Streamer Support - Another Opinion

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Strider99, Dec 11, 2019.

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  1. Strider99

    Strider99 Bug Hunter

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    It seems that the current consensus somehow ended up to cut off COTO support to the streamers and this supposed consensus did not come from the portalaium or Atos but from streamers themselves. What the heck? Why?

    I love that we have Justyn and Ravalox to help support the streamers and the community and the way they have actively engaged the streaming community. I just don’t understand why we cut off coto support in the mean time to people spending hours and hours day after day streaming and actively promoting the game.

    In the Shroud live stream, it was announced that the current streamer support program was cancelled pending the development of a new program. Why did we cut off all streamer support before a new support initiative is in place? Sure, I love the idea of developing some future vapor ware that may or may not work to incorporate live stream drops of special items to the sota community through streams. Sounds great when and if this actually happens and gets all the bugs worked out but why are we cutting off all support now?

    I do not believe streamers think that it is a bad idea for us to give out free cotos given to us from the game that we stream. I know for a fact that the viewers of my stream and people just coming into my stream for the giveaways love getting cotos AND it keeps them playing. It gives out cotos mostly to current players to buy stuff in game and use that stuff in game and keep them as active players. I believe we need to focus just as much on current players as new players to help this game be successful. How many thousands of players has this game lost already? We need to keep people engaged! That is the best thing we do as streamers. I love working occasionally with a brand new player but I get to play and stream with the rest of the current community all the time.

    Some people have suggested that streamers who stream the most are being unfairly rewarded with free cotos? This is simply not true. The cotos which portalarium rewards the most active streamers go straight to the community of players, not the streamer. I cannot speak for everyone but in my stream and all the ones that I follow regularly, we have given out 10’s of thousands of cotos to hundreds of players.

    Specifically from my stream (And I know some others that give out even more):

    Cotos given out since June: 59,592
    Total number of giveaways: 785
    Total number of different players who received rewards: 137
    Additional Cotos personally purchased: $285.
    Cotos items given away $45.


    In short, we are not making money from streaming unless you count less than $1 per hour if we are very lucky and have a ton of donations from viewers to encourage us. I can make much more money collecting aluminum cans, or having a yearly garage sale. We stream because we love the game and like to play it with others. We also are trying to grow the game and keep players active because we love the game and want it to be around for a while.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2019
  2. Bedawyn

    Bedawyn Avatar

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    THIS.

    It's especially problematic to cut off COTO support at exactly the same time that players are going to be wanting to give game friends gifts and buy holiday decos and take advantage of the lot upgrade sale WHILE most of us have extra holiday expenses in real life reducing the amount of funds we have for game stuff.

    I know I've said it before, but until it sinks in....
    Player X wants to upgrade their lot, but needs to buy 2400 COTOs to do it.
    Player Y wants the same upgrade, needs the same 2400 COTOs -- but they got 1000 from stream contests, so they only need to buy 1400.

    Which casual player -- not big money spenders who are going to buy anyway, but casual players who have a lot of other demands on their time and money -- is ACTUALLY likely to buy those crowns?
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2019
  3. Girlsname

    Girlsname Avatar

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    It’s better like this, we don’t/shouldn’t need bribe candy to attract/keep players LOL.

    If that’s the case then something is fundamentally severely wrong.

    (Also still waiting for the cotos I won from you months ago):p
     
  4. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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    Twitch drops. For the players and stream audience.
    Twitch drops. For the devs.

    Why is it that 100% of the rest of the games industry with active twitch communities have zero problems with this kind of thing? This is a simple problem with a simple solution and pits zero people against each other.
     
  5. Bedawyn

    Bedawyn Avatar

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    No, we SHOULDN'T, but...

    Yes, something is fundamentally wrong. Not with the streamers, but with the game -- that makes it significantly easier to win COTOs (thereby enabling much of the fun of the game) on stream than in-world. I'd much rather earn COTOs in-game than by watching Twitch. But since I've still never seen a single COTO drop in-game.... Yes, we do need bribe candy to keep existing players from getting too fed up to keep coming back. The Twitch COTOs provide hope, which as I've said elsewhere, the game itself doesn't provide. I'd rather see the game itself make things possible, but in the interim...

    I haven't heard anyone say anything against Twitch Drops -- but that's a separate issue. There's no reason having Drops should be the only kind of streamer support, nor would having them require all streamer support to be dropped until they can be implemented.

    New players aren't going to come to a stream just for prizes that they can't use because they haven't tried the game yet. As far as new players are concerned, COTOs and Drops are equally useless. New players coming from Twitch stick around because they see a happy, helpful, interactive community. And that community is built by existing players, which is why it's important to keep existing players happy and hopeful and motivated to stick around and help newbies. And yes, stream rewards -- both COTOs and the other prizes that some streamers buy with their official COTOs -- currently play a role in counteracting the stream of disappointed players who would be leaving if it weren't for the community.

    The only argument I've heard against COTOs as streamer support is that it's "buying viewers" but that argument doesn't hold water with me. An unappealing streamer with prizes to give away may attract more new or intermittent viewers who are existing players than one without, but those viewers aren't going to stick around once they see the stream isn't to their taste. Sure, there will always be a minority of jerks who abuse any system, but they are a minority. A streamer who wants to keep viewer numbers needs to be a good streamer, regardless of whether they have COTOs to give away or not. The COTOs help keep us buying things in game, upgrading our deeds, and otherwise participating in the game. The only thing that keeps someone participating in a stream is the streamer.
     
  6. Kabalyero Kidd

    Kabalyero Kidd Avatar

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    Agreed...

    They do drop... looted 17 COTOs yesterday... not always though...

