You can't do much to make this game more popular. It doesn't have any value beyond basic shooter.
Is this a architecture game where you build maps only to run around and look at them? Bringing back old maps do nothing if the gameplay doesn't support it well. The class base for each map has to be specific to support it. Weapons/weapon mods have to be in place. Mechanics need to be reworked. Too much work to do. Check back in 3-5 years. If the game still exists, maybe they will have made it somewhere.
The game isnt the product, the Army is the product the game is advertising.
Basically the game gets funded with Army PR budget.
Yeah, but if the game isn't being played by many people, it isn't advertising the Army all too well. Hence, they go hand in hand. When your video game is being played by people mostly in their 20s and older, it's not doing the job it needs to do. The target audience is supposed to be people who are in their mid-teens trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives.
Either way, AAO/2 did that whole aspect better with the training. That was the whole point of it. I remember the SF training would tell about all of the different SF MOS's. They were boring if you went through it a hundred times, but for people who are actually interested in joining the military it was pretty good knowledge to get through a video game. Same went for medical training and training on different weapons systems and other stuff. The training wasn't meant as something that made it take forever to play the game, it was meant as a way to educate people... even those who had no intention of ever joining the Army. It's why it confuses me that they never put it in this game.
IMO, I fail to see how AAPG advertises the Army in any way besides the random Army logos and videos during the loading screen.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
This is not battlefield... this game has something no other has. It's the best free online fps out there. Just make it better and show it to more people. Nowadays people have acess to many more games than before. Even if X people check the game, probably X/2 won't keep playing it, however its more than its now.
About new features and stuff. Keep the core of the game, don't change it or it will most likely kill the game. However I liked something from sugested and could be similiar with what R6S (Rainbow 6 siege) has right now: cameras. But you could only make use of them on defense by acessing some PCs, maybe? <- Not the main problem now however.
Adding a comp mode or a skill based stat just like moh2010 had (http://mohstats.com/leaderboard) that would add you skill points or remove depending if you won or lose and who you played against. Basically works like ELO rating but it's endless.
Adding more guns, skins and costumization is always a good way to make people hold for a game now.
In terms of maps, I think we are having to many maps for now, so no need to work for that now. But why not make costumization competitions like we doing to maps? New soldier aspects, etc... It's all ideas, we all have many... so whatever.
And please, make like AA2, one side US and other RUS or any other enemy. It will work better for spectator/demorec; eventually add options to use US vs US, RUS vs RUS, IRAQ vs US, etc... on the servers.
Basically add more stuff none than maps, DEV are slowly improving the game, working on bugs, adding nice features for website, fixing the menus on the game: all good.
Im not a DEV, but you DEVs should probably get in touch with us more, starting by asking or giving us options to what to choose, example: asking this: "What do you guys want now, for the next release? -ELO Rating 100% working on a side mode? -New guns, SF class and a small coop map (beta)?
I think you get the point.
Devs, you have so many to do and so many possibilities, jus tkeep the CORe of the game and talk to us, many people still believe in the game, good luck.
This is not battlefield... this game has something no other has. It's the best free online fps out there.
Free doesn't mean much these days. We can see by the popularity of Battlefield and COD games that lots of people will gladly pay $50 or $60 for a game. In fact, I think free is an impediment.
Free leads to a game being a try and quit game since people have less incentive to stick with a game that they never paid for. Also, it leads to little to no advertising since steam isn't going to advertise a game that they aren't making money from.
I'm not going to bother listing out ideas that can help this game, we've had too many of those threads. I think at the very minimum, the Army should be advertising the game at recruiting stations (would they even be charged for this)? They could even have recruiters hand out cards to potential recruits that say something like "Try America's Army Proving Grounds for free on Steam! http://AmericasArmy.com"
Very simple. Even still, the game needs to have more Army education if anything like that would be worthwhile. A recruiter gives some kid a link to the game, the kid goes on and learns about the Army. That's what you want.
