Rough draft for our Kickstarter reward tiers

Battlescape
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Alright everybody here’s the rough draft for our Kickstarter reward tiers. We’ve spent quite a lot of time debating these and we’d like to show them to all of you and see if there’s any additional feedback or ideas you may have. Our primary goal with developing these reward tiers was to offer something compelling while heavily reducing or eliminating the need for physical rewards. The elimination of physical rewards solves a huge number of logistical problems for us that could be time consuming and have additional hidden costs.

  1. $5 - You have our eternal gratitude and your name in the credits.
  2. $20 - You receive a copy of the finished game along with a “Bronze Supporter” badge for the forums with an accompanying in-game decal for your ships.
  3. $23/$25 - Same as above but you also get a limited edition skin for a single ship that we choose. The $23 price point will be limited to the first X (TBD) backers at which point it will increase to $25.
  4. $35 - You get all of the above along with a digital art book and the sound track. The digital art book will include a wide range of released and unreleased artwork that has been produced internally by our art team.
  5. $40/$50 - All of the above including beta access to the game and a silver forum badge with an associated in-game decal for all of your ships. The $40 reward tier will be limited to the first X (TBD) backers before its price increases to $50.
  6. $75/$85 - All of the above including alpha access to the game and a gold forum badge with an associated in-game decal for all of your ships. The $75 reward tier will be limited to the first X (TBD) backers before its price increases to $85.
  7. $150 - All of the above including a special edition set of skins for all playable ships.
  8. $250 - All of the above including “Developer Access” to the game. This means you will have access to the game at more or less the same time the dev team starts playing it. Immediately after our Kickstarter we’ll have a month or 2 of administrative crap that we have to take care of but as soon as we begin producing daily builds backers at this reward tier will have access to them along with a platinum forum badge and an associated in-game decal for all of their ships.
  9. $500 - You will get all of the above including a special set of effects for all of your weapons. These effects will be purely visual and will not affect weapon speed, damage, etc. You will also receive a diamond forum badge and an associated in-game decal for all of your ships.
  10. $2,500 - All of the above including a custom, personalized skin for a single ship size corvette or smaller of your choosing. You will also be able to customize your ship decal and this reward tier comes with 5 additional copies of the game. Lastly the first 5 backers at this reward tier will be given the opportunity to name a planet in the Battlescape solar system.
  11. $10,000 - All of the above including the ability to design a custom advertisement for a billboard and/or hologram that will float around a space station. Your name will be highlighted in the Battlescape credits as an executive producer and you will receive an official Infinity Battlescape dev team t-shirt.
18 Likes
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Sounds all around good I would say.

For the tier 2, is there a particular reason why you went with $20?
I’ve seen campaigns go with $10 or $15, and more rarely $25 or $30 IIRC. Are there stats about what is the best choice between higher price and more people buying it depending on the price?
Is there a reason why there is no ‘early’ tier 2 (say, $18)? Some campaigns do it, but again I’d be curious to see if there were any stats about it.

Also, the tiers jump from $500 to $2500, it feels like there should be an intermediary tier, maybe at $1000. Similarly, there could be a $5000 tier, but that’s probably less important.
I don’t know what those tiers should give, though.

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Neither do we :stuck_out_tongue:

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Firstly, thanks for publishing this. I think it’s a good decision and I hope the feedback will help you to craft a good tier structure that will maximise funding!

My first impression is that the tiers are a little bit cheap and the $100 to $1000 range is a bit underpopulated.
However, I then went and dug out my post from back when I was an unemployed graduate and see that they are pretty much the prices I suggested.

I would have no qualms whatsoever pledging $250 (£164).
I am not remotely tempted by special weapons effects which is a shame because I’m in that gap where I could be tempted to pledge $500(£327) for the right things.

I’ll sleep on it and might have some ideas tomorrow.

For reference:
$20 = £13
$40/$50 = £26/£33
$75/$85 = £49/£55
$250 = £164

3 Likes
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Well, it’s a good thing I’ve been working overtime.

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cool link asap to the kick starter! im going for $85. :sunglasses:… i just did the $250 !! lol :slight_smile:

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My income tax refund was higher than I expected this year, and this is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to spend it on…

Also, a viable $10 tier might be either the Bronze Supporter badge without receiving a copy of the game, or an uncoloured Supporter badge sans game copy. Also, all tiers at the $10 level or above could gain access to a special Supporters section of the forums.

I think you’re missing out on the magic of round numbers, too, by skipping $100 and $1000.

The reward at the $500 level also seems to be a little lacking relative to the $250 level. It doesn’t feel like much of a step up for double the money. I think most of the community die hards will get what they want at the $250 level. I’m all for sparkles and stuff, but that extra $250 is 10 Bronze Supporter tiers (i.e. 10 additional copies of the game).

1 Like
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Looks pretty good. Have to agree with what the most said.

It looks a little sparse though. Makes it easy to decide … maybe a little to easy.

I can see how it can be hard to add even more. Though the tiers up to 85$ seems to be pretty good.

You should really fill up 1000$ though …

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How about these?
10$ - same as above + beta forum access
100$ - same as above + special edition set of weapons
150$ tier becomes 200$
250$ tier becomes 500$

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Well the “main” tiers seem to be.