    [​IMG]
     
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  7. CICI

    CICI Avatar

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    Best to ask Players to Donate gold/COTO's vs the dev's :)
    or
    just buy one pack of 10,750 COTOS and sell it for 2,150,000‬ gold plus then give out 5k-10k per hr
    or
    just giveaway loot =)

    Free COTO's = less sales for cat games
     
    Last edited: Dec 12, 2019
  8. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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    Agreed. Twitch Drops. Problem solved. Every participating streamer gets something that encourages their audience to be an active audience member, every audience member gets to show support to their favorite streamers, and everyone gets to show support to their favorite game.
     
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  9. CarlNZ

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    If the total players who have received cotos is 137, I'd say it's not even worth their time supporting that system. There isn't a single streamer for Sota that's significant enough to have an impact on exposing sota to new players anyway.
     
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  10. necronut

    necronut Avatar

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    Akeada is significant... but he left the game and became significant.
     
  11. Virsago2099

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    Twitch already has the system integrated into their software. Have for years. And it works very well. The program has been proven effective for generating a bigger audience, and where there are more viewers there tend to be more streamers.

    I don't see how giving away COTOs to streamers (which the giveaways for tend to be locked behind bit donation walls), is doing much for the growth of the game.
     
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  12. Strider99

    Strider99 Bug Hunter

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    Sorry if I missed a giveway. It possible I made a mistake. I'll send you some for the 11/23 50 coto giveaay but I show it was paid. I could have made a mistake though. Please let me know if I ever miss one. I do get flustered at times with all that we have going on when streaming and its easy to make a mistake like that.
     
  13. Bedawyn

    Bedawyn Avatar

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    Free Stream COTOS = Over $100 in crowns I purchased from Port and used to buy the deeds (from Port) for my lots, including the one that I bought a basement from you for.

    No stream COTOs would have meant no realistic track for me to purchase the land I wanted, no reason to continue buying decos or more crowns to buy the decos with, no motivation to continue playing a game where I only heard "Oh, they drop for me, so that's all that matters", and a few dozen newbie questions that I wouldn't have been around to answer because I wasn't playing anymore. Including the ubiquitous "Oooh, that's gorgeous! How can I get that? Ohhhh, that's expensive, that's FRICKING EXPENSIVE IN REAL MONEY, please tell me this game isn't pay to win or I'm outa here..." newbie question.
     
  14. Virsago2099

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    @Bedawyn I promise you, even without the free COTOs to streamers there will be plenty of COTO giveaways. They aren't disappearing just cause the devs stop giving them away. COTO giveaways generate revenue for streamers, in a couple of ways. The difference is, they'll be COTOs that were bought from the store.
     
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  15. Sulaene Moon

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    Buy coots with IGG.
     
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  16. Bedawyn

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    Problem MIGHT be solved when (and if) Drops are actually implemented, if the drops still have the same flexibility and excitement level as COTOs.

    For the sake of anyone reading this who doesn't watch Twitch, "locked behind bit donation walls" does NOT mean that only donors have a chance at them. Many of our streamers give away dev-funded prizes on a timed basis. Those that occur only when a certain bit donation goal has been reached still allow anyone to enter and win, not just the bit donors. And my understanding is that most of those (at least on the streams I watch) are funded by the bit donations themselves, not by the dev COTOs. We have a relatively small group of bit donors who support the community in large amounts, much smaller than the group of people who win prizes.

    Okay, you posted just above me while I was typing this. As I just typed, many streamers already fund their own prizes. But not everyone can afford to do that -- and stopping one form of support BEFORE implementing another gives an immediate advantage to streamers who are already better off. And as I said earlier, it's problematic to do so at this time of year for everyone -- it's a wasted opportunity to get more crown purchases. Streamer COTOs are NOT a lost sale, they are a loss LEADER.

    If Catnip analyses the data and decides to stop them because it's a losing proposition, that's one thing. I will have no objection to that. But just stopping them without a replacement in place, with insufficient warning for all streamers to make alternate plans, because a handful of streamers want to blame COTO giveaways instead of their stream content for not being as popular as they'd like (which is certainly what the other thread felt like to me), then yeah, I'll continue to think Shroud is making bad business decisions.
     
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  17. necronut

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    It is a losing proposition. No one watching the streams is new. Plenty of new accounts getting created to farm those streams though. You can use twitch insights to find that out rather easily.

    Simple. Make cotos more affordable and make coto store items more affordable.

    Twitch drops solves the giveaway problem and makes everything more honest.

    This is a passionate, but very small player base with a passionate and very small stream audience spread between the few streamers there are. But do something and do it quick.


    https://imgur.com/ii6kKL6
     
  18. CICI

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    it's the responsibility of the streamer to come up with the giveaways not the game co! Asking viewers for donations for giveaways works too! :)
     
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  19. kaeshiva

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    I don't really watch streams much beyond the 'official' ones, unless I'm like, attending an event that is being streamed or somesuch. I've never really understood the allure of watching someone else play when I could just go be playing. But, if its good marketing and brings in players, then yeah, sure, I'm glad people do it.

    That being said, I had no clue that nearly 60,000 cotos had given given away - by a single streamer - in less than 6 months time? I think that's massive - while I absolutely believe that there should be a non-cash alternative to earning cotos, such as in-game drops, watching twitch streams for absolutely massive amounts of "free money" seems a bit ridiculous to me. While its true that giving people a little may encourage them to buy more, this seems excessive. This is on top of the unique cloaks or whatever and streamer titles and other perks for the streamer program. I'm not just trying to hate on streamers, I think if they're bringing in players, great. But if players are just watching (and creating additional twitch accounts...) for the handout, then I don't think its fit for purpose.
     
  20. Girlsname

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    Chris has said he’s going to be doing, “paid advertising”, IF so, why should he NEED to continue the bribe candy? =)
     
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