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[Awaclus]

Tournaments with a $1 entrance fee; winner gets a promo (or even an expansion) as a prize.

I think this is a very good idea, but I think it would be better if it cost, say, 10 Gokoins to enter a tournament and you'd win some amount of Gokoins depending on how well you do in the tournament (obviously hand out less than 80 Gokoins total for a 8-person tournament, for example). That way, people who already have all the cards could still enter tournaments and then if they win, they get to enter more tournaments for free.

[Polk5440]

Can the discussion about the merits of various payment systems be split into another thread?

[popsofctown]

Probably not. It feels like the Xbox Gold subscription.

Uh oh.  Been nice knowin you guys

[sudgy]

Actually, I like the idea of extra things that aren't expansions being more ways to make money (like tournaments or something).  People won't feel like they're being cheated out of anything (like I kind of would with subscription based expansions (do I have to pay a few dollars a month to play with expansions in real life?)), and it still brings in more revenue.

[Rubby]

Can the discussion about the merits of various payment systems be split into another thread?

It's confusing when a thread is moved/split without retaining an indication of its origin, because to anyone new to it, it's like why is someone posting in the payment discussion thread that payment discussion should be in another thread?

[Witherweaver]

Can the discussion about the merits of various payment systems be split into another thread?

It's confusing when a thread is moved/split without retaining an indication of its origin, because to anyone new to it, it's like why is someone posting in the payment discussion thread that payment discussion should be in another thread?

Just in case you were wondering.  Feel free to also go and post there that any discussion of the fixing practices of wholesale albatross prices should be split off in its own thread.

[Polk5440]

I do not like the idea of moving to a subscription model. There is a benefit to the company and others to having a large player base, as well. People who buy everything up front then play for years are not just dead-weight: They are people to play games of Dominion with! That reduces the wait time for a game with someone of similar skill level, and reduced wait times may encourage more people to buy in.

Other games in the same space as Dominion don't necessarily use a subscription model. Ticket to Ride has done very well with a purchase-the-expansions model.

As far as getting more money out of existing users (if that is really a goal), then there is definitely space for purchasing additional things: Base Card art, Adventures, buy access to better bots, etc. If there is a concern about the revenue raised from someone who buys everything, then really, there is an easy solution: raise the price of things. It doesn't necessarily mean the whole model is faulty.

[iguanaiguana]

Can we have the discussion about how it was confusing that this discussion got split into its own thread split into its own thread?

[DavidTheDavid]

I do not like the idea of moving to a subscription model. There is a benefit to the company and others to having a large player base, as well. People who buy everything up front then play for years are not just dead-weight: They are people to play games of Dominion with! That reduces the wait time for a game with someone of similar skill level, and reduced wait times may encourage more people to buy in.

Other games in the same space as Dominion don't necessarily use a subscription model. Ticket to Ride has done very well with a purchase-the-expansions model.

As far as getting more money out of existing users (if that is really a goal), then there is definitely space for purchasing additional things: Base Card art, Adventures, buy access to better bots, etc. If there is a concern about the revenue raised from someone who buys everything, then really, there is an easy solution: raise the price of things. It doesn't necessarily mean the whole model is faulty.

Right, all players contribute to the making of a game in these social, ftp models. A large player base contributes to the success of the game, and many players invest their time not just in playing but in participating in online communities, helping out new players, reporting bugs, and all of those things make a game work in this era of online gaming. That said, if the developers can't determine how to make a game attractive to paying customers, then it will fail sooner or later. Dominion is a top-tier indie board game with broad, lasting appeal, which is a tremendous plus, too. If any game deserves a first-rate online experience, it's Dominion.

[popsofctown]

I do not like the idea of moving to a subscription model. There is a benefit to the company and others to having a large player base, as well. People who buy everything up front then play for years are not just dead-weight: They are people to play games of Dominion with! That reduces the wait time for a game with someone of similar skill level, and reduced wait times may encourage more people to buy in.

Other games in the same space as Dominion don't necessarily use a subscription model. Ticket to Ride has done very well with a purchase-the-expansions model.

As far as getting more money out of existing users (if that is really a goal), then there is definitely space for purchasing additional things: Base Card art, Adventures, buy access to better bots, etc. If there is a concern about the revenue raised from someone who buys everything, then really, there is an easy solution: raise the price of things. It doesn't necessarily mean the whole model is faulty.

What's the term.. I should keep my foot out of my mouth, is that the idiom?... but... As a nonpaying player, doesn't this large playerbase of set-for-lifers reduce my incentive to pay in the current model?  When I queue up, there's a bunch of players with all sets for me to play.  It's not gonna pair me with newbies that are stuck on base like me, or with old players who have let a subscription blink out.  I don't know if I get it.

For me in particular I don't know if I'll ever get enticed into spending dough, but I'm just kinda trying to keep this discussion going and see what you think from that angle..

