The other discussion about features for premium members that are convenient, but do not confer an advantage inspired me to think of some improvements that would be a good fit for premium, and maybe make more people want to sign up.

One thing I thought of was the 'advanced attack' options.  I can think of two I would like:

• A 'W' or weaken button on the attack pop-up.  This would keep attacking a territory until it had only 1 or 2 enemy units left, so that you can finish it off with your big stack.

• A 'T2' or transfer-2 button that would work like the T button, but leave 2s behind. 

You could make these buttons smaller than the rest and/or have them toggle via the settings.

I also looked through the feature requests doc and pulled out some other possible premium features:

# 25 - Add to info table - change in earned bonus from players last bonus.

#42 - Allow undoing of deterministic moves

#43 - Allow invitees to private games to invite others.

#59 - Place units randomly.

Any other ideas for good premium features?

The 'T2' sounds like it would work in all circumstances.  The 'W' should not be available for boards with limited attacks as that changes the gameplay between Standard and Premium members.  Not entirely sure if these could be incorporated with SG gameplay either, possibly TurnBased only (which is where the benefit is probably).

I'd be hesitant to say #42 should be a Premium only thing, Undo is a potential significant game changer IMO.

I like the others you've suggested.

The Clan system could definitely have Premium perks (even though I really don't know much about what a clan system on Risk sites means).

An Achievement system could have a mix between Standard and Premium players.

Board Payment system for Board Designers could be available for Premium and not Standards members.

There are still Team Luck Stats and SG Luck Stats that would/could be Premium.

The notification system for CP/Ranking changes (via the Growl stuff I think) could be Premium only.

Replay (as Private games :)) could be available for Premiums.

I'm sure the Chat system could have Premium only features (ie creating a Private room).

I'm guessing that are quite a few nice-to-haves that could work as Premium-only features.

Yertle wrote:

I'd be hesitant to say #42 should be a Premium only thing, Undo is a potential significant game changer IMO.

It does give an advantage, but I'd say it's more the type of advantage that the stats box does.  If you are careful and meticulous, you don't need undo.  You could also limit it to just undo one step, so that it's more of a 'oops i pushed the wrong button'.

Is the Charts feature Premium only?

Ozyman wrote:

Yertle wrote:

I'd be hesitant to say #42 should be a Premium only thing, Undo is a potential significant game changer IMO.

It does give an advantage, but I'd say it's more the type of advantage that the stats box does.  If you are careful and meticulous, you don't need undo.  You could also limit it to just undo one step, so that it's more of a 'oops i pushed the wrong button'.

I think that would simply give too much of an advantage. It could very easily be used by premium members to attack with 1 army (if they had 2 left on a territory) to another player's 1 in hopes of a last shot. However, if it failed, they could simply "undo" this, and do it over, and over, and over, and over again.

If this is a feature that is added, it should not be added as a premium deal, but for ALL players.

emz wrote:

I think that would simply give too much of an advantage. It could very easily be used by premium members to attack with 1 army (if they had 2 left on a territory) to another player's 1 in hopes of a last shot. However, if it failed, they could simply "undo" this, and do it over, and over, and over, and over again.

If this is a feature that is added, it should not be added as a premium deal, but for ALL players.

What you are describing is not "deterministic".  As I understand it, the reason having a T2 button is unfair is that it counts as a single roll, which is an advantage in games where rolls are limited.  This is what I think Y is referring to.  Undoing any die rolls is out of the question for standard and premium alike.

M57 wrote:

emz wrote:

I think that would simply give too much of an advantage. It could very easily be used by premium members to attack with 1 army (if they had 2 left on a territory) to another player's 1 in hopes of a last shot. However, if it failed, they could simply "undo" this, and do it over, and over, and over, and over again.

If this is a feature that is added, it should not be added as a premium deal, but for ALL players.

What you are describing is not "deterministic".  As I understand it, the reason having a T2 button is unfair is that it counts as a single roll, which is an advantage in games where rolls are limited.  This is what I think Y is referring to.  Undoing any die rolls is out of the question for standard and premium alike.

First off, I didn't realize that I failed to mention that I was referring to the "undo" option. Although, I do also disagree with the T2 option.

When I said "If this feature is added..." I meant it in a sarcastic sense. Undo is not a feature that should be permitted. I can't think of a single game I've played against other people where the rules permitted "undo" as an option of the result was unfavorable.

It still sounds like maybe you are misinterpreting the undo.  Undo would only be allowed in situations where a dice-roll is not involved.  Its primary usefulness would be when you misclick something like the # of fortifies - sometimes when I play, the UI (or maybe it is me), screws up and I accidentally fortify the wrong amount - usually this is when I have to scroll to pick my fortify #.  Or maybe depending on how it is implemented - lets say you turn in cards, but then realize you didn't want to turn them in. 

In any case, it's nearly a moot point because I doubt Tom would get to it in the next year or so.

Ozyman wrote:

It still sounds like maybe you are misinterpreting the undo.  Undo would only be allowed in situations where a dice-roll is not involved.  Its primary usefulness would be when you misclick something like the # of fortifies - sometimes when I play, the UI (or maybe it is me), screws up and I accidentally fortify the wrong amount - usually this is when I have to scroll to pick my fortify #.  Or maybe depending on how it is implemented - lets say you turn in cards, but then realize you didn't want to turn them in. 

In any case, it's nearly a moot point because I doubt Tom would get to it in the next year or so.

With the fortify, I could understand the usefulness of the "undo" button, however, I still feel that is an option that should be made available for standard members, as they too are susceptible to such human errors.

