A way to make money for the developers

Battlescape
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So I was just discussing with Lomsor in discord about what I would like to see as far as monetized items and I can tell you I am one of those many suckers that spend like 200$ on a game just to skip the grind, think I blew like 400$ on just World of Warships.

First of all I would like to see a purchasable option for a ship that would get me halfway to capital for instance if the game was to ever become like a 10 hour grind to make it into capitals. I would buy that in a heartbeat cause I know I don’t have time to grind, I work 40 hours a week and just like the game “The Isle” I don’t have 10 hours to grow a Rex just for it to be eaten after playing an hour of finally getting one on a PVP server. So I pay a 10$ monthly cost to remove 10 hours of wasting my life and get that Rex.

There is a game called “Naval Action” that provides the service as a DLC and its a simple way of cutting the grind down for the player which normally takes about 10 hours of trade, and struggling to make a 3rd rate, I simply pay 40$ to have one at a “one time cost” to have access to a 3rd rate Redoubtable once per day. You have no idea how many people simply do this, like 85% of the player base with a 900 player per day constant.

Now I know your thinking, that’s pay to win, but it really isn’t as long as your able to do the same thing except with your Time. This is really just for us guys that have jobs and don’t feel like spending our few short hours away from the kids to grind into a ship when really we just want to enjoy the game.

Of course your game is not ready for this kind of monetization cause I can simply crew a bomber and get 4000 credits by camping on a repair ship and firing endless torps at capital ships. I only just got this game yesterday and found that trick after 10 mins of playing. This is for you guys to make money and get this game on the right track. I tell you right now if you had made this game a little harder to play, and had that 40$ ship one per day service I would have spent it already and flying around like the sucker I am.

However I will be a sucker, cause I realize this simple fact. If I was to work a 10 dollar and hour shift for one hour to get me that Rex, I would rather do that then spend 10 hours trying to grow one, only to loose it in less time then trying to obtain it.

Now as the game stands now, we need more things to do game play wise, a simple change to how we can get the ships would be better if they were only available in certain ports. This would give more reason to capture ports if they grant new ship types. Also improve competitive game play especially if you incorporate this with ship weapons and abilities, like extra shielding and more damaging weapons to equip.

Now I hope this gives you more ways to make money, but remember, you gotta have that player retention, cause man I want blow up some players on this, I got lucky earlier and killed some, that was exciting, but dying and coming right back with a new capital from my endless economic return sort of took the fun out of it, just felt like we were both playing the hungry hippos game and no one really dies. So get that economy fixed and incorporate a little grind to the game, it doesn’t hurt us that much, makes it more exciting, knowing that if we loose this capital we go back to square one!

Oh and enough with this Match crap, make the game like Planetside 2 with constant battling and you don’t loose everything when the match restarts, I mean I want to have my credits still available and the ability to change sides like a pirate. Otherwise I don’t feel like playing cause I know I wont have what I built up the night before especially if u want to use that grind and monetization method. Instead make it where if you loose your home port you loose the ship you had, so you want to retake that port and get your ship back! Man nothing feels sweeter then liberating your stuff and driving it like you stole it after the job is done!

Anyways I wrote to much already hope this sounds cool to you and gives you some options.

3 Likes
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Going through your post in order and writing my thoughts as I read through it:
I think the design of this game doesn’t really open itself up to this type of monetization. The game is round based, meaning that at one point (let’s say after a week) all progress is rolled back. Now how would your 10 hour skip work in that environment? Should the dev force you to pay up those 10$ again for the next round? Should the dev force you to pay per server? It might potentially make maybe a tad of sense if it was an ongoing, never resetting game. There is an end goal to each round, and people are playing to win said game.

I also think that, given the nature of this game, your suggested optional payment plan is definitely pay to win, as your suggested mechanic does definitely impact gameplay. It would definitely shift the meta from “get the capital” to “buy the grind bypass to get the capital earlier than the enemy”. You are buying an advantage over the enemy in a match that will end with one side winning and the other one losing.

