Goblin Squad Member
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You guys all know there are Goblin plushies already in the Paizo store, right?
Mine came in the mail recently, and I will add that it is really awesome. My kid is going to love it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's great to see all these ideas kicking around for individual players making crazybig donations, however what the thing needs is a lot more smaller pledges rather than a small number of heavy donors.
If you secure a large base of people at the <$100 mark what you are actually obtaining is a larger player base, and in turn a large base of ongoing subs from the outset, which is a much better business idea than having rather lonely empty servers with just a handfull of dudes paying very few subs, despite them being really keen.
player base > all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As someone who has no intention of playing the MMO the only incentive that would prompt me to contribute to this Kickstarter would be if they offered some sort of unique and tangible reward for the RPG. I imagine we'll start seeing those pulled out when we're getting close to the end date and the project has only raised $500,000.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As someone who has no intention of playing the MMO the only incentive that would prompt me to contribute to this Kickstarter would be if they offered some sort of unique and tangible reward for the RPG. I imagine we'll start seeing those pulled out when we're getting close to the end date and the project has only raised $500,000.
I'd be surprised if the momentum stops that drastically, They're been getting a little over the $20K/day that they need for the project to succeed at present and for some people I know, it's a matter of waiting for their paycheck to roll in. I know that Kickstarter's don't charge till the due date, but I, like a few other friends, want the money to be in savings so I know I have it before I commit to a pledge.
I think it would be awesome to see some of the adventures that are planned for the MMO to make it to a table top starter set of some sort so you could start a game in a similar setting if desired.
One half wonders if a sort of online group of role players might spring up in the game, somewhat like a virtual Camarilla, leaning more concept, not what it became.
Perhaps a conversion book to take your online character offline and into a Table Top game? If level progression will be slowed as drastically as they are stating, would be cool to take my MMO char and play in a tabletop game too. Not sure it would be possible to make a solid translation back though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd be surprised if the momentum stops that drastically, They're been getting a little over the $20K/day that they need for the project to succeed at present and for some people I know, it's a matter of waiting for their paycheck to roll in.
If you average it out then its 20k/day, however that was due to the first two days pulling in $130k, taking the biggest two days out and you are left with about $10k/day since, which suggests Deane could be about right.
There was another minor spike after the Reaper push, then it dropped back again.Projection rate suggesting best outcome now is in the 900's.
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Goblin Squad Member
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- discounted future game time. Get the money now, deliver your product later for a discount. Please, don't start a discussion that this "can't do". Yes it can, anyone with a basic knowledge of how cash flow works will understand.
A good one for any tier/level actually.
I stumped up a whack of dough for LoTRo as a founder, as it came with a lifetime sub to the game.
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How about giving out Pathfinder Society boons for races not normally available in PFS play? That's really a zero-cost option that would probably generate interest in that crowd.
Vic: Does the Crowdforger buddy give two each of the rewards, or is one of the people getting the proverbial "short end of the stick"?
Levels that provide multiple copies of the game provide multiple copies of the other rewards as well.
Hooray, thanks for not making me lie about the shipment never coming, I mean.. have to make tough choices about who gets what.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Add-on for backers of Crowdforger Pioneer or higher level:
Crowdforger for Life
Receive a lifetime subscription of the game. Requires an additional pledge of Crowdforger Pioneer or higher level. (I have no idea whether this type of model would even be feasible, but it was the only one I could come up with, which would not mess up the existing reward structure.)
Limited to a maximum of 10,000 backers in total.
Either all at a flat rate of around $ 100 or a tiered system of e.g.
* first 2,000 at $ 100
* next 2,000 at $ 125
* next 2,000 at $ 150
* next 2,000 at $ 175
* last 2,000 at $ 200
The basic idea would be to increase the potential value of an early commitment to backing the game while at the same time contributing to creating as dedicated and committed an early game community as possible. A similar model seemed to work pretty well for LoTRO (as was already mentioned).
