Hi Tomos,
I'd like to offer you some thoughts if I may. I've been playing this game for a few weeks now and am quite enjoying it. Over the course of the past month or so I've watch you make many improvements to both the front- and back-ends. Most are good changes, however there are a few things which deserve comment:
(1) A couple of days ago I finally bought a referal. However this was someone brand new to the game. They were on level one and appear to have earned 499 soposhi and spend about half-an-hour on the site in total before giving up and going away. I'm a bit annoyed at that because I've spend a days earnings on someone who wasn't a tested user - they were simply checking it out. Can you please not offer new accounts for referral purchase. Let the the accounts mature for a while first. Maybe you should let them upgrade the Bar to level 2 before you offer them.
(2) There are too many times I click on a link (say to buy beer) and I get an ad instead. OK, I get it that you need ads to fund this but if you must show an ad can you at least them follow through with the action as well? I currently need to do a separate refresh to see if it took the action and then re-do the action if it missed. This is really annoying and will turn people off the game, see (1).
- There are too many ads in general - when I click something I get pop-overs, pup-unders, new windows and eveything else you can think of - sometimes all at once or two or three new windows of ads per click adn I find myself playing "IE Whack-a-mole". This interrupts the flow of the game and will turn people off the game, see (1). You need to find a balance between ads and useability, but at the moment it's too heavilly weighted on the ads.
- You introduced a force-login if the user changes device. I found it really convenient to have multiple devices logged in. That way I could leave my desk, pick up the iPad and keep playing while in front of the TV, or I could do an event update on my phone while I'm shopping. Now I have to log in when I pick up the iPad and then re-login when I return to my desk. What purpose does this serve? Why do you object to people using the game from a variety of different devices? From a user perspective, it's just annoying.
- There are some things which would work better on a once-per-calendar-day basis instead of 24-hours. One withdrwal per calendar day would be an improvement and the same for the daily bonus. However keeping the inventor on a 24-hour cycle works for that to because it's part of the challenge of the game.
Tomos, I think this game is great and you've put in a lot of hard work. It's got great potential and I want this to succeed as much as you do because then we can both get benefit from it. I know you need adertising revenue for it to work, but there is lots of room for improvement.