I feel like this game has lost sight of that.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
Free doesn't mean much these days. We can see by the popularity of Battlefield and COD games that lots of people will gladly pay $50 or $60 for a game. In fact, I think free is an impediment.
People pay to play AAA franchises with $100,000,000+ budgets. They don't play them because they cost lots of money.
The average paid game on Steam is owned by 32,000 people. The average F2P game on Steam is owned by 330,000 people. That's ten times more.
You can argue about which business model is better for either consumer or developer, but free certainly doesn't hurt player numbers in and of itself.
The original game (AAO) was directly influenced by Sept 11 and the Iraq war. Camo patterns became a public fashion statement at the time! Everyone was interested and affected by what was happening on the world stage. That's simply not the case today, and this shouldn't be ignored when trying to understand where this game is at NOW. As a Canadian (and a beta tester) I'm not going to comment politically, but there are a lot of things affecting this game outside of purely game vs. game issues.
______
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
People pay to play AAA franchises with $100,000,000+ budgets. They don't play them because they cost lots of money.
Obviously, people don't play them because of how much money they cost. The point is that having to pay for a game is not a huge deterrent for most people if the game is good or at least has enough hype. Also, having a game cost money will get you more advertising from distributors vs. a game that costs $0. The only thing Valve gets out of AAPG is the potential for someone to download Steam for the first time who never did before. However, once they are on Steam Valve doesn't get anything, so why advertise the game?
The average paid game on Steam is owned by 32,000 people. The average F2P game on Steam is owned by 330,000 people. That's ten times more.
I think Dota2 and TF2 are probably inflating those numbers. In any sense, it still doesn't mean that a F2P game won't suffer from the try it and dump it syndrome. There's no risk in downloading a free game, trying it for an hour or two and then uninstalling it. That of course talks more about the quality of a game than anything else. If 330K people own a game, try it and dump it then the game lacks something that another game offers (even if it's a paid game). For other games, they would also suffer from refunds. With Steam offering refunds these days, I can try a game and if I don't like it, I'll just get a refund. That leads to the game having one less owner. With a game like AAPG, if I try it and then uninstall it, I would still be considered an owner of the game.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
It's true and very likely the game wont be as popular as AA2 or even become popular. But one thing you can't deny: this game is good and has potential. So the game can definitely grow in terms of players. Most of the people who try the game has a good impression of it, even comparing with other pay to play FPS. But what makes them leave after a while? -Lack of content. Doing all the same but only on diferent maps won't change much. That's my point. and I hope DEVs can understand it.
the game just needs something that can hold most of the players for a period of time > than it takes to other players to join the game. So it will be always growing and we won't have the charts we have been seeing. also, more players bring more players just by itself.
The average paid game on Steam is owned by 32,000 people. The average F2P game on Steam is owned by 330,000 people. That's ten times more.
I think Dota2 and TF2 are probably inflating those numbers.
This is for the "average" game, not average of all games in the category. The median paid game on Steam has 32k owners, the median F2P game on Steam has 330k owners. Inflation from the big titles isn't a factor because that's not the metric being presented.
In any sense, it still doesn't mean that a F2P game won't suffer from the try it and dump it syndrome. There's no risk in downloading a free game, trying it for an hour or two and then uninstalling it. That of course talks more about the quality of a game than anything else. If 330K people own a game, try it and dump it then the game lacks something that another game offers (even if it's a paid game). For other games, they would also suffer from refunds. With Steam offering refunds these days, I can try a game and if I don't like it, I'll just get a refund. That leads to the game having one less owner. With a game like AAPG, if I try it and then uninstall it, I would still be considered an owner of the game.
Refunds aren't changing the trends. You're not seeing 10 people buy a game and 9 of them return it on Steam.
A low barrier to entry for F2P means consumers have the option to experience more titles and shop around more for what they like. The effect there is to spread playtime across more titles. That's good for both players, who get to try more things and end up in a preferred title, and for developers, who get more exposure and more feedback. The downsides come in when worrying about monetizing F2P, especially when looking at exploitative practices in some titles.
