4. Make trading subscription tokens more profitable for everyone

Make trading subscription tokens more profitable for everyone


  • Good day everyone

    I personally think that the current market system is a bit, hmm how should I put it, uninteresting.
    In order to change that, there needs to be something that is valuable but doesn't break the bank and appeals even to those who are new testing the game.

    Subscription tokens are a great thing but unfortunately due to the high price tag mostly unreachable except for those with pro-ness in trading.
    There for I like to change the concept a little:

    Instead of the 60 day token I suggest that we get 30 x 1 day coins. Or better yet switch the entire subscription system to 1 day coins.
    But those are not directly available for trading they need to be "transferred into the game" via a lvl 8 controller which requires energy of cause (maybe one day of 2 sources). However in order to transfer them back into your account you need at least 16 -1 for administration cost.

    This has the following benefits:

    • The price tag gets reachable enough to make the promise of "pay never" feasible
    • Since it becomes a resource that is player generated, it gets a completely new value and inherently nerfes the p2w feeling a bit
    • Player are now able to pseudo "suspend" their subscription by generating coins
    • It should revitalize your revenue stream for the game since non-subscription players are now able to taste blood 😈

    Cons:

    • requires a complete revisit of the subscription handling, but should be possible since your payment provider should allow micro transactions (<- handle coins here)
    • things that I might have overlooked but for that reason there is the community

    insert input below 🙂


  • Your idea to break a subscription token down into a smaller unit is a good idea, and I believe it worked well for Eve.

    The price tag is directly correlated with the number of people who are prepared to pay real money to buy a token, and exchange it for in-game resources.

    I'm not sure about the benefit/complexity of "transferring into the game".


  • What exactly would the purpose of requiring players to invest energy to turn their subscription into coins be?


  • This is a small Nerf for new players,
    so that they have to go to all phases at least once.

    Basically force them to maintain their code instead of just buying energy from the market.
    Also keeps a baseline for pricing, since a lot of people will use that as orientation.
    Oh and it would give energy finally some worth since it is a good sink.
    It should use the weekly avg. Tick time to calculate the energy cost, adds natural fluctuations.
    This way inter shard trading becomes a very interesting opportunity,
    since shards with a high tick time are able to transfer cheaper.


  • A small sample calculation:.

    • avg. tick rate: 2s transfer cost: 432000E
    • avg. tick rate: 5s transfer cost: 172800E

    Simply carrying massive amounts E from a faster shard into a slower one could have a ROI that is profitable.


  • what are you trying to achieve?


    • a boost in genral market activity
    • Making the market more attractive for new low-level players
    • Making subscription tokens affordable by splitting them into 1d coins
    • Creating a baseline for subscription tokens / coins it is currently very arbitrary
    • Creating a new value and feel for subscription coins by required work
    • Allowing people to "suspend" their subscription with a decent but fair penalty
    • Providing a means to handle subscription programmatically, at least to know when it ends so they can switch tasks to buy coins
    • Simplifying subscription management by making it a "physical" thing 1 coin = 1 day of CPU; 100 coins = 100 days (monthly subscription just gives a amount of coins)
    • Refresh the revenue stream for the game to ensure continued development of such

    People are cheapskates and don't want to be bound,
    this will hopefully increase the amount of people who want to try out the game.


  • Seriously I'd buy much rather a one day coin from time to time instead of a subscription or a massive 60d token.
    The subscription feels to much like a forced commitment since there is currently no value feeling for it.

    Opening the game up to micro-transactions will definitely boost the revenue stream.
    Even if it has a really bad reputation, executed right it is a good thing and I'm very positiv that this game will benefit from it.


  • I assume the 60 day cadence for billing it to simplify the business side of the code and operations. Shifting to a daily cadence might be a lot of work for devs. I'd rather the focused more on game code than boring billing code. (That said, I'm not a game designer, micro transaction might be a huge boost in revenue for the devs which would be a positive for us players as well).

    A simpler (I hope) suggestion, break your request into two parts: micro-subs and partial subscriptions. Microsubs would be a new resource (or they could replace the current subs). Then players can buy their tokens piece by piece and that might increase the trade rates. To keep the billing logic simple, a 60 day subscription consumes 1 million mirco-subs.

    The more complicated problem of enabling partial subs can be solved later if/when it looks like a good ROI for the devs. 500,000 for 30 days, 31337 for 3 days, etc.


  • The billing service they use has full APIs for that and should handle the tokens.
    All they would have to do is to "destroy tokens" and implement a endpoint to read the players amount.


  • IMO We should have fewr sub tokens around rather than more. Pay-to-win ain't fun.


  • You can't even pay to win. Unless you buy a top-tier code-base off someone...

    1 Reply

  • @wtfrank said in Make trading subscription tokens more profitable for everyone:

    You can't even pay to win. Unless you buy a top-tier code-base off someone...

    I agree and I disagree. I think is you're able to develop a reasonably good codebase on your own you can get to the top of the GCL/power rankings much more easily if you're willing to sell sub tokens to buy energy/power. Similarly, a reasonably good codebase can much more aggressive with boost usage as those boosts can just be bought from the market.

    Now, the market isn't huge so token prices are high. The more it gets used the lower the prices will be I guess. I personally see it as a bad thing rather than a good thing and I don't want more ways in which players can turn money into in-game advantages.

    1 Reply

  • @tigga exactly, and that is why I also want to introduce the "transferring to the game" mechanic to prevent such pay to win scenarios.
    By requiring energy to transfer them to the game it would be a ±0 calculation and I'm pretty sure prices will adjust fast accordingly to supply and demand.
    Besides, your pay to win argument isn't really valid, look at EVE online.
    When they host the annual tournament people sell massive amounts of PLEX to finance their ships and modules.
    This has always a positive feedback in the market instead of negativ. (Also a huge boon for CCP Games :- )