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Author Topic: Payment models  (Read 35134 times)

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Voltaire

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #75 on: June 18, 2015, 01:39:29 pm »
+2

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.
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Seprix

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #76 on: June 18, 2015, 01:49:22 pm »
0

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

I play enough Dominion to where I wouldn't do this.
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #77 on: June 18, 2015, 01:57:01 pm »
0

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

Yeah, I don't think that would work. It works for the games that do this because those games are pay-to-win, and people pay because they want to win.
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #78 on: June 18, 2015, 02:25:30 pm »
0

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

Yeah, I don't think that would work. It works for the games that do this because those games are pay-to-win, and people pay because they want to win.

This isn't always true, but I agree that this model doesn't seem appropriate for Dominion.
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blueblimp

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #79 on: June 18, 2015, 02:36:22 pm »
0

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

Yeah, I don't think that would work. It works for the games that do this because those games are pay-to-win, and people pay because they want to win.
This is an over-simplified way of putting it. Yes some games are pay-to-win, but sometimes it's more like pay-for-variety. In Hearthstone for example, there are top-tier decks you can play at low cost, but most decks (strong or not) require a significant investment of either play time or money. Granted, there is an inherent advantage to having higher variety available to you, just because the maximum of n random numbers is greater than one random number. I still think it's misleading to call that pay-to-win, though.

I don't know whether a similar model of pay-for-variety could work for Dominion. I don't see why not though.
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funkdoc

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #80 on: June 18, 2015, 03:54:22 pm »
+6

no way in hell would an arcade system work. i learned this from my background in fighting games - american arcades pretty much died in the late 90s-early 2000s.  they've lasted a lot longer in japan due to various geographical & cultural factors, but even there it's reaching the same point the US was at in the mid-90s.  pretty much the only american arcades that make money these days are the dave & buster's types (all casual carnival-esque games where you can win prizes, full restaurant & bar) and the "barcades" (actual good retro arcades that serve overpriced drinks & nostalgia).

it's just not an attractive prospect with a game you plan on playing a lot, which is why so many top players in fighting games now prefer to get their practice online and deal with the game-killing input lag that offers.  notice that the places i mentioned are meant to be one-time or occasional experiences, not stuff you grind on the regular.  for a while arcades could survive with games that offered an experience you couldn't get at home.  dance dance revolution was a big deal for a while...then guitar hero & rock band happened. gg arcades~

tl;dr i would compare it to renting movies/games as a fundamentally outdated model

Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #81 on: June 18, 2015, 04:31:45 pm »
+2

From my perspective, the best value, recognizing that money isn't the only thing worth having, would have been for there never to have been any online versions.
Do you mean literally no online version for the public (that is, excluding playtesting), or no commercial online version?

The comment regarding the interaction with the community sucking can be interpreted in rather different ways depending on the answer. This community (which I hope you see as net positive thing despite some faults) would largely not exist without some online version, whereas I fully understand that the interaction regarding the commercial versions largely evolves around negative things that the small profit indeed could not compensate for.
I was referring to negative interactions over Goko etc. I wouldn't hang out here if it wasn't fun; then again I didn't have an f.ds-shaped hole in my life prior to these forums existing.

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it. He was happy to have people have it for a while, but not at that price. That is why you can't have nice things.

You can't realistically just stop online versions from existing though. Man, did Wizards ever get Apprentice shut down? It certainly was around for years, letting people somewhat play online Magic for free.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #82 on: June 18, 2015, 04:33:40 pm »
+6

Another idea that avoids exploitation is just to have a certain number of expansion cards that are "free", and they cycle every day or week. Today Horse Traders, Menagerie, and Jester are publicly available. Tomorrow it's Graverobber, Poor House, and Sage.
We once talked about promoting expansions with a card-of-the-day or something. Of course they are already promoted by being able to play with someone else's cards. And I sprinkled in expansion cards into the main set campaign.
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blueblimp

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #83 on: June 18, 2015, 05:17:42 pm »
0

no way in hell would an arcade system work.
Hearthstone uses an arcade-style pay-per-play system for its arena mode. The way they make it playable for skilled players is that winning in arena gives you in-game currency that can be used to pay arena entrance fees. Players who are skilled enough can play forever without paying anything, but the rewards are calibrated so that not everyone can do that. (With a 50% win rate, you are refunded about 1/3rd of your entrance fee. 70% win rate gets you roughly a full refund, but the later games in one run are matched against players with similar win-loss records, so the games get harder.)

