empire and the number of CEOs. No one would have a free empire anymore either. Every entity should require gold coins to keep alive. Then you eliminate all gold coin rewards and only allow them to be acquired by credit card purchases. Then you bring back the player cash market for gold. This would allow paying members to finance free players in exchange for game cash. We need to bring back credit card warriors. Plus if we made the boosters more enticing, more gold coins would be used up, which would require more gold coin purchases since there would be no other way to acquire them.

I think there are many players who would be willing to pay more than what they currently pay for their subscription if the benefits were worth it. Making gold coins more important, and then giving players the ability to sell them for cash would be huge.

For those that do not know yet I am also a free player.

This discussion about free players is an interesting one. I for one think that free players are actually really strong and I intend to prove it once the 21 day waiting period is over. Paying members still get huge advantages and I think that is exactly as it should be.

I just find it a bit frustrating to keep reading that free players are so weak/incomplete/harmed etc etc The game masters gave us free players tons of extra's to work with over the past few months and I have found 0 yes ZERO other free players on LU who have been using all these extra options. How can people complain so much if they have not even tried? For me the biggest problem is not the power level of the free players but the unwillingness of free players to use their full potential.

I just felt that this had to be said.

I can understand why cycrillix is so angry. He worked hard on breaking the rules and then the rules changed to force him back in line. It is absolutely fair in terms of policy and vision but I can really understand his frustration.

I would just love to see you go premium and see how far you can go!

There is always going to have to be at least 'some' limit on population. Otherwise everyone would end up with Trillions of people, and there would be so many Corporations, the servers wouldn't be able to process the data.

Ultimately, it's a matter of focusing on Quality over Quantity. Rather than always trying to have 'more' people. Try to achieve more with the people you have. Once you reach your stabilization population, the game becomes more about improving and optimizing what you have. Rather than just building more of the same. For those that want to keep growing. There is the Empires System. Either conquer another country through war. Or buy one with 30 Gold Coins.

There used to be more for 'Free To Play' Players to 'do', in terms of improving their countries, when they first started. Because C3s were in such terrible shape. However, this lead to a lot of problems. New Players didn't know how to fix those countries, and often they would just fail.

If you think Simcountry is trying to 'force' you to pay. Try playing some other games out there. Simcountry is actually very reasonable about how much it lets free players experience. Aside from massive population, and large empire building, there is very little that Free To Play players can't do in Simcountry.

Signed President of DanNation on LU