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I like the way you think.chubchubrecon wrote:If you want people to donate you have to offer something of significance. When I worked on a dark-rp server this conclusion was plain as day. The fact is you have to dangle something shiny in front of people in order to get them to pledge money. Especially youth. It's the whole reason FTP games are thriving so much right now.
I love this server and I love the people who have flocked to it (most of them).
I have seen servers and communities grow and die and sometimes reform.
I'm not just pulling things out of my heindquarters (well some of it).
Let me pitch a couple ideas from a business standpoint:
We are already pretty aware of Death's conclusion, that the majority of the server's occupants are
not of a working age. Given that assumption It's important to find a system that targets the said majority audience.
From my experience, people of the age group in question are more likely to create a loyalty, or dependency to a server based on what they will loose if they stop playing there. As it stands, a good chunk of the servers population would probably not be all that bothered transferring to another TTT server, most players aren't. If you want to create a hook for the average player, you have to do something unique, something they won't find easily on another server. More importantly if you want to establish financial loyalty, you have to offer something unique in return, something a player won't want to walk away from.
Some solutions:
Vary obvious benefits for donating. Using the MOTD especially to outline these in a section, or at lest showing it somewhere players will see.
Examples:
- Donators vote counts more during map voting
- Donators are given slightly longer mic-bars
- Donators can carry slightly more ammo (not clip side obviously)
- an extra starting credit when detective/traitor
A more complex system might include A coded in-server monetary system.
Where normal players gain say 5 currency per round played, and donators gain 15.
The best kind of system is one where anyone can get things, but you have to pay to get them more quickly.
Donators are also given currency based on the amount of money donated. EG. 10$ =10k of said currency.
In game currency would add up to rewards from some form of in-server shop system.
I have seen this done with hats, but in my opinion it didn't work out very well and it didn't fit TTT very well.
Instead if you could create it so say, You spend 20k of your accumulated in-game currency on a weapon, and then you spawn with said weapon in your inventory slot, or at your feet when a round starts. Players could buy multiple weapons and decide which one to spawn with from the shop menu. Weapons would have varying prices, but all of them high, to encourage people to donate and be able to buy them much much quicker.
A system like this would likely create the question from new users " how did he start with said weapon, when I have to go find one? ". An admin would then answer " because he's a donator ", or " because he bought it from the shop ". Not only implanting the idea of progression in the mind of a common server-goer, but also establishing that the server has a unique system where you can in fact gain from being a part of said server. It creates a dependency that can lock in more players, the same way a DarkRP player would not want to change servers after accumulating a large amount of currency. Systems like these promote Donation from people who otherwise wouldn't even think of donating. It's complex and I'm sure it would take a good deal of effort but I have seen it work before.
I also liked the idea sniper posed about adding a gambling system where you can bet on the outcome of a match.
The proposed model would mean that there would be no advertisements shown while you're actually playing the game.Maxaroni wrote:Yeah the above ideas sound good but i dont know how well they will work. However, i am willing to go with anything if it means not having ads on a server. I absolutely hate ads, they take away from the gameplay experience tremendously.
I'm not denying that there is some slight degree of immorality to the concept of in-game currency as a whole. I personally won't play FTP's because of it. But you can't ignore the usefulness of the concept, and if it's done right, it doesn't unbalance anything. Progression systems can add a lot to a game, and a progression system is the one thing that TTT lacks in. As for the downloads, I've never seen it as a bother. Whenever I have encountered them they are much smaller than map files and go by quickly, but that's just my experience.Soul wrote:We have discussed before that we do not like an in game currency. It causes too many downloads, and it's just a cheap way of getting people to keep playing.
I'd have to talk to alex to see how this would be coded.- Donators vote counts more during map voting
- Donators can carry slightly more ammo (not clip side obviously)
Already in place- Donators are given slightly longer mic-bars
ehhh... I dunno about this one. I'd have to talk to the guardians, see if they agree with it.- an extra starting credit when detective/traitor