Premium Membership  $10 for 3 months $30 for 12 months

UNLIMITED Active games - limited to 10 for Standard accounts

Private Messaging - send private messages to other players in the game to discuss tactics / alliances

Game Stats - access instantly updated information on the state of the board during games

Board Designer - Unlimited designs and publish your own board designs on WarGear

Vacation Period (4 weeks)- safeguards you from being booted while you are on vacation

Set Enemies - block non-Premium members from joining the same game as you or sending you unwanted messages

Work mode - switches the WarGear site design to a more 'discrete' view for work viewing

Player Membership - $6 for 3 months / $20 for 12 months

Active games - Limited to 50 public games, Unlimited private games, unlimited beta games

Private Messaging - send private messages to other players in the game to discuss tactics / alliances

Game Stats - access instantly updated information on the state of the board during games

Vacation Period (2 weeks)- safeguards you from being booted while you are on vacation

Designer Membership - $6 for 3 months / $20 for 12 months

Board Designer - Unlimited designs and publish your own board designs on WarGear

Active games - limited to 15 public games, unlimited private games, unlimited public beta games

Vacation Period (2 weeks)- safeguards you from being booted while you are on vacation

Standard membership - Free

 Active games - limited to 10 public games, 15 private games, 10 public beta games

Board Designer - limited to 5 boards, limited to private games on those designs

Eh, simpler = better, stick with the current?
Not a bad idea IMO, and it does make some sense, but not really sure it's worth it and then you would probably have to have a way to upgrade from Designer to Full, then how is that "calculated".

you don't need to calculate anything.

eg. if you are 2 months in on your player membership and you upgrade to a Premium then when your premium is up you will still have 1 month of the player membership left.

Sounds & looks pretty good except for the # of public games for the Player & Designer memberships. Maybe I just don't understand how game boards are approved for public games, but why only allow 15 public games for Designer while 50 are allowed for Player for the same price?

prolly cus the intent for one is different for the other. if you're more interested in playing, you pay for the player, vice versa for the designer. if the designer one also had the bigger playing limit, then what's the point of player?

Tournaments

Premium Membership - Unlimited starting and playing

Player Membership - 15 open, unlimited playing

Designer Membership - 5 open (unlimited on your board designs) 15 playing

Standard Membership - 0 open (standers are unable to create tournaments) 5 playing (can join up to 5)

Selling / buying boards

Here is what I'm thinking:

 1 price for any board. for example $3.00, $2.00 goes to WarGear and $1.00  go to the designer.

reasons to buy a board: once you have bought a board it grants you to unlimited tournaments and unlimited normal games (public & private) on that board. a purchased board will not be counted in the limitations of your membership

As far as I'm concerned the numbers are not set in stone but the basic principal would work extremely well. you have options rather than the "all or nothing" approach

Eh, dunno about that, especially the Selling/Buying.
*Quick Reply*, may expand later.

[In regard to Board Sales]

I like the idea of being able to limit the number of total games a player is allowed to create on a specific board.  Of course, the designer would be able to set the number of games available as well as the price.  It would go something like this:

• Anyone can start ___ (number of) games on this board.
• Pay $___ (amount) and the purchaser will be able to start ___ (number of) games within (add a time limit if you'd like) ___ (number of) days.
• Pay $___ and receive unlimited access to this board for ___ days.

All proceeds get split 50/50 with Wargear.

So, if I were filling this in for my Wargear Warfare board, it would end up being something like:

• Anyone can start 3 games on this board.
• Pay $0.50 and the purchaser will be able to start 10 games within 365 days.
• Pay $1.50 and receive unlimited access to this board for infinity days.

This method accounts for the ability of everyone to "try before you buy."  It also makes a distinction between the player who just wants to play a few more games, but is pretty sure that his interest in the board will most likely fade and doesn't want to put a larger investment in it.

Also, I like the idea of Premium Memberships being "a la carte" and people can pick and choose what options work best for them.  Of course though, I am American, and we love things bigger and full of more options than is usually necessary.

again HIGHLY sensitive to buying boards to play. if i had to buy boards to play, i prolly wouldn't be playing unless invited, ala the fish. $10/3mo is almost too much for me, tho i cave because the fish is drowning and i wanted to reward tom for his efforts.