The immediate and long term benefits should (by far in my opinion) outweigh the potential loss of long term subscription revenue. Having a maximum of 10k "pre-paid" subscribers onboard should be more or less irrelevant as far as the long term profitability of the game goes in every other scenario besides the game pretty much completely tanking.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Vic - thanks so much, and sorry to be a bother, but one more question.
What if, at the end when most of the slots are filled, I finally convince my Pathfinder party to join in, and I change my pledge from to Guild? Do I retain my first month place in line,and my buddies get in at the later.month? Do we all get in at my original timestamp place in line? Do I then get in later like my buddies?
Thanks!
Some ideas for more expensive tiers - basically have players give you seed ideas for things you have to do anyway:
Custom design for hair/tatoos/accessories/armor/weapon - The person gets to work with the art dirrector to design the look of some part of the game (within limits). You guys are going to need to do this anyway, so this just adds in some talking with a customer who is willing to pay for it.
Be an NPC. Model it after the person and they can write some quotes for them. Just writing some dialog for an NPC could be worth it.
Voice an NPC: you get to be a voice actor for one of the people saying random things in town, or perhaps a particular guard
Design a Dungeon. Work with the game designers to put some cave/ruin/orc fort into the game and populate it with monsters.
A reward that worked perhaps a little to well in The Banner Saga: design your own faction symbol. You could allow guilds that preorder to make custom symbols to display next to their guild name, especially if you display them over people's IDs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some pretty cool suggestions. I like the "Voice an NPC" or "name a lake" ideas. A lot of people are talking about life time subscriptions. I think they talked about this in another thread and basically explained to make it worth while, the life-time sub would need to be $1000-$1500 if you look at the lifetime of a game (as compared to Eve) and figure out how much you loose on the monthly sub after the first year. I paid for a LoTRO Life time sub early on but I didn't end up playing that long but could theoretically go back to it. However, it was made free to play with purchasable content. So, one thing they have to weigh is what the long term look of the game will be. Many games MMOs these days are going from a Sub model to a FTP model. Personally, I would rather pay a subscription than have micro-transactions for experience boosts etc. but a lot don't want to do that. Guild Wars 2 seems to have a pretty successful model so.
So, thinking about ways they could give value without out increasing production time, we have to look at things that either don't involve the development team or are easy to do without adding significant production time since we all want the game sooner than latter.
Possible add ons should be things that don't give a "pay to win" advantage. Any in game items should really be cosmetic or very insignificant such as things like guild banners for your castle, a statue of with your guild name as a founding company or something like this. These types of things make cool additions that are unique, give identity but don't give an unfair advantage or take a lot of resources.
This would be an idea that required programming: Create a backer memorial in game.
Create a room, somewhere in the game. In this room is a memorial / wall / statues engraved with the names of the backers. As you go up in backing your name is on a more elaborate piece of the room. Now here is the kicker - Publish a pic of the room and don't tell people where the room is in the world. Now we have our name immortalized in the game and we have an incentive to explore the world. Make it very hard to find / gain access. It should be something to strive for and it's location also becomes a nice piece of info that we can sell / trade for in game.
As far as the voice work goes...expensive. You now have to fly someone out to your sound studio and pay for room and board just to get an NPC's voice. I like the idea but it could only be a super high paying backer who could get this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... the life-time sub would need to be $1000-$1500...
I don't recall Ryan putting a price on it.
From Pathfinder Online Kickstarter:
It's hard for me to imagine ever selling a lifetime subscription. Frankly, I think they're always vastly underpriced, and if they were offered at the real value, I doubt most people would buy them.
For example, 20% of the people who played EVE the first month it was on line are still playing. Multiply that number by the 7 years its been in operation and you get a figure in the thousands of dollars. Now compound that by knowing that about 20% of the people who join in any given month also stay effectively forever, and you start to see how much money is lost if you let the hardest of the hard core buy a "lifetime subscription" for $250 or something.
As far as the voice work goes...expensive. You now have to fly someone out to your sound studio...
I originally thought this would be cheap, but I think you're right. They'll probably want the recording done in a decent studio.
