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Im going to look into it but if anyone has any suggestions or anything to say to the idea around,  "per average" how many dollars$ per person playing will we need to accumulate to stay in the green?  Not saying every person will or needs to pay to play but the more people playing the more cost rise so what are we looking at here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXA559KNopI  I will reference this video in this post.

This video brings up some really good points that i think we should think about.  It starts off by talking about the community perspective on micro transactions.  Allot of people dont really like it but its not necessarily a bad thing if done right.   And keep in mind we may actually do a great job on paper but the community perspective could seriously have an impact on the amount of money they are willing to spend.

And interesting point got brought up though.  Someone mentioned "How many non paying customers do you expect me to buy bandwidth for?"  The answer?  As many as you can.   Its import to see the amount of people playing our game almost as valuable if not more than actual dollar signs.

Ive read this before elsewhere but the idea is that the more people you have playing your game will inherently increase the amount of money that game makes.  community is a powerful thing in this day in ages and they can get more done than we ever could.  For things such as word or mouth and simply being the game everyone's playing i think we all understand how that works. 

An interesting topic that got brought up i wanted to talk about with all of you was the idea that we should let players earn every type of currency.  Even the paid ones. the video goes on and gives four good reasons

           Players will think its fair.   Absolutely i agree with this.  Its interesting to think the amount of time and people who would give whatever they need to in order to get that sweet juicy gold or platinum.  We wont ward off as many players who in turn will bring more people to the game as well.

            The shop doesn't really get touched until someone uses it for the first time.  Look we can either shove the shop in their face or not.  But either way the player is going to do everything they can to experience the "fun" content before they even give thought to the goodies in the shop.  And some might not even look at it all if we dont give them a reason to,  By giving currency away we encourage them to not only look at the shop which i hope wont be shoved in their face but also purchase something as well with currency they may or may not have spent money on.

           If it takes time people will pay.   If we lock the good currency behind super hard and annoying and time consuming task them some people especially those with good jobs and no time would rather pay to have that content right now rather than later.  This is a great point.

           If you dont people with no money wont play.  Some people dont have money.  or jobs.  But they have all the time in the world to play the game and master it for everything we have to offer.  If we deny access to these people we are deny access to youtubers, kids, disabled people,people with family's, and so many more.  Not only will this affect our numbers but who knows maybe those people may actually end up paying or even bringing paying customers in.  I know i bought a world of warcraft subscription when i watched my dad growing up.

Now the whole entire reason i even brought all this up with this video is because of something they say halfway through

Never sell power.

Now this could mean all sorts of things.  Such as going straight pay to win offering the best gear for the best price.  But could even be....selling content that makes you stronger.   In anyway.  The players are savage I know i dont just speak for myself here when i say i am one of them.  

                  This brings up something i actually witnessed with another free to play game by epic games called paragon.   in this game they sold card packs that you spent with the in game currency you get for free.  These cards made your dudes stronger (it was a spin on the moba genre)  And it was the entire gimmick for the power fantasy.  Well this is why its important to look at these things.  Because they "sold" for actual money an reputation(the free currency) booster.  For x amount of days or x amount of games.  Well the fan base blew UP  Because they considered this unfair and they were taking things too far.  

           Whether or not they were didnt matter.  The community thought it was pay to win because you could pay to speed up your currency grind to buy more cards which were RNG based on top of that.  It went so far that they completely relooked at their system.  

so what can we learn from that?   The community is incredibly sensitive and we have no choice but to be sensitive to that.

the video goes on to mention a few other things i encourage you all to check it out but what i wanted to take away and bring to this conversation is this.   We shouldnt be selling power.  We should be selling convenience.  

Now take a look at League of legends or other models they primarily dont sell power.  Yes you could spend money and actually buy units and get power.  But those are available with time and play for non paying customers.  But they sell cosmetics.  Sometimes for outrageous prices like 15$

And people pay.we could sell other things such as slots for units/equip whatever.  give them enough at first so they dont think they would ever need them but oh they will need them later.

What are your guys thoughts?

Ditto on not selling items that create more power, or make it easier to win.

Visuals are always a good upgrade, which people will buy to have cool looks in game. EXP/Currency boosts, as long as currency rates are pretty far balanced this would too be a "I just want to do it faster" thing. 

I don't necessarily agree to the giving players premium currencies, but arguably it works in situations.

Other things that seem to relatively work pre production, but not so much post production, is marketing-- getting people hyped and involved, even in development, as well as Patreon usually with regular updates/devlog

@Jonathan Nice video I had seen it a while back ago but forgot about it until you posted it.

