Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] General: State of the Game: Rewarding Loyalty
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
When players support your game in its pimply, awkward, squeeky-voice stage, you reward them appropriately when the cocoon bursts open to reveal a beautiful butterfly. But what you never, ever do is later offer those early founder's rewards in the cash shop for a few extra bucks. It's just not worth it. Betraying loyalty like that is a sure-fire way to lose the respect of those people who would probably still play your game after the tourists have come and gone.
Read more of Shawn Schuster's State of the Game: Rewarding Loyalty.
)
Comments
TRION has made a few mistakes with Loyalty rewards in both Rift and AA. In Rift, it was using Loyalty mount skins. In AA it was the starter packs. Both situations fueled a lot of rage on the forums and reddit, though in AA's case it just added to all the other things players were raging about after a very rough launch.
Rift's mounts were reskinned and players received an apology. In AA, those starter packs are still in the store but the latest wave of rage has moved on to bots and chat spam... (lol)
Great article.. I believe many games are having a hard time with the Patron or loyalty program, there really isn't enough to draw a person to spend the money without really knowing what they are getting into.
Of course Archeage was the exception to the rule because everyone wanted in early and founders packs were awesome, or so we thought. But the bust came when the game opened and there are so many Patron members that were not getting to experience a lot of really enjoyable things in game because things were not controlled properly. I cant count how many time I have read " I want my $150 back". What good is having Patron status to build things and having no land to build it on?
I think the only way to build Loyalty for a game is to just keep the subscription method, if people really like the game they will pay the cost, there are numerous F2P trolls in all of the new games and its really not helping the experience.
How many WOW players come back to subscription everytime an expansion is released, that is loyalty...
Just my opinion
Why is it that companies like Trion are so bad at building loyalty and even making simple business decisions. In AA the land is all gone, how many new players will pay a sub without land? It was a simple fix, limit the amount people could get at the start. They didnt do this and now some people are sitting on 8 properties while others drop their sub fee becuase they cant place a simple 8x8 farm.
With a game like AA and the amount of servers they have, it is not out of the realm of possibilities that 10,000 people might decide not to sub because they can not own land. That amounts to almost 2 million dollars a year in lost revenue. If I was a shareholder, I would be pretty upset.
I remain a loyal customer when I get the product that I was promised. I feel no loyalty towards companies that think I can show my loyalty by paying extra money for stuff that should have been in the game.
The very idea of loyalty token to buy things in the loyalty store sounds ugly to me. Money and loyalty has nothing to do with one another.
Smile
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
DISCLAIMER: I don't know how archeage works, this is merely a comment on the authors statement that maybe it is ok to sell game-altering stuff to founders.
The whole F2P model is going haywire, little by little.
everyone started off hating B2W, but nowadays apparently it's ok to do it as long as you do it only for the founders, or as long as it's "sidegrades", like the new WH40K-mmo that's in the works?
are. you. fucking. kidding. me!?
The whole idea of F2P is that it gets a chance to prove it is fun before you buy into it, not to let you buy increments of fun-ness (B2W).
LoL does it well, with a nice balance between time it takes to earn a champion and lets you pay hard cash for skins or unlock champions for cash, while Runes are strictly earned by playing. If we look at PlanetSide2 though, the sheer amount of time it takes to grind cert points for an AA or anti-tank rocketlauncher for your heavy is just mindnumbing - personally i ended up cashing in, 'cause i wanted that power when i was with my guild, but i've done it that one time, thought on it hard, and you won't see me doing it again - i'll find something else to entertain me rather than get forced to B2W in a model like that.
Imagine then, if only founders had access to the AA rocketlauncher, and rethink the statement that game-altering perks are ok for founders.