MAYBE ok for starting tourneys or something but i can't get behind it. i'm all for rewarding the board creator's efforts, but not on a forced basis like that. i'd rather we thought of another way around it, as we have been pretty good at coming up with out of the box solutions. something like for every 50/100/xxx number of times your board is played you get a month membership or something, since that's essentially what i've gotten from all ya'll's post (did i just fit two apostrophes in one word?!!) is what you'd use the bought board's money for...if you're thinkin of makin a living from this, go find a real job. create boards for blizzard or hasbro or something. this is a hobby IMO



(yes the last sentence or two were to ruffle feathers)

weathertop wrote: ...this is a hobby IMO

I'm not sure what kind of hobbies you have other than interweb games, but mine are all pretty expensive.  Between my DVD collecting, computer building, paintballing, Warhammering, filmmaking and T-shirt designing; I've easily spent over $15,000 on my hobbies over the last 5 or 6 years (mostly before I got married, of course).

In my experience, there's usually a pretty direct correlation between cost, and level of fun.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of paying for anything that I could get for free.  I would, however, like to ensure that Wargear is self-supporting enough to not only pay for its own hosting and developing costs, but to also to provide enough incentive to grow that it doesn't go the way of slow death like the 'Fish has.

I'm not sure what kind of hobbies you have other than interweb games, but mine are all pretty expensive. Between my buying hookers, tango lessons, beef jerky home brewing, buying hookers, needlepoint and building a miniature model of the Large Hadron Collider; I've easily spent over $15,000,000 on my hobbies over the last 5 or 6 years (mostly after I got out of prison, of course).



In my experience, there's usually a pretty direct inverse correlation between cost, and levels of STD infection.



Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of paying for anything that I could steal. I would, however, like to ensure that WarGear is self-supporting enough to not only pay for its own hosting and developing costs, but to also provide enough incentive for tom to purchase hookers so that it doesn't go the way of excrutiatingly slow and painful death like the 'Fish has.

I would though like to point out that each current board already has price:"0" contained within it's XML format, so I'm guessing the ultimate plan leans towards charging for boards in some capacity.

I can't imagine that tom would institute a *requirement* for mapmakers to charge for their maps, so even if the ability to charge is instituted I'm sure there will be a large variety of maps still available for free use.

I'm not really a fan of having lots of different membership types, I think simpler is probably better in this case.

As regards board payments it's always been on the cards but has just really been a case of waiting until the site is large enough to make it worthwhile.

I certainly wouldn't make it mandatory to pay for a board, it would be totally up to the designer to set this option. I did always want to have the option to 'try before you buy' a board, that was always a turn off for me for buying boards on TOS, not knowing if it would be any good before buying it.

Having a fixed price for a board is potentially a good idea, what do the designers think of this?

tom wrote:
Having a fixed price for a board is potentially a good idea, what do the designers think of this?

I'm not sure it's a good idea, for either the board designer or the buyer.

Some maps have more potential for mods/rule swapping/players/etc., and should probably be available to be priced as such.  Some maps just take more investment by the board designer and should probably have the ability to be reflected by that by their price.

I don't know if this has been decided, but what is the reason to buy a map? I kinda like the idea of purchasing a map allowing that person to start more games on that map but I don't really know how that would work. I never purchased a map on TOS because I made my own and could start games and play on other maps I liked. I have always thought that you should only be able to start a tournament on a map that you have purchased but then that may just get the same maps being played in tournaments or *gasp* force the map makers to make tournaments on their own maps or being asked to start tournaments. Giving a copy of the map for a tournament win could be a nice thing and I'm totally for that and think it should be a thing.
1st thing is to create an incentive and hence give purchasers extra features with a map. The second thing is to come up with a pricing structure and I like having them all the same price. I don't want this to become anywhere like games on Facebook where they are free to play but if you want to continue playing or do well at it you have to either pay or download a bunch of crap. That annoys me. This is different than those but I just don't want it to come where people play for 30 days when it's free and than 72.68% of them stop because it isn't something they want to pay for and you can't really enjoy it any further without paying.
Beh, my opinion on this shouldn't really count I guess because I'll charge the base for my maps and be shocked beyond all belief if anyone buys one of them. I encourage everyone to shock me but unless the incentive is big, I don't see the rest of this really mattering. People will buy maps if they like it, wanna encourage the map maker or just invest more into the site.

