upcoming premium membership

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2972 days, 9 hours, 23 minutes ago

edidbeduid15

upcoming premium membership

30 dollars a year is what i have been hearing will be initiated october 1st. we new this was coming and that is not the problem. the thing is the average player can only do 2 games that are at turn 80 efficiently. but the issue is there are many faults with the site still and a lot of games can take a year to play. so basically i would be paying 15 dollars a game. . . that's a little much i would say. i suggest paying like two dollars a game. thats 22 dollars a game. a thousand games running means 22000 dollars. 30 dollars a year is nice but that is just for the people who are willing to pay, which won't be many i think, i myself will drop, that price will discourage people to play. the players will not even know what it's like to manage ships above tech 6 without paying 30 dollars. so they'll drop. if they like what they see in the game then they could pay a small price for one game to see what it is like and see if they like it. this way a profit is still made and the new player will not be discouraged to play. only previous players of vga will know what its like to have higher tech ships. with the 30 dollars a year i do not believe many new players will join. this post is for the benefit of vga and the production of the site. any other comments on this topic are welcome and encouraged.

Edid,

sorry for the bad sentence structure. its late where im at and i needed to post this asap

2972 days, 8 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I think we should pay per game, not per year. My reasoning:

Veterans know that you can't play too many games at once successfully, so having unlimited options during the course of a year isn't appealing anyway.

Some games can last over a year, so do I have to pay twice just to finish such a game? That just doesn't seem right.

A player who is using the site every single day in multiple games is using more system resources than someone who just plays one game twice a week. They shouldn't pay the same amount.

Paying per game discourages people from dropping out. Nobody wants to throw money away.

Paying per game discourages people from joining a game as a replacement if their intentions are less than honourable (playing with multiple accounts, joining to gain intel only to drop out right away, etc).

I figure that a good player can play 3 simultaneous games well, and that the average game lasts 6 months? So using the target of $30/year that would make each game cost $5. Seems fair to me.

2972 days, 1 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Per game sounds better to me as well.

2972 days, 1 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Benchmarking other online sites that offer less, I am thinking an annual fee of $20 plus a per game fee of $10 makes a lot of sense (perhaps only $5 for replacement games).

2972 days, 1 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Yes I was thinking on this as well.

A per game cost makes you value your commitment and will reduce drop outs. a cheaper (or free for high rated/reliability players?) would also make sense to encourage the (hopefully rarer) dropouts to be filled.

Need to be careful not to scare new players away by restricting techs so I suggest a quadrant of newbie trial games where people can play with full tech races however they are smaller games(read less number of planets and maybe players?) and are timebound to perhaps only 30-50 turns so people get a feel but not a real game.. of course not rated etc. this would allow people to try before buy and then upgarde to premium.

I know the trial concept works well in many genres but in VGA not having tech 10 is a real limiter. warp 6 will make then get bored, not having alchemy or the big ships takes a lot away.

I would suggest a method to allow a sandbox of the full game.

To entice them to play in the premium games.

2972 days, 0 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I was about to say that about techs. Tim had no choice but to do that with the shareware version. But you do have other ways of enticing players. No need to ham string new players, while you're trying to get them on board.

But a 6 player game with 250 planets on a smaller board might be very interesting for intro games.

Perhaps the races for initial games should be,
Feds
Lizards
Crystals
Robots
Rebels
Colonies

That way you avoid the seriously painful Cloakers (Birds and Privateers), The Cyborg which just cannot be played well by a newbie, and of course the Fascist and Empire, which no new player has any business acting like they can play. A game for newbies can take about 2 - 3 months, and they'll be fighting during the last 20 or so turns with a mix of big ships and small ships. I bet you won't even need to limit the games to 50 turns, I bet the games will be wrapping up by turn 60 naturally. You'd probably also want to limit the ships to about 200 - 250.

2972 days, 0 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Good comments and ideas by halion and veldan for those intial new Trial members.

2971 days, 23 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

It´s 2011 aren´t there any other ways of raising money to cover the costs? Advertising?
I would name my ships Coca Cola, or Amazon if it would help.

2$ per month would be fair, but then i want the full game. I do not want to pay per game or 10cents for every tech 10 hull i build.

What i am more afraid of is that the community will die as soon as you charge. Like so many other good vgap sites in the last 20years.

2971 days, 23 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

It might also be interesting to consider an a la carte pricing method. Where all players get a race for free.. or perhaps a suite of races. After that for $5 a player can get access to one of the "premium races". Maybe the races having different price points based on their availability and desirability. For instance the Privateers are a very popular race to play. Maybe they have a slightly higher price point of $15. The Colonies being another popular race might be $10 to encourage newer players to try other races. There would need to be considerations between the difficulty, popularity, and current player population for a race to get an idea of what valid price points should be.