That “capture ports to unlock ship types” thing you brought up does sounds fairly interesting, the question is how this could potentially lead to a snowball effect (who knows, maybe that snowball effect is actually desireable to make matches not draw out for too long)

Also if I read that correctly, you want to introduce grind, just so that you can then bypass the grind with real money. That is a giant red flag to me.
… oh wait, you just mentioned that you want to get rid of match ends… I can see a little bit better now why you would want that type of monetization but still Imma have to go with “I’d rather not have this in the game”

2 Likes
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Yes, well its more like, you pay for the service then once every 24 hours you can redeem the said dlc ship. There is also non grind ships you can sell that would give more flare and stylish gameplay like the Requim from Naval Action. It is a cheaper buy but gives you a 5th rate to redeem whenever you want, and its not that hard to build something like it, however it gives a nice boost to speed in an opposing wind direction, so its valuable in complicated fights.

I say that its not pay to win so much as it only gives the player a chance to get a free ship, sure it can throw off the balance of the game slightly, but in a firefight like this game throws at you I could hardly imagine how one ship in a row of super death battles could really throw the game.

As far as a grind system this game heavily needs one, its too easy to max out in under 30 mins of game play, players get bored if they already have a capital and could spawn one if death has no real value. You may play this game and think its awesome, however I am a new player and telling you straight up it bores me and I literally have to avoid spending credits and get off the game to come back with a fresh face. You can see how that hurts my game play for your game. You want players to play at least 2-4 hours at a time, not get their rush in 30 mins and get off…

Tell you what, try playing the game with the grind on, make it hard to earn ships that are more valuable and superior and dying causes you to loose progression towards that ship and you will wish you could just pay a one time 30$ dlc so you don’t have to grind and get straight to what you want. Now I’m not saying you or anyone else with your mindset will find that favorable, however this is a Market, not a free ride game, you payed 40$ to play this game right? And now that you have it hardly anyone is on and you want more for your buck? Well so do I, but we cant get what we want unless the developers get something for it. So I encourage this monetization because it works, and is a proven method to help the developers get more money and give players like myself something to spend their money on. Sure we all want stuff for free, but free is tasteless and worthless. If a capital ship was given to you at the start of the game you would find it worthless as well and seek for the next best thing but find nothing.

As it stands now this game makes the best too easy to obtain, that must change, you should play Naval Action for at least a week and tell me how you rage quit because you cant do anything in a cutter, you have to invest your time in the game to have any real fun. But also you will tell me how you cant stop going back to play it cause you almost got into a Trincomolee (5th rate, usually takes 3 weeks of gameplay to obtain) and want to sink that asshole that keeps grabbing your trade ship at port. We need something as players a goal to sink our teeth into. And that’s why I suggested this route.

Condemn the idea because it takes money out of your wallet, but think about how your money could help this game improve, hire more developers, pay for that nice new ship to try out. Or you know go play free to play games if you don’t want to be supportive. Cause I can tell you ever since Naval Action has been out like every month or two the developers add more content and things to do cause they are rolling in that DLC market they have. I honestly would not expect this Battlescape game to move anywhere if it is not allowed to exploit something to make a profit and give real reason to add more detail for their gamers. You gotta put yourself in their shoes and realize that everything takes money to improve the game quality. And I really hope their team leader is not a player, but instead a man bent on making this game popular and worth its money invested.

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There’s is merit in monetization besides Art in my opinion.
Now, the game hasn’t been designed to be monetized that way and it appears most of the infrastructure needed is not in place to facilitate that.
This kind of monetization has been critized a lot though, mainly due to the hunch that people feel that the game has been intentionally made grindy beyond being fun anymore in order to further incentivise people to buy the “shortcut”. Also, many say that it is ridicolous to pay for not playing the game instead of playing it.
Yet, this kind of monetization is less frowned upon then is loot boxes or blatant pay to win.

