Dev update 2020-03-08: new account resources
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My gut feeling is that CPU tokens will underperform subscriptions in terms of revenue (and I have a fair amount of experience in this area).
It seems like the devs are replacing a simple elegant system with a fiddly complex one.
Is the goal to ultimately charge more per clock cycle? I.e. will running with CPU tokens 100% of the time cost more than a subscription? I wonder if the real fix is just to charge more for subscriptions if that is the case. We're all programmers. Our hourly billing rate is 30-50x the monthly subscription cost right now. We don't care what it costs, probably. I don't even know what it is.
I'm happy paying for my subscription right now even though I hardly play at all any more because I like supporting this weird indie game. However, I hardly ever participate in any game economy that involves microtransactions, and the mere presence of them in a "skill based" game for anything other than purely cosmetic stuff makes me not want to play the game any more. Maybe I am old and out of touch.
High level question: if Screeps were twice as good at converting free players to subscriptions would the devs be considering this change? If not, is the real problem actually somewhere else?
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@shedletsky Nobody likes subscriptions. A game item is way more easy to understand than some real-life financial relationships. And with 24-day tokens much more people will become involved in this, than with 30/60-days minimum commitment.
Also, the idea is not to increase revenue from CPU selling (we're fine if it will not), but to streamline the entire account resources system, make it more game-like and less service-like.
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@shedletsky your point of view is totally legit but lets face it, programmers are not the majority out there.
(Even so any sane person sees that software dominates our everyday life and we need way more of them)So if screeps wants to grow it needs to be appealing to new players (non programmers) and subscriptions are a BIG turn off for a lot of people, i.e. like me.
I f-ing hate subs, that is one of the major reasons why stopped playing EVE etc.
I really can't stand it if a game tells me what to do with my time. (I know silly, isn't it. But I'm just a dumb human)
Subs are "forcing a commitment" that a lot of people don't like, the 24h token are way more approachable and don't feel like a big commitment.
This "giving a choice" is a big part in the decision for newbies to continue to play the game and this is the goal.
Selling tokens lowers also the bar quite a lot for new players to get access to new resources and gameplay elements.It's like YT videos you have around 10 secs to gain the viewers attention, if you waste that with a stupid intro you will get skipped a lot.
Does it boil down to the same result at the end of the month? Yes it does!
But it does feel a heck of a lot different to a sub.Thinking about it, @artch I think you should rise the price of the lifetime sub to 150 bucks. Seems more appropriate with this change.
Also I wonder how granular will you sell the tokens?
By piece, packs, mass rebate?
It may also be interesting to hint to the steam market for low quantities so you don't have to deals with so many transactions.
Every transaction is something with the potential to go wrong.
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@mrfaul said in Dev update 2020-03-08: new account resources:
Also I wonder how granular will you sell the tokens?
The official store will sell it in bundles of 30, 60, and 90 tokens. But on the in-game market or Steam Community Market you can buy a single token as well.
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Do you plan on something like a starter pack with all 3 res in limited quantities but with a cheap entry price...
Uhhhh wait you can use the steam version for that
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Reading through all the comments here shows the devs have pretty well thought about it, and thanks for the active respones from their side!
Something that's not very clear to met yet is how you deal with these "account resources" in combination with the "seasonal mode" that's being worked on. In my opinion it's very important that these seasonal modes are a "fair" fight which shouldn't be influenced by account resources either gathered from paying with RL money or originating from the persistent MMO mode.
The seasonal will become quite competitive I guess and being able to retrieve an advantage there would seriously ruin this mode. Would it be possible to completely block selling CPU "blocks" in this mode or at least restrict it until you reach like GCL5 or something?
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To my understanding they are standalone shards with own rules and have nothing to do with the persistent world, besides the fact that you need access keys.
You won't be able to transfer anything to them.Dunno about events in the persistent world, but those are probably just fun gimmicks where you can get special cosmetics and such.
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@qzarstb In our current plan, there will be no usable account resources on the seasonal server. Seasonal server supposed to be a separate server so you won't benefit from your account at the persistent server, no matter how big or how wealthy you are there.
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Goggles,
Any idea as to the extents of the "rule changes" for the seasonal server? I.E. If it takes ~14M energy to level a room to level 8, and the "season" only lasts 2 and a half months... even at a 1 second tick that's going to be a pretty small colony at the end. Starting cold is a beast, and I get that exercising the cold start code will be a big part of the seasonal server, as it is in the impromptu "combat" servers on screeps plus, but the game's systems are geared for level 8 rooms.
So, to rephrase, any idea as to the changes to make leveling faster?
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@smokeman this is yet to be decided.
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The seasons sound like a great change, and shrinking the tokens to add market liquidity also sounds nice. Maybe the tokens could be shortened even more, to 3 or 6 hours. 24 hours also sounds like a big commitment for a new player.
As far as lifetime subs go, my vote is to either keep selling them or remove them for all players. Sounds like the plan is to keep selling them, which is good & fair enough.
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@yoner Lifetime unlocks are here to stay, we're going to discontinue recurring subscriptions only.
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For those who still don't understand or are skeptical why this is a step in the right direction watch this:
It is old but still relevant.
