Patreon

Agreed TBK. I`ve been one since day one \**/

I plan to begin my Patreon status December 1st

Even if nothing is offered to be one , a small monthly donation is a small price to pay for a game that has given me numerous hours of entertainment over 15+ years. The alternative is let the game die and complain to nobody.

I don`t know how hard this would be to implement, but here is an idea...

I used to play RPG Mo. In that game people can buy a 2x potion that, when used, grants double experience to everyone on that server for 20mins I think. Successive potions make the 2x experience last longer. Something similar like using an arti that grants faster turn regeneration across the server for X amount of time might work.

A good question would be what is doable and willing to be adjusted from a staff perspective as far as patreon tier rewards, what is iffy, and what is staff not willing to do?

Ankaar, you are right, my last post was a poor idea. Scrap that.

I don`t really agree with everyone getting a paid though. Yes it would be a nice thing to have, but as far as making money and paying for things needed for the game, it would not work from my perspective. If you have a monthly funding goal that says once X amount of dollars is funded each month, everyone gets a paid account, OK, a few generous people help everyone get a paid. Unless you have a way to motivate people to put in more money, it will stagnate at that income level. What happens when money gets tight for a lot of people, or people lose interest that were funding the universal paids, and they stop funding it, would everyone suddenly get reverted to free accounts? What would happen to paid races in that scenario.

On the topic of getting 1.5k barrens, or explore bonuses, or arti dig bonus, or more turn reserves as possible tiers, if we go to universal paids, wouldn`t that be replacing one kind of paid with another? Why not have getting the benefits of the current paid system as tier 1.

Pay to win is kind of why we are having the gordo debate right now. People were/are trading paid accounts for gordos (basically buying them). I just don`t want to see us open a can of worms and we are back here debating something else down the road.

Transparency.
We gave you money, what did you use it for, can you break that down for me.

$500 my initial fee for taking on a new project
$800 dollars for the 8 days i did researching for the following updates.
$200 dollars for the 2 days i spent doing minor updates with ships.
$200 dollars for the 4 days i spent doing minor updates with the economy.
$700 dollars for redoing the battle system from scratch.
$700 dollars for developing and adding NPC`s into the game.

Are my numbers horrible or reasonable haha?

Normally when I think of a IT project, the whole lifecycle alone is a beast and getting enough resources (whether free or paid) is a whole other story. I don`t mind supporting a game, but there has to be some sort of transparency on both sides of the equation, otherwise I would assume the risk of fraud. In no way am I saying this would happen here, but there has to be some checks/balances on this so that players can rely on the game developers being honest and transparent.

I do independence work with companies for financial reporting, Series Funding, or investigations. As long as the Development team has checks and balances, it is easy to review for independence and transparency. However, without checks and balances the money given to development would give me concern.

It would be nice to get paid lol. But for this, I feel strongly that any monies generated should stay within GC, or placed into BWs GCR development project. Even if some of it goes to her CoL expenses to some degree I am okay with that. She puts in an insane amount of work. If the game is worth it to you, I would also like to prompt you all out of stagnation and let`s see what we can actually get done.

We appreciate the healthy discussion over the last few days. It is refreshing and there is a surprising level of support for many of the ideas thrown out there. Keep it up guys ^_^

Exactly Assass. We need to put together a list of desired updates and figure out how much time they will take to complete. Events can be like this too. When a certain amount is raised, an event starts. All updates and events should be global. For people who want the staff to spend their time doing this stuff they have a way for it to happen. It`s insane that people don`t get paid for the hard work they do here.

Personally I like the idea of being able to support the game in a clearer way, however I don`t feel that Patreon works particularly well in this case.

Would it not be better to have several projects open (minor, major updates, new game development, etc), and people can jump onto the page, see what`s pending, what requires funding to be pushed through and seen on the game, and that way can decide which aspect they wish to fund.


As a horrible example as I don`t have many ideas:

For everyone to be given a paid account - $100 to be raised
For a new race to be added to the game - $1000 to be raised
For a new game without all the horrific bugs - $3000 to be raised


Then it`s sort of self selecting, the best ideas get funded and pushed through, but BW still has overview of what projects/updates to put up on the page and the direction to lead the game.

I suspect it would also work on Patreon, come to think of it, but you`d have to rename each tier to an update title (get 10 subscribers on $1/month for universal paids), and rename them once each project/update is run through on the game.

That`s my thoughts, a way of giving people insight into what exactly it is they are funding/buying.

This is not supposed to take the impacts of paids and separate them out.

Its a small pain to have to do paids the way the system currently requires, and is sort of sketchy as well for a lot of people. BW wants to give full paids to everyone to avoid the hassle and also because thats just a dope thing to do.

In return, BW is doing work on the game and working to bring us a new game. Shes not being paid. Because of that, shes hoping people will support her efforts through the patreon.

The jump to 100% paids isnt happening immediately. When I asked what wed get for various tiers, having it divide up the benefits of a paid is frankly a terrible idea and were getting less for our dollar than we already were. I simply wanted to know if tier one supporters for instance could just automatically get paids because theyre basically paying the same amount they would for a paid. If you paid more, I would expect more than a paid account though and thats where I was coming from.

At the same time, I dont believe in anything game breaking being given as a reward for paying, ie, pay to win.

Some of the things suggested, like a small boost to some players max turns, is not really game breaking - you still get your turns at the same speed and this amounts to only a few extra turns compared to your normal turn bank each time you log in.

Since this is supposed to *replace* paid accounts, the tiers should correspond with the advantages of a paid account. Those advantages are:
Able to play all (playable) races
+15% extra turns
+50% extra turn reserves
+20% chance of finding artifacts
Up to 20% more land when exploring for planets
Ships available only to paid accounts

There is also the ability to start federations, use 99 turns instead of 9 for research, mass plunder, and being able to complete all missions of your race, but imo I think those should be available to everyone. Being able to play any race for free is something debatable as well. Thinking about it, I guess any of them are debatable. Anyway.

So tier 1 ($2) would be you get one of the paid advantages above. Like getting 50% more turn reserves, but none of the others. Tier 2 ($4) would be getting two of the bonuses from getting what a paid offers now. Like +15% turn regeneration plus 50% turn reserves. And so on. So that $12 a month will get you all the benefits of what we currently get from a paid account. I think if people want above and beyond those benefits, the cost of the tier should go up quite a bit.

You could say that at a certain tier you get to pick two benefits instead of one, so that you get the full paid at $10. Or start at $1, then $2, $4, $6, $8, $10.

xsake too many diff threads open xD wrong section ill repost it

sorry Ank but xD ....

@Badwolf, if were making the PR formula land based then mineral miner is going to have to be changed to land based .. i have a formula if u require 1 ?

whats other peoples thoughts?

And im interested in the game you are making

What are the Rewards ?

Give me good rewards and ill pay to play !!
Every Online Game that i know of if you pay you get extras Give everyone a paid and ill pay you to have more turns and so on

global paids
every sunday explore bonus
every other Saturday building bonus
every 3rd friday artifact bonus digs

Nothing is set. Global rewards like paid status is a good idea. Debate it. Come up with something you all can agree on.

Unless the thing they get is greater max turns - nobody steals that.

Universal paid status for all servers can save every player up to $27 every month. Whether you donate or not. This benefits those without money to donate allot and every game online offers goodies to patrons, but no matter how much stuff they get if they are unskilled they will lose it anyway to someone who is