A change in direction...
- Thread starter Baker93
- Start date
OldAcctSnapFlash
Member
Although this is a good idea, I see a few problems with it.
Blocktopia Premium:
Costs $90 a month
This isn't that expensive, but also not that cheap. Considering the nature of players on Blocktopia, being that only a fraction of the community is on regularly enough for this to be worth paying for continuous time, I would advise that having more options below that price for fewer features net more profit.
Alternatively, instead of charging per continuous time, maybe perks could be awarded for a set amount of time logged in. An example would be to charge $10 per 1 hour of perks on the server, purchasable at intervals of five minutes. This would be equivalent to somebody purchasing $90 for a month playing for 9 hours during that month. Since mostly only players who forsee playing every day for at least an hour would pay $90 per month premium, this option would be more profitable in terms of both per-hour and per-continuous-time, while simultaniously giving the customer more choice in the matter.
Exclusive subforum
I think that the community is too small to warrent an exclusive premium-only subforum. At best, there would only be a few posts onto there, as people who post on the forums would want as many people to see it as possible because of the nature of the forums here. Technologically, though, it would be a simple feature to add, and, if just left at that, is still a viable way to increase perk sales.
Exclusive forum title
Such a forum title would only draw attention to people who bought perks, which means that they would get singled out and praised for supporting the server. As long as it does not interfere with normal forum usage, I support this perk.
Exclusive premium-only messages
This is taking premium-only a bit too far. Specifically, as with the exclusive subforum, there is no reason for users to post a premium-locked message aside from annoying the other users. Rather than seeing premiums as regular users, this would likely promote a split between each sides, and users would be discouraged from buying premium if they were seen socially as "people who have to buy a rank", which is an opinion we absolutely do not want the public to have.
In-game perks
These are just ridiculous. I can only speak for RoF and Buildbox, for I only partake in those servers. Nevertheless, they are still ridiculously overpowered.
Creative mode in RoF could easily be used to spawn items for other players, or just by building a house and having someone else mine it for profit. A clever system involving locking premium-placed blocks to premiums only may be devised, although such a system would have many drawbacks such as premium players unable to help new players with houses, inadvertantly placing such blocks in others' houses, and also are vulnerable to the typical piston-pushing and anvil-drop-breaking exploits, as well as tnt and creeper and ghast_fireball explosives dropping it. This would cause way too many problems for what it is worth.
Also, there must be an un-removable distinction between spawned items and legit items, or else people losing premium would be forced to forfeit all their items (including in ender chests). This may see at first to be a benefit making people buy more premium, however, current premium members would dissuade players from buying it.
Command blocks in Buildbox would cause way more problems. All command block commands are run via the context of vanilla server operator mode, which means that, by default, they have access to all permissions. This includes stopping the server, making anyone else a vanilla-op, changing anyones permissions, and generally ruining peoples' day. Although this could be circumvented by use of clever global disallowing (or a seperate permissions profile for command blocks), there would still be too many loopholes able to be formed by allowing this.
Access to PTNT beta
Since people buying premium are going to be people who frequent the server at least an hour a day (see calculations above), giving them access to beta test PTNT would be a win-win situation. The only drawbacks I can see is the possibility of information leakage regarding PTNT to the public, and the possibility of a glitch in PTNT that affects other servers. If these could be fixed (or meliorated, maybe PTNT documentation could be available to the public?), then access to the beta test would be a good way to encourage premium purchasing.
Blocktopia Premium+:
All the features of Blocktopia Premium
This makes sense.
Sparkly tag
This also makes sense.
Non-negotiable unbans from any of our Minecraft servers (max of 5 per period)
This does not make sense. Having 5 free get-out-of-jail cards would mean that people buying Premium+ would definately want to use some of them, because otherwise they would feel that they weren't getting their full money's worth (a popular conceptual bias in human rationality). Hence, the general public would see people with a Premium+ badge grossly misbehaving and breaking the rules, 4 times per 3 months. This is just absurd, and will cause a schism between Premium+ buyers and the rest of the general public, which would make people less likely to buy it because then their public image would be lumped together with the rest of Premium+'s.
Perma-banning 3 non-staff members
Even staff members do not have such a dictator-esque rule over players. Not to mention the logical fallacy of both being able to remove anyone forever and being able to unquestionably be unbanned (if a Premium+ bans another Premium+, what happens?). This would definately make them seem like jerks, just because they would probably not seek to remove regular users or people deserving to be banned because they could easily otherwise be banned through conventional methods, thus saving the Premium+ a ban. So, they would only ban high-profile people. Remember that we want Premium and Premium+ not to be see as royalty, but as players who support the server, and this feature would consequentially cause less players to buy it, or cause everyone not Premium+ to leave, which would mean that they would leave too.
Conclusion
As I only check back every once in a while, I do not know of the current economical state of Blocktopia. However, we should not sacrifice our playerbase for cash, because it would not be worth it in the long run. Aside from server perks and all of Premium+, this seems like a very good... Aww shucks. I just realized this was posted on April Fools.
