Agree that there wouldn't be an issue with such a low fee to play. Things have to fund themselves somehow, and for the enjoyment and effort made by Frank, this seems only right!
But the biggest obstacle I see is how the game grows with the introduction of a pay barrier.
I am not sure what Frank has forecast and how far ahead/off we are in terms of 'active players'. I can only assume we are down on what we thought we would have.
My concern is that we are in Season 5. Things have progressed nicely, there are active leagues and a string of regular players using the game for free, and the odd paid supporter. What rate of new players per week / per month are we getting with things as they are?
I know that any online game I have seen in the past, the second I see that it involves money / tokens / credits etc I will overlook it because part of me has alarm bells to think you wont go anywhere without parting change.
That, to me at least, is an almost instant opinion and I am stubborn to shake that. To the point I would likely not play further.
What the game needs is to widen the advertising and increase the flow of people playing for free before we consider any full time pay per play option. Get it on the Autosport forums; heck, get it on the F1 teams fan forum pages. Everywhere we can.
I will be running the London to Brighton Classic Mini run again this year, and I will be putting a magnetic door number with a big fat pitwall.org logo on it; and maybe also on a sun strip to get the right people in the motorsport scene aware; and spread it around.
I worry changing to the payment option too soon would leave only the regular crowd here; lose the existing ones that just about care enough for it to be free, but not to pay; and then the back turning of potential new players that run away because its pay per play without trying it.
But then it depends what you want. Do you want 250 same old paying dedicated players; or 2500 active players? I played a game called Oil Empires. It's free, but there are features to buy extra credits in game to make playing it easier. You can either get these by either buying them for real money; or you convert things you earn in the game to pay for credits on a rolling black market within the game (its an actual feature).
I don't know if this could be done in Pitwall where players could convert team funds into credits for Pitwall? I did this for a few months, and when I realised how good it made the game, I chose not to use my in game points to convert and actually parted cash and bought some using real money. It might be another option to consider than the simple 'first year no charge' thing as it does let you trial it with your teams money, which has the same subliminal risk element as your real money. It's a good indicator of how likely people would pay to play.
Then again, I guess it slips away from the purpose that money can't come from nowhere, is essentially has to come in externally. But then going from free to pay per play is a big jump for what is quite a small community. I fear it will isolate players and make the game a bit too inbred.
If you want it to 'grow' then it needs to stay free for a few years; or until we have a good 1000 active players.
'Oil empire' sounds suspiciously like 'pay to win' Dan? I would instantly leave Pitwall if the payment model moved that way, no hesitation.
I'm all up for moving to a subscription model for Pitwall as Frank suggested, only concern is that it seems like the game is shedding players already and I wouldn't want to see the player base reduce further. Plenty of old names seem to have vanished over the past season or two...
Look it up, its a military game where you build oil lines and troops on a per turn time cycle basis. Nothing 'pay to win' about it lol, its about making troops, fighting them and stealing resources for your own. A bit like the board game 'Risk' mixed with Age of Empires.
I used it as an example as the black market aspect it a bit like shares in this game, its a side thing where you can use your game money or real money to buy tokens which in turn buy weeks of Oil Empires Supporter - this just has some in game menus that are a bit easier to manage.
It's of no real benefit over another player other than being easier to use. I was just trying to find a reason to encourage supporter, things to add as I feel this would allow people to pay and play as they want, instead of a constant subscription thing.
ie, What if you cant afford even £1 a week to play? Do you lose your entire team if you say, lost your job in real life? That's another negative on pay to play for me.
Supporter lets you play more in depth when you can and want to. On and off.
I'd be more inclined to advertise and push for supporter and add a bunch more features to it to increase the appeal of what is already a very good game.
I think, as it presently stands, that pay to play would likely drive players away. I know of 4 right off the top of my hat who used to play this game, and play it well, but now are no longer to be seen.
I know that initially if pitwall was pay to play, I'd have never even started playing it, also the free season isn't really enough time, afterall, it takes a good 2 seasons i think to get your feet in this game and work out what you are doing. People aren't going to pay to keep playing when their team is falling apart.
Pitwall is a great game, but especially initially it is a very complex game too. It's easy to overspend, and break your team (just look at the current contract problems, because people are still paying 2.5mil per week for drivers, or more). Part of that complexity now is why those 4 people I know no longer play. Not everyone has the time to invest in the game for many hours a day, and with the current design and manufacture pipeline, it does require a lot of time.
I would be happy to pay yes. It would need a big input from you though Frank, there is a huge amount of improvements that could be implemented and i think if you are going to retain new players a very through help section with newbie guide should be first on your to do list.
Im quite surprised you dont have more supporters at present, its not as if running this site is completely free and the ads probably dont cover much
Its tricky because there is the need for more revenue to be generated for frank to be able to spend more time on the game to improve it. I can see where frank is coming from.
We can get more players from a bit of advertising and a decent help/tutorial to engage them
The more players coming in and stick around the more likely some more will pay for something
Personally, I don't have an issue paying for the game as I'm already a supporter. However, I only became a supporter because I was able to play the game fully for a while and see how good it was in PW1 to agree to pay for the supporter.
I, like several others, would have refused to play the game if I saw it was subscription based from the start as there are plenty of other games that you can play for free. There has to be a reason for paying a subscription to a game and that only comes from being able to play it to see whether you enjoy playing it. I'm not sure whether one season is enough to do this but everybody is different. Forcing people to pay will always stop the majority from playing though. As in the opening post, I would be strongly against a freemium model as you should not have to pay to get better rewards in a game.
There is one other web based game I play regularly and that is a game called FootballIdentity. Here, they give you one free slot for life so you can have a character without paying and you can choose whether that is a footballer, a manager, or a journalist. You can also delete that character and create a new one if you so wish without having to pay. If you want to hav 2 or more characters at once, you have to pay for the slot on a subscription basis (x credits for x months). You can also get supporter which gives you a few benefits like being able to control 1 bot per turn if you are a manager but nothing that makes you play the game any better. The bit I like about the game is that you could earn credits by completing tasks on advertising sites. Every credit earned on them went to the users account and the site owner gets money from it. That way, the user doesn't need to pay for the game, but can get the extra slots and supporter, whilst the owner is still getting paid. Just as an example, watching a short video (30 seconds to a 1 minute usually) earns the user 1 credit. Completing a survey can earn anything between 40 to 150 credits. There are lots of different things that you can do to earn the credits. I don't know how much revenue each credit earns the site owner though. There are several advertising sites that do it such as Matomy, TrialPay, SponsorPay. I think some allow direct payments to the game for credits as well. The only issue with the game though is that the creators have done very little in the last year or two and it has driven people away as there are too many bugs.
I told myself that I would never pay to play any game , but that said I like this game so I might , but how about div 3 free div 2 you pay a little and div 1 pay more , and maybe get more in game money in the higher divs?
