Explanations on monetization thinking on SotA

Really know ~~~ Drops!!! With Their RNG on Drops maybe just maybe 30-50 or even 1 out of 100 at Best lol.......No.......lmao

 

Come on Budner, you know that's not P2W but rather P2P...pay to play!

 

Hi Guys,

If this is a repeat i am sorry

I am one of those people who has more money then time. If i am lucky i get to play on weekends, usually i only get a couple hours a week. These potion are something that would would greatly improve the quality of my play time and also support the creators of such a great game. I think this is a wonderful idea for a system.

My question is, does the 7 day time persist well logged out? I believe in GW2 the timer only ran well logged in. If the idea of this system is for those with more money then time, then to me it wouldn't make sense for the timer to run well logged out. In my situation, if it did, this would mean I would log in on Saturday, apply my potion, get my 3 hours of game time in per week, then log back in the following Saturday and my buff would be all used up?

Thanks for the response

 

Yes, the timer is still running while you're logged out.

 

@Chris @RichardGarriott @DarkStarr

Have gift cards redeemable for store credit and/or COTOs been considered for additional revenue? I'm well aware you can buy store credit online, but there are about a hundred reasons people would want the gift card option vs. making an online purchase and I'm betting most of these are manufactured and sold by just a few third party companies who simply takes their % and send the proceeds back to the development company, so if the right deal was struck it would be near transparent revenue generation for portalarium.





A cool idea that other companies are not doing is, if you created this gift card and attached a collectable mini series pulp comic book to it with a spin-off story line that relates to SotA and helps entice a person who may be looking at it to investigate the game. Maybe even in the old "choose your own adventure" virtue driven storybook format. How cool would that be?




Thanks,
-Grave

 

COTO cards in retail location s would also double as advertisment for the game. when im in the electronics section i often check that rack out and look up the ones i never heard of on my smartphone

 

出售在中國, 日本でそれを販売, ขายในประเทศไทย, 한국에서 판매...
~But I Like This Idea~

~Time Lord~

 

Just remove the stuff then. Its worthless to those of us who have lives and priorities outside of game. Its a real pain trying to grind out for money and this was at least some what of a helper in getting yourself established and moving forward. This "compromise" heavily favors only time investment and nothing else. I already have one job. I do not desire a second.

 

Thanks to you and the rest of the team for having the courage to try something new, knowing there is no guarantee that it will succeed, and also keeping in mind that some people will never be happy no matter what you do.

However, if I may make a suggestion: It seems to me that part of the difficulty in trying to find the right balance between "P2W" and "F2P" could be due to the possibility that it is somewhat of a false dichotomy. It's not really two points on a line that needs to be balanced, but rather more like 9 smaller squares making up one large square. Or even 27 smaller cubes making up one large cube. What I am trying to say is that there is more than one dimension.

At the very least- there are two dimensions: time and money. For the sake of example, let's say there are three tiers within each dimension: low, medium, and high.

For example, say <5 hours a week of play is considered "low" time, 5-10 hours "medium" time, and 10+ hours "high time". (I'm just throwing numbers out there and really have no idea what they actually are for this game.)

To continue the example, say <$1 a week "low" money, $1-10 a week "medium" money, and >$10 / week "high" money. (Again, just making an example. Your team would know better than me what numbers you are trying to target.)

This generates a matrix of nine general classes of players:

1. High time / High money
2. Medium time / High money
3. Low time / High money
4. High time / Medium money
5. Medium time / Medium money
6. Low time / Medium money
7. High time / Low money
8. Medium time / Low money
9. Low time / Low money

What I would first suggest is to make it very plain to players what that "sweet spot" for the #5 "medium time, medium money" actually is. For example, if the goal is to have the average player spend $50 and 500 hours per year on the game, then state that very transparently.

Now what I would further suggest is that a specific strategy be implemented to recruit and retain players of all nine categories.

Clearly- players with low time and high money should be able to convert their excess money into items that basically accelerate gameplay, and reduce the amount of time they need to spend in-game in order to achieve a particular skill level.

Similarly- players with high time and low money should be able to convert their excess time into benefits as well. For example, I've seen it suggested to offer bounties for bug and exploit hunting. Or there could be some kind of special status that kicks in according to a player's moving average of time spent logged in and active. For example- A player who is logged in and active for a minimum average of 10 hours a week for the last four weeks gets a 10% xp or gold boost for as long as they maintain that moving average. There's tons of options to go with here.

But perhaps more importantly is to create a mechanism for new players or those considering playing the game to get easily connected with the strategy designed to complement their time/money ratio. Don't let people just go straight to the Game Store, see a bunch of expensive buffs in there, and conclude "this game isn't for me" because it is ostensibly P2W. (Even if it isn't they don't really have any way of knowing that.) Make it clear that there are different kinds of special rewards available for players who aren't willing or able to make a strong cash commitment.

Just some thoughts that I hope might be helpful! Again, thanks to all of you for making a good effort to tackle this issue.

 

Sell me a "sneeze" emote so I can sneeze every time someone flowers me...
+1 emote packages...
~TL~

 

Nice post. Well thought out.

In the past I felt like a lot of the add-on store items were 'expensive'. I explained to the devs that clothing items in the region of 15 - 40 USD is probably towards the top end of what people want to pay for a single item. They are not expensive in the sense of bank breaking, but it was my assumption that few people would want to regularly spend that much on single items. I proposed (along with others, both in the hangouts / B+ hangout and in dev+ forum) that there should be more items and more variety but at a lower price. That considerably reduces the barrier to entry and hence enables a far larger number of players to buy. I reasoned that this ought to be beneficial to revenue.

Big backers will always go big: either by buying packs of items / multiples of the same items and also by purchasing the odd single big priced item. I think they have received this feedback keenly and acted upon. I can't say (as an outsider) whether this has helped to boost their revenue but I hope so. I also think the current prices ought to do a better job of catering to the various categories that you point out. From the stats that the team post from time to time the biggest amount of money has come from the house owners, who are possibly toward the top-end of medium money (the time factor I couldn't guess at). By medium money I'm not saying they earn better than average necessarily in real life but rather they are spending better than the average gamer when it comes to SotA.

Most of the items give no buff but rather just provide a different look. Rare items have obviously been popular and have no buff, so those are an easy win for the devs.

 

In addition players could use a steam gift card if there was a SOTA store credit for purchase on the steam store page. Although that might open the game up to p2w criticism from the steam people, and it might turn off new customers who might immediately identify it as p2w without further investigation unless there is a reasonable explanation.

The Portalarium team probably have lots of data regarding that sort of marketing stuff. I'm sure they will make the right call on this.

*******************************************

Although you are right! It would make it more convenient. It seems like we spend a lot of money on these pledges but spread out over the years to 2013 it isn't that much. I've spent more on Subway sandwiches in that time by a long shot. I've spent more on starbucks coffee in that time too AND I DONT NEED STARBUCKS EVER... I can make Folgers and be totally satisfied for pennies on the dollar. If it wasn't for that gold card I wouldn't be going to starbucks at all. smh

However I feel more tension knowing portalarium shows up on my bank statement than Starbucks Coffee. It hasn't caused any real problems for me, but if my bank statment said $54.32 at Ralphs Market nobody is going to look twice at that. A gift card and a bottle of water! (CAFFEINE FREE).

 

Or give us COTO chocolate coin, which the wrapping has a redeemable code for in-game COTO or store credits.