How do you feel about referral/challenge rewards?

After reading today's Project Update, I have mixed emotions about the rewards being offered to the community.

Recruit Your Friends:

Challenge of the Avatar:

As someone who spent a large sum of money on my tier, I find it a little disappointing that someone can win the rewards free of charge. At the same time, I understand that these are extremely limited rewards and are intended to improve the game and grow the player base.

Ultimately, I want what is best for the game, so if this helps improve the game then I support the decision. I would just ask that the team be careful with giving away high-end pledges when people have already spent a lot of money on those rewards. I understand that they have to walk a fine line of giving away enough to make people interested, while at the same time not giving away too much to devalue the existing rewards, but I think such high-end rewards should be the rare exception and not the rule.

What does everyone else think? Are such high-end rewards justified for these contests and do you have any concerns with them being offered?

 

I'm actually excited about them. I do understand your concerns, I was quite surprised with the announcement myself but...

You say free of charge although it really isn't. For the Challenge you've got to spend quite some time to make something impressive and have skills. "Time is money friend" said the goblin.

As for the recruiting, as long as it's a reasonable amount of people that are brought in, it could work.

 

I'm not a fan of the idea, but an increase in players is generally a good thing.

 

I think I share your mixed emotions. I thought long and hard about whether to bump my pledge to Duke.
If somebody recruits 100 people, I guess he's earned the Duke title. If it goes to somebody who recruits 10 or so, I'll be disappointed. I know at least 10 people I could pay to make accounts, and land the Duke crown for $450.

I know it'll just be one, but it still burns a bit.

 

I spent a good chunk of change on the game as well, but I'm up for building scenes and hopefully winning some higher tiers or that Occulus Rift dev package.

I've attempted to get some friends interested in the game, but most of them pledged during kickstarter. The ones who haven't feel that the game is looking like a newer UO and aren't too impressed with what they've seen so far. Don't think there's much else I can do to try and convince them.

 

My only disappointment about it really, is that I have worked really, really hard about getting people refereed already, and that there are exclusive rewards (emote and hunting dog). I have 3 family members at the 60.00 level, another at the citizen that will be upgrading to knight (both the initial and the upgrade based on my referral), and a few people from LOTRO came by and made some pledges based on my recommendation during the kickstarter.

Im all about a referral program, that's cool.. but the mixed emotion side of it for me is that, Ive generated..oh, around a 1000.00 in referrals from about a half dozen or so people. Now that the contest is going, I really don't have much left I can do.. Ive pushed the game every where and anyway i could, ive ran social networks, posted news, etc.. Ive even went onto other web sites that did news reviews, and when community members of those sites where bad mouthing the game, company, Garriott, etc.. based on bad information went to the trouble of creating an account, posting correct and factual information, and telling people they should come look at things more and make an educated opinion.. those may have generated referrals.

Now that there's a referral program in place... I don't have much left. Ill still try a bit. Shot out some emails to friends and family members again (last time im doing so.. i wont spam people).. posted another facebook message.. but im running on empty

so i know i don't have a shot at much (least i dont believe so).. and the reason i dont have a shot, is because i already did the work. Not Portalariums fault, im not bitter about it... i want more players and if this helps them get it, that's awesome! just kind of disappointed at the same time.

On the other hand, if they had been doing the referrals earlier.. would someone else have done more referrals then me? very likely.. someone that say, bought an account for themselves and then did a big one for a wife and kid, might just have blew me out of the water.. I dont know.. In EITHER situation i dont see me getting the duke level reward or anything. So a contest aspect of "the most referrals get 5000 added to pledge" or any amount really, that sort of thing im ok with.. i would never have gotten that. The "get 1 person, get 5 people" exclusive rewards on the other hand.. heck, i done did that. Now i cant do it again.. so those sort of rewards in a referral are a bitter pill.

So mixed emotions..

So in summary my answer is... im for the referral program.. im disappointed by the fact it has rewards that cannot be gotten any other way. Rewards which give out items that already exist, or that increase your pledge value (by whatever amount), im fine with.. you work, you get referrals, you get stuff.... but exclusive referral rewards sort of are a bit bitter to someone who already did referrals, started working it day #1, and so now has no options at all to get those items.. Moondial? if you really want it, you can upgrade pledge.. you can buy it from the store.. alternate options, you have a choice... Referrals? there's no option.. its not a choice i can make as an individual because its something i have to get someone else to do.... while i can do a certain amount of that my avenues for doing so are exhausted unless i start going door to door..... Which dont get me started on what happened to the last solicitor that knocked on my neighbors door (who happens to be a lawyer for the city).

Referral program, yes.. rewards for referrals, yes.... exclusive rewards for referrals? not so much.

no complaints though, just like Frank said. some mixed emotions. Ultimately yes im for a referral rewards program.

but my final answer is *shrugs* is what it is.. still looking forward to the game... Anyone want to sell a hunting hound if i cant land one let me know!

 

I have no problem with the rewards. What they are giving away costs them almost nothing. The licenses and Oculus dev kit were given to them to give away. The pledge boosts aren't real money. I think whatever support they drum up will pay for what they give out.