P.S. I think paying something for use of this site is important to keep it going and giving tom an incentive to keep it going strong and improving it. Sure, money isn't the sole reason he does this, but it's a nice little "ada boy" for him.
P.P.S. 72.68% is an actual number based off of years of study, tracking site traffic and using an equation developed by Sir John Gielgud before his passing.

Why not increase the cost of a Premium membership slightly so that some of the money can go toward board designers? I think with a pay-for-board system, a large number of Premium members will rely on a small population of people to buy boards. Did a similar thing happen on the old site? Right now, I tend to join games rather than create them, and I think having to pay to create them would further encourage my tendency to join games.

I know that determining how to distribute money from subscriptions among board designers would be an issue that needs to be resolved, but an arrangement where the money they get increases with the amount their boards have been played could work.

(Short version: I'd rather subscribe to Netflix than buy every DVD I want to watch.)

Utimately the idea here is how do we get players to stay with WarGear, see some value and then decide to invest in that perceived value. Perhaps some sort of immeadiate recognition followed by laddered goals.

I know this might be totally outside the box. But everything in gaming has become achievement based (Valve, Steam, Etc.). A free way to encourage continued participation might be to have achievements.
-join a WarGear game
-Win a game
-win 10 games
-win 50 games
-win 10 games on the same board
-design and release a board
-have 25 games played on your board
-review 5 boards
-win a tournament

My point here is that some achievments would be easy for all players and some would require a greater commitment and thus a premium membership. I don't think the price is bad right now, we just need to incourage commitment so that people are willing to pay for it.

Just an idea and perhaps it deserves its own thread.

I think the achievement idea is a very good one.

Look to something like Kongregate as a spectacular example of ways to foster community involvement and investment around something that really has nothing to do with community (and here I'm referring to being able to earn points by doing routine/mundane activities as well as in-game achievements, where points contribute to your "level" over time - "level" being ultimately completely meaningless except insofar as people just like to be given points for doing shit).

I also never really understood the motivation to buy boards, either back in the Old World or here (theoretically). That despite the fact that somebody would buy my Indonesia for $2 every month or two for no discernible reason.

I think simple member retention is the problem that should be getting all the attention right now. It is a problem, I'm guessing a pretty big one. It's hard to tell from the outside but I'm sure Tom has some numbers and my supposition is that they're scary. I think the shock of going from your free month to Standard is too much for most/many people. I have many ideas on possible ways to combat this:
(o) don't give out the free month until the player has met some minimal level of attachment to the website, like having played x number of turns in at least y number of different games (something small like 4,2 maybe), or maybe until they have hit their initial cap of 10 games participated in. This way you get a look at Standard before it's forced on you, and the concept that Premium is something worthwhile is put in place before it's taken away.
(o) expand Standard a bit. Going from unlimited to 10 games is a BIG step down.
(o) increase explanation of what's going to happen. We've already seen a handful of "where'd my info box go" forum posts; people just don't get what's going on, but this should be explained BEFOREHAND as well as maybe something like an email or inbox message a week before a player is scheduled to run out of Freemium (this term (C)Mongrel 2010).
(o) introductory renewal rates. Let a brand new player just dropped to Standard renew for one month at half price to start off, both as an extended trial period as well as a gradual step towards eventual full membership.

+1 for Raptor. It'd be the WarGear MMORPG aspect of the site. You play enough games you get the +45 Flail of Not-Too-Devious Lederhosen.

+1 for asm. (against my natural instincts) At first glance the idea that everyone who signs up gets Premium free to try sounds great, but that might be backwards. If you start 'em on standard then they won't quit after 1 month because something stopped working, they just won't know what they are missing.

Well, they'll know because we'll tell them in pretty fonts surrounded by rainbows and lollipops all the super great features they are missing, but they won't 'know' them. Like, in the cardinal sense. Like asm does.

Carry on.

asm wrote:
(o) expand Standard a bit. Going from unlimited to 10 games is a BIG step down.

I totally disagree on this one.  You have to keep in mind that many of the big-time players such as yourself run upwards of 30+ games at once, but newer players wouldn't have nearly as many.  I'm currently running an average of 12 or so here, and still have 6 or 7 on the 'Fish which keeps me at my comfort zone of 18-20 games.

I think 10 games is just the perfect amount to get your fix and whet the appetite for more.  If there were a 15 game max, I think 90% of the players would be perfectly content to keep it that way.