I once suggested to make the small ship combat Free to Play and the capital ship combat “buy in” for instance. That in itself isn’t really pay to win as these two groups of ships fly a lot differently from eachother. There are other downsides to that though. I feel like I-Novae kind of wrote themselves into a corner by making the groups of ships a progression in itself. The lacking economy isn’t helping the perception as Avor noticed it can be cirumvented with several easy and boring tactics.

Important is perception. The main thing that needs to be avoided is pay to win.
People seing that players have capital ships from the get go could be a very negative perception. On the other hand, NPCs can get them almost instantly anyway, because the commander assigns credits to pay for them.

Some people like to play the capitals and less so the small ship combat. Currently they use the shortcut methods to get to their favourite ships. A one time DLC purchase to grant one free capital ship of choice per server per day could cater to these people. If they loose the ship without making their money back … well. They would be pretty big targets for player bombers early game too …
It’s kind of risky, reputation from both the ones that buy the DLC as well as the ones that don’t.
But it is an idea worth sharing indeed.

1 Like
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Many people dont even like capship ganeplay, and the game deteriorates into cap only gameplay as the round progresses, that’s a big flaw in the current concept IMO.
The only remedie is making the grind terrible, thus screwing people that want to play caps only.

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You need to take and look at other projects and not compose a bicycle. There are many games, what is it worth to bring all the best mechanics to Infinity? Pride does not allow? The same HUD, it is terrible! Although it was developed half a year! Make it possible to collect ships, for those who have time to play, for those who do not have time, buy a ready-made kit! Premium boats, what prevents add? Sell ​​a license so that Players can develop faster, a bonus on earnings and resources. No need to invent a bicycle. Paid Fights are you talking about? That’s bullshit. A Player needs a Hangar, and a lot of equipment, both simple and premium. Here you are and monetization.

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Yes, that is exactly what I am trying to address, you have gamers that live in their moms basement that can play for whole days without investing a single dollar, and then you have people like me that have money but hardly any time. You have to have a happy medium, if this game had all grind and no way for me to invest in time or money, I would probably not play it, or try to play off an on but rage quit cause I would not get to the excitement. At the same time, the player that has all the time in the world would love to play the grind knowing that all their life can be wasted in an effort to gain something back for it. This game serves neither player as its a match based game and their is no reason to invest time into it, or money for that matter if I can already obtain everything I want in less than 30 mins. The player with no life will play something more deserving of their time, and the player with less time but more money will invest their wallet in another game. So you got to make it work for both types of players, but I can already tell you only one makes more money then the other one.

I’m also not talking about paid fights, I am talking about a ship you can own and have access to. Sure lets call it pay to win, but honestly what is not pay to win in the MMO world today? You got paid loot chests that give you minor bonuses. I’m talking about not a loot chest but an actual redeemable item that can give you that worth of investment, not a chest that might give you something but not really. Also I would avoid the Premium, this is not War Thunder, I don’t want to get less reward for doing the same thing another player did, only so they can earn more reward cause they have Premium. No that is more Pay to Win! Instead I want something that I can call my own, my own ship… Its why I spent money on World of Warships, its why I paid money for DLC from Naval Action, its the ship that I want, not the extra nonsense. It would be no different then playing a Jedi game, and you getting the right to buy your own specialized light saber over one you collect and build with items in the game. Its your property and its what you want! That’s why players spend money, so they can feel like they have property in that virtual world. And since they paid for that car they may as well drive it! Which means ding ding ding, player retention!

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You shouldn’t balance a game in a way that forces players into the category of basement dwellers or cash cows. Because more often than not, Basement dwellers will end up buying ships too, which means those basement cash cows will be at the top, followed by cash cows, followed by basement dwellers, with the normal working person who can’t spend money on games willy nilly being in last place.

