Premium Rewards

[Guh]

Although Droid Arena is a new game, I feel there should be some form of premium reward. The same goes for Queens Necklace, and Gang of Four. If these already have benifits that I don't know of, it would be nice to have them posted along side the other premium benifits.. As for Droid Arena.. the reward should be something more than what PAC's get.. The playerbase might throw a fit, but it's also likely they will join the skotos community, just for a premium droid arena account. Some suggestions are +1 Arena point per tick, +5 credits per finance tower upgrade, +.5 hanger upgrades per level.

Anyway, just a suggestion.

Cheers,
Guh

[Webbed]

Skotos Premium members get of course 5AP/day, any of those suggestions as 'perks' you make would simply throw off the balance of the entire game, everyone would call foul. we would not survive if we were to do that.
Remember, DroidArena has been going for about 2 years, and has a serious following. All of those players would say just the opposite, being, they should get the +1 AP or +5CR and so on, since they were there first.
this isnt to even mention that I just gave away a GameBoy to a Skotos member, for which Skotos members had a much better overal chance of winning than regular DA Players had for the same prize.

[Guh]

I agree with an offset to the balance, however, skotos basic accounts and skotos premium accounts are each getting the rewards of a PAC. Although any real benifit would be unfair, it still seems a bit off. There's the possibility of starting each season with an addtional 9k CR, so one can buy a full three weapon frame, or the ability to play a second droid, even. These are just sugesstions, and I'll try to think up more, that are balanced for all players.

[Webbed]

to my knowledge, we cant even tell if a skotos member is 'basic' or 'premium' i'm sure shannon now will let us know if we can or not.
but if we can, we may be able to give 4/ap/day to basic
that would go more along our current lines of types of accounts.
trials currently get 3/ap/day, premium 5/ap/day, a skotos trial gets the same as our own trial 3/ap/day, which next week willbe 2/ap/day.

[Tyr Gunn]

If you want to talk about bonus rewards for skotos members. Give us the option to simply convert Story points into cash/upgrade points/structure points.

Just to start the ideas flowing:

10 SP = 1,00,000$
25 SP = 6 Structure upgrades
50 SP = 10 Hanger Upgrades
250 - 300 SP = Dream Droid Build(May need to add some Hanger Upgrades to make this more appealing than simply cashing in 300 SP's for 30 mil.)

[Webbed]

ok, first i must say, this is NOT implemented and mey never be implemented, this is for discussion purposes only, and not to be determined as rule or law or anything like that.

second, we do appreciate this discussion, it will help a great deal in the long run.

heres what we have come up with.

5sp to run a spy mission (instead of the cost of CR+RP+CP)
spy mission costs vary so, each mission would have a different SP value given

10sp for 100K CR / level (level 1 could get 100k CR, level 2 could get 200k CR and so on)

100 to complete a research that you are eligible to research

10sp for a custom arena of your own design, which you may place any restrictions on that you like.

how do those items sound
what i do not know is what a SP is worth to you, so please if i'm low or high as to the SP cost, let me know, and tell me what you think a single SP is worth in relation to CR or CP or RP, or even actual $$'s
another thing, it wold be nice to know what an average player has on hand of SP's

[Webbed]

Heres some possible costs for the various spy missions that are available, you can look at those spy missions and see what the cost of cr/cp/rp is now
OPERATION COCKROACH 1
OPERATION INVENTORY 1
OPERATION INTIMATE 1
OPERATION JUGGLER 1
OPERATION LIGHTFINGER 2
OPERATION WEBSTORM 2
SPECIAL OPERATION LOST FILE 3
OPERATION SLUMP 4
OPERATION LOST SCREWDRIVER 4
OPERATION BROKEN VEIL 5
OPERATION BLACK CLOAK 5
SPECIAL OPERATION STONE AGE 5
SPECIAL OPERATION BIG DOUGH 10

thats what we've come up with so far as to cost averaging

oh, and those costs also reflect the time it takes for a mission as well, along with cp/rp/cr

[Tyr Gunn]

Before I comment on the other things. I have to point this out.

Originally posted by Webbed
we may be able to give 4/ap/day to basic
that would go more along our current lines of types of accounts.
trials currently get 3/ap/day, premium 5/ap/day, a skotos trial gets the same as our own trial 3/ap/day, which next week willbe 2/ap/day.

I don't like that as an option at all, and I'm sure due to the math, most any skotos member would agree.

Consider, a paid skotos basic account works out to almost double that of DA account over a single seaon. Yeah, we have more games here, but if you're only playing DA, or primarily playing DA, this is not a good deal.

The Skotos Premium is much more than a DA account over a season. If you're gonna adjust Arena points over skotos accounts, give Skotos Premiums 7 AP a day.

