When i started , i was enchanted by this game .. few buildings / planets later , i find myself in the arms of AZG alliance , was nr3 back then .. remember lot of players , defiant ,sporg , contruga ,thor from AZG ... i remember beeing chased / scanned daily .. roamers , ppl lunching on me ..Gozar , pkromm ..FUN ! It made me want more and more , so i had days when i was 48h online and more ,others when i was sleeping 5-6 hours a night , i remember waking up from bed at 4Am just to check if i got scanned or raided , but that`s my story.Now everybody is blue , or going to be blue for long periods of time .. Nobody hunts anybody.. Game is dead.

What do we do ?

keep inspiring.

Numbers have dropped. That's the major truth. Also, summer is never good for numbers.

We have already increased advertising since mid June and we are willing to dedicate much more time into developing new features.

Any other ideas, we are open to suggestions.

I Got suggestions ... :
-Making a special color to the Help button it will attract players to click on it and discover the game
-and i changing color not all blue (some ppl will say that blue color isnt interesting)
-a picture guide (flash guide showing players how to play how to click on buttons )
-a small gift when the make shipyard level 1 ( 5 Small cargo )
-notification messages to help them
-for big players they give 50 rubies and 25% of there fleets are back ( it gives them hope to replay the game they will not leave easily )
-and 2 3 experienced players to help the newbies on all servers connected 24hours and there names will be present on the Help section
-Making fb page active !!! its no use no ones is using it :O at least put a proverb or smthn ...

Expedition rework would be the best place to start, it needs to be something worthwhile and interesting.

Sending ships for nothing is kind of a drag, you obviously don't want it to be the best way to get resources but it shouldn't be completely pointless either.

I'd suggest making a minigame of it that gives rewards in the game, this way there is meager payout and something interesting to do in some downtime. This will give people a reason to stay when they start an account and are waiting on the resources to rebuild (As well as help them recover resources faster).

You should know the retention rate and I'm sure it's pretty dismal from what I've seen watching new players come in and immediately go inactive before even getting a single point in buildings

we all agree the problem is the lack of active players. to fix this we either need to increase the retention rate, or increase the rate new players find the game. Also as awesome as having different servers is, it splits the player base, there are lots of people that have accounts across servers, but some people either dont have the time or interest to play on different servers. One idea that i think would work and would address the expedition issue, would be to make expeditions more worthwhile to players under protection. Gives expeditions a purpose, gives new players something to do, and allows them to recoup some losses so they dont leave if they get crashed.

While implementations of new features can be helpful for retention issues, they will hardly play a role.

There is also a long time since we created a new universe; perhaps the time to create a new one has came. New universes always boost activity across all universes as they all benefit from the increased advertising and returning players.

Regarding the split up, if a universe keeps running on low numbers with no profit (right now, massacre is not doing well) we will need to consider drastic measurements with the most drastic of all to remove it from main welcome page (no direct newcomer signups).

Another issue to consider is the deletion of inactives; with many inactives player interaction is reduced as most farm the inactives. We are going to test this primarily in massacre for the time being.

We also need help from current playerbase in spreading the word; the usage of referral system is adequate and only a few players seem to bother with it. That's a good way to help the game.

Going on the referral system maybe we can up the rewards for using it? Gives a major incentive for players to use it.

here is a helpful statistics from a raiders perspective.

back around 2009-2010 when i used to raid i used to get at least 40%-50% of my raid incomes from active players. that number has been reduced to 10%-20% these days. The percentage did not get reduced cause there are more inacitives, it got reduced cause there are less active players. If you try to increase cutting off inactive player base more drastically, you will only cut back player income which will directly result in less player growth and that wd mean the universe will die fast.

we need more players. the more the player the better the interaction. find the right balance for farm ratios and try to keep that up. just forcing players to interact wont be an answer if the only players left are a handful ones.

in extreme server on a daily basis i find only about 4-5 targets per colony to raid. that is how low the player base has thinned out there. in speed that number is as best 8-10 no more. where these numbers used to be 30-40 way back in those days. cutting off inactives is not an answer. only a non-player wd consider that as an option.

make the game more interesting, increase the retention rate. bring ze to new players more and let them find ze more interesting. give them a plump universe to surface/flourish in to. if the goal is to keep a moderate income going then what you are doing is what u need to do. but if you really want to boom this game to hold the largest player base then you need to make the existing servers interesting. you have to turn the challenges of the existing servers to be the key selling points. make it lucrative to the new players.

Don`t think only for the new upcomers ,but also think for the old players .. Players that are here from the beginning .

Any game in order to survive it has to have something that will still get you turned on after years.