On the topic of play time:
I have barely any time to play games during the week, usually less than 1 hour per day, which I then would have to split up between multiple games. Designing a game session to be rewarding only after 2-4 hours isn’t a healthy behaviour for those who work full time, as it cuts severely into your social time with your family, friends etc.

The proposed monetization just sucks. It might “work” for Naval Action (which by the way sounds like a terrible, terrible, terrible game), but that doesn’t mean it would be a good fit for this game.

On the topic of pay to win:
Anything that can be purchased with real money and affects gameplay is defacto pay to win. It doesn’t matter how “little” that impact is, it is pay-to-win.

I can assure you, that I would probably drop the game instead of “just buying that 30$ dlc”. You are proposing a system that discriminates against people who don’t want to pay more than the initial purchase. It makes for an overall shitty user experience.

Edit:
Also, just to be a bit extra edgy - Not every monetization should be used just because “it works”. Going by that logic, devs should add unlockably hentai waifu’s and focus on gacha systems that unlock parts of a new SSR rated ship which has better stats and comes with special abilities. However, to fully utilize your new SSR rated ships special abilities, you first will have to date it, until your affection level hits max.

3 Likes
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The problem I see with your analogy Dekaku, is that you are not a player, this game would suit your needs as it stands right now because your only able to play it for less than an hour. I am sorry but I want to play a game that is fun for longer than 30 mins, perhaps you will be left behind after some changes are made to the game, but as it stands now this game will never lift off the ground unless changes are made that don’t favor only your play style and time. And why should you care about what others do with there money? Its up for grabs if the developer only seeks it out.

There are plenty of games that have monetization that are very popular and all of them are very enjoyable past your temporary amount of time. World of warships, Naval Action (which by the way is still kind of new and has a huge player base for being produced by a small Russian development team for what it offers) War Thunder, Starwars Battlefront, Call of duty games, and other very popular PVP style games. That’s just what this game is missing, it needs a way to continually fund and improve the game, and it cannot do that without the annoying monetization.

I wish all games had money grown on trees, but its just not practical and to shame a game for going that direction honestly seems like you would rather see a game die, before it has a chance to grow. You can find games that are capable of appealing to your interests that don’t require monetization, but to assume that one in alpha status does not require it in the future is only preventing its growth.

Take Ark for example, are you really going to tell me that if all of its DLC and additional content would still be available for free and with its timely releases if the development team just said, “No monetization at all?”

Ark would not be in its current state if it was not allowed to charge people for amazing additions to its platform. Sure they have released free versions to play, like its Hunger Games style tournament, however that’s just to appease the people that only have an hour to play at most, which sounds like you would be perfectly happy to be apart of.

Bottom line, don’t accuse those that use monetization as trolls that only want money, they instead want to use it to improve the product that is offered to you. The one thing I don’t want to have happen to Battlescape is for it to become another game like Grav. Only charging a one time purchase with huge ambitions, poor player retention, and then never getting off the ground cause it ran dry with funding.

I’m sorry I just cant take your criticism seriously cause you sound like your only here to play Battlescape till something else comes along and you wouldn’t look back to see if it even improves, just another gamer that picks up a copy cause they had the money and not interested in seeing what they invested becomes something more.

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And neither are you, with your whole “please make the game excrutiatingly grindy and let me use money to bypass so I personally don’t have to do it”. You’re someone who wants to make games objectively worse just so you can get an edge over others via money.

Because in a pvp setting them spending money to gain an advantage ingame leads to me having less fun. It’s one thing to lose a fight because someone bested you with skills, but a completely different one if that person bested you because that someone spent more money on the game than you did.