In any case, AAPG's paid for by the military and their goal is exposure. It's very clear free titles generate more exposure than paid ones, regardless of what you may think of Steam's incentives to advertise any given title. If the AAPG devs decided to slap a $10 price tag on the game, what makes you think Steam will suddenly choose to promote AAPG over any of the other thousands of games? If you can't bring people in with no price tag, charging admission isn't going to help.
On a side note, just wondering, is is possible to implement drive-able vehicles etc from the AAPG advanced editor? Or is it only possible from the Dev's side? I have been modelling some vehicle game models and animated it in a 3d software. Wonder if it will work in game. Thanks.
All my attempts so far have been one fail after another
If my trollery drives you crazy, you'd better put on your seatbelt.
Refunds aren't changing the trends. You're not seeing 10 people buy a game and 9 of them return it on Steam.
I have no idea how refunds are changing anything. In any sense, if a game sucks, you could easily see 10 people buy it and 9 return it. If people payed $10 for AAPG, played it for an hour an decided that they hated it, would they have asked for a refund? Maybe, unless they don't care about their $10.
A low barrier to entry for F2P means consumers have the option to experience more titles and shop around more for what they like. The effect there is to spread playtime across more titles. That's good for both players, who get to try more things and end up in a preferred title, and for developers, who get more exposure and more feedback. The downsides come in when worrying about monetizing F2P, especially when looking at exploitative practices in some titles.
So if people are getting to experience more titles and see what they like vs. dislike, why aren't they settling on AAPG? Shouldn't that be the big question? We can't just say that people have more options and it is what it is. If hundreds of thousands of people are trying AAPG (which is free) and aren't continuing to play it, then something is off somewhere.
In any case, AAPG's paid for by the military and their goal is exposure.
Exposure to what, exactly? If someone plays AAPG for an hour and never opens the game again, what are they getting exposed to? The one thing that I recall from AAO/2 was that there were so many people who played that game who eventually ended up joining the military. What was great about it was that it wasn't just an regular Army game, but it also had tons of former and active military playing coupled with Army education and such. I'm not necessarily saying that the game was the reason that these people would join, but I'm sure it exposed some of these people to aspects of the military that they maybe never previously considered. Plus, being exposed to the Army as your main act of online recreation has to have some sort of psychological factor.
It's very clear free titles generate more exposure than paid ones, regardless of what you may think of Steam's incentives to advertise any given title. If the AAPG devs decided to slap a $10 price tag on the game, what makes you think Steam will suddenly choose to promote AAPG over any of the other thousands of games? If you can't bring people in with no price tag, charging admission isn't going to help.
I don't know whether it would help and you're right, if you can't keep them when it's free, then people just won't buy it if they have to pay for it.
Either way, I look at a game like Insurgency as a good example of how it works. It's not exactly the most popular game ever (although it has more owners than AAPG), but throughout its run on Steam there were often times that the game was offered up on sales. They had one off sales that were disconnected from the major steam sales, but they were also included in all of the major steam sales. Each time the game went on sale it had a huge surge in popularity. It was always short lived, but it still would happen every time like clockwork. People see value in sales and they jump on them. It's instant exposure being on the front page of Steam and offering your game for $5 (great value!). Of course you can weigh whether having a large influx of players in a short time period makes any bit of difference compared to people trying the game over a long period of time. Even still, if you aren't good enough, you won't keep them.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
One thing thats was huge in PC gaming, died down, but is coming back is large LAN events. 2008 was the last AA lan that I know of, and that was purely put on by the community. I think Cyberninja showed up to give out shirts. I know they also had a bunch of laptops with Army ops installed for trade shows, and at Fair type events. All logged in, playing on LAN.
I'd love to see a LAN for this game. Wont get mass players like advertising will, but will get more grassroots players that will spread the word.