Although I'll still hold out a little bit of hope that they'd be able to take a simple recording I made on my PC and process it enough to make it usable.
As far as the voice work goes...expensive. You now have to fly someone out to your sound studio and pay for room and board just to get an NPC's voice. I like the idea but it could only be a super high paying backer who could get this.
Lots of kickstarters have rewards where the people have to pay for their own transportation/room & board. This would still probably be a $1000 reward level, limmitted to maybe 5 people, and sould probably include lunch with the game designers or something similar.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... the life-time sub would need to be $1000-$1500...I don't recall Ryan putting a price on it.
From Pathfinder Online Kickstarter:
It's hard for me to imagine ever selling a lifetime subscription. Frankly, I think they're always vastly underpriced, and if they were offered at the real value, I doubt most people would buy them.
For example, 20% of the people who played EVE the first month it was on line are still playing. Multiply that number by the 7 years its been in operation and you get a figure in the thousands of dollars. Now compound that by knowing that about 20% of the people who join in any given month also stay effectively forever, and you start to see how much money is lost if you let the hardest of the hard core buy a "lifetime subscription" for $250 or something.
As far as the voice work goes...expensive. You now have to fly someone out to your sound studio...I originally thought this would be cheap, but I think you're right. They'll probably want the recording done in a decent studio.
Although I'll still hold out a little bit of hope that they'd be able to take a simple recording I made on my PC and process it enough to make it usable.
Right, I knew I read it somewhere. He said thousands. Which is worse than $1000-$1500. The point is it is cost prohibitive to sell a life time subscription for $200.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As far as the voice work goes...expensive. You now have to fly someone out to your sound studio and pay for room and board just to get an NPC's voice. I like the idea but it could only be a super high paying backer who could get this.
Maybe you could have some sort of web interface where you could record a pre-scripted line and submit it. It would be in the format they want and go directly to them. They quality is the issue so they would have to have final say on if its used or not. Nihimon mentioned something about this a couple posts up.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This would be an idea that required programming: Create a backer memorial in game.
Create a room, somewhere in the game. In this room is a memorial / wall / statues engraved with the names of the backers. As you go up in backing your name is on a more elaborate piece of the room. Now here is the kicker - Publish a pic of the room and don't tell people where the room is in the world. Now we have our name immortalized in the game and we have an incentive to explore the world. Make it very hard to find / gain access. It should be something to strive for and it's location also becomes a nice piece of info that we can sell / trade for in game.
This is sorta what I was thinking with a statue. You could put a statue up in a town with the persons name on a plaque or something. That way people passing by could see it and the backer would have that notoriety. Maybe the townsfolk in the area can mention something like "Hey have you seen the statue of Tharkune the Giving?" :)
That makes me think of another idea that might have been mentioned. Titles based on backer level. But you could tie that to NPC interaction someway where an NPC will recognize you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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At $15/ month, 8 years would be $1440. Add $60 for the game, and you're at $1500.
So Ryan's $1500 price tag is perfect. 8 years worth of guaranteed revenue, and up front?
Check my post earlier in this thread. :)
Granted, they've said it will be cheaper to buy large blocks of subscription time (buying six month blocks, say, instead of month-to-month.) So, it's probably more like 8.5 years worth of subscription payment.
I figure offer 25 Crowdforger Alpha Lifetimer tier spots at $1500 or $2000. If (when) the game is a success and lasts longer than 8.5 years, the loss of 25 players' hypothetical subscription fees after that point will likely be worth the $37,500 or $50,000 in guaranteed upfront revenue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe you could have some sort of web interface where you could record a pre-scripted line and submit it. It would be in the format they want and go directly to them. They quality is the issue so they would have to have final say on if its used or not. Nihimon mentioned something about this a couple posts up.
