I agree, we should have been constantly pushing for new players this WHOLE time, regardless of the state of entry. The thing about this 'NPE' is that the team has flatly refused for YEARS to focus AT ALL on bringing in new players, and the excuse is always the lack of a NPE and tutorials. We get told that it would be a waste of time and resources to make tutorials, since gameplay will be changing to much, soon, and everything would have to be re-done... but...those changes never come. I was told this THREE YEARS ago. Imagine if we had just made tutorials THREE YEARS AGO and put some energy into expanding the player base. The lack of any serious tutorial at this late date blows my mind.
We need new players and we need them now, no more excuses. Whatever it takes to make that happen needs to be TOP priority. This has clearly become a matter of survival at this point. We can no longer depend on a handful of whales to prop up the economy. We have to stop pricing things so a large part of our current player base refuses to buy. And we need ALL hands on deck making it so we are 'ready' to attract new players. That's the only way we can keep the lights on at this point.
I have come to realize that Matt's vision of land, while awesome, is simply to grandiose to realistically achieve with the current skeleton crew in any reasonable time frame. We have had simple NFT crafting games for years now, we could easily adapt a MUCH simpler way to create items and spells, and then build out Matt's vision as time and resources allow. Clearly, we don't have the resources for the luxury of full on land at this point in time. So in lieu of that, we need to focus on what we need to SURVIVE.
Land can be and should be developed at the same time NPE and the rest of the parts of the game are. The goals are very clear for near term land development, get the rest of the natural resource plots working and the corresponding LP's. This does not interfere with NPE development if this proposal is passed. I don't think Matt would have let this proposal be submitted if it was going to, so let's not second guess him as he has proven himself at leadership so far and he has made it very clear how important NPE is. You can see they are making progress on that and are getting ready for a marketing push.
The way I read this is that we get one person dedicated to land and nobody touches him for other projects but he still falls under the guidance of the team leadership as to how and what parts of land are to be developed. That is exactly what I want.
Land resources can be awarded to new players in an achievement system in loot chests and they can sell those to land owners. If we get the natural resources plots going and corresponding LP's that burns a lot more DEC which makes the whole economy more appealing to new players.
If we get these natural plots up and running maybe we can introduce the salt system and DS crystals in the near future which also opens up possibilities for new players to acquire more land resources in ranked and sell them to land owners.