These extra costs are mostly why pretty much any skotos member laughed at the recent contests which offered a PAC for non skotos people, and a mere 100k for skotos members. Especially when I could probably sell that PAC to another corp for a cool 1 mill. :P

Now, onto the other points. :)

Originally posted by Webbed
5sp to run a spy mission (instead of the cost of CR+RP+CP)
spy mission costs vary so, each mission would have a different SP value given

10sp for 100K CR / level (level 1 could get 100k CR, level 2 could get 200k CR and so on)

100 to complete a research that you are eligible to research

10sp for a custom arena of your own design, which you may place any restrictions on that you like.

I like all of that, mostly. A few points:

I really think SP's should convert for more cash. This is a good start, but perhaps 10 = 150 to 200 per level would be best. That way if you're strapped for cash after blowing it on a silly droid build, you can convert and get a bit of a pad back.

Also, rather than having it cost 100 sp's for research, make it so we can convert sp's to RP's. 100 sps for a research is a bit steep. Especially considering the current income formula for RP, if you're careful, you'll rarely have an RP problem.

Thoughts?

[Tyr Gunn]

Also, to answer your question regarding the value of StoryPoints.

It's really a variable thing. To some people, they're worthless. :P Others have vaule to them because they apply to the game they play.

But that stuff aside. The only folks who are guarenteed Story Points every month are Premuim members and certain staff members on certain game staffs. And to those who are guarenteed SP's, they only get 50 a month.

There are, of course, other methods of obtaining SP's. Referring, mentoring, and community support are among them. So, to a non premium account, SP's are gold if the game they play have good rewards. To a premium account, they're a nice return for their significant investment. The key, is offereing nice rewards.

I think what you've got here so far are pretty good. Here is to hopeing all this brainstorming goes somewhere. :)

[Webbed]

AP and UP is simply out of the question in any case. that would create a serious game imbalance. it would make it where ONLY skotos members were in the top 50 or top 100 in rankings since they would be the ONLY ones that could play in that many arenas per day, end result, game dies overnight.
as to considering what a paid skotos basic or premium is equal to in DA, not eveyone really understands the dynamics of how these partnerships are designed, suffice it to say, what a basic or premium member pays to be a Skotos member is not what Skotos pays me when you play DroidArena, and again DroidArena has members of long standing, in which case, they would immediately notice a system where skotos are the only players that can get to the top rankings, it would simply kill DroidArena. Now, in the future, if DroidArena was to have another system whereby paying a different fee would get different AP's per day, that would make it a diff story, and a system like that could be easily implemented where skotos premium would get more AP's per day than a basic subscriber.

PAC contests, we have addressed this issue already and have made arrangements with Skotos which allows us to now offer Skotos Members a month free Skotos membership in place of a PAC in those cases they win a contest, we can now also offer StoryPoints as well.

oh, of course, your reference to selling a PAC to another corp, is an illegal activity in DroidArena, you may not sell PACs for resources. if you win a contests and accept a PAC as a prize, please do not do this, email me to for an exchange, or tell the person running the contest that you are a skotos member and arrangements will be made with me to accomodate.
Future contests will be announced in a fashion that includes the skotos equivalent prize.

StoryPoints for CR exhange, here is another tough area, which i would like for you to view this hypothetical situation.
player JOHN (non-skotos) begins game on day 1, he gets 70k CR when he signs up.
player KATE (skotos) begins game on day 1, he gets 70k CR when he signs up. PLUS exhanges 10SP for 200k CR

guess who has the BEST of everything, guess also who wins the arena in which KATE and JOHN fight eachother, this creates a balance issue almost as much as the AP idea does. however, this balance is not quite so bad, if we limit the amount of CR exhange rate for SP's for the lower levels, the getting out of the gate for all players remains somewhat balanced, this is why we thought of the x amount of CR per level exchange rate. any player CAN get 100K cr in the game by regular play, by making good bets and getting good scores in arenas, skotos could then make that Cr by exhanging SP, resulting in a better balance. in the higher levels the exchange rate is better of course because it doesnt impact the regular players so greatly.

the 100 SP for research idea was actually an idea that it cost x SP's for you to choose a research that you are eligible to do, and have it IMMEDIATELY completed, that is why the cost is steep, this would mean, for a research that typically takes 24 hours before you can complete it or use it, a skotos member would simply spend 100 SP and have it done NOW, no waiting at all. this was just a thought, which might be better not to implement at all actually, and do the research more along the lines of the spying.

[ShannonA]

Just wanted to comment that Webbed and I have chatted a bit, and overall it's a tricky issue because Droid Arena is a ranked strategy game.