There could be other avenues open to allow for a different kind of revenue stream for the Nu team. Some that might end up drastically changing the makeup of the game. For instance single player addons, the ability to spend money for resources (to a limit), etc... I think these deserve exploration.

I understand just bringing this up will not sit well with some people. However, I think we should consider talking about these kinds of ideas because I'm certain there is some demand out there to pay actual cash money for an advantage and that at some point the Nu team may consider bending to that interest. It would be in our interest to discuss this, so that maybe as a community we can come up with a rules framework that might help the Nu Team make up their minds on how to pursue it. It is not my intention to turn Nu into "the person who spends the most money wins the game", but to create a revenue source for the Nu team outside of subscriptions, which might end up holding back bringing in new players.

Another thing to consider is that if we do pay money for each game we play, then there should be some kind of uniformity with starting positions. Sorry, but I'm not going to pay $10 to find out that my homeworld is in the middle of a 100 ly void. That's a sure way to not have a happy customer.

2971 days, 23 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

@spacesquad

This VCR brought to you by Mentos;

Might be fun the first couple of times. :)

2971 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Perhaps other restrictions then tech6?

I would favor something like that.
-You can buy races (2 races are free to everyone, they should be 'easy' to play, so new players stay)
-If you have enough xp, ..., you can buy the 'officer games right' (so you can join officer games)
-At the beginning, you only can join 1 game, if you wanna play more games, you have to pay per slot
-private game slots -> money
-game slots as replacement -> less money then a normal slot
-you get assigned to a random game/can't choose which you wanna join. If you wanna choose a game, pay for it ^^
-special offers in such a price model would fit aswell. Noone plays Fascists and everyone wanna play Privateers? Lower the price on Fascists, raise Privateers

All of those things should be a 1x fee, so pay once, keep it forever
People like to collect things, so abuse it xD

ps: Perhaps someone wanna have individual pics for his ships, so let him pay for it (should be expensive, since it costs bandwidth)

2971 days, 18 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

There should also be some kind of reward for finishing a turn and turning it in... like 1 space buck which can be redeemed for a custom paintjob on a ship or something like that. Or maybe for a bonus like +1 on all ground attacks for 3 turns. or double the mine sweeping rate for a ship in a single turn.. or something like that.smal little advantages.. Eventually I'm sure a mechanism would develop for players being able to buy space bucks with real cash. Just need to be careful about establishing limits for space bucks... maybe each game could have a per game limit of how many space bucks can be spent by any one race.

2971 days, 18 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

There should never be rewards that effect the mechanics of game play.

So things like bonuses to ground attack or mine laying or what not should be out of the question.

Cosmetic things like decals on ships and what not, that should be fine I think.

I liked the idea of penalizing people who quit games by maybe giving them a DNF % or something like that.

So when you create a game you can say that people with a certain DNF % should not be accepted.

2971 days, 16 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Playing the basic game should not cost anything. What should cost money is anything outside of the default. Such as setting up a custom game or add a couple 'premium' ships to each race that have an unlock cost. These ships should not unbalance the game but could do something useful like generate fuel or minerals in small but consistant quantities. Anytime someone uses an unlock, it should be flagged on the game page so others can see that someone is spending cash to help thier situation. There are a ton of things that can be done to make this a micro-transaction game and allow people to continue to play for free if they want. Alienating the players by forcing them to pay to play will only drive people to other free sources of VGAP.

2971 days, 15 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

My reaction to some of the things that have been suggested :

Currently, I don't think I'd stick around if there was both an annual and a per game fee. Ether / or, fine. Perhaps a per game fee with the option to pay an annual fee instead, fine. But both? It would depend on the figure, but it kills a lot of enthusiasm.

I am 90% positive I would not stick around if players could pay real world cash for in game items that have any effect on game play (beyond the free / subscribed level, such as the old school tech 6 limitation). Purchasing individual ships or in game perks would drive this player right out of the paying market.

The same goes for paying for a race. Sorry, but I don't want to see this turning into a bidding war for who has the most money available to buy a specific race, which is what it will do if you start selling the races individually. Maybe not here, but there would be reselling of the races.

The idea of a training game... that's what the original shareware tech 6 limitation was, and there's no reason to say it can not work today. With regards to a race limited, tech unlimited, size limited trial game.... I don't like the idea. It only forces a stilted view of the game on the new player, then forces them to pony up to play outside of that arena, where as we already know there will be plenty of poor sportsmanship and players quitting. Besides, who are you Veldan (or anyone else) to determine what races a new player is capable of playing? I've seen players having success playing the faciest (myself), the empire, and even the borg as "new" players, and experienced players struggling with the robots...