That said, I don't think anyone knows how much money Blizzard makes off of arena vs people buying card packs. My speculation is that they make more off of the card packs, simply because it's really simple for someone to spend $200+ on card packs if they have the money and want a sizeable collection quickly, but it would take a huge number of hours playing to spend nearly that much on arena.
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markusin

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #84 on: June 18, 2015, 06:46:54 pm »
+2

On the topic of Hearthstone, it's worth mentioning that Hearthstone sells it's ~35 card expansions at $20 along with a campaign where you fight ~25 bosses to earn those cards. There is no way to get the expansion cards without buying the full expansion. You can also buy the expansions with 2-3 months of daily play worth of in-game gold, but the in-game gold to dollar ratio is significantly higher for those expansions than for packs.

Players fork over their money/time for those expansions just so they are not put at a disadvantage when it comes to the competitive scene.

BTW, I really appreciate that Donald had Goko/MF include cards from other expansions in the campaigns besides the expansion associated with the campaign section. Even V1.0 had cards from other expansions in the Hinterlands campaign.
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jaketheyak

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #85 on: June 18, 2015, 07:54:48 pm »
+1

no way in hell would an arcade system work. i learned this from my background in fighting games - american arcades pretty much died in the late 90s-early 2000s.  they've lasted a lot longer in japan due to various geographical & cultural factors, but even there it's reaching the same point the US was at in the mid-90s.  pretty much the only american arcades that make money these days are the dave & buster's types (all casual carnival-esque games where you can win prizes, full restaurant & bar) and the "barcades" (actual good retro arcades that serve overpriced drinks & nostalgia).

it's just not an attractive prospect with a game you plan on playing a lot, which is why so many top players in fighting games now prefer to get their practice online and deal with the game-killing input lag that offers.  notice that the places i mentioned are meant to be one-time or occasional experiences, not stuff you grind on the regular.  for a while arcades could survive with games that offered an experience you couldn't get at home.  dance dance revolution was a big deal for a while...then guitar hero & rock band happened. gg arcades~

tl;dr i would compare it to renting movies/games as a fundamentally outdated model



Are you trying to tell me that Noah's Arcade is not still going strong in Aurora, Illinois?
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DStu

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #86 on: June 19, 2015, 02:02:52 am »
+3

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it. He was happy to have people have it for a while, but not at that price. That is why you can't have nice things.

And that is why we only get online versions that no one complains about if we lost them? scnr
« Last Edit: June 19, 2015, 02:06:22 am by DStu »
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SwitchedFromStarcraft

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #87 on: June 19, 2015, 08:31:37 am »
+6

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it. He was happy to have people have it for a while, but not at that price. That is why you can't have nice things.
Then Jay needs to read the tea leaves differently, or not take things personally.  We are not upset that we lost Isotropic - we should be grateful Jay (and you) allowed it to begin with (though not as grateful as we are to Doug, who made it work). We should understand that this was a business decision.  No problem there.

So let's look at the business side of it.  Here we are some 3 years later, with a system that, even when functioning, is not as "nice" as the one that was shut down, despite the application of what we can assume is MANY more resources than Doug ever had (except perhaps brainpower). So I would argue that any "price" that Jay is paying is attached to a bad business decision regarding what would stand in for Isotropic.  I would further argue that said price is much higher (in terms of a missed opportunity to expand the Dominion brand and collect the associated revenue) than the monetary value of any company goodwill that RGG lost when Isotropic was shut down.

That "price" continues to escalate, as the lack of progress gets continued attention.  It also doesn't help the PR side of the problem to know that Isotropic was used to playtest the latest expansion, because Doug was willing and able to code the cards, yet MF can't even fix their ________ issues (fill in the blank: log-in, lobby capacity, automatch, etc.).  Of course, they haven't had much time, and they were starting from scratch, so we shouldn't be overly harsh.

« Last Edit: June 19, 2015, 08:33:04 am by SwitchedFromStarcraft »
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Awaclus

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #88 on: June 19, 2015, 08:56:13 am »
+1

yet MF can't even fix their ________ issues (fill in the blank: log-in, lobby capacity, automatch, etc.)