I’ve noticed that you keep circling back to certain “russian-made” games, which are seemingly exclusively using this specific type of monetization. The games I specifically quit playing because I despised their monetization, which is a shame, because War Thunder was actually fun to play… I guess I can address your “I’d be coming back to play Naval Action because it’s so good, and would just pay the 30 bucks” argument. I wouldn’t, given my experience with War Thunder. I played it for an extended period of time (back before they added ships and tanks iirc), unlocked a number of planes, and was on track to unlock whatever the last tier of planes was at the time. Then I started to notice that I was put against more n more premium aircrafts, which led to me losing faster and more often, which meant my aircrafts/crew got damaged/injured more, which led to more forced downtime. So I quit. I don’t have a problem to permanently drop a game if I think that the game’s economy is bullshit. On the other hand I don’t have a problem spending money on a game if I think the economy is fair and respects it’s playerbase <insert reference to the somewhat ridiculous amount of money spent on warframe over the years>.

Okay, never mind. Oh hey, look at that, there’s even the CoD game which I am currently slugging through, and can’t wait to drop like a hot potato once I reached the max rank in the battlepass, which a friend tricked me into buying.

You mean the game that got heavily ciriticized by it’s playerbase in 2016 for releasing a paid dlc while it was still in development, the very thing you are trying to push right now?

This has it’s own thread, I encourage you to read up on it (especially now that it got cleaned up) and participate in the discussion there. To give my own two cents, one of my many concerns is, that your proposed monetization will have an adverse effect on player retention.

There is a game that is worthy of being mentioned when talking about ingame monetization, Dust514. It was shut down in the end (which was unfortunate, as they just turned to being profitable - as in they got all the costs racked up during development back in and were making more money per day than the daily costs of keeping the lights on were), and I think that it failed mostly because the EVE playerbase is actually unironically cancer, but I will need some time to write up my thoughts around this subject as it is still something that to this day I am very much emotionally invested in, and tend to end up raging about.

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:slight_smile: This is how weak players write and act. Whiners. In these games Premium Technics do not steer, it gives an impulse for rapid development and no more. Simple Technique is not worse, and sometimes better than premium. Experience 10 years.

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Look I’m going to be frank dekaku. I admit that I spend money on games, so I don’t have to grind as much and spend time with family, that’s not something to be proud of, but neither is taking time away from family to unlock things. I only brought it up because I see a lot of promise in this game and wanted to let the developers know they could have gotten money out of me. It also is informative that they got input from you, that you don’t want monetization at all and just want this game to stay the way it is for you without any grinding at all. If you take into perspective that they will obviously never get another dime out of you, then why should they listen to your opinion? They already know that to get your kind of player base they wont need to improve the game much and make minor releases like UI enhancements and maybe a new playable ship in a year.

However after hearing my opinion on the matter they can see that if they make drastic improvements with the promise of more income by incorporating some of my ideas, this game might actually improve with a higher player base. Your telling me that it wont, maybe its because they been only listening to your great ideas that its been failing.

As far as I can see, my money was a poor investment, and I probably should not invest anymore if I’m being told that this game does not deserve to be monetized. Cause I already see what happens to many games that do this route, they either go dry like Space Engineers, or they wait to build hype just to release another game that folds in less then a year like their initial title.

So you can take my input and say what you want, I’m just here for the developers, what are you here for aside from leaching off their title for your pleasures. Do you support them past a purchase? Do you play regularly and share streams with others to build awareness? What makes your argument even worth its time to read? Cause it sounds so similar to players that don’t care enough about the game to see it become more.

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That’s incredible how people want shitty pay-or-grind mechanics in any game. Paid content has to be something that don’t affect gameplay at all like cosmetics or skins.
Otherwise it’s P2W. Period.

None of the arguments said there are worth using in this kind of game. That may be why no one answered since 7d, not even a dev. Solutions to have more money are based on something else than “I pay I win / skip grind”. The solutions are more from the gameplay side, like more things to do and more general progression (skins to unlock for example).

We don’t need another crappy WoT / WT / WoWa / WoWs / H&G reboot in space.

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I am a big fan of WoT, and usually play with a Premium Account. But I would not like to see this here.
The point with games like World of Tanks is they are free to play, if you want extras you pay. This is a paid for game. The only purchasables, if any, should be cosmetic.

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That is near impossible model to achieve with the current Development team size.