I told him some of our general philosophies that we've tried to extend, which include:

* StoryPoint Rewards in general can be gotten by other players with the expenditure of more time.

* StoryPoint Rewards which cannot be gotten by other players through the expenditure of time most frequently don't have a direct game effect.

I've also pointed him toward the TEC & GR StoryPoint programs, which have generally been well-received & seem well-balanced.

Shannon

[Dariel]

Nice. Just felt like I'd chime in. I tried Droid Arena and it just wasn't to my liking. Too much of it depends on coding in a fictional programming language and I just can't get my mind around stuff like that. Too busy with real languages.

Either way, I've got to say that I never really expected any of the associated games which aren't directly run by Skotos but rather part of the package to offer any Premium or StoryPoint benefits at all because of incompatible structures. I think it's a really laudable move that the Droid Arena guys are considering it at all.


(There, I said something nice. Don't expect anything constructive from me till the new year anymore now.)


Have a nice day.

[Webbed]

I'm sorry to hear that DA is not to your liking, we've had a number of folks say that after only an hour or two, that they dont like it, but, for those that dont like it at only first glance generally find that if they spend a little time on it, it becomes addictive to even them. i hope you found that we had a bbrsl page that does the rsl programming for you, as well as lots of players willing to help anyone that asks, most of them would write a script for you just for the asking. theres even a good number of skotos members only corps that i'm sure members would be glad to help you on that aspect. I personally have used the bbrsl generated basic script for up to level 8 with quite good results.

either way, thanks for the kind words, and dont worry, i wont expect any more kindness till the new year.

as to skotos premium rewards, another suggestion that was made to me, was the ability to use x SP to own an arena, by owning i mean, an arena that goes in the pool of 1000 arenas, of your own name, whatever you wish to name that arena, as long as it is within certain guidelines, such as no political advertising types, no religous types, and no defamatory names, something such as, Skotos Arena 1, would be acceptable, or Dariel's Playground, something along those lines are the generally accepted names. this is a feature we have actually given in exchange for $ donations in the past, donations being of 100$ or more usually. end result would be that every day or three, the arena you bought would show up, and you'd get basically advertising or bragging rights to it.

we have also sold Corp Ads in the past, a method of a corp to promote their corp and gain membership, we possibly could do that for x SP's as well

[Blackhand]

I strongly agree with keeping SP rewards from being game-affecting. In general, I belive that SP are meant to be exchanged for, basically, special requests, game personalization, etc. In the MUD-style games, this tends to equate to custom character descriptions, personalized events, special items, and the ability to play unusual characters (like the 'bad guys' of the game, or the high-ranking members of society).

I like the idea of naming arenas, that goes along well with the SP concept, as I understand it. Another possibility might be to allow SP to be spent to get different Droid models or colors in the movies.

Although I've not interacted with them directly myself, from what I've seen, the DA team seems real good about responding to player desires. I think a part of the reason for SP was that, especially in MUD-style games, it would be nearly impossible to handle every special request, to customize every detail and every item of every character, and be directly running events for each player, without a huge staff.

On the other hand, I think DA appears pretty good about responding to player requests (considering what's humanly possible), and limiting things like a brand new style of frame to just certain players doesn't make too much sense, when it's really little effort just to give the cool stuff to everyone. So there's not as many applications of SP in DA, that both would get a player something special, and not disrupt game balance.

Another cool option might be to allow SP to be spent to request a a droid name or death message; I belive that these used to be allowed in DA, but were removed due to people including profanity in messages and other such stuff. If a player could spend SP to buy the time it would take an admin to approve a name/message, that would be cool.

Hmm... actually, whether or not it becomes an SP-costing action, maybe it would be good to select a few players of DA to approve names and messages; requested names/messaes get stored on the server, and one of these selected players can look at the list, and selectively approve/deny each one. To keep these players from being overloaded, limit it to PAC's, if not just to Skotos SP-spenders alone. I'm willing to volunteer to review such requests, if doing so would bring back death messages and names, which sound pretty cool to me. :)

[Webbed]

thats not a bad idea, and unless i'm forgetting something, the framework for messages is still there, and yes, it would need an approval system as well. i'll pass that along and see what we can come up with for that.
and
thanks for noticing that the admin team is working very hard to accomodate player requests. We have worked long and hard to get this team together, making some hard and bad choices along the way and i think finally its working as we envisioned.

[Malice]

First of all, I'd just like to say that all of those SP expenditure options Webbed posted sound really nice. To answer some of his questions:

1) Personally, I find that those prices are very reasonable in relation as to the value of story points.

