RazorBlade
Retired Snek
Dunno if this has been noted in page 73 at all but I just woke up and I'm not reading it right now.
Now, before you get all salty and make personal attacks on me instead of focusing on the topic at hand, hear me out. This one is actually sincere.
At which point must you draw the line?
If I have time to play only 15 minutes a day, should there be an option for me to buy my way to the top 100? Top 50? This is a rhetorical question, you don't need to answer it, just think about it. It's also not an accurate example to the way things are, just a generalized example.
What I'm getting at, is that there's always going to be people who can play 6, 8, 12, 18 hours a day if they so desire. Maybe they can be the top player without donating a single cent. Good for them.
There will also always be people who have a real life job or other commitments that either prevent them from playing that much, or simply it isn't as much of a priority. Good for them as well.
While I have my own opinions of servers with donation rewards that are not purely cosmetic, I'm putting that aside and asking, where does the balance lie? Where SHOULD the balance lie?
If I can play 15 minutes a day only, no amount of donating should bring me to the top, or anywhere near it. In that case I'm literally just paying to be the top without playing the server. Great for you in terms of income, but for the server to succeed long term, there should be a higher population of people who understand the little things, people who put in time and effort to learn the inner workings (like when I played full-time, knowing to use scrolls and buffs in certain orders for maximum lasting effect, and other little things like that). On the other hand, there are of course negatives to people like that (even a player who never donates can have great gear by playing, and if they understand those little bits that make a player most effective at hunting or questing or pvp, you're obviously gonna find a bunch of people who don't like how powerful they are, even if they could be as powerful or more powerful than that person)
Imagine someone who not only plays full time and knows how to be the best, but also donates loads?
If you're going to have your gear and trinkets and items and currency available for donation so that the people with less opportunity to play are able to still make good progress, that's your business. However, I urge you to consider just how much someone should have to play to benefit from those donations. Again, my numbers are generalized examples and not intended to depict the actual way things are running at this time. It's great to have an assortment of players, and have different people on at different times and for different lengths of times (was kind of boring when I played since I was always on, and my team was basically always on, and I didn't see a lot of diversity in those who were playing). Donating should be an incentive, otherwise why would anyone donate? In cipsoft's tibia, you buy premium and you do better, that's part of their business model. You can play free, but you'll have a shittier time trying to advance. But they also have a shitty game in general, hence the low player counts and typical rage people hold towards them. Other games, like WoW, are subscription-based. I don't know if they have any benefits you can pay for or not, but everyone pays and starts on a level field, because the game is good enough that people are willing to pay just to play at the same level as others, whether they play for 24 hours straight without sleeping or just an hour a day. I urge you to rethink the reason some of your players are there, and the business model that supports their desire to be there without really, truly playing it.
I do still play occasionally to see how things are going. I don't donate anymore. I don't become a part of the community. No one on there knows me. I'm not being shitty or trying to ruin anything, I don't talk to anyone at all. Trying not to be the one on the outside looking in so that I can make somewhat educated observations of how I think things are going.
Look at hypocritical me, not wanting to read and then posting a wall of text...
Hopefully my energy wasn't wasted, and you can take something constructive from this rather than take it as an attack and retaliate in turn.
