I think a large part of it is the mistakes of Chaos and we simply continue to pay for it now because there's a much smaller player base and people interested in the game. Chaos was extremely damaging. Not only did we have DEC unpeg but somehow the company burned through legit billions and had nothing to show for it which just boggles my mind. All I can say is things are better than what they were and at least corrections were made before everything came crashing to zero. It's going to take a ton of hard work, better player experience and so forth to try and get back up on top again. Idk if that will ever happen but I'm going to remain hopeful.
I'd also agree that land has been a let down. There is no reason why land 1.6 or even 2.0 shouldn't be out now. If they would have kept up tempo it would have created at least some hype and kept people interested in it. But we are now TWO months into simply gathering grain, sps and research and being clueless as to when we will get anything new. We were told land 1.5 was the hard part and everything else would come faster after that. That hasn't been the case.
Land is a game within a game. The encompassing game needs be sustainable first. The main problem is that the audience for land is small, and a captive audience to boot. No brand new player is going to discover land and want to get involved in it until much later in their journey if at all. I'd much rather land be subordinate to onboarding, marketing, and NPE. The build it and they will come mentality never works, with something as specialized as land in particular.
That is very true, in terms of growing the game land really wont do that. It might help in terms of prices because there would be more market action but it would be for assets in which a majority would never touch. The barrier for entry into land is only going to get larger so I agree with you.