[Polk5440]

As a nonplaying player, doesn't this large playerbase of set-for-lifers reduce my incentive to pay in the current model?  When I queue up, there's a bunch of players with all sets for me to play.

I was thinking about pay-for-expansions versus pay-for-subscription. You can raise more or less money in each of the models by raising or lowering prices. So there is no need to change models to raise more money if simply changing prices would do it.

I had forgotten about the ability for people to join games with sets they do not own. This seems like a separate thing. Because this could still be an issue in a subscription model if people who do not have a subscription could still join any game, right?

I agree that having the ability to join any game reduces a person's incentive to buy expansions/subscriptions themselves. Not buying yourself basically limits your ability to play with bots and set up games. This is kind of an interesting dilemma: you can charge everyone the same (lower) price for any access to expansions, or charge a (higher) price to those more willing to pay for all access and give more limited access at a lower price (free) to others. Not clear which is better.

Edit: wording.

[LastFootnote]

If I recall correctly, it sounds like in the new version:

* You mostly find games through automatch (unless you've set up a game for specific players).
* The game is generated using the union of all sets the players own (instead of just whoever's hosting the game, like it is now).

In my opinion, automatch should not let you specify which sets or how many sets your matched opponents own. If you don't own anything, sometimes you get matched against another such player and just have the Base Set cards. For a serious player, that should be incentive to purchase some or all of the expansions.

[popsofctown]

If I recall correctly, it sounds like in the new version:

* You mostly find games through automatch (unless you've set up a game for specific players).
* The game is generated using the union of all sets the players own (instead of just whoever's hosting the game, like it is now).

In my opinion, automatch should not let you specify which sets or how many sets your matched opponents own. If you don't own anything, sometimes you get matched against another such player and just have the Base Set cards. For a serious player, that should be incentive to purchase some or all of the expansions.

I actually set my Salvager automatch to accept base games and accept them when they are offered to me, 75% of that being out of guilt and desire to endure a double witch BM mirror as pennance.  4/5 times the person doesn't want to play base and just hasn't used the automatch to properly express that desire, so they decline the game.

[Donald X.]

What's the term.. I should keep my foot out of my mouth, is that the idiom?... but... As a nonpaying player, doesn't this large playerbase of set-for-lifers reduce my incentive to pay in the current model?  When I queue up, there's a bunch of players with all sets for me to play.  It's not gonna pair me with newbies that are stuck on base like me, or with old players who have let a subscription blink out.  I don't know if I get it.

Whatever the payment method, letting you play with someone else's cards doesn't invalidate it, it just means it has to charge more to compensate (at most twice as much, figuring that 3+ player games aren't the norm). If you can play with my cards, and I am paying by the month, then I am paying for you too. It could charge less and not let me share, but there's no problem letting me share, it's just factored into the prices.

I don't know how automatch will work, but it might incentivize buying in by tending to match you with people with a similar number of expansions (or, tending to match you with other people with the same value for "do you pay by the month"). The attraction of this would be, not having to charge you much for sharing your cards.

[popsofctown]

I don't know how automatch will work, but it might incentivize buying in by tending to match you with people with a similar number of expansions (or, tending to match you with other people with the same value for "do you pay by the month"). The attraction of this would be, not having to charge you much for sharing your cards.

Do you mean "tends to match you up with similar # of expansions" as a tiebreaker, or as a high ranking criterion?  If it's a high ranking criterion, it seems kind of.. wrong.  If a 5800 rated Dominion player Alice who owns all sets queues up for a game with a player of similar skill, and there's a 5600 rated player Bob with 2 sets floating in queue, and a 5100 rated player Charles with all sets floating in queue, my presumption would be that Alice (5800) wants to play with Bob (5600).  If the system goes, "well, Alice and Charlie have the same number of sets, let's have them battle eachother and leave Bob floating in queue so hopefully he can battle someone else with two sets and get a reminder of why he needs to give us more money," then that's not good.  To be clear, the server is being totally fair towards Bob: Bob has not bought in at the maximum level, he cannot queue into a game that will use fewer sets than he owns, and for all the queue knows the next player to queue up could be even closer to his rating, perhaps.  But the server is being totally unfair to Alice, Alice has taken every opportunity available to support Goko MakingFun but is still being denied an optimal Dominion experience in a pretty deliberate way.

If it's a tiebreaker, and all three of these players are rated 5000, then sure.  But payment level automatch sounds like something that rubs me the wrong way.  It doesn't sound [paying!] customer oriented when you talk about it from that angle.

[GeoLib]

I don't know how automatch will work, but it might incentivize buying in by tending to match you with people with a similar number of expansions (or, tending to match you with other people with the same value for "do you pay by the month"). The attraction of this would be, not having to charge you much for sharing your cards.