Heh, the quality you would want to use, only people that are hobbyists would have. You'd need compression and super high quality for it to be a usable sound file, and you want that to be at a standard that you can mix and work with across the board. It's best for it to all be recorded in one studio where the settings are controlled and maintained and no random elements are introduced. I decided not to include a voice acting option as logistics on getting the actor out and on-site as well as ensuring that the quality of skill was to a level desired for the game, and making sure the person paying was happy about the character they were voice acting for, it's too many possible points for conflict/drama. It sounds cool, but in practice could go horribly wrong.
I'd love to do voice acting, it's something I've wanted to do for forever. But I don't think buying your way in, is going to ensure a level of quality that we're expecting from the end product.
I still think it would rock to have seats at a table for 1 weekend of gaming with one of the writers would be awesome :-p Imagine being able to say you played in a game run by Lisa Stevens or Keith Baker, etc. I think that'd pull some money.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or hearken back to the AD&D days -- spells named after the archmage who crafted them!
Some new tier or add-on which lets you add a name (subject to approval) to a spell.
That way, if you play a wizard named Vaster whom you love in Pen and Paper, you can immortalize him by making it "Vaster's Acid Arrow" instead of just "Acid Arrow."
(Harking back to Melf's Acid Arrow, Mordenkainen's Disjunction etc).
Maybe a higher level to name a tier (aka Vaster's Faithful Hound, Vaster's Sword, Vaster's Disjuntion, etc).
Or some Wondrous Items had similar names in D&D. Heward's Handy Haversack, for example. If I had the money, I would absolutely drop some to have people carrying around "Suviont's Superior Sack". Wait. That sounds... wrong.
Still love the spell names idea, though. It's just a single word of text in the game, but it would definitely be a great reward.
Chief Technical Officer
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Vic - thanks so much, and sorry to be a bother, but one more question.
What if, at the end when most of the slots are filled, I finally convince my Pathfinder party to join in, and I change my pledge from to Guild? Do I retain my first month place in line,and my buddies get in at the later.month? Do we all get in at my original timestamp place in line? Do I then get in later like my buddies?
Thanks!
Sorry—missed that post until now.
The info we'll get from Kickstarter will have the time and date of your original pledge, and your final reward level; it doesn't tell us your initial pledge level, or anything about increases or decreases to your pledge level. So you and your buddies would all get in at the place in line that you staked out with your initial pledge.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The lifetime subscriptions are a bad idea. I agree with Ryan that they are always under priced. I also think that games that have sold them have made a mistake. Eventually it encourages companies to shut down games that may have a steady population base but not enough of them paying subscribers. Just stay away from the lifetime subs.
I like the idea of a cheaper tier $20 that gets you a copy of the game and you get a single month. Shouldn't start as early as beta but at least a bit of a head start before release. I also like the idea of an inscribed in game item at a higher tier (maybe $1500+), cosmetic but "viewable" by others (maybe a different color on your player avatar).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Vic!
Re: Darklord - here's my amendment (like we talked about on the K S comments) . :)
I say limit the $20 level to 8000 backers. Copy of the game, new player pack, 1 month subscription, NO Goblin Squad.
Then just add one month onto the $35 level, for a total of 2 months (plus Goblin Squad membership).
I really do not think the higher tier levels ( art lover for example) are a necessity and a larger focus on the lower tiers , 50 to 200 range, should be the focus. But if your thinking of doing something higher then that I would suggest goblin squad investor, 15,000-20,000 maybe they get a cool in game title, a share of stock in goblin works?
Here is my idea, Vanity Pets! but only if you were already going to put it in game. starting with say the $75 pledge you could get a special vanity pet ( different color scheme) to follow you around,and the $100 gets a different pet of slightly different color scheme? ( i am thinking a special colored shocker lizard!).
the $100 reward tier could get a special one time allotment of micro-transaction coins ( I like to call them goblin teeth!) for the opening up of the micro transaction store that was mentioned in the blog. Something to get them a taste of whats in the store and get hooked on it to spend extra money after the games launch. ohh and a mouse pad and one of paizos goblin plushies, I am sure they wont miss any going missing from the vault.
The $1,000 level you could name a dragon?
