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New pricing
https://mail.black-squirrel.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=26082		 Page 1 of 3
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon May 31, 2010 3:22 am ]
Post subject:  New pricing
I'd like to change the pricing structure to try to better support a variety of user types. Right now, the 4 node/100 node options don't really suit someone who just wants to run the game at home, to practice, or just play against aliens or whatever. I'd like that person to have access to the game so as many people as possible are exposed to it. I only really want to sell public servers.

I had the thought that maybe it would be good to limit the total number of active games along with active connections. Someone recently mentioned that having one server with 25 games was just keeping players from exploring other servers.

Here are the registration levels I'm thinking about:

Personal, 1 game/1 node, local only, FREE - Intended for any player or gameop just playing the game alone.
Small, 2 games/2 nodes, $20 - Intended for a player who wants to explore scripting tactics, or small private games.
Medium, 4 games/4 nodes, $40 - Intended for medium private games (same as Lite).
Large, 10 games/10 nodes, $60 - Intended for large public or private games
Massive 24 games/100 nodes, $80 - Intended for very large public games (same as Full).

The cost to upgrade from one level to another would just be the difference in cost, so $20 per level.

Of course, anyone already registered would continue to have all 24 games and 4 or 100 nodes. This would only be for future registrations.

Again, the goal here is to get more players playing the game without necessarily having a lot of larger public servers. It would be nice to have more players than servers again. Do you think this pricing would encourage that?
Author:  Vid Kid [ Mon May 31, 2010 6:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
I think this may help others to enjoy the Tedit features and maybe get a few users up to speed better.
As far as bringing more players into the fold .. it might just do it :)
But for one thing .. from your side ..you will gain more in royalty then you probably do now.

Again .. that is not a bad thing ..

But for the most part , I believe its a good step to help all who care to learn more about the game at a lower cost and fair price as well.

my 2 ยข
Author:  Kane [ Mon May 31, 2010 9:12 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
How about the people who already have TWGS lite, but want to upgrade to the full vers. Would that be $20 or $40?
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon May 31, 2010 11:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
I actually forgot to point out that this is a price for everything, rolling it all into one cost. When I put TWGS out years ago, I had a goal of eventually putting some other games on the server, so I wanted to keep it seperate from TradeWars. Eventually it was going to be just a game server, with TW just one game on it. Obviously that never came about, and it's not a priority for me at this time. So for simplicity and a better value, I'm just going to integrate TradeWars into TWGS and provide a single registration code. That code will also include Gold as standard functionality. That also means that if you currently have TradeWars without Gold, the next version will activate Gold.

As for upgrades, I was thinking I would handle it like this. If you have TradeWars, but no TWGS, the costs would be:

Personal (1/1) FREE
Small (2/2) $10
Medium (4/4) $25
Large (10/10) $40
Massive (24/100) $55

And if you have TWGS Lite, the costs would be:

Large (10/10) $10 (would actually keep 24 games from Lite)
Massive (24/100) $20
Author:  Singularity [ Mon May 31, 2010 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
If you could increase the number of games... 4 active games isn't very many for a lite, and
if you could find a way to get more than 24 on a full, that would rock. I know it's limited by
the alphabet, but what about numbers?
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon May 31, 2010 1:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
I'm actually wanting to avoid a situation where one game site provides for everyone's needs. That just gives others a chance to provide their "niche" of game types. That's the thinking behind that. I really never imagined one game site actually running 24 different game edits!
Author:  Thrawn [ Mon May 31, 2010 1:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
John Pritchett wrote:
I'm actually wanting to avoid a situation where one game site provides for everyone's needs. That just gives others a chance to provide their "niche" of game types. That's the thinking behind that. I really never imagined one game site actually running 24 different game edits!


Heh heh we did for quite a while.

However, we have designed our own edits specifically for our site and find 25 slots are more than enough for our needs. I could never see us needing more than that.
Author:  Singularity [ Mon May 31, 2010 4:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
John Pritchett wrote:
I'm actually wanting to avoid a situation where one game site provides for everyone's needs. That just gives others a chance to provide their "niche" of game types. That's the thinking behind that. I really never imagined one game site actually running 24 different game edits!


The problem is inactive games. I've got almost the whole alphabet filled, but half the games
are inactive. Basically I cycle thru games, and rather than deleting a game and having to
re-import it later, I can just rebang it and make it active again when necessary.

Another situation is duplicate edits. A sysop might want to provide 5 different stock edits,
or 5 different subzero edits. Or both.
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon May 31, 2010 4:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
I would consider sites like that to really be "premier" sites, and I wouldn't want every site to be that big. I actually considered increasing the cost for sites that big, so those who run them would have less competition, and there would be more of a variety of smaller sites to choose from as well. The 4 game/4 connection registration is really intended for small private games among friends, so I think 4 games at a time is plenty there. The next level, 10 games and 10 connections might be a public game, but for someone who isn't expecting to handle a huge amount of traffic.

Back in the day, TradeWars sold 1 reg for 1 game and only supported 1 connection, so I really opened it up by allowing so many games on one registration. I've just heard from some that it actually hurts the game by having so many games and fragmenting the player base (such as it is).

For a variety of reasons, I do think it's possible that the player community could experience some growth in the near future. I'm trying to prepare for that so that the game has the best chance of capturing and retaining as many players as possible. That includes a better pricing structure, support for more traditional and old-school players, and a central game list site where people can locate games to play.
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon May 31, 2010 4:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
Sing, so to support that, I'd basically say there's a limit on ACTIVE games, but not a limit on the number installed on the server. I have no problem with that. It would still be useful to be able to manage a large number of games, then decide which ones to activate at any given time. And that wouldn't be hard to implement. Would that help?
Author:  Singularity [ Mon May 31, 2010 5:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
John Pritchett wrote:
Sing, so to support that, I'd basically say there's a limit on ACTIVE games, but not a limit on the number installed on the server. I have no problem with that. It would still be useful to be able to manage a large number of games, then decide which ones to activate at any given time. And that wouldn't be hard to implement. Would that help?


Yep, that'll work.
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon May 31, 2010 9:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
Ok, it's on my list.
Author:  Thrawn [ Mon May 31, 2010 9:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
So does that mean you can have 25 active games only, but have 30+ games actually ready in the TWGS? Then you can "rotate" games as you want to. So, for example, Games A-Z are active, plus you have an additional 5 games ready. You can mark 5 out of your 25 inactive, then activate 5 you have installed as extras?
Author:  John Pritchett [ Mon May 31, 2010 10:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
Yeah, I see no reason why there can't be any number of games in your list, but a limit on how many are active at any one time. I don't want to get into building some kind of management system to facilitate having hundreds of games in your list. I would imaging that it might get messy if you have too many in the list right now.

Also, keep in mind that "active" means a game can't be accessed from a player connection. But it can be accessed from the Command Center or from an admin connection. That will allow you to interact with an inactive game if you want to test settings, etc. You just can't open it up to your remote players, or from a local game using a telnet client or helper.
Author:  ElderProphet [ Tue Jun 01, 2010 8:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: New pricing
I think the pricing is reasonable, and I especially like the free personal version. You might consider counting local connections more leniently than external connections. Maybe 2 local connections could count as 1 node.

It would be useful, especially for Sysops trying to recreate the classic BBS feel, to be able to limit the number of active nodes per game, from 1 up to the maximum nodes of their license. Then if a Sysop wants to run a 100-node unlimited game next to a 1-node classic 250-turn game, he would be able to.
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