Potential GMR change, feedback requested!

[m4stermel]

I'm kind of that you haven't gotten more support than that. I'm for anything that helps you justify spending more time on making GMR better. In addition to $$ support I also want to offer a thank you to Mel and Taz for their hard work.

Also I would like to suggest to the GMR community that it would be nice if you donated a few $$ to GMR when requesting support. Mel is always on top of everything that he is asked to do and I'm sure that he must have a full time job probably a family. $180 is barely enough to take a family out to dinner and a movie. Mel deserves more.

Thanks Michael! The appreciation and support that you and many other members of the community have given us has been incredible, it feels really good to serve such an amazing group of gamers

We've been very grateful for the monetary support we've gotten so far! We didn't set out to make any money on GMR, it was done from a desire to play CiV and give back to the community. So the fact that as many of you have expressed value in GMR by donating is amazing and very humbling!

With that, every little bit does help! It took a considerable initial investment on our part to get the software and technology we need to make this system public, and that's in addition to several hundred hours between us in developing and supporting it. Thanks to a very generous GMR member who owns the hosting company we're currently at (http://www.pazdigital.com), our technology costs are very low. The largest cost for us right now is time, which we're happy to give to GMR and this community! Like everyone else though we don't have as much of that resource as we'd like, both of us have full-time employment, I have a family of 7 and Brian is single but attending BYU full-time. In spite of it all we still manage to squeeze out several hours a week to work on GMR and make it better, and we plan on continuing indefinitely into the future (or until no one needs GMR anymore)

 

[m4stermel]

I agree with michaeltrnka -- I'm astonished the number of premium users is so low. I have no problem with higher price/lower threshold -- pound for pound the GMR service has proven to be far better value than even the game itself in my view ... what you guys have built is awesome, and definitely worth more than the initial price.

Wow, thanks Banman! I'm not sure that I would say GMR is worth as much as CiV but it definitely adds a lot of value. Thanks for your support and feedback, it is much appreciated!

 

[m4stermel]

Do you assign premium status with a one-time donation or is that a monthly fee? If I were in charge, I'd try to implement Regul's suggestion of a tiered status. I'd probably knock the lowest tier down to just a couple of dollars and implement it at two or three games simultaneously.

I just started using the GMR myself and from what I have seen so far, I have been impressed. Not only is it so much easier to do the PBEM-type game, but the response for any technical questions or issues is very prompt.

A one-time donation is all that's required, $15 and you've got Premium status for life. And wow, thanks for your support Turjo! You're up there in the "Islandia" league

 

[m4stermel]

What about charging to use different parts of the game? E.G. you can play as Russia, USA and Japan for free. Pay $1 to unlock additional civs, pay $5 to unlock all civs, pay $1 to unlock DLC, pay $5 to unlock G&K, pay $5 to unlock mod support or pay $15 for full access. The UI for this may be more trouble than it is worth. I have no idea what goes into creating something like this. I am just making suggestions.

Those are some very creative ideas! As you and Banman pointed out though they would be particularly challenging to implement cleanly. But we don't really have a desire to cost-enable any other parts of the website or service. We feel that game-limits is a fair place to implement paid-growth as it directly effects our database/storage.

Perhaps if we ever come out with some totally awesome feature completely unique to GMR we might charge for it, but I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future

 

[m4stermel]

To me this sounds like what you do with full games and not mods. We are supporting, not paying to play a game we already payed for.
Everyone should be allowed to participate and have fun but show those that support you a little appriciation. Like it has been all along.
I support the lowering of limits. It might bring in a few extra bucks to make it break even, because that is the ultimate goal, am I right?

You are exactly right! We don't want to limit in any way how you can play a game that you've already bought and paid for, that just doesn't seem right. Our primary goal has always been to enhance and expand on that game and the multiplayer experience it provides. We value people wanting to support us in that, which is why we implemented the game limit, and now we want to make it easier for people to do that by lowering the limits.

We've actually had a couple people donate only $5 or $10, obviously not enough to unlock Premium under our current system, but I assume that's not what they were donating for. We want a better way to reward those people, without lessening the donations we've received from our more generous supporters

 

[m4stermel]

Whew! So much feedback, you guys are great, and keep it coming!

Right now I'm definitely liking the idea of a tiered support system as originally suggested by Regul. If we don't go with that however I think we'll at least lower the amount required to get unlimited games. I'm excited to hear that many of you are in support of it!

 

[michaeltrnka]

The largest cost for us right now is time, which we're happy to give to GMR and this community! Like everyone else though we don't have as much of that resource as we'd like, both of us have full-time employment, I have a family of 7 and Brian is single but attending BYU full-time. In spite of it all we still manage to squeeze out several hours a week to work on GMR and make it better, and we plan on continuing indefinitely into the future (or until no one needs GMR anymore)

Holy Mormon, Mel! That's a lot of kids.

 

[Foffaren]

Holy Mormon, Mel! That's a lot of kids.

You know, he could be. Just sayin.

 

[m4stermel]

Holy Mormon, Mel! That's a lot of kids.

I guess that number does include myself, but I love every one of them!