2) Premium users get 50 story points a month. Perhaps increasing the price of SP for Credit option would be needed. Even if it's only increased to say 15 or 20 SP. A level 1 player spending 1 months worth of story points would be able to get 500,000 credits, and it would be even higher for higher levels. Or maybe make the equation for credit work something like the Arena XP modifier.

Level 1 = 100,000 credit per 10 SP
Level 2 = 100,000 X 1.5 credit per 10 SP
Level 3 = 100,000 X 2.0 credit per 10 SP, etc.

This would prevent a massive build up of credit from low levels, while still providing higher levels with adequate cash to make decent purchases. All together it seems more balancing.

The SP prices for spy missions are right on I feel. They reflect the importance of the mission, without over charging SP cost. Just a question, would missions which SP is used be completed instantly, or would they still require the same time as normal?

And my thoughts on the custom arena option. Very cool. Again, however, I feel the price is slightly too low. If it cost only 10 SP to have a custom arena everyone would want one, and it would quickly swamp the staff. Perhaps a more reasonable price would be 50 SP. That would pretty much limit it to 1 arena a month per premium account, and also limit the people willing to spend that months worth of SP on an arena.

On AP and UP:
I agree completely that story points should not be able to be converted into arena points or upgrade points. That puts Skotos subscribers at a huge advantage. I think the DA staff works really hard to accomodate Skotos subscribers, offering credit, SP and a month's free subscription in exchange for the normal PAC offered in most contests. I think asking to convert SP to UP or AP is pushing it. ;)

I also like Blackhands idea for the droid death messages.

One thing I feel sort of guilty about, however, most of the Skotos subscribers playinger Droid Arena have played for maybe a total of six months, and that might be stretching it. While some of the people who played DA before the move to Skotos have played since season one. It seems unfair to implement a system to award people, just because they subscribe to skotos instead of DA directly.

My thought on a solution would be making a new account type for direct DA subscribers to mirror the Skotos accounts, Trial, Basic, and Premium.

Now I'm not very good with server costs and things like that, my suggestion would be:

Trial - Free
Basic - 8$
Premium - 15-20?$

First, you'd probably end up getting more people who convert from a trial account to a basic account, and second, you would get the hard core DA players to upgrade to an account that offers more perks. This would make the relation between skotos subscribers and Direct DA subscribers a lot easier.

You could offer the same options to premium DA subscribers as are offered to Skotos premium subscribers and basic subscribers to basic subscribers.

You could make it so that Premium subscribers get 8 arena points a day with no carry over. [You wouldn't need carry over since 8 arena's is the max you can join a day with 1 hour ticks.]

Basic subscribers get 5 arena points a day, with carry over.

And trial accounts get 4 arena points a day, with no carry over.

Just a thought.

And lastly, I just want to compliment the DA staff as a whole. They are extremely good at what they do, and everyone I talk to seems to feel the same. I tried DA when it first came out, but I couldn't get the hang of it. After joining the Grendelkin Corporation, a corporation completely made up of Skotos subscribers, I learned a lot and now I'm in the top 50 Deckers! I love the consistant contests, and News updates and I'm glad to hear that you are where you want to be. I look forward to many more seasons playing DA. Now if only the seasons were longer again. *hint hint* ;)

[Dariel]

Originally posted by Webbed
I'm sorry to hear that DA is not to your liking, we've had a number of folks say that after only an hour or two, that they dont like it, but, for those that dont like it at only first glance generally find that if they spend a little time on it, it becomes addictive to even them. i hope you found that we had a bbrsl page that does the rsl programming for you, as well as lots of players willing to help anyone that asks, most of them would write a script for you just for the asking. theres even a good number of skotos members only corps that i'm sure members would be glad to help you on that aspect. I personally have used the bbrsl generated basic script for up to level 8 with quite good results.

I'm not sure how far I played, but I did have a Cyberspider frame in the end, so I guess that was somewhere between level 6 and 8, and yes, that's when the auto-generated scripts pretty much stopped working. On the other hand, though, I'll admit that making your own scripts was really part of the fun of the game for me, so getting scrips made from other people seemed pointless. I just couldn't muster the level of understanding (of the programming language for the bots) required of me to do that anymore.

I mean, if you don't do the programming, the only part where you can be really creative anymore is team strategies/tactics, and that's just not enough for me. But hey, I trust there are enough people out there who have that approach to programming languages I lack -- I'm a Linguist myself, but not a computer linguist. When confronted with programming languages I usually get my first heart attack reading terms I deal with on a daily basis and finding them in a completely different context and with a completely different meaning.


And just to be productive... how about an ability to 'skin' your bot? The basic colour schemes work well for direct identification of frames, but how cool would it be to have a Cyberspider that looks like a black widow? Skins would of course have to be provided by the players.


Have a nice day.