"An interesting topic that got brought up i wanted to talk about with all of you was the idea that we should let players earn every type of currency.  Even the paid ones. the video goes on and gives four good reasons"

My thought on this is we only have one currency for the game and weather you purchase points or earn them you only have one to think about.

@Team I have updated the list of items we could possibly sale base off this forum.  Can anyone else think of what we can do to continue growing?  We will tweak the balance of the asset we sale once we have them up and going to make sure we keep our casual players and hardcore players in mind.  I want us to make it fair as possible that a causal player can take on a hardcore play if they so wish and have a fighting chance to win if their strategy is better in that game.

Thanks,
James Fleming
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I think the only things that I see would be, if a free-tier player has a limit on respawns, and a premium-tier player pays to respawn more, arguably that would be a larger advantage. I quit playing games quickly that prevent me from playing because I have to "wait or purchase" respawns. And it's not that they are bad games, I just forget they are there by the time I can play again.

The first four-- Units, Structures, Equipment, Contact, if I can buy a stronger unit than a player, or a larger quantity available to use or said items, then it would arguably give an unfair advantage.

tl;dr - respawns are grey areas-- definition for the first 4 on list.

@Anthony Excellent point let discuss the asset purchasing for Unit for a second.  If a player at the start is given a starter pack of units for a standard army then they can start playing right away.

Now if a player purchase an asset let say a Mobile Missile Launcher and the starter pack let just say does not have a plane or helicopter in it to kill that units but it would probably have a tank that would do.  This changes their strategy to use that tank to kill that unit.  This make the other player try to counter with whatever else.  So on and so forth...

So to balance the game we are giving the games a Total Unit cost.  Like in table top games where you come to the battle field with a pre-made army and battle it out but you are capped off with like a 1000 point army system.

So in the beginning let say you start with 200 point system.  If a Mobile Missile Launcher is 50 point to bring then that limits your other strategy of combat.  This is a wager in the game that is an unknown because you don't know what the enemy is bring to the game.

The unit asset I suspect will be 70% of our purchase.  Does anyone else have any idea on how to balance it so that we can sale unit assets for people to purchase?  This was my idea in trying to get it so its fair even if you just started and going against a pro player of the game.

Thanks,
James Fleming
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I think if there is fully a strategy to win no matter what units you have, that's great. I would imagine it then like a CCG. You can go to the store and buy a booster, or purchase individual cards that give you strategy, but it can always be beaten another way, then it's not an issue.

That said, selling those would be no issue, and we could also monetize strategy "packs"

@Anthony can you go into detail your last post?  I'm not sure I'm following you on the CCG as the asset will be models to choice from not cards and the strategy will be whatever the player choice to do with the asset he/she has.

Thanks,
James Fleming
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Yes.

So I was saying if you were to buy a card game, you can buy any card. but just because you buy a super rare, or strong card, doesn't mean you have the best strategy. If that's the approach that you're taking to the purchase of units, buildings, etc.. then yes, it's a great option.

Also I was saying another way to monetize that would be to sell a pack of buildings/units for several strategies to play, which would cost a bit more, but they would have the ability to play with that specific strategy.

Of course, players would still be able to build their own strategies still, but we would just offer other ways to do it, and the units all at once, instead of playing to unlock and following along.

@Anthony Ahh yes ok we are on the same page then.

@Team Ok anyone else have any other idea's we should work towards on this topic?

Thanks,
James Fleming
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@Team, 
While not directly related to the generation or handleing of funds, i think it would be usefull (even now) to come up with what we will call in game currency as it will be from that point on easier to designate what we are discussing. 

Here are a few suggestions:
1. Bonds
2. Shell
3. Coin
4. TacticPoints
5. ArmaCoin

I like the idea of a single currency that can be both earned and brought, however that decision is not up to me and we may infact have many forms of currency we never know. 

I do feel its important to ask though, if we do go with a single currency that can be earned/bought will a player be able to pay the currency back in exchange at a lower value for real world money? Ive seen a few games do this and it seems to be an attractive option for players as they seem to feel that their actions in game can reap real world rewards. Even if those rewards are relatively small.

Again this is all just suggestions, questions, and comments. None of my words should be taken as gospel.

Post note: 
@James,

I feel like the custom skins is an excellent excellent idea, it's shown effective and games like Counter-Strike where people take great pride and customizing their style and look. 

We could create alternative models for units, alternate skins, and even allow players to create their own for upload, moderation, and then possible distribution.

@Bishop At this point we are way to small to sell back their points and that adds another layer of complexity to our system.  Maybe awhile from now we can revisit this topic but for now I'm going to say probably not.

Thanks,
James Fleming
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