Maybe tech 6 is too low of a level for the "unsubscribing". Maybe Tech 8 would be better. But then again, if you look at the ship list for each race.... there's a distinct bump in ship quality (on average) at tech 6, and again at tech 9 (personal opinion), and that's there for a reason... to give the unregistered player something to work with, as well as incentive to pay.

I guess I'm saying I'm open to ether a monthly / annual fee, or a per game fee, but opposed to anything that allows real world dollars to by anything ingame other then the "registered" effects.

2971 days, 15 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

A lot of good ideas yet; the price-range for certain races sound's very interesting; as long as it adapts to the current popularity of the race.

Also a neat idea: decresing prices for picking races in games:
the first player to pick a race pays more then the last one to pick a race (which might do this for free ;).

So i will try to sum up what i like and add ideas as i go:

Does:
- i also think the game will loose players once you have to pay, advertising sounds like a reasonable way to go. Adds should be shown permanently and also restrict the space of the webside, so you just can't look past them ;)
(No adds for paying customers, of cause.)
- Game's that are for free can have Planet-names from certain companies
That in mind: a very odd thing to do would be to have ships shaped (and maybe named) like the products of a certain company:
- you always wanted to see the "Wopper-class-Burger-Carrier" fighting a "McRib'em appart Class Dreadnought", don't you ? ;)

If this will not bring in enough money (please, i was kidding about the Ships !):

Nonpaying customers:
- can only join games limited to 50 turns ( winner = highest score.)
(alternativly: games limited to a certain period of time, say a month)
- can not pick a game, just race, and will be assigned to a game then
- can't join a new game for X days after the dropped a game
- will have to play smaller games, with less races
- can only pick certain races if their rank is high enough (better then to generally deny them to play certain races like the Privateer)
- should be allowed to join only one unlimited game (games that last more then 50 turns)
- can only level up to a certain rank (say: Commander)
- can not join games in the inner quadrant
- pay for private games
- maybe can't ally anyone, so no winning alliances in free games (?)

- to revive the idea about adds:
Adds will only pay of (for the one how advertises) if you can reach lots of players.
But a lot of players will not be able to get a hang of the game fast enough to stick with it.
So beginners should play in a very limited environment (small maps, not all races, only a limited number of players (4 ?) per game, maybe even a limited shiplist; even simpler goals can help (try to reach that big planet in the middle of the map and hold it for 5 turns, then you win !)
Beginenrs will also need more hints ("You are trying to build a ship with SD1: are you nuts ?" (err, i mean: "This ship will not be able to reach the next planet before this game is over ! [Learn-more-Button]))

Paying customers:
- can upload own images for ships, visible for other races (what about copyright in such a case ?)
(maybe pay per image; an admin needs to look at the pictures, too, to avoid the appearance of P*nis-Class-Dreadnought's or other odd (and maybe insulting) pictures...; i am certain there WILL be players who will abuse such a feature))
- can set up own games
- can play games that will have addons or alternativ Shiplists (and can upload alternative shiplist's, too)
- only paying customers can join games that will process the turn once all players have set "Turn Done"; other games will process turns on schedule, no early turns; probably the first 10 tuns should process daily in both cases, to keep beginners interested.
- (only paying customers can use certain automation-tools in the game, like the (yet to come) fleet-management or autobuild (which is not perfect yet, also))

Don'ts:
- I would not restrict techlevels, and especially not friendlycodes (like the VGAP-Shareware did)
- In general: do not restrict the game-mechanics
- Maybe it is a good idea to pay per game OR pay per year (with a general restriction to 8 games max in any case). For me it would be easier to pay once a year, rather then for every game (no creditcard here)
- (pay-per-year in mind: the ranking of the players should be calculated by their average performance/score, not by any accumulated values, to keep the ranking fair; dropouts should be penalized for players who do pay per year; either in decreasing their score or.. what ever...)

So, thats all for now (i think i have borthered you enough with my strange ideas, anyway. ;)

Regards,
Shrambot

2971 days, 14 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I'm nobody but a fan of the game who wants to try to find ways to encourage others to play it and get a few bucks out of them in the process. This way we can get a good community here of enthusiastic players to play this game that we've all enjoyed.

So my opinion on what races a newbie should play are just my opinion... perhaps I used too strong of words, and accidentally passed my opinion off as fact.

I'm just spitballing ideas. There seems to be some concern about subscriptions killing the player base here. We're just talking about alternatives to a subscription system. And yes an alternative might need to involve things like paying to have access to a race (races would be bought one time only was the suggestion.. not on a per game basis... I would not bid on the right to play a race in a single game either). So outside of say three starting races the remaining 8 races at an average of $10 a piece or the equivalent in space bucks would actually cover almost 3 years of monthly subscription revenue. Of course they could be bought using space bucks which would probably be 1 space buck = $0.10, so at 1 space buck per turn that's 800 turns or 8-12 games played.