I agree with Kilhwch. Most everyone who I know who would be interested enough to pledge already did so. I'm way more excited about the challenges. I regularly do 48 hour game development jams, so I am intimately familiar with what it takes to complete one, but also know how hard it is to complete well enough to compete. I would love to have my work selected to get a pledge level boost.

 

I'm poor, so I like it for the 1 to 5 recruit range. I might be able to swing that.

But I don't have any delusions of grandeur that I'll somehow be the highest recruiter. That title will likely go to someone that spends a lot of money and makes a lot of gmail accounts.

As for the challenges, I have no idea what a "game development jam" is. I'd like to think that I'd have a shot at winning something creative like a poem writing contest. But I don't know that I'm the best person to create a YouTube video, it seems like the winner would be someone that already does a lot of that outside of this contest.

I guess my point is that I would enjoy inclusive challenges, or challenges where I'm good at something. How about we play 1 on 1 basketball for a Duke Title?

 

Challenge accepted!

 

I would tear both my ACL's and give myself a heart attack for a Duke Title. You can't possibly beat my determination.

 

I can see the rewards for crowdsourcing scenes - it's a great contribution to the game. But I do wonder how big is the pool of potential contributors since there was already a blitz of recruitment by a lot of players. I agree that if the # of recruits to be in the top 5 is small, it will be unfortunate.

 

So..........a Shroud of the Avatar T-Shirt actually exist.....

 

Well, we haven't seen it yet.... It may go down in history with the likes of Bigfoot and Loch Ness.

 

We need another demo or something to show our friends if we are going to try and get them to play. The demo is only 3 months old and looks terrific. I know they worked extra hard getting this thing together in that time period. It is a good demo. However, the fact is that it is still a very early demo that isn't visually stunning or even that exciting. The hero made some chairs and talked to a barkeep....and murdered a lich. The last part is ok but how am I supposed to show this to someone and expect them to drop their WoW account? If you want us to recruit...give us some more tools.

 

I am for this but should have been thought out a bit more. What if that person that wins is a duke do they get cash back (I dont think so) so what is there for those people that pledged the most to be part of this? And what happens if the person that wins (as mentioned in a post earlier) only brought 10 people to the game. That is cheap to give away a duke position.

Personal I think giving away a Baron would have been more classy. There is not many Dukes and this just cheapened the feeling of them.

I am glad to see them trying to drawing more people and something that does not involve drawing or creating dungeons. This coming from someone that is not good at drawing.

 

I'm sure we won't have to wait long for another demo.

Are you a Duke? Do you feel cheapened? There are limits on the number of Dukes. Even if all of them were already sold (10) adding one more isn't going to dilute those people awards by much, if any at all. If they haven't sold them all then this would simply take up one of those slots that any Dukes should have expected to be sold anyway.

The way it reads above, the pledge amount will be added to your existing total. So any pledge will make you a Baron plus some. If you're already at Baron you'll be within spitting distance of Lord.

Pledges as prizes are great because at this stage Portalarium can be reasonably assured that those who have already pledged (for the most part) are at their max. They aren't going to see a whole lot of real cash money for another Baron or the other pledges giveaways. That doesn't mean they don't have value. There are many of us here who would love to have that boost and are willing to spend time talking to friends and family, random strangers on forums and chatrooms, just to convince anyone who hasn't already pledged to do so. At the very least it makes more people aware of SotA and so in essence, Portalarium is trading pledge value for advertisement.

 

10 doesn't seem like much and it isn't. I do, however, hope they don't do too many contest where high level pledges are given away as rewards. We still have over a year of promotions. I would prefer they make a in game object kind of promotion...like potted trees or something. Or...say there is 25k accounts pledged ATM...maybe they can give away a citizen level pledge as a reward every 5k new. Keep it in check so everyone knows there isn't a welfare wagon handing out duke titles around the corner.

 

I find this a bit annoying, I already bought and paid for my partner and I could have waited and got extra value out of it

 

I'm really excited about this. I feel it's going to have a nice impact on the game community as we bring in new members.

For those with concerns, look at it this way: you're blessed enough to have the money to be able to afford to support the game financially in a way that many people can't. There are a lot of people I've talked to on these forums and in the chat who are amazingly fantastic community members but all they could afford to give was the bare minimum. This gives them the opportunity to join those people who had the financial ability to while doing their own part in helping the community grow.

 

The initiative itself makes perfect sense to me. In my opinion there's nothing wrong or bad or doubtful in it. However, what did surprise me was the timing and the extent.

The Kickstarter phase is somehow over, I didn't notice huge growth rates in pledges during the last weeks. So this initiative looks a bit like a "Kickstarter reloaded", or a second Kickstarter launch.
Same applies to the goal to double the backers. Given the status of the project, this surprised me. At least regarding the extent. The game's making good progress (at least from what I've seen), but it's still far away from any Alpha or Beta deadlines. Hence, trying to double the backers "halfway through" was a surprise to me.

However, the core of the initiative (raising further money, attract more backers, increase the community) makes perfect sense to me.