  • $20 Copy of finished game
  • $50 Beta Access
  • $85 Alpha Access
  • $250 Developer Access

Everything else seems to be a filler, I’m wondering why the Developer Access is such a huge jump from Alpha Access, it should only be a difference of a few months…

Also why is there no MOD Creator tier and no mention of delivery dates?

2 Likes
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Because it’s a rough draft of the tier ideas.

In our estimation it is a difference of about 6 months. Developer access means when the dev’s start playing, so do these pledgee’s. It likely won’t be access immediately after the KS finishes, there might be a couple months lag in order for us to setup shop. Alpha could be 6 months or more after this developer access.

As I explained before, modding will be a stretch goal, not a pledge tier.

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Modding will be a stretch goal. So adding a reward/pledge tier for it doesn’t make sense if we only raise the minimum target, cause we wouldn’t be able to deliver.

As for delivery dates, this is just a rough draft, and we don’t want to announce anything officially yet.

1 Like
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Alright, I wasn’t asking for specific dates, just estimates, as most KS projects include, I suppose 6-months after 3-months for alpha is more than good enough as that estimate.

Not sure if this is because this is a draft, but the forum access tiers are missing and so are the “development” tiers, design decision and things like that?

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Right now I’m inclined towards the 500 dollar level. There should be more options in the 100-1000 area, though.

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Looks fairly good! Only things i can think of to improve it would be:

  • A limited early bird below the 20$ game tier. I’ts really important to get an early impulse into funding and somthing like a 18$ early bird would definitely help.

  • More graduation of tiers above 500$, then jump from 500$ to 2500$ is enourmous and some of the long term supporters would want to pledge in that area.

Beyond categories: Make sure you get your PR / Press releases in order and ready to go, getting in magazines and forum posts is paramount!

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The weapon effects thing could potentially hurt gameplay, if they are too different. In space arena games often you need to use the effects to tell whats being fired at you. Something to consider.

Im wondering about the 2500 and 10000 tiers though, a custom ship skin is far more difficult to create than a custom billboard. You may want to swap them or even put the billboard on something more like a 1000$ tier(also, i would include a clause that ultimatly the skin art decisions can be overridden by you to prevent people paying for a skin that is 100% black or something that could potentially impact gameplay,) . Also, you dont have any naming scheme things up for sale. If there are NPCs planned in battlescape, maybe include a tier that lets players submit names to be added to the name generator. Elite dangerous did this for their npcs.

Otherwise, looks good.

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There won’t be any design decision tiers. When you’re in alpha, helping us to test the game, your feedback will ofc change the course of the game design. I believe we intend to have forum sections for this feedback. Any “design your own art” stuff ofc would have the disclaimer that it must be approved by the dev team, etc.

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Hmmm … That does ring a bell …

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More seriously, what will the tiers be in euros ?
Also, I agree that there could be maybe some more tiers between 500$ and 10.000$. I certainly would have pledged around 1.000$, but 2.500$ is a bit too much at the current moment for me.

Out of curiosity, why did you rule out the friend’s pack ? Surely you could throw in extra game copies for the 100$+ tier (not necessarly with alpha or beta).

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This proposed list is, IMHO, missing a very important opportunity: 4 packs. 4 packs have been a great success in the gaming community i am a part of, and bringing friends along into the game should be made as easy as possible, you need every player you can get to be successful, and every backer you can get too. The proposed list of rewards as in the OP, only offers additional copies of the game at a pricepoint of 2500$. This is far above a realistic number for someone like myself that is looking for a 4-pack option, without the need to include fancy skins or forum badges.

My proposal is therefore the following:
- Offer at least one option that serves as a no/few extras 4 pack in the low/medium price segment.

Personally, my ideal pack would include 4 copies of the game, that all include Beta access. No Skins, Badges or Artbooks. Currently, the first tier offering Beta access for one person is at 40/50$. This would place a 4 pack with Beta accesss in the region of 160/200$, unless one includes a possible small discount, as 4 packs often do. 160/200$ is something i would personally be willing and able to spend for a 4 pack with Beta access.

Of course, you could easily construct different versions of 4 packs if you wanted to.
At proposed prices of OP list, for example:

  • 80$ Barebones 4 pack, no alpha, beta, no extras.
  • 92/100$ Limited edition skin 4 pack, no alpha, no beta.
  • 160/200$ ± some dollars, Beta 4 pack ± extras
  • 300/340$ ± some dollars, Alpha 4 pack ± extras
    And so on.

Assuming the list of the OP to go unchanged, and no 4 packs to be introduced, my assessment would be this:
2500$ is way out of my range. Even if my goodwill was that large, my wallet is not. Therefore, i would look for what tier gives me the best value for a single person, myself.

And that would be the 75/85$ Alpha access tier. I do not need fancy skins and badges, and pre-alpha builds will be fairly bugged and unfinished anyways. Of course i will lobby in my gaming community to support the kickstarter, independant of how the final reward list will look like, and some might jump in and back the kickstarter. With a 4 pack, i could drag people over that are not ready to back the kickstarter themselves.

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