If I had a better grasp on what Joshua's vision was for Nu and how he's planing on building things, and what he wants from Nu ... such as does it turn a profit? Or does it just survive and this is a labor of love? I would probably make other suggestions. But I don't so I'm trying to look at it from a business perspective and looking at some of the games that are out in the market right now. Several years ago DDO was nearly dead. So they went to a free-to-play system with some of the addons and nice things in the game requiring payment. The game has turned around.

I'm operating under the idea that many people won't pay a subscription for a game that's 20 years old, has fewer addons and interface tweaks of free planets, and has more bugs, the only advantage is that it's entirely browser based. Players might pay for things like "go-faster stripes" on their MCBRs, and there will be demand to pay a few bucks for some in-game effects as well. As I stated before these are inevitabilities and I'm just trying to expose them now so we can either resoundingly say HELL NO to it, or give feedback to the devs about what we might consider to be okay.

Perhaps paying for in game effects or items is a tangent discuss to the rest of what's being discussed and may need to be saved for another day... but I'm telling you now it's going to be a concern in the future.

2971 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Great ideas Shrambot I was thinking a lot of the same things. Although I think some marketers might have a problem with the Evil Empire owning the Windows 7 Class Battlecarrier.

Piggy-backing off of your ideas about paying customers having automation tools. I was thinking that certain tools, like a VPA interface and Echoview tools are account addons that players would probably pay extra for. These could also be done in lieu of annual subscription fees.

2971 days, 14 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Lets face it, as of right now there is one awesome thing about NU, and that is the web based functionality.

You can log in to any PC or Mac or whatever, and play your turn. That is certainly great, but while that is great, the bugs and shortcomings of some of the features are a bit hard to ignore.

So far I prefer the classic VGAP + Echo View. Until NU can blend the web based approach with Echo Views features and remove the major bugs, then I don't know if its going to be worth the $$$ at this point.

October to me sounds like far too soon to release this officially, unless they go on a super duper bug fixing spree...

2971 days, 14 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

the problem of planets is that it is not self-explaining.

2971 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Well its like Chess in space. Chess is not self explanatory either :)

Perhaps the complexity of the game is what makes it so enjoyable.

I do admit that without Donovan's website, things would get pretty tricky :)

2971 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

yeah, i can say i love it - but i had to be convinced to take a look
and had to be guided in the first games i played.

for a random player from the net, this is not the case,
and a paysite might then be the second barrier.

maybe there are different, more creative funding ideas, to get more people into the game?

2971 days, 12 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Sorry, but it seems that everyone has a different idea.

Personally I would like to see many things improved before paying to play, but I like the game and unless a big disaster occurs I will probably suscribe (I don't mind paying per game or per year).

What I really want to state is: please, VGAP is a game we all like, so do not change it. Do not include different ships, different bonuses for people who pay, etc. If you want a difference between people paying and people playing for free then do it like Tim did it. Registered copies can raise to tech 10 and have all fcodes available; shareware not.

Yes, many of you can claim that there are better ways, maybe new players will not like the game if they start in lower conditions but that's not true. We all played our first (and second and probably more) game with the Shareware copy and we finally bought the registered version because it was great. So if we did it, people will do it.

A different problem is that we all are probably more than 30 years old, and in those times the games did not have the graphics the games have now. It's ok, we learnt to judge a game by other reasons than young people do it now. But the game was good, it is still good and if somebody thinks it's a crap only because of the graphics then believe me, it is somebody I preffer not to play with.

Do not invent. I like Nu because I can play in every computer with access to the internet and because I do not have the need of looking for other 10 people willing to play. And if the price is 30$ per year or 10$ per game I really do not mind; my cigarettes, my drinks with the friends on friday night and the bill of the internet acces for a month are all of them more expensive than playing Nu registered.

2971 days, 12 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I think ultimately for me, its the bugs. If you want me to pay to play, the game has to be perfect.

If I'm paying an amount to play a game, and the entire outcome of a war is decided on a bug then that would be very bad indeed.

2971 days, 11 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I have enjoyed finding bugs in this nu version.

If this site is $30 per year with maybe an 8 game lilmit like I have heard fine.

I usually have 2 main games going. But if one of those games gets to an end game situation I will start a new game to have it going good when the main one ends. I may get up to 6 games going at one time for a little while.

But I will not pay per game.

2971 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

My upper tolerance would be about $5/month or $2 per game.

Better still, I think there should be a credit system. Everyone gets the training games for free, and then say 2 starting credits, which you can join 2 games for free. After that, if you want to join more games, you buy additional credits. E.g. $20 buys you 10 credits.

If too many people drop out within the first 20 turns, the credit is returned to all (except the people who dropped out), and the game can either be shutdown, or given away as a "freebie"

Anyone who takes a replacement and plays it to the end, not only doesn't have to pay, but can EARN credits for taking over an abandoned race. That way, if you were genuinely stone broke, or a kid without a credit card, you can still earn your way to play.