 

[m4stermel]

Thank you all again for your feedback! We've implemented what we feel is the best solution given all of our goals and the feedback we've received. So from here on out there will be a tiered game-limit and corresponding donation amount to unlock the next tier. You can read about it over on our Support Us page, but effectively the tiers are:

[TABLE="head;width=280px"]Amount|Game Limit
FREE|2 games
$5|5 games
$10|10 games
$15|Unlimited[/TABLE]

And a really big to everyone that has supported us thus far! Since the OP in this thread we've had another 4 people donate enough to unlock Unlimited games! You guys rock!

 

[Regul]

[TABLE="head;width=280px"]Amount|Game Limit
FREE|2 games
$5|5 games
$10|10 games
$15|Unlimited[/TABLE]

Nice, that seems quite fitting to me anyhow i guess the 10 games limit won't be taken too much. So you sized the free 5 games down to free 2...a hard cut from my view, but you are the boss. Probably this way you cut off the player pool for all those numbers of 'planned' games...

I would better vote to have the paying limits on CREATING games, while one could join any GMR game for free. This way you get more players interested, while those who want to host a game have to pay for. In exchange the paying members offer the games as they like them. But it's just a idea...

BTW, how about allready existing games that exceed the limit?

 

[EEE_BOY]

Creators can quit and leave the next one as host, so the above logic won't work.

 

[Atlas627]

I was just about to suggest against the tiered system. For 2 reasons.

1.) People don't like to make payments, no matter how much. The act of paying is what holds people back a lot of the time, not the cost-efficiency of the purchase. The hassle, making multiple decisions, is the annoying part. So I would much rather pay $15 for something than pay $2 seven times. The convenience of one payment is worth the extra dollar.

Now if I can straight up buy the unlimited for $15, that avoids this problem. But it does lead to the second issue.

2.) Which one do I buy? I of course know that I need more games, but how many more? I certainly don't want to waste money now that I have the option to. Now I have an annoying decision to make that could have real consequences (as opposed to in a game, where its all for fun).

Personally, I don't think there is anything to decide. I will support the full amount. But I think these issues might make a difference for some people and could mean less support and less happy 'customers'. I thought what you posted in the OP was a fine idea.

Thank you so much for your hard work!

 

[m4stermel]

Nice, that seems quite fitting to me anyhow i guess the 10 games limit won't be taken too much. So you sized the free 5 games down to free 2...a hard cut from my view, but you are the boss. Probably this way you cut off the player pool for all those numbers of 'planned' games...

Yeah once we decided to go with a tiered system it made more sense to have the default limit be 2 as the vast majority of players (87%) are in 2 or less games. But perhaps that isn't generous enough, we're definitely still considering it...

BTW, how about allready existing games that exceed the limit?

Existing games aren't affected at all by any changes we make to game-limits, only whether you can join/create new games

 

[m4stermel]

Creators can quit and leave the next one as host, so the above logic won't work.

That's correct

 

[m4stermel]

I was just about to suggest against the tiered system. For 2 reasons.

1.) People don't like to make payments, no matter how much. The act of paying is what holds people back a lot of the time, not the cost-efficiency of the purchase. The hassle, making multiple decisions, is the annoying part. So I would much rather pay $15 for something than pay $2 seven times. The convenience of one payment is worth the extra dollar.

Now if I can straight up buy the unlimited for $15, that avoids this problem. But it does lead to the second issue.

2.) Which one do I buy? I of course know that I need more games, but how many more? I certainly don't want to waste money now that I have the option to. Now I have an annoying decision to make that could have real consequences (as opposed to in a game, where its all for fun).

Personally, I don't think there is anything to decide. I will support the full amount. But I think these issues might make a difference for some people and could mean less support and less happy 'customers'. I thought what you posted in the OP was a fine idea.

Thank you so much for your hard work!

Thanks for the feedback GamerKG! If I understand what you're saying, you feel that "less is more" so to speak. By giving players more options when it comes to supporting us and increasing their game limit it actually might make the decision more difficult, resulting in a poorer experience which many players might just avoid all together.

That is a really good point, and one that we hadn't considered. Perhaps one of the larger benefits we had in the old model was its simplicity. We'll discuss it some more and see what makes the most sense to us. We're certainly not opposed to changing it yet again

 

[Atlas627]

Thanks for the feedback GamerKG! If I understand what you're saying, you feel that "less is more" so to speak. By giving players more options when it comes to supporting us and increasing their game limit it actually might make the decision more difficult, resulting in a poorer experience which many players might just avoid all together.

That is a really good point, and one that we hadn't considered. Perhaps one of the larger benefits we had in the old model was its simplicity. We'll discuss it some more and see what makes the most sense to us. We're certainly not opposed to changing it yet again

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Too many options makes some people (not me necessarily, but I can see it happening) paralyzed. Its simply easier to pick nothing. Status quo.

If I wanted unlimited games or wanted to support you, I don't think the difference in money would matter that much. It would be an all or nothing decision, even with the options. But I'm sure many people would care about how to save as much money as possible, and they may decide that no decision is worth the worry. Better to make it simple and then people will be able to enjoy your awesome work in whatever way they feel is worth it, whether that be as a free app or as a software purchase.

 

[Nouco]

Is there another way to pay then threw pay pall?
I would want to pay, as i use GMR quite a lot. But don't want to use pay pall.

 

[m4stermel]

Hey Nouco, right now we're only setup to take payments through the website with PayPal. But we may be able to setup another option for you, what would work best?

 

[Nouco]

Ideal?