One thing thats was huge in PC gaming, died down, but is coming back is large LAN events. 2008 was the last AA lan that I know of, and that was purely put on by the community. I think Cyberninja showed up to give out shirts. I know they also had a bunch of laptops with Army ops installed for trade shows, and at Fair type events. All logged in, playing on LAN.
I'd love to see a LAN for this game. Wont get mass players like advertising will, but will get more grassroots players that will spread the word.
Not a bad idea actually. Just need a good place to do it. I'm surprised that the Army doesn't do anything at big gaming events to support the game either. It makes me wonder if the Dev team themselves just don't feel like the game is complete enough to warrant the kind of advertising at this time.
You joined the world's greatest army to become a graphic artist? Outstanding!
One thing thats was huge in PC gaming, died down, but is coming back is large LAN events. 2008 was the last AA lan that I know of, and that was purely put on by the community. I think Cyberninja showed up to give out shirts. I know they also had a bunch of laptops with Army ops installed for trade shows, and at Fair type events. All logged in, playing on LAN.
I'd love to see a LAN for this game. Wont get mass players like advertising will, but will get more grassroots players that will spread the word.
Not a bad idea actually. Just need a good place to do it.
The game isnt the product, the Army is the product the game is advertising.
Basically the game gets funded with Army PR budget.
If I have a 12" pizza to cook, I'm not going to use a microwave. The pizza is the product, but I can't enjoy the pizza without using the stove. Naw mean? Bad argument. And if the AAPG team is happy with the player base remaining stagnant, someone needs to be fired. I'm not talking about the contractors building the game, I'm talking about the GS in charge of making this thing tick.
The original game (AAO) was directly influenced by Sept 11 and the Iraq war. Camo patterns became a public fashion statement at the time! Everyone was interested and affected by what was happening on the world stage. That's simply not the case today, and this shouldn't be ignored when trying to understand where this game is at NOW. As a Canadian (and a beta tester) I'm not going to comment politically, but there are a lot of things affecting this game outside of purely game vs. game issues.
The game clearly gives us the impression we're fighting another First World country. Is the goal of this game to aggravate tensions with Russia? Last I checked, we are not in a war with a First World country, but we are still engaging with the same type of enemies depicted in AAO...
You have to wonder this...if the Army wanted pure advertisement, why the video game? Sponsor a NASCAR vehicle, NHRA, advertise at PBR events, run commercials during sporting events. Send your recruiters to fairs. Get with school counselors and get your NCOs in high school classrooms. Oh right, that's already all done.
Here's the kicker though, recruiting goals are being met. Retention rates across the DoD are very high. Army is the only branch to miss the mark in 2015...and it's because it lost folks already in the service. So the issue isn't bringing in new folks for the Army, it's retaining qualified Soldiers.
So, a large part of me thinks that the game is both advertisement and entertainment. We need some advertising invested into this game to ensure it's longevity.
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I love this community!
Is this a architecture game where you build maps only to run around and look at them? Bringing back old maps do nothing if the gameplay doesn't support it well. The class base for each map has to be specific to support it. Weapons/weapon mods have to be in place. Mechanics need to be reworked. Too much work to do. Check back in 3-5 years. If the game still exists, maybe they will have made it somewhere.
Make AA Great Again!
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Yeah, but if the game isn't being played by many people, it isn't advertising the Army all too well. Hence, they go hand in hand. When your video game is being played by people mostly in their 20s and older, it's not doing the job it needs to do. The target audience is supposed to be people who are in their mid-teens trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives.
Either way, AAO/2 did that whole aspect better with the training. That was the whole point of it. I remember the SF training would tell about all of the different SF MOS's. They were boring if you went through it a hundred times, but for people who are actually interested in joining the military it was pretty good knowledge to get through a video game. Same went for medical training and training on different weapons systems and other stuff. The training wasn't meant as something that made it take forever to play the game, it was meant as a way to educate people... even those who had no intention of ever joining the Army. It's why it confuses me that they never put it in this game.