Blocktopia Premium:
Costs $90 a month
This isn't that expensive, but also not that cheap. Considering the nature of players on Blocktopia, being that only a fraction of the community is on regularly enough for this to be worth paying for continuous time, I would advise that having more options below that price for fewer features net more profit.
Alternatively, instead of charging per continuous time, maybe perks could be awarded for a set amount of time logged in. An example would be to charge $10 per 1 hour of perks on the server, purchasable at intervals of five minutes. This would be equivalent to somebody purchasing $90 for a month playing for 9 hours during that month. Since mostly only players who forsee playing every day for at least an hour would pay $90 per month premium, this option would be more profitable in terms of both per-hour and per-continuous-time, while simultaniously giving the customer more choice in the matter.
Exclusive subforum
I think that the community is too small to warrent an exclusive premium-only subforum. At best, there would only be a few posts onto there, as people who post on the forums would want as many people to see it as possible because of the nature of the forums here. Technologically, though, it would be a simple feature to add, and, if just left at that, is still a viable way to increase perk sales.
Exclusive forum title
Such a forum title would only draw attention to people who bought perks, which means that they would get singled out and praised for supporting the server. As long as it does not interfere with normal forum usage, I support this perk.
Exclusive premium-only messages
This is taking premium-only a bit too far. Specifically, as with the exclusive subforum, there is no reason for users to post a premium-locked message aside from annoying the other users. Rather than seeing premiums as regular users, this would likely promote a split between each sides, and users would be discouraged from buying premium if they were seen socially as "people who have to buy a rank", which is an opinion we absolutely do not want the public to have.
In-game perks
These are just ridiculous. I can only speak for RoF and Buildbox, for I only partake in those servers. Nevertheless, they are still ridiculously overpowered.
Creative mode in RoF could easily be used to spawn items for other players, or just by building a house and having someone else mine it for profit. A clever system involving locking premium-placed blocks to premiums only may be devised, although such a system would have many drawbacks such as premium players unable to help new players with houses, inadvertantly placing such blocks in others' houses, and also are vulnerable to the typical piston-pushing and anvil-drop-breaking exploits, as well as tnt and creeper and ghast_fireball explosives dropping it. This would cause way too many problems for what it is worth.
Also, there must be an un-removable distinction between spawned items and legit items, or else people losing premium would be forced to forfeit all their items (including in ender chests). This may see at first to be a benefit making people buy more premium, however, current premium members would dissuade players from buying it.
Command blocks in Buildbox would cause way more problems. All command block commands are run via the context of vanilla server operator mode, which means that, by default, they have access to all permissions. This includes stopping the server, making anyone else a vanilla-op, changing anyones permissions, and generally ruining peoples' day. Although this could be circumvented by use of clever global disallowing (or a seperate permissions profile for command blocks), there would still be too many loopholes able to be formed by allowing this.
Access to PTNT beta
Since people buying premium are going to be people who frequent the server at least an hour a day (see calculations above), giving them access to beta test PTNT would be a win-win situation. The only drawbacks I can see is the possibility of information leakage regarding PTNT to the public, and the possibility of a glitch in PTNT that affects other servers. If these could be fixed (or meliorated, maybe PTNT documentation could be available to the public?), then access to the beta test would be a good way to encourage premium purchasing.
Blocktopia Premium+:
All the features of Blocktopia Premium
This makes sense.
Sparkly tag
This also makes sense.
Non-negotiable unbans from any of our Minecraft servers (max of 5 per period)
This does not make sense. Having 5 free get-out-of-jail cards would mean that people buying Premium+ would definately want to use some of them, because otherwise they would feel that they weren't getting their full money's worth (a popular conceptual bias in human rationality). Hence, the general public would see people with a Premium+ badge grossly misbehaving and breaking the rules, 4 times per 3 months. This is just absurd, and will cause a schism between Premium+ buyers and the rest of the general public, which would make people less likely to buy it because then their public image would be lumped together with the rest of Premium+'s.
Perma-banning 3 non-staff members
Even staff members do not have such a dictator-esque rule over players. Not to mention the logical fallacy of both being able to remove anyone forever and being able to unquestionably be unbanned (if a Premium+ bans another Premium+, what happens?). This would definately make them seem like jerks, just because they would probably not seek to remove regular users or people deserving to be banned because they could easily otherwise be banned through conventional methods, thus saving the Premium+ a ban. So, they would only ban high-profile people. Remember that we want Premium and Premium+ not to be see as royalty, but as players who support the server, and this feature would consequentially cause less players to buy it, or cause everyone not Premium+ to leave, which would mean that they would leave too.
Conclusion
As I only check back every once in a while, I do not know of the current economical state of Blocktopia. However, we should not sacrifice our playerbase for cash, because it would not be worth it in the long run. Aside from server perks and all of Premium+, this seems like a very good... Aww shucks. I just realized this was posted on April Fools.
Well but for the effort that went into the post, I'd say kuilin gets one month free BT Premium (once we open beta access to it)