However, for the card trade ins, I, again, disagree with this 'undo' option. Considering it takes 4 complete clicks (Card 1 + Card 2 + Card 3 + Trade Cards), that is not a result of simple error, that was a result of a poor choice. If you "screwed up" 4 times, then you probably shouldn't be playing a game like this. Once the cards are traded, it shouldn't be an option, for anyone, to "undo" that action.

Fair enough.  Same thing really with placing units - you have to click apply to actually confirm the placement, so it is unlikely you would do it by mistake. 

But as far as it being useful to standard members also, I don't think that is a good argument for making it available to everyone.  Every one of the premium features would be useful to standard members.  If they weren't, no one would pay for premium.   The question is not are they useful, but do they confer an unfair advantage.  I don't think undo does, others can reasonably disagree.

My primary reason for starting this thread was to encourage more people to pay for premium - because Tom spends a ton of time fixing and improving this site and I want to make sure he continues to think that is a worthwhile use of his time.

Ozyman wrote:

My primary reason for starting this thread was to encourage more people to pay for premium - because Tom spends a ton of time fixing and improving this site and I want to make sure he continues to think that is a worthwhile use of his time.

And one approach to achieving this would be to give them a taste of all the features by offering pretty much ALL features but limiting the amount of games they can play, which is kind of/sort of the approach WG has now, though not quite

I wonder if a ten game limit is too much.  I wasn't around when that standard was set.  I'm thinking 5 is very reasonable, including tournaments, which when you think of it can let a player player more than 5 games at once if they are in fast tourney play mode (or whatever that feature is called where you can play multiple games in a tourney at once).

The argument I gave earlier and still believe is "get them addicted and they will join, lots of games (maybe more than 10)".  I do however think the current setup is good with 10.

thought they got a free month membership if they stick around for a month? and 10 has seemed to work pretty well.

I joined as many games as I could before my free month ran out, because many of these games have 3 day turn limits. Conceivably, out of 25 games, I could only take turns in a few a day, especially those with many players.

10 games is kind of a strong limit. The vacation ability is pretty ridiculous though to not be available to standard members. We shouldn't have to pay an extra 10 dollars on our vacation tab just to not get booted from some games.

The undo button would prove to be advantageous. Everyone makes second thoughts in their life about things they should [not] have done. We don't get an "undo" button, and if some did, and others didn't, as with anything, it would create an unfair advantage.

The variances b/w a premium and standard membership are ridiculously huge, and it costs 2x as much as it does on warfish. Albeit, warfish is down quite a bit these days, but there is a way for players to invest on their money spent with boards created. I'm sure "Tom" makes a huge chunk of money off of this site, and the players pay everything and get nothing in return. Financially, paying for any online game is ridiculous, but even with warfish being down, it is the better bet.

I'm sure "Tom" makes a huge chunk of money off of this site, and the players pay everything and get nothing in return. Financially, paying for any online game is ridiculous, but even with warfish being down, it is the better bet.

So this whole site amounts to "nothing", eh? I guess the concept of having to pay, god forbid, for an enjoyable, well-maintained, ad-free service is anathema to the modern internet user. Apparently emz thinks Tom should just put all this work in out of the altruistic goodness of his heart.

emz wrote:

I joined as many games as I could before my free month ran out..

So what you're saying is you want to play a lot for little.  I don't know how much time you spend on this site, but I'll bet it's more than a few hours every six months.  Try taking a date out to dinner for less than it costs to play on WarGear for six months.  There's very little of value in this world that can be had for free or even cheap.  I am happy to line Tom's pockets for the seemingly 24/7 service he gives to this site.  I hope he becomes rich doing it and addicted to the money he makes so he's forced to keep high standards. 

On the other hane, your argument about some features being unfair is valid.  I agree that some of it walks a fine line.

It would be amazing if he made "a huge chunk of money" based on the numbers we seem to have. I'd love it if it were true!

There is a logic to this business model, but I do side with Alpha in that a larger, more hooked population with steady freeloaders could increase traffic and overall business. I do question the CP chase if standard users are too shackled to participate. That said, there must be strong incentives to pay.

Firstly, the players do not get nothing, we get immediate service when a game has a glitch or there is an issue, and we get an add-free site to play unlimited games on. Second, paying for an online game is the same as paying for any game on any sort of medium, someone has to put in the time to operate it. And I have never played warfish, but from what I understand it is slowly going downhill (maybe it needed more money). I think you would be very hard-pressed to find a single person who has paid, and regrets doing so. $30 for a year is not a lot of money, pack a lunch for 2 or 3 days instead of buying and its paid for.

I think the game limit and differences between standard and premium is good as is, because the proper business model for a site like this is to encourage membership.

On a side note regarding vacation, perhaps there could be a way for players to purchase vacation time? If a standard player does not want to pony up 30, but is going to be gone for a weekend, they could pay $5 for 2 days? Or premium players who are running out could add a few days? (Of course there would be a maximum, but could bring in some extra money)

Or just join or start games with a longer turn-timer. That's why the 7-day was created.

Kjeld wrote:

Or just join or start games with a longer turn-timer. That's why the 7-day was created.

i guess i wouldn't be opposed to letting the standard player have 2 days of vacation as part of their package.

as to membership dues; I'll admit i balked a bit at the raise in cost as i couldn't pony up the $30 at first. However, after 6 months of playing from the beginning and seeing how much Tom put into this place and how much say we as a community had in it's upbringing. I don't have a problem with $30/yr.

membership perks: it's been a while since i've seen info as a standard player, but i don't recall there being much difference between the game info perks between ToS and WG, in fact i liked what was available here more than ToS as a standard on both when i quit giving $$ over there. Granted above and beyond the game info (which is really all you need to play) it is pretty staggering how much Tom has created - the luck stats, the chat...feature, ability to leave yourself notes, amount of vacation time, work mode, and all the other non-advantagious features.

so yes i think i get a helluva lot for <$3/month