5,000 dollar reward. a special PFO dungeon/module run in game with the PFO dev team. Already done a table top game session why not an ingame mmo session that is used as a commercial as well!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do agree we could use more lower tiers or add-ons over a few larger ones. Hordes of backers get Kickstarters going.
Of course, even with more smaller tiers, we need more people willing to put up money for them, so what we really need is to get the word out of what PFO is and why people might enjoy it enough to help push it forward.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We would LOOOOOVE to see some creative ideas for rewards with values from $1,000 to $10,000. At those prices we can do some pretty amazing stuff. Again, we have to avoid eating up the income from the reward with production and fulfillment costs, so things that have a low "cost" but a high "value" are the sweet spots.
Ok, here's a wacky idea off the cuff...
At $10,000 we invite you to record dialog as a potential voice actor for an in game NPC.
At $15/ month, 8 years would be $1440. Add $60 for the game, and you're at $1500.8 years?
Is that the lifecycle of the product, or of the player?
Reckon the first one is a maybe, and the second pretty rare.
As Ryan has said, 20% of initial players in Eve are stil there 8 years later, and they have retained an average of 20% of players from every month to now.
I really do not think the higher tier levels ( art lover for example) are a necessity and a larger focus on the lower tiers , 50 to 200 range, should be the focus. But if your thinking of doing something higher then that I would suggest goblin squad investor, 15,000-20,000 maybe they get a cool in game title, a share of stock in goblin works?
$10K limit on pledges, and stock or profit sharing are explicitly prohibitted by Kickstarter rules.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've seen lots of 'design an NPC' or 'name an NPC' type rewards on similar Kickstarters. That would seem to be a low-cost high-value benefit.
I can't think of anything with a higher value/cost ratio than signed items, and they wouldn't appeal enough to me to be a significant upgrade.
I am already the "buddy" of someone who bought the crowdforger buddy tier. I would definitely think about kicking in an extra $x to be able to name an NPC -- dependent on the pricing, maybe 2 (also dependent on my free cash after I total up the damaging costs of buying newborn diapers... a cost that I have yet to pay, but will in, oh, about three weeks.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm surprised there haven't been any *Early Bird* tiers that are a discounted price of the existing tiers for a limited number of people.
These usually bring in a big jump for all the people that want to get a better value for their buck.
And then later potential donors feel cheated because they didn't find out about it early enough. There are already enough bonuses for pledging early (get in the game in the order pledged), they shouldn't add more. GW must have a late marketing push up their sleeve because I don't understand how it can reach the $1m in 30 days.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reckon the first one is a maybe, and the second pretty rare.As Ryan has said, 20% of initial players in Eve are stil there 8 years later, and they have retained an average of 20% of players from every month to now.
You can look at the exception to the rule, or you can look at the rule.
PfO isn't Eve, it's also not WoW or EQ (yes some might be saying thank ye gods!) so I'm not sure why the industry stand out would be what you'd work off as a benchmark. I think its more appropriate to look at an industry snapshot.
Given the amount gone F2P etc over their lifespan, assuming subs will continue for 8 years is also iffy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Though I've already pledged my Benjamin...
It might encourage more pledges to give a list of what's in "Player Packs", "Alliance Packs" and "Guild Packs".
Other than that, I suggest a $10,000 level where Sean K. Reynolds participates in a debate on the Pantheon of Golarion with the contributor.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Really have to move people off this high individual pledge view.
You need lots and lots of smaller ones in order to build mass, momentum, and then a significant enough body of subs going forward to sustain the game.
Project Eternity is a good exmple - sure there were some big pledges, which made up about $150k worth of pledges, yet the money was made at the low to mid range pledges.
The $20 and $25 pledges generated $1,023,025
If we take it to the modest sum of $65 it got to $1,851,335
There was a good bump around the $140 mark - which happened to come with a great range of goodies - and almost a half a million in revenue.
Importantly, have a look at the sheer number of people buying in, which translates to word of mouth and hype. Thats a lot of people hopping on social media afterwards talkig about the product.
High end rewards are interesting, but pretty meh in the bigger picture.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity