Being able to watch the world when being not logged in/spawned
-
I would like to propose the following features - I think they might greatly benefit your conversion rate and churn reduction.
1) At the moment as anonymous user, you get an ugly login screen. This is no smart move, since a registration process is always a barrier for entry and seeing the action first (perhaps in reduced way if you are concerned about server load) and after that having a voluntary registration process offered (=e.g. a prominently placed link "Join the action now") would probably greatly improve your conversion rate.
2) Needing to place a spawn in order to see/observe objects in the game world detains inactive players, which (temporary) retired from playing from re-joining the game. Having the regular world obversable all the time and offering a prominently placed "respawn" button (which brings you into respawn mode) will surely help reduce churn and improve the reactivation rate of sleepers (unlike a subscription model you don't benefit from sleepers).
-
Viewing the world for anonymous users was restricted deliberately in order to avoid possible abuse of uncontrolled automatic monitoring of game data by unknown persons through an anonymous web sockets connection. This could create too much load on our front-end server. Accessing the game, including view of the game world, usually requires registration in online games.
Yes, we plan to add this capability.
-
Did you consider anonymizing the data, so that monitoring provides no real benefit? Also, why don't you restrict the websockets from anonymous browser sessions? Also, considerung your arguments for 1, option 2 is prone to abuse as well.