@Plato - Why Im More Important Than GOLD Buyers
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by 5n4keyes
@Plato
This article is aimed at pointing out the huge flaws in how you treat your game. Those who purchase GOLD seam to be getting major benifits, gamebreaking changes, and generally become stronger than anyone who can't or doesnt purchase GOLD, and whilst it is logical to take care of these players, given they are paying your wages, your thinking is wrong, and here is why.
In recently studys its shown that for an online game, offering a microtransaction model, generally you would see between 3% and 6% of your active players purchasing virtual currency, most of these transactions tend to be under the $10, as it tends to be kids, paying with a mobile phone, or other such device. EA have also had a presentation on the microtransaction model, in which the above is true, and they only require 1% of there playerbase to pay, to cover costs of the game.
Also within the EA presentation, it is clearly pointed out, that new players are the most important part of any game running a microtransaction model, the more players you have, the more players that are in that 3%-6% group. Also stated is that non paying players, need to have access to the same thing as those buying your virtual currency.
So lets take a look at eRepublik, today we have Q6, something that im sure almost every citizen would love to have, but, you make it a limited time offer, so this offer is aimed at players who will buy GOLD, its very unlikely that a person that hasnt bought GOLD would have the 200G sitting around to upgrade even one building.
Next we have the Top Fighter Achievement, To get that Acchievement, you need to be doing atleast 3m damage to appear in the top 100, note that this can and is sometimes higher. I have 6100+ strength, and im a National Force, with 600HP, I could maybe pull off 380k of damage, over 24 hours this is, a little over 1.5m, half of what I need on a good day, In order to appear in the top I would have to spend some GOLD, or stockpile one heck of a crapton of Bazookers and Health bars, and I would need to do this 30 times, in order to unlock the achievement... So this is once again aimed at those who purchase GOLD.
So, why am I and others like me more important? well lets take a look, ive worked 1024 days in a row, played for 4 years and 2 days, and been awarded the society builder award twice, and never purchased a single bit of GOLD. I on a daily basis fight, and work, I like the other 94%-97% are your game, we are the largest group bringing in more friends to your game, we provide the battles for the GOLD spenders to blast away, we provide the markets for the GOLD spenders to use. We are your game.
So Plato, if you want to increase the number of people in that 3%-6% group, start working on retaining those who on a daily basis see you bend over backwards to push those who buy GOLD, higher and higher above the rest. Work on retaining players in those first few weeks, work on retaining players who with every update feel more and more like you couldnt care less if we were here or not.
We are your game, without us people wouldnt spend money, so, put some focus on us for a change.
/5n4ke
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Good article o7
Also even if admins made gold cheaper to buy or if we got more gold for our money.
The cost of gold is so high its worth more then most international currencies. I thought about buying gold for a couple seconds , but I just could not get over the lack of return.
Excellent article! Well said snake
Excelent article. I have managed to kick my habit of buying gold, this whole Q6 mallarchy almost sucked me back in. I reckon that's exactly their intention, I'd say they're trying to coax back people who have stopped buying gold (because the game simply isn't worth it) by making shinier in-game baubles to purchase.
We all know you have well over 200 gold sitting there doing nothing 5n4ke ,so stop complaining ; )
Great article , valid points , Voted
Voted, but Plato isn't listening. He stopped listening a long time ago.
Great article, good argument Snakeyes
great article
Great article. Very true.
finally aiming for FP, eh???
Very good article. I think we've all been thinking this stuff for a long time.
Admins are making a fortune from the game so they won't care about this.
Good article. Lets hope that some of the money they took in from Q6 they reinvest in advertising for the game and bring in more new players.
Well said but tbh Admins never cared about the game when they saw their bank account.
Some amount of oldfags on this article.
I might as well get in on it too.
I don't think the EA microtransaction model is that relevant to Erepublik, as you said, the reason why it's a microtransaction model is because it'd be mainly young kids with not a lot of money playing the game. Erepublik's player base I think would be older than the standard browser game and possibly more passionate considering the RL national and personal pride which comes into play. Thus I'd suppose their income would be based around a small number of key gold buyers...
The Q6 is clearly just another quick money grabbing scheme, it seems as though the only features that the Erepublik team actually work on are designed to squeeze out whatever extra money they can...
Bottom-line everyone quit thar
The 3%-6% is based on alot of the information provided by Zynga, who do such amazing and fantastic games as.. Farmville (FUUUUU).
Note that this could be people spending $1 or $1000, tho its pretty well known that once someone buys virtual currency once, they are more likely to do it over and over again. (Damn you League of Legends!!!).
The major thing they are doing wrong with eRep, is they havent focused anything in a long long time on retaining new players, or providing stuff current players can achieve, this in turn is costing them alot of money.
I think we would all agree, if the game was more cost effective, and more worth spending money on, more of us will pay for things, Ive personally spent money on other games with a microtransaction model, so its not like im against doing such thing, if its worth it.