Why players leave the online game after winter?

[MikesCZ]

DSJ is quite unique in this aspect - majority of online players only play during winter season.

What are the main reasons?

1. No snow on hills? I know many players hate the green "igelit". In the past Jussi tried to add "snow server" but since that was not applied to tournaments it was not successful.

2. Players only buying 3month sub and then wait for winter again?

3. Other reasons?


I can't recall any other game where most people only come and play for 3-4 months and then abandon the game.

It is sad to see constantly empty servers...

[MikesCZ]

As for the second example - I think, 3 month sub should NOT exist. You see, players come back to the game, when it's time to Ski Jumping on snow (real life). From November to March, there is 5 months, so I think, 6 Months DSJ4 Online Sub is great idea. 6 Months is half of year. So if this will be avaiable to buy on Mediamond, then put there half price of 360day sub

Maybe little bit more than half price - because you should incentivize players to buy the bigger sub

Or perhaps just offer the yearly pass - that way people have access for whole year and maybe come into online server during off-season

[Borthne_79]

I will try to join in the tournament tonight on the saturday tournament.
I have no plans for the evening, so I have plenty of time.

[MikesCZ]

Well, main reason is how the hill looks like. Yuck! Just look for example: look of Planica HS215 custom lines. (Made by Wojciech Schiller). Or it is the problem with the take-off. You can't really see when to do timing, because of too weird, "double things" or just call it black thing.
But if you want to not have empty servers, do the same thing as Martin Kafka in 2015/16 - create a base of players and create a fictional season (or it was based on real, I didn't remember )

Are you talking about Winter vs Summer hills? If yes, then I agree. There is snow on hills only from November to March (or something like that) and rest of the year there is no snow, which is realistic, but people do not like it.

I know Jussi has tried to test this with the "snow world cup server" but that was just a standalone server and snow was not used in daily cups so of course it failed to be attractive.

Anyway - we can clearly see that every year the attendance for online cups drops heavily when snow is gone. I believe that Jussi should try to implement "all year snow" in all online cups and servers - let's try this in 2024 and compare cup attendance in 2024 vs 2023 in summer months and then we can see if it is good approach or not. What is there to lose really? How many players actually care about the realistic weather conditions in computer game? There is like 20 die hard DSJ players competing online in the summer (including me)....will any of them leave the game because there is snow on hills? I don't think so. Can it attract some more players who normally don't play because they hate the green plastic? Probably yes