Obviously details could be nutted out, but that kind of system would not turn anyone away, while generating some revenue for the host AND better still, encourage more games to be kept playable.

2970 days, 23 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

@Draven:
I don't know what you want. All things i mentioned wouldn't change the gameplay at all. And as a premium member you won't have such a big advantage like in the old shareware, which was really unbalanced, too (Robotics were so much stronger then the rest).

Perhaps we could bring in a mentor system. You get spacebucks for it and play in a 3way ally (1 vet player with 2 new players)

2970 days, 22 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Sirius, if there's not a real advantaged for the paying player, there's no incentive (other then trophy braging rights) for a player to pay. I'll be honest here. If I can play, COMPETIVILY without paying, I likely would. As would many players when you get down to it (even if they won't admit it publicly). Paying has to have a real advantage in the game, and tech level restrictions provide that without changing the game, while still providing the "free" player a chance (it requires good luck) to experience the full game.

2970 days, 17 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I got no real solution to this, most options are possible, but i wanted to make 1 comment........

30 dollars per year. That's $2.50 per month (less than a coffee per month).

How can anyone actually complain about that as a fee?

There are far too many people out there who expect everything on-line to be free, I read that in a recent survey over 95% of people declared that they were not prepared to pay anything for on-line music downloads, they they expected them to be free. The worlds gone crazy.

I know that people will drop the game rather than pay, but these guys are running a business here to make money, they're not here to support free-loaders.

If people expect to play games for free then VGAP is not for them, or I hope that they drop in enough restrictions to deter those players.

..........YES I know that people have been playing this game for the last 20 years having only ever paid out $20 in the first place, but cant people see that that was their good luck, and should not be seen as the norm that needs to be followed.

People should have a simple decision, either its worth pay around $2.50 a month to play, or its not. If its not worth it, then Joshua's business should politely show you where the door is.

$2.50 a month. Get a life. If you can afford a PC, and an internet connection, I can't believe you can't afford $2.50 a month.

If you don't feel its worth your $2.50 a month then that's fine and you're right to make that call, but don't complain about it as though its your right to play free of charge.

Pobs

2970 days, 17 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Pay per game would be good in my opinion. It may also be a cure to the problem of people playing too many games as well...

Paying per year wouldn't change a thing. The same dropout playing style will continue. "Game is going bad... drop and start a new game." If you pay for that one game would most likely lead to a situation where you try at least a bit more to stick with the game.

Personally I wouldn't pay per year... Paying per game is possible. You could also make both options available...

2970 days, 16 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I hope the membership idea does 2 things:

Support the site and promote quality.

Quality interface.
Quality reliabilty.
Quality opponents.

Therefore, I would like to see a dual site: A free area and a premium area.

The premium area would cost about $25.00 per year and $10.00 per new game and $5.00 per replacement game.

A lot of people will say, "Then I wouldn't . . ."

That is fine with me. I would rather some good players not join the premium area than quitters be allowed in the premium area.

The free area would have its own set of quadrants and play the unregistered version of the game. The premium area would have the games we have now. Both would get the continueing improvements. Except, only the premium area would get any improvements that are new abilities from previous add-ons (like Starbase +).

Mike

2970 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

What about a forum, where you have to pay for every stupid comment?
This one i just made here is worth 5$ at least!

2970 days, 15 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

MJS - the issue isn't that I don't want to pay (and I assume many others feel the same). It's that it shouldn't be an annual charge AND a per game charge. Ether one or the other, no problem. But having to pay an annual fee for the "privilege" of paying a per game fee as well????? That doesn't work. You have to give something for that annual fee beyond access to pay-per-game games. Otherwise you're basically going "ok, here's yous subscription information. Welcome to the club. Oh, you wanted to actually play? That's not included." You don't see Blizzard charging people a per character fee on top of their monthly subscription fees do you? But you are suggesting the same thing here.

And I misunderstood the earlier suggestion (I forget who from) about paying for races. It sounded, originally, like it was purchasing a race per game. But as a "your first 2 races are free, but it's X dollars a race after that"... that again makes sense, and wouldn't have a problem with.

Once again, I'm not saying I won't pay to play. I will. But it would have to be a reasonable* fee.

*yes, everyone has there own definition of reasonable. Would I consider $60 a year a reasonable fee? if it meant quality games, sure. Would I consider $2-$5 a game a reasonable fee? Again, sure if it resulted in quality games. Would I consider an annual fee and a per game fee reasonable? No... one shouldn't have to pay a subscription fee that does nothing besides provide the opportunity to pay even more.

2970 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Tech 6 limit for engines is too harsh.