IMO, I fail to see how AAPG advertises the Army in any way besides the random Army logos and videos during the loading screen.
About new features and stuff. Keep the core of the game, don't change it or it will most likely kill the game. However I liked something from sugested and could be similiar with what R6S (Rainbow 6 siege) has right now: cameras. But you could only make use of them on defense by acessing some PCs, maybe? <- Not the main problem now however.
Adding a comp mode or a skill based stat just like moh2010 had (http://mohstats.com/leaderboard) that would add you skill points or remove depending if you won or lose and who you played against. Basically works like ELO rating but it's endless.
Adding more guns, skins and costumization is always a good way to make people hold for a game now.
In terms of maps, I think we are having to many maps for now, so no need to work for that now. But why not make costumization competitions like we doing to maps? New soldier aspects, etc... It's all ideas, we all have many... so whatever.
And please, make like AA2, one side US and other RUS or any other enemy. It will work better for spectator/demorec; eventually add options to use US vs US, RUS vs RUS, IRAQ vs US, etc... on the servers.
Basically add more stuff none than maps, DEV are slowly improving the game, working on bugs, adding nice features for website, fixing the menus on the game: all good.
Im not a DEV, but you DEVs should probably get in touch with us more, starting by asking or giving us options to what to choose, example: asking this: "What do you guys want now, for the next release? -ELO Rating 100% working on a side mode? -New guns, SF class and a small coop map (beta)?
I think you get the point.
Devs, you have so many to do and so many possibilities, jus tkeep the CORe of the game and talk to us, many people still believe in the game, good luck.
Over 2k Golden Hawkeyes.
I never said drive-able vehicles should be added. I simply asked if it is doable in the editor as I wanted try out my models.
http://forum.americasarmy.com/discussion/5808/aapgmod-v1-0/p1
Free doesn't mean much these days. We can see by the popularity of Battlefield and COD games that lots of people will gladly pay $50 or $60 for a game. In fact, I think free is an impediment.
Free leads to a game being a try and quit game since people have less incentive to stick with a game that they never paid for. Also, it leads to little to no advertising since steam isn't going to advertise a game that they aren't making money from.
I'm not going to bother listing out ideas that can help this game, we've had too many of those threads. I think at the very minimum, the Army should be advertising the game at recruiting stations (would they even be charged for this)? They could even have recruiters hand out cards to potential recruits that say something like "Try America's Army Proving Grounds for free on Steam! http://AmericasArmy.com"
Very simple. Even still, the game needs to have more Army education if anything like that would be worthwhile. A recruiter gives some kid a link to the game, the kid goes on and learns about the Army. That's what you want.
I feel like this game has lost sight of that.
People pay to play AAA franchises with $100,000,000+ budgets. They don't play them because they cost lots of money.
The average paid game on Steam is owned by 32,000 people. The average F2P game on Steam is owned by 330,000 people. That's ten times more.
You can argue about which business model is better for either consumer or developer, but free certainly doesn't hurt player numbers in and of itself.
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
I think Dota2 and TF2 are probably inflating those numbers. In any sense, it still doesn't mean that a F2P game won't suffer from the try it and dump it syndrome. There's no risk in downloading a free game, trying it for an hour or two and then uninstalling it. That of course talks more about the quality of a game than anything else. If 330K people own a game, try it and dump it then the game lacks something that another game offers (even if it's a paid game). For other games, they would also suffer from refunds. With Steam offering refunds these days, I can try a game and if I don't like it, I'll just get a refund. That leads to the game having one less owner. With a game like AAPG, if I try it and then uninstall it, I would still be considered an owner of the game.
the game just needs something that can hold most of the players for a period of time > than it takes to other players to join the game. So it will be always growing and we won't have the charts we have been seeing. also, more players bring more players just by itself.
Over 2k Golden Hawkeyes.
Refunds aren't changing the trends. You're not seeing 10 people buy a game and 9 of them return it on Steam.
