Warrior General Games

Originally posted by Corndog
Because servers have infinite processing power.

Not sure what type of servers you have, but if you wanna play this game, how many dots can each of your current servers support? Divide the cost of 1 server by how many dots you can fit on it, and we will have the cost per dot. Rough estimates are fine, but I dare you to calculate that. And I'm willing to bet everything I own that the cost per dot is less than $0.01.

Sites like youtube exist that have shitloads of hd video up on the interwebs that run only on ad revenue. Don't sit here and try to tell me that people creating additional dots at anything less than $30-$90 isn't cost effective. Even if dots were all $10 each, you want people to build as many dots as possible and should be happy to buy additional servers as necessary because it means you are making more bags of money...

Well I can tell you that servers cost (way) more than a thousand dollars a month and there's definitely not a hundred thousand active players. And players usually play for more than a month.

So...paypal?

You surely don't think server costs is from storing the player row in the database? If people were happy with players that just sat there and didn't play games or anything, yeah, you can "fit" them all on our database server for almost no cost at all.

Originally posted by Corndog
Well I can tell you that servers cost (way) more than a thousand dollars a month and there's definitely not a hundred thousand active players. And players usually play for more than a month.

So...paypal?

I'm talking cost per dot, not cost per user. Try to keep up. A lot of this cost is in site infrastructure. If active users stayed the same but an additional 100,000 dots were created, what would your additional server cost be?

The stance that $3/$6/$9 per dot/season barely covers server costs to support that dot, is a completely ridiculous stance...

So let's say the cost is quartered as mentioned in the OP...and let's even act like dots don't cost anything in the way of servers because computers are magic.

Do you think people are really going to start making four times as many dots as they do now? Do you think new users are going to start flooding into a niche 7 year old browser game?

Originally posted by Corndog
You surely don't think server costs is from storing the player row in the database? If people were happy with players that just sat there and didn't play games or anything, yeah, you can "fit" them all on our database server for almost no cost at all.

Even with infrastructure for additional games, the cost per dot is tiny. For each game simmed, each dot is taking up 1/110th of the resources needed since there are 55 dots/team. It costs very roughly 33000 flex/season to boost a 55 dot team (600 x 55). Say a 30% flex discount when purchased on average. $231 to boost a team each season. A team plays 24 games/season (scrims have an additional cost which more than supports per scrim). Are you going to honestly sit there and tell me than for $231 you guys can barely afford the cost to run 24 games referencing your database, and store 55 dots?

Oh but I forget we have 70% flex return. Not a real business model and having a lower flex return with lower upfront cost would be beneficial to price people into more dots, but I digress. So $231 * .3 would be $69.30/season per team to store 55 dots in a database and run 24 games. There is no world where you guys are extremely winning from that.

And keep in mind my shitty caculations didn't even include custom equipment, which is 55x1100 = 60,500 flex/team. Discount by 30% for flex purchase discount and you have $423. Divide that by 12 seasons (480 days is 12 seasons) and you have another $35 per team per season. Or rather $10.57 after you take into account the 70% flex refund. Again not that the flex refund cost should be taken into account in this way since all you care about is flex purchased to cover your bills...

If there was an insatiable demand for more dots, all of your arguments might be relevant.

The fact is that there's zero external demand and limited internal demand. You're paying premiums for what is essentially a niche product. It would be cool if that wasn't the case, but it is what it is.

Originally posted by Corndog
So let's say the cost is quartered as mentioned in the OP...and let's even act like dots don't cost anything in the way of servers because computers are magic.

Do you think people are really going to start making four times as many dots as they do now? Do you think new users are going to start flooding into a niche 7 year old browser game?

Talking about only 900 flex dots here for practical purposes, can obviously to extrapolated to other tiers.

#1 you don't quarter cost. You probably should reduce dot cost a little but you guys are maniacs who probably won't consider it. Honestly what should be done is flex return should be scaled way back so dots can be priced more aggressively. You did this in GLB2 because you understand that 70% flex return with high upfront costs means less sales, so why not use the genius rational you've already realized on this game? If instead of 900 with 70% flex return (net 270 flex/season to boost), you could be at 450 flex with a 35% flex return, means it costs net 292.2 flex/season to boost (which is actually making dots slightly more expensive).