Make it tech 6 for hulls & beams & torps.

Also carrier races only for registered players.

This way you can start a game and get addicted with tech 10 engines.

When the first tech 10 war ships show up on your screen, then any and everyone will pay the 30$.

2970 days, 12 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Carrier races registered only? Good heavens, WHY? Don't you want new players to join the game??? It's not as if a tech 6 carrier is going to overpower a tech 10 torp ship. If anything, in the balance of power at tech 6 hulls, torp races have a slight advantage over carrier races. Why, if you limit everyone to hull tech 6, the Facist become fighter races worst nightmare.

No. Limiting hull and weapon tech levels like in the shareware version : good, fairly comaon, no problem. Letting engines go to tech 10? well, I could make an argument both ways, so ok. But doing that AND limiting race choices? Doesn't sound like a winning idea to me.

(of course, if you wanted to go the other route... no tech limit on unregistered players, but make only 1 race playable by unreged... say Facist, or Solar or whatever (but it would be the same for every unreged player)... well, that might make sense).

2970 days, 12 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

(note I am not a vet, i just started playing on NU since a few weeks because a collegue at work seduced me with this game, and never heard of the game before in my online exsistence)

To be honest, I would not pay for playing with an annual fee. This is for me a too long timeframe, and looking on the average time a game takes, paying monthly is not a solution since you would need to cover several moths for just 1 game. If you do not pay for the next period, you would be dropped from the game and loose any progress you made - comparing to other online games, if you would not pay, your character is just paused for a while, and you can pick up exactly where you were when you start paying again.

Paying per game, should be the way to go. But keep the games for new players free (even on a smaller scale as suggested above by many - less players / smaller map) and larger games for the premium players can earn a few bucks. Also paying to be able to make some visual changes in your frontend can help - online world loves to be able to pay just to make a cosmetic change to the appearance of a character etc.

Definitly do not limit the gameplay at all - what worked and was used years ago in standalone games, does not work well in online games (limiting tech). It just unbalances the game and gives an unfair benefit to the people who pay.

As for paying options, how do you want to accomodate that? While in the US a creditcard maybe very common and not costly to have, in other parts of the world this is definitly not the case (let alone that there can be tough requirements to even be accepted by the cc company - more than average salary, fixed employment contract, etc. etc..). I do not own a credit card, I do not own a PayPal account (or any other online wallet) and all I can do is a bank transfer (which would add a lot of costs just to pay what ever you wanted to charge for playing 1 premium game - and take some time to be processed)

-- as a small comment to the price of a cup of coffee. Here you would pay around $0.50 for 1 good cup of coffee at a coffee bar. So please keep in mind the financial differences for various regions in the world.

2970 days, 12 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I think it should stay as it was with Tims game. If you don't pay whatever, you are limited in tech just as you were before, and have to find native planets to surpass it.

The on thing I hope is that the current games be allowed to finish without penalty.

2970 days, 12 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

The only problem with paying per game is that something should probably be done to ensure a somewhat uniform and equal start for all players. That would help with the dropout rate IMHO.

2970 days, 4 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I really preffer a pay per month or pay per year, but I agree that paying per game would solve most of the resign problems.

I also consider that the best way to difference paying players and non paying ones is the tech levels limitations as it was in the original VGAP. So if you use "shareware" version you can only have tech 10 if you build a base in a planet with the appropiate natives. Otherwise you can only reach tech 7 maximum.

@cyborgedgmo: I do not know where you live, but I live in one of the most undeveloped states in Europe and a cofee is worth 1,10 €. And I can tell you that most of the people has a credit card to pay for internet shopping. I want to believe that in serious and first world countries (Germany, UK, France...) the situation is even better, but believe me that even in the third world it is acceptable to pay with credit card.

2970 days, 2 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

+1 to Capnkill - lets NOT alter the game, when we do, it usually unbalances a well balanced game.

Even planets4 never could compete with planets 3.5.

On one hand: the levels of quitting is a very common concern that paying per game would help solve. There have have been some excellent suggestions regarding those that quit losing credits and those that play replacements for XX turns gaining them - this alone would significantly help shift the dynamics away from quitting. From a purely tactical point of view, right now it is a legit strategy to quit anytime the going gets rough - that may stay if we have a flat rate and the current scoring system. The problem is that quitters mess up the game for everyone else.

I continue to be concerned about the ranking system - paying per game could benefit quantity over quality. Planets is about military, economic and diplomatic strategy - not about daddies credit card. Many games already have a pay your way to success and this approach never sites well with me and seems especially out of place with "space chess". I'd really like to see the scoring system redone. If it moves to a 100% quality based system, then I'd prefer the proposed $30 a year - that is what, one month of WOW?

