I think you do need to be making money from pitwall and it is a pretty good game. In terms of charging for it well i think you may already haev your answer. If there are only 33 players currently supporting it out of 1200+ then the chances of converting people over to pay is fairly slim and im afraid it would change the dynamic of the game too much as currently large numbers is what makes this game great to challenge for higher division. I think you need to value add for the supporter feature. Or make some of the items cost money. E,g a level 5 hg will cost $2 or somethign like that. YOu still need to have the game playable for free or you wont haev the numbers but there is room to make items cost money as long as those who are playing for free can still compete to an extent
I was always a supporter in PW 1.0 and having tried PW 2.0 for 1 season, I'll be a supporter once again. I would certainly pay to play the game.
However, only 1 thing would stop me from playing - if the user based declines. There already are too few Div 3 players. PW 1.0 was more enjoyable due to the larger user base. It was a challenged to get up to Div 2.
I think Robert might have mentioned it but a pay to speed things up like buildings etc may be a great way to raise extra income. Could also do a pay for better more detail searches e.g being able to search more stats faster. Things that dont really stop people playing for free and being able to be competitive if they want to be patient. I would certainly haev paid to haev my lvl 5 hq done a lot faster.
There needs to be an incentive for paying. Just forcing people to pay will drive players away. We are already short of players in div 3, so there should be a possibility to play free of charge. Now what could that incentive be... I have no idea. Perhaps some kind of competitive advantage. Lure them in with free play, but once they make it to the higher divisions, make them realise that they can't quite be competitive enough without the supporter advantages. Just my 2c, not much but maybe worth discussing.
The incentive should be "damn this is good, i want to play this game". The game should sell itself. The same reason you got out and buy a pc, ps4 or xbox game is because you've seen its good from advertisements, reviews and you want a piece yourself.
It can be no different here if executed properly. Improve the game, iron out bugs and bring in cool new features. Advertise the hell out of it, drive people to the site. Draw them in to wanting to pay to continue with there free season (a demo).
If thats the line frank wants to go its the same attitude and execution, just on a much smaller scale and it can be done and in the long run you'll end up with a much better game.
I agree with Tim, as per my first post, that adding features to the current supporter package would be the safest and easiest to implement solution for the immediate future.
This maintains the level of free play needed to grow; and offers an incentive to pay by easing play and adding extras to make it more enjoyable.
The fact only 33 players pay for supporter suggests there are not enough features; or that people are tight.
I'd imagine its more to do with the game state and various bugs deferring commitment to pay for it.
'Pay to win' is a good idea for the impatient; but it should only offer, say, 50% speed increases on long term things like HQs and not in-season development. What that would do is cause a clear split between paying and non paying players and then people would leave as there would be no way to compete.
Unless the intention was to create a paying player top tier that would essentially filter to Division 1 and 2 within a few seasons as the paying players buy their success.
What might be a clause in paying to win would be that all paying players would be subject to 10% of their team being owned by 'Pitwall'; as opposed to other manager shareholders.
This way, there is at least some risk to playing this way.
Pay to win should not be an option. It is the main reason why the general user stays away from games like that. It should not matter how much money someone has in their own personal bank account in deciding how well they can play the game. Most people want to play games like this for free and seeing they have to pay to get the game benefits puts most of them off. After all, freemium games and similar games are the ones that anger people the most. The best ways are to keep with the current scheme or go to a game where everyone has to pay to play.
But, at the end of the day, Frank has already said that it is not an option to pay for game benefits.