At first, I thought the blank was supposed to be a censored obscenity. Would've been pretty appropriate too.
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DStu

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #89 on: June 19, 2015, 09:38:43 am »
0

yet MF can't even fix their ________ issues (fill in the blank: log-in, lobby capacity, automatch, etc.)

At first, I thought the blank was supposed to be a censored obscenity. Would've been pretty appropriate too.

that's under "etc."
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #90 on: June 19, 2015, 06:15:52 pm »
0

Then Jay needs to read the tea leaves differently, or not take things personally.  We are not upset that we lost Isotropic - we should be grateful Jay (and you) allowed it to begin with (though not as grateful as we are to Doug, who made it work). We should understand that this was a business decision.  No problem there.
It makes no sense for Jay to interpret people screaming at him as gratitude. For that matter people could just email him the word "yellow" and he could get plenty sick of that.

It's not a business thing. It's strictly personal happiness. It doesn't need to be a business thing either.
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blueblimp

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #91 on: June 19, 2015, 08:19:27 pm »
+7

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it.
I gotta say, if this is Jay's takeaway from the Dominion Online saga, then as someone who got hooked on online Dominion by isotropic and paid for Goko later on, this is the first time I've really regretted spending that money.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #92 on: June 19, 2015, 11:36:39 pm »
0

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it.
I gotta say, if this is Jay's takeaway from the Dominion Online saga, then as someone who got hooked on online Dominion by isotropic and paid for Goko later on, this is the first time I've really regretted spending that money.
He wasn't worth paying if he couldn't take the screams and just be glad to have done good. And you weren't worth giving isotropic to, if you were willing to pay the price of other people being screamed at when it went away. See that just keeps going. You can't get any moral high ground with spite.

I don't regret isotropic being public. And I don't need to punish people for not being happy with a gift that's only so big. They suck to hang around though.
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Kirian

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #93 on: June 20, 2015, 12:36:48 am »
+1

Then Jay needs to read the tea leaves differently, or not take things personally.  We are not upset that we lost Isotropic - we should be grateful Jay (and you) allowed it to begin with (though not as grateful as we are to Doug, who made it work). We should understand that this was a business decision.  No problem there.
It makes no sense for Jay to interpret people screaming at him as gratitude. For that matter people could just email him the word "yellow" and he could get plenty sick of that.

It's not a business thing. It's strictly personal happiness. It doesn't need to be a business thing either.

I had a really long post written up, but I've abandoned it in favor of simplicity, because I don't think I actually need to lay out the logic, it's easy enough.

Believing that these various things have not, all along, been business decisions, is ludicrous.
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funkdoc

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #94 on: June 20, 2015, 01:25:05 am »
0

no way in hell would an arcade system work. i learned this from my background in fighting games - american arcades pretty much died in the late 90s-early 2000s.  they've lasted a lot longer in japan due to various geographical & cultural factors, but even there it's reaching the same point the US was at in the mid-90s.  pretty much the only american arcades that make money these days are the dave & buster's types (all casual carnival-esque games where you can win prizes, full restaurant & bar) and the "barcades" (actual good retro arcades that serve overpriced drinks & nostalgia).

it's just not an attractive prospect with a game you plan on playing a lot, which is why so many top players in fighting games now prefer to get their practice online and deal with the game-killing input lag that offers.  notice that the places i mentioned are meant to be one-time or occasional experiences, not stuff you grind on the regular.  for a while arcades could survive with games that offered an experience you couldn't get at home.  dance dance revolution was a big deal for a while...then guitar hero & rock band happened. gg arcades~

tl;dr i would compare it to renting movies/games as a fundamentally outdated model



Are you trying to tell me that Noah's Arcade is not still going strong in Aurora, Illinois?

n0ice

actually it's "ironic" that you mention illinois...chicago has one of the only great arcades left in the US.  galloping ghost arcade...sooooo many classics and hidden gems you've never heard of.  heck, they even had the crappy arcade castlevania (yes, there is one)!  they also have one of the strongest competitive scenes for mortal kombat, with weekly tournaments there and an entire team representing them at major events.

to bring this a bit closer to the thread topic, they use a different model from traditional arcades.  you pay a one-time fee ($10 or something) that lets you play all day there.  the machines are all set on free play.  a little while back there were some other arcades that were similar, except you paid less up front and all the games cost a nickel per play; those all seem to be gone now.