Yes, I too like the functionality of EV and old school planets. But what we, or at least I, didn't have anymore was a rich community of players to work with and compete against. Nu has brought a lot of us together in what was a great, but nearly extinct game. Nu has also done a great job of programming many of the features we requested - coloring planets, distances, the time machine, etc We probably could get more EV features if we asked for them. Also, we can play from anywhere and don't have to have our PCs with the game loaded to play - that too is a big advantage when traveling or when your computer dies.

2969 days, 23 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

@chaos:
I just write my suggestions again and explain you, why some people would buy it :P

-You can buy races (2 races are free to everyone, they should be 'easy' to play, so new players stay)
you wanna play different races aswell, not just the f2p races (especially if your new and like VPL)
Old players have their favourite races, so they would buy them aswell, if they aren't free (not in the beginning, but if VPL nu is good, sooner or later they will)

-If you have enough xp, ..., you can buy the 'officer games right' (so you can join officer games)
Beginner games are fun, but most players wanna play versus better players, not just beginners (especially vets)

-At the beginning, you only can join 1 game, if you wanna play more games, you have to pay per slot
1 game is not much, many VPL players wanna play 2-3 games (especially vets)

-private game slots -> money
It's easy to setup, and if even unregistered players could play in it, its a good way to introduce friends to VPL (they wouldn't need premium membership). Perfect way for a vet to introduce their friends to VPL. The old client won't work there

-you get assigned to a random game/can't choose which you wanna join. If you wanna choose a game, pay for it ^^
You can't play with friends in a game, only chance is to pay for it (private game or this would be the way)

-special offers in such a price model would fit aswell. Noone plays Fascists and everyone wanna play Privateers? Lower the price on Fascists, raise Privateers
If you can buy Fascists for 2$ for (nu) lifetime, because of such a limited offer, nearly everyone would do it, or? ^^

All of those things should be a 1x fee, so pay once, keep it forever
So people could collect it. Collecting things works pretty good (pokemon, diablo2, ...), so try it in a commercial way

-Perhaps someone wanna have individual pics for his ships, so let him pay for it (should be expensive, since it costs bandwidth)
There are many players who like to individualize their online alter ego ^^ Guildwars, LoL and some other games make money with it.

And seriously, whoever says that the Shareware version was balanced hadn't played it.
1. Robots have their Instrumentality.
2. If you are a fighter race and build a starbase on a humanoid world, you get your best ships. Torp races get their best hull with really bad tubes on the same planets or good tubes on bad hulls.
...
If im new to VPL and wouldn't have a friend, who says, play VPL, i just wouldn't try such a browsergame.
My suggestions would be ok, cause you could play without spending money. And new players would get enough to actually test VPL nu. If they like what they see, they have some good reasons to buy the extras. As a new player you won't buy things straight from the beginning (why should you, you don'T know if you will like the game)

ps: perhaps we could make a premium membership with a annual/per game fee aswell. So you get everything free, but just for a year/game.

2969 days, 22 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Yes, the Instrumentality is a beast in tech 6 games, requiring other races throw multiple ships at it to kill it. And? I mean, how is that any different then a Biocide or a Gorbie in tech 10 games? And if you really want to dominate in a tech 6 game, you don't play the robots, you play the feds, so you can have the only all tech 10 ships in the game.

I'm in agreement with the buy race idea. As I said, I originally misunderstood how you were proposing it, but as a "unlock race X", sure.

I could see potential in the idea of buying officer rights in a race... provided you already had those rights in another race.

No problem with the idea of private game slots being purchased.

As for paying for games beyond 1.... many players are only going to play one or two games at a time. Some will play more, but if you give everyone 1 free game slot you are encouraging people to keep playing for free instead of paying to play.

I think instead of random game, random race (unless using the purchasable race idea above) makes more sense. Most players are more concerned over their race then who the other players are (and you could just hide the other players until after the game starts if you really want to make it "go in blind").

As for personalized ship pics... if the code supported it, I would be all for this! (depending on cost of course).

2969 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I am soooo tired of people wanting everything for free. I am willing to pay.

However, there are some good ideas here, pay per gme, higher pay for unlimited number of games, reasonable advertising, (sorry but a hamburger shaped ship would drive me out of here the first time I saw it ). Perhaps lower fee for those that never drop a game. There are many good ideas.

My key point is that I do not expect someone to put in a lot of work and not get paid for the value they create. Sorry but I am not a socilist. The developers of this site have created a good gaming experience and have brought many people back to VGAP. This site has come a long way and continues to improve. They deserve to be paid for their efforts and investments. I am sure they will consider all the good ideas presented here (not all of them are great ideas however) and they will decide a way and I am also sure that they wil continue to improve whatever they decide. I have seen enough support whatever they decide within reason and to make me sign up on day 1.

