That is a lot of thoughtful information and an interesting read. Thanks for posting- it sounds like you are creating a business plan for starting a gaming company! I'll learn to develop games and come help
I'll offer some of my thoughts below. You can keep the following in mind while reading them. I am a relatively new player- I have only played 2.0, so I have no comparison to previous versions and no baggage influencing my view of the game. I got my gaming start on Ataris and grew up with Nintendo and Sega. My gaming tastes now run towards sims (flying and racing primarily these days but Sim City, railroad tycoon, etc. in the past), but I could also spend hours on Mario or Street Fighter with friends. I have not been able to get into any of the first person shooter games ever, so perhaps I am not the target demographic for game developers trying to hit homeruns, but rather those looking doubles or a solid single.
What I like about WOWP
- Flying!
- Easy to get started but complicated enough to keep it interesting
- Community- forums, clans, flying with others on discord voice channels
- Free to Play (and not really pay to win) I would be willing to pay for a good game, but not on a subscription model. I hate subscriptions and don't much care for micro transactions. I'm usually ok with ads.
- Lots of planes
- Challenges and events to keep things interesting
- Graphics- I am plenty happy with the graphics in the game as-is and don't need more at this time.
What could be improved in WOWP
- Better joystick optimizations
- Aiming seems to be a big disadvantage to joystick. Any flying game should be optimized for joysticks (or at least not make them a disadvantage), just like any racing game should be optimized for racing wheels. As a business, the game could be marketed with joystick hardware as there is a severe lack of competition and quality in the joystick market today!
- Can't look around easily with a joystick. Using a hat to look around works somewhat, but isn't the same as using a mouse with free look.
- Limited directional control while in turret mode or bombing mode
- Either stop making missions and materials require winning a battle or change the game dynamics so that an individual has more control over the outcome of a battle
- Trying to overcome a player who has disconnected or dropped out (which is all too common) is very frustrating
- Overcoming bad players on a team is also very frustrating (What's up with bots that manage to finish a battle with 0 points!)
- One tier per battle
- Get rid of cost penalty for flying in training rooms
- Clan battles
- Flight physics- would like more realism (and less lag packet loss problems like bullet hit sparklies, but no damage)
- Time sink. I'm spending more time on this game (particularly with two events going on now) than my life can afford. Maybe this is a problem with me rather than the game, though. I still blame the game
Edit to add: VR support would be awesome and solve the joystick look around problems. I'd go buy a VR headset for that.
Edited by Commodore_Sailracer, 09 October 2020 - 02:50 PM.