Do you mean "tends to match you up with similar # of expansions" as a tiebreaker, or as a high ranking criterion?  If it's a high ranking criterion, it seems kind of.. wrong.  If a 5800 rated Dominion player Alice who owns all sets queues up for a game with a player of similar skill, and there's a 5600 rated player Bob with 2 sets floating in queue, and a 5100 rated player Charles with all sets floating in queue, my presumption would be that Alice (5800) wants to play with Bob (5600).  If the system goes, "well, Alice and Charlie have the same number of sets, let's have them battle eachother and leave Bob floating in queue so hopefully he can battle someone else with two sets and get a reminder of why he needs to give us more money," then that's not good.  To be clear, the server is being totally fair towards Bob: Bob has not bought in at the maximum level, he cannot queue into a game that will use fewer sets than he owns, and for all the queue knows the next player to queue up could be even closer to his rating, perhaps.  But the server is being totally unfair to Alice, Alice has taken every opportunity available to support Goko but is still being denied an optimal Dominion experience in a pretty deliberate way.

If it's a tiebreaker, and all three of these players are rated 5000, then sure.  But payment level automatch sounds like something that rubs me the wrong way.  It doesn't sound [paying!] customer oriented when you talk about it from that angle.

Yeah I much prefer LF's suggestion of just not being able to specify # sets in automatch search criteria (and perhaps not even being able to see before the game begins, so people can't just reject games until they get one with more sets).

[Donald X.]

Do you mean "tends to match you up with similar # of expansions" as a tiebreaker, or as a high ranking criterion?

My best guess it that they will pick the option that sucks the least.

[TheOthin]

Not being able to fund Dominion Online would certainly suck more than a lot of things.

[blueblimp]

A downside of a subscription model is that it disincentivizes occasional play. Right now I'm not playing even a game per day reliably, but I do play sometimes. If I were on a subscription plan, the amount I'm playing now might not be enough to justify continuing to pay the subscription (depending on its price).

[Beyond Awesome]

If Dominion were to not go with a subscription service, I am willing to pay more for Adventures than I did for DA which I paid $12 for because I bought it as each part was released.

I do like Tournaments. I think a prize they can offer is to qualify for another tournament that if you win that tournament you get to play in the world championship tournament. So, essentially, all tournaments would be qualifier tournaments and then there would be one more tournament where all the winners play and the winner of that goes to the irl world championships. That would be cool. Other prizes could be offered for 1st, 2nd, 3rd like promos or expansions. This might not be a deal to us, but it might mean something to some of their other customers who have not bought any expansions. For us, having a shot at the world championships can be a big thing and for others just winning expansions can be a cool thing. Anyway, if they held weekly or monthly tournaments I can see this being a good way of gaining revenue while not having to go on a subscription service.

Oh, and MF, if you ever do implement the base cards art, I will buy it. I promise. I think that should be super easy to program.

[Chris is me]

Honestly, I really like the "virtual board game" model. Tables and stuff are stupid, but if I own the physical game, all my friends play with me for free. I think it makes sense that online is just the same. I want to be able to play with my friends online without everyone paying for it. It gets them into the game, and then they buy their own copies, etc.

[Accatitippi]

If I may chime in (late), I think a subsctiption system is a bad idea because experienced but occasional players will disappear.

Forcing new freetoplayers into their own, Base-infested ghetto is not a great way to keep those players if they don't shell money in the first week of play or so (even adding the occasional "on trial" card to the free set - say one or two different cards per week - Base Dominion gets stale pretty fast).

I, like many others before, suggest selling cosmetical upgrades for money - and not just the base cards. You could sell alternative ("shiny") versions of existing popular cards (with less popular artwork - say Harem), backgrounds, avatars, personalized cardbacks...
In general, people are more likely to buy such nonessential stuff if said non-essential stuff is visible to other players.
You could make alt-art skins for coppers and estates, and people could buy them to personalize their starting deck. So, no in-game difference as cards only care about names, but your opponent will be green of envy when you play a bunny copper, a limited edition Adventures pre-order copper, and a "Tournament: first place" copper to buy a Silver, while all they have in hand is five lousy, cheapass coppers.
(maybe add the rule that they become vanilla coppers and estates as soon as they leave your ownership, to avoid masq/ambassador weirdness).

[SCSN]

A far better idea would be paid cosmetical upgrades of your opponent's cards, with them having to pay double what you paid to revert the changes.

I'd make all the cards look like this:

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

Awwwww, now you're just making fun.

[Ghacob]

I'm going to have to really disagree with popsof here, I think the solution really lies in matching based on sets owned. After all, anyone that cares enough to be strategically competent will have all of the sets (which is why I don't own all of them, I'm not strategically competent). If someone has put enough of their time and effort into dominion, they would no doubt want to support the creator however they can.

I would even go so far as to suggest base only automatch if not for that creating a pretty terrible experience for new players

With heavily(but not fully)set based automatch, you really incentivize buying new sets, and those with all or most(I'm gonna expect a bunch of people with all but adventurers) will mostly play with others with the same dedication to dominion