#2 You shouldn't be obsessed with up front cost. You have long term customers that are trapped playing this game for long periods of time. What you should care about is flex/season cost to play. People will run through current flex the more dots they have and the longer they play, ensuring more flex purchases.

#3 since all you care about is monthly costs and you clearly have long-term sustained customers, morphing GLB to a per season subscription that gets auto billed are different bucket tiers of dots would have made an insane amount of sense. People forget about auto-billed things, and it ensures people keep making purchases monthly. Obviously we are at a weird place for a change like that and I'm 100% sure you've stopped reading this anyhow and this wouldn't be considered regardless, but man would it make a lot of sense. Peeps are on the $20/tier but need more dots they can upgrade to the $35/month tier. Then since dots are on teams they are unlikely to downgrade and have to retire time and fuck over teammates. Obviously converting current flex to x number of months would be difficult, but you could keep a la carte purchases for price stratification as well.

#4 Even if new users are a 100% fantasy, traffic reporting sites prove GLB1 is still your highest traffic game despite all the bad toxic customers you hate. WG should be looking for ways to actually use and not lose current customers. If you want to plaster ad's all over the sidebar including to fantasy football sites (who let me tell you would love to have ad's as GLB is their ideal target market) so you guys can make some cash, go ahead. If that'll stop you from being a self-righteous while hating GLB1ers and being bad at math, it'd be well worth annoying ads imho.

Let it go, WISEiVan. Ship is already out to sea.

Originally posted by Corndog
If there was an insatiable demand for more dots, all of your arguments might be relevant.

The fact is that there's zero external demand and limited internal demand. You're paying premiums for what is essentially a niche product. It would be cool if that wasn't the case, but it is what it is.

Just to backtrack to the OP, supply and demand never meet in the real world because buyers and sellers have unequal information.

Lets not pretend WG's past/present/future decisions cannot effect internal demand. You guys should have the desire to increase internal demand by GLB1 customers to monetize them. If you don't think the heavy up front pricing structure of GLB has turned away many potential customers, and over time lost you many current customers, you guys are kidding yourself.

There is a reason all companies try to hook people in with low monthly payments. You don't see tv advertisements for cars saying "Pay $45,000 up front today" because that leads to a TON less sales than low monthly payment numbers.

Perhaps nothing in this thread I've said makes any sense at all, but fwiw I do have a degree in economics. However I'm hungover and enjoying endless rambling on my mechanical keyboard this morning, so thx for that Cornblade. And don't worry, I don't think anything I typed will change anything, but it's been fun.

Yes, a site with a couple thousand active users has huge bargaining power.

We totally haven't looked around and gotten zero responses.

Originally posted by WiSeIVIaN
You guys should have the desire to increase internal demand by GLB1 customers to monetize them.

They already have extended plateau, non-refundable CE upgrades, reduced flex return on sold teams... They've pretty much stretched out all they are going to out of the userbase.


Originally posted by WiSeIVIaN
If you don't think the heavy up front pricing structure of GLB has turned away many potential customers, and over time lost you many current customers, you guys are kidding yourself.

Not only is it insane to change the way you charge 7 years into a game, the current system is why most of the userbase is still here.

Originally posted by Corndog
Yes, a site with a couple thousand active users has huge bargaining power.

We totally haven't looked around and gotten zero responses.

lol

u got zero replied

But I'm also not understanding this "huge upfront cost" argument. Up to nine dollars every two months is pretty cheap. You can get half a dozen players for less than most monthly MMOs cost.

Originally posted by Corndog
But I'm also not understanding this "huge upfront cost" argument. Up to nine dollars every two months is pretty cheap. You can get half a dozen players for less than most monthly MMOs cost.

This is a poor argument, most MMOs give you infinitely more hours of gameplay for lets say 15 dollars a month. If you have 6 plateau dots you basically don't do anything with those dots other than maybe check their stats or watch a few replays. We're talking maybe an hour or two tops of actual dotball every 2 days. The rest is surfing the forums or w/e.