A low barrier to entry for F2P means consumers have the option to experience more titles and shop around more for what they like. The effect there is to spread playtime across more titles. That's good for both players, who get to try more things and end up in a preferred title, and for developers, who get more exposure and more feedback. The downsides come in when worrying about monetizing F2P, especially when looking at exploitative practices in some titles.
In any case, AAPG's paid for by the military and their goal is exposure. It's very clear free titles generate more exposure than paid ones, regardless of what you may think of Steam's incentives to advertise any given title. If the AAPG devs decided to slap a $10 price tag on the game, what makes you think Steam will suddenly choose to promote AAPG over any of the other thousands of games? If you can't bring people in with no price tag, charging admission isn't going to help.
All my attempts so far have been one fail after another
So if people are getting to experience more titles and see what they like vs. dislike, why aren't they settling on AAPG? Shouldn't that be the big question? We can't just say that people have more options and it is what it is. If hundreds of thousands of people are trying AAPG (which is free) and aren't continuing to play it, then something is off somewhere.
Exposure to what, exactly? If someone plays AAPG for an hour and never opens the game again, what are they getting exposed to? The one thing that I recall from AAO/2 was that there were so many people who played that game who eventually ended up joining the military. What was great about it was that it wasn't just an regular Army game, but it also had tons of former and active military playing coupled with Army education and such. I'm not necessarily saying that the game was the reason that these people would join, but I'm sure it exposed some of these people to aspects of the military that they maybe never previously considered. Plus, being exposed to the Army as your main act of online recreation has to have some sort of psychological factor.
I don't know whether it would help and you're right, if you can't keep them when it's free, then people just won't buy it if they have to pay for it.
Either way, I look at a game like Insurgency as a good example of how it works. It's not exactly the most popular game ever (although it has more owners than AAPG), but throughout its run on Steam there were often times that the game was offered up on sales. They had one off sales that were disconnected from the major steam sales, but they were also included in all of the major steam sales. Each time the game went on sale it had a huge surge in popularity. It was always short lived, but it still would happen every time like clockwork. People see value in sales and they jump on them. It's instant exposure being on the front page of Steam and offering your game for $5 (great value!). Of course you can weigh whether having a large influx of players in a short time period makes any bit of difference compared to people trying the game over a long period of time. Even still, if you aren't good enough, you won't keep them.
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I'd love to see a LAN for this game. Wont get mass players like advertising will, but will get more grassroots players that will spread the word.
Not a bad idea actually. Just need a good place to do it. I'm surprised that the Army doesn't do anything at big gaming events to support the game either. It makes me wonder if the Dev team themselves just don't feel like the game is complete enough to warrant the kind of advertising at this time.
Let's be real here, probably in Europe lol
I love this community!
If I have a 12" pizza to cook, I'm not going to use a microwave. The pizza is the product, but I can't enjoy the pizza without using the stove. Naw mean? Bad argument. And if the AAPG team is happy with the player base remaining stagnant, someone needs to be fired. I'm not talking about the contractors building the game, I'm talking about the GS in charge of making this thing tick.
The game clearly gives us the impression we're fighting another First World country. Is the goal of this game to aggravate tensions with Russia? Last I checked, we are not in a war with a First World country, but we are still engaging with the same type of enemies depicted in AAO...
You have to wonder this...if the Army wanted pure advertisement, why the video game? Sponsor a NASCAR vehicle, NHRA, advertise at PBR events, run commercials during sporting events. Send your recruiters to fairs. Get with school counselors and get your NCOs in high school classrooms. Oh right, that's already all done.
Here's the kicker though, recruiting goals are being met. Retention rates across the DoD are very high. Army is the only branch to miss the mark in 2015...and it's because it lost folks already in the service. So the issue isn't bringing in new folks for the Army, it's retaining qualified Soldiers.
So, a large part of me thinks that the game is both advertisement and entertainment. We need some advertising invested into this game to ensure it's longevity.