so a few traditional arcades can still get by - they just have to be located in a huge metro area and not charge per game, it seems!

blueblimp

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #95 on: June 20, 2015, 02:44:48 am »
+5

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it.
I gotta say, if this is Jay's takeaway from the Dominion Online saga, then as someone who got hooked on online Dominion by isotropic and paid for Goko later on, this is the first time I've really regretted spending that money.
He wasn't worth paying if he couldn't take the screams and just be glad to have done good. And you weren't worth giving isotropic to, if you were willing to pay the price of other people being screamed at when it went away. See that just keeps going. You can't get any moral high ground with spite.
I didn't mean out of spite, although I see how my post can be read that way, sorry. It's more like frustration. Although I got enjoyment out of Goko, I also felt like in some small way, being a paying isotropic->Goko conversion put me in a data set that supports the decision to allow isotropic in the first place. After all, if "# of people who paid for Goko because isotropic existed" exceeds "# of people who didn't pay for Goko because isotropic existed", then it's a correct business decision to have authorized isotropic, all other things being equal. For Dominion in particular, being a game that rewards repeat play so well, my intuition is that isotropic acted better as a promotion than the opposite (conmotion?). It's frustrating then to think that random people complaining on the internet holds greater weight when deciding what to do in the future.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2015, 02:56:44 am by blueblimp »
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #96 on: June 20, 2015, 09:24:28 am »
+7

Jay doesn't like getting screamed at. He doesn't get screamed at when publishing board games (his main business). He gets screamed at when getting involved in online gaming. Hence he regrets isotropic. I think it's fairly easy to understand.
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Donald X.

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Re: Payment models
« Reply #97 on: June 20, 2015, 06:24:54 pm »
+2

Believing that these various things have not, all along, been business decisions, is ludicrous.
"It's not a business thing" is me referring to Jay's being sick of people complaining; if that position motivated his behavior in the future (more on that in a moment) that would not be a "business decision." He can decide he doesn't want something because he expects future pain, even if it works out to not being the best business decision. You don't win at life by maximizing money and in any case you're only human.

I wasn't saying that "allowing isotropic" or "isotropic going down" (actually one event, since it was allowed with the requirement that it would go down) weren't "business." That's an awful way to look at them though. Jay let fans put up fan-made versions to please fans. Calling it business is like saying that it was a cold calculation that it wasn't. The cold calculation was putting up BSW, a paid-for promotion. Jay didn't let online versions stay up forever because whoever made online Dominion would demand exclusive rights. That was just a reality of the world to be lived with; it was passive.
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #98 on: June 20, 2015, 06:32:55 pm »
+3

It's frustrating then to think that random people complaining on the internet holds greater weight when deciding what to do in the future.
Well if it's any consolation, as it happens I know this position of Jay's specifically because someone wanted to do online Temporum (a 2nd person besides Gendo; last I heard was http://www.reddit.com/r/temporum/comments/2x2jze/anyone_want_to_make_a_bot/). Jay didn't want to allow it. I argued that we needed the promotion; that there was no downside unless the game was a huge hit and that that wouldn't so much be a downside situation would it; that the Kingdom Builder app was making roughly no money so probably it wouldn't be worth pursuing an official version anyway. Hey those are all business arguments. He said something like "let me sleep on it and find a way to say yes." Of course there was a big 4th argument, which was me, me presenting the other 3 arguments.
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Re: Payment models
« Reply #99 on: June 20, 2015, 11:26:50 pm »
0

Jay didn't let online versions stay up forever because whoever made online Dominion would demand exclusive rights.
That's what I mean when I say this was a business decision.  Jay could not let Isotropic continue, it would compete with the for-pay version.

But I will point out that the data suggest that the two entities that (we can assume) demanded exclusive rights (Goko, then MF) haven't actually made online Dominion - they've put up unreliable pieces of the game that sometimes work and sometimes don't.  The only entity that hasn't (we can assume) demanded exclusive rights (Doug Z) is the only one that has truly made online Dominion. (I'm leaving out BSW because I know nothing of that situation).

The notion of "exclusive rights" is one that exists entirely and only in the business world. It may be that Jay's personal happiness is reduced because people yell at him for "shutting down" Isotropic.  I'm not arguing that. But you have given me some hope.  If Jay really wishes he could revisit a business decision and take a different path, perhaps that will happen with MF.  We may still have a working online Dominion one day.
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