2969 days, 21 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

The question is, if you just wanna get some old vpl players or try to get new players aswell?
If you just concentrate on old players (what you will do, if you have to pay to have fair games), will they stay long enough (Tim gave some people VPL sources, so they can port it to 32bit and beyond; and every 'old' VPL player would be ok to run the old client aswell)/will the playerbase be big enough?
(how many active players are there atm in nu? 200?)

I don't wanna have everything for free, i just want a game, which works. And obviously it only works if Joshua&co make enough money. And they won't if they just do the old Shareware thing imo

2969 days, 20 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

The viability of the site it is about numbers. It is simple. As long as someone comes and puts the money on the table It can not be for free for ever and ever.

¿How much does it cost just to maintain the site, recover somehow the investment already done and since it is a business at least some kind of ongoing profit? ¿10000 $, 20000 $, 30000 $... annually?

Since the figure 30$ annually per member is around let´s take the 30000 $ to make numbers easy. That means 1000 players. ¿Do we have right now at least 1000 players willing to pay 30$ a year? If we have it excellent, done! But If we don´t have it the random 30$ must be higher because otherwise the business goes broke or we need some kind of extra income....advertising for example just to be break even. There is a break even number in $ that the NU team must achieved. Otherwise the end of the site, or any business, might be around the corner.

Some already wrote about it. 30$ it is 0,08 daily. In Spain, for example, a normal text mobile message costs you 0,15 and a cinema ticket costs you around 6 euros. I know 1eur it is not 1$ right now. But you get the idea.

Regarding payment methods I had to pay something in the USA last year and the year before and since it was a small amount (50$) and have spare dollars with me I just sent the money by normal post. It is risky and stupid, it could be, but did not have any problem. Obviously I trusted the other site and if the money would not have arrived it would be my fault, just my fault no one else

People with no credit cards, other internet payment methods or with some spare dollars could use this. Solve it, but if they allowed, as I said, if something goes wrong it is just your fault.

At the same time I believe every player will have an ID number on the site therefore you could always ask a friend to pay it in your behalf. Solve it too.

But here the important point is ¿Which is the break even number? Just the NU team knows about it.

2969 days, 20 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

+1 to marklein
(second post)

In general, I love this site and I'm willing to pay!

However, if I'll pay or not, will be based on the following criteria:

The price must be fair. 5$ per game is fine, 10$ would be too much.
A fair starting position must be guaranteed for every player. I already made a proposal on this once, see thread Balancing out the map.
The Nu team must deal with cheaters. Valid suspicions must be checked by the Nu team and accounts of proven cheaters must be deleted. Of course you can't find all cheaters, but heavy cheating is conspicuous.

Otherwise I would actually think about changing back to the old VGA Planets.

2969 days, 19 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

Last site stats I looked at stated there were 900 individual players in 250'ish games. I would suspect that on the high end only 50 are "double accounters".

I also don't believe that includes private games.

I agree Sirius, w/o knowing what exactly Joshua's goals are for Nu it's hard to suggest a good revenue strategy for them. Personally I would think if their goal is to make it self-sustaining with a chance at commercial success they should find a way to slowly transition us to shelling out cash rather than just lowering the boom. Which is why a per game, pay for extra races type revenue building scheme might work out pretty well.

2969 days, 17 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I agree with Mike, Baer, and others here with similar sentiments. Personally, despite the creativity, I think the the only simple and valid way to create Nu revenues is an annual fee and/or per game fees. I think no matter what, half the players or so will drop here once we move out of beta. That is o.k. More players will come afterwards. And I rather lose 50% to 80% of the players here and have a Nu Planets site that will thrive for years, than have Nu fold and be no more. Where can I send my check!?!

EDIT: Thanks ronnie robot -- I guess I know where now :). Very good.

2969 days, 15 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I believe they have selected the model: http://vgaplanets.nu/register

2969 days, 15 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

As long as new players will join, you can do it like that.
But just an example. Allods Online thought the same way and lost 90% of their playerbase in a month because of one commercial update. They actually removed the commercial part of the update completely, but they still have only like 30% of the playerbase they had before.
I want that NU will stay for a long time, aswell. And if you want that, you have to be really careful. Atm you have many old players who actually loved VPL, if you loose 80% of them, you have to do much to get that many new players interested in VPL. And who will pay for a game, where the playerbase is low.
Don't take that commercial part to easy, if you make it wrong, it can kill the whole game (if a player decides to leave, he won't come back, especially germans are like that ^^)
If you have many russian players, you can go that way, cause they are different in that point.

2969 days, 13 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

So $54 for two years and a three month additional bonus so that is $2.00 a month? Whatta deal. I just signed up.

2969 days, 9 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

I'm registered too.

2968 days, 20 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: upcoming premium membership

exactly, its not bank breaking by any means. I probably spend more in a week on coffee...sometimes in a day ;)