Warrior General Games

I think the 70% number is about right. For anyone who puts money into the game at the 20% or higher discounts they will be at worst be breaking even per character. Now to put this in perspective in WoW you pay $15 a month to play the game, if you have no life you will get 75% of that money you spent back in actual play time. The other 25% is wasted by you not being logged in an playing. If you do have a life it is more likely reversed.

Things like getting teams never degrade and are where "serious" users are going to spend most of their money anyways. For player crazy people, they should get a thrill out of continually creating new players.

If the general public really doesn't want to have player retirement, than the only real business option is to have all flex benefits only last one season per player. So each season you'd have to buy new custom equipment, boost, and most likely they would have to implement some other options to use flex points on.

Heck nobody reading this takes home 70% of their gross pay...

I seriously have a problem with people calling this a scam, and I'm not even involved with this in any official way.

If you go buy a movie ticket, the theater isn't scamming you!

If you go bowling, they're not scamming you!

Just because you spend money on something doesn't mean you're being scammed.

sheesh....is everyone on this thing 15 or something?

(my apologies to the responsible teenagers out there)

I'm not sure if the WoW comparison is right, because this game has a lot of downtime between games. I don't know WoW but I imagine every time you log on you can run around and do stuff. I just have one player here at the moment, and there is very little for me to do with him.

Originally posted by Okole
I seriously have a problem with people calling this a scam, and I'm not even involved with this in any official way.

If you go buy a movie ticket, the theater isn't scamming you!

If you go bowling, they're not scamming you!

Just because you spend money on something doesn't mean you're being scammed.

sheesh....is everyone on this thing 15 or something?

(my apologies to the responsible teenagers out there)

its a HACK!!

duhh :O

;D

First let me say that I really DO enjoy this game and I care about what happens to it. Which is why I'm posting now. So if you say that I don't care or that I'm ungrateful, that's completely unfair and opposite of how I feel.

With that being said, I propose a more proactive solution. There are two opposite sides and there has to be a compromise. Players need to be rewarded for good performance and investment of time and money in characters, but they also need to give other people a chance to be the best. Why not have the best of both worlds? Retirement is necessary, yes, but forced retirement is much different, much more of a commitment to this community and game than going up to the top and retiring your player or going inactive from the game. So how can we reward these key players that contributed to the game to make it where it will be in a few years, when players start retiring?

Say the base return for FP when you force retire is 80%, more than the optional retirement but enough that makes sense. Now, what if there was a set of career goals that had to be met to raise that percentage returned? Say if a quarterback had x amount of touchdowns, yards and super bowls (etc.), then the FP returned would be 85% or 90% or 95%, creating a tiered system, rewarding people for putting money into characters while still retiring them and creating incentive for competition. Heck, you could even reward them with specialized equipment that would distinguish them from a new character that just started the game! Anything of that sort, where there could be a tiered system to set apart those who are dedicated and invest money, would be appropriate, especially if it has to do with the FP returned.

I dunno, this makes too much sense to me, it gives you the best of both worlds and the greatest players would be rewarded accordingly while still giving new players a chance to advance.

Let me know what you think.

Maybe we should all just step back from the ledge, I think DD was just talking off the cuff when he mentioned a 70% return of flex points. Personally, I agree in a 100% return of flex points (or at least return of 100% of purchased fp) upon forced retirement of a player. Here is a quote from Bort in a another thread:

"There will be a forced retirement point, so you can't all become uber-gods, and newer players will have their chance to be on top. But, you'll get a refund for the players and what you've spent on them when that happens."

As has been pointed out before, think of the cost per month if you get x% of your FP back.

And as Bort pointed out... 5 years from now, when we're all far beyond the leveling reach of a newbie, and that has no prospect of changing, why would anyone join? I'm not sure if "forced" retirement is the right way to do it, I'm for "forced" decay after x point (seasons, level, whatever is deemed fair), and in due time, it will become indirectly forced retirement due to the face you have no game left.

The two key points-
A. No players are forced to pay.
B. If you never went down, the top of the mountain would make joining this game useless after time.

I concur - forced retirement will be silly. Attribute erosion due to age/years playing football is far more appropriate. Make it possible to get to level 99 by the end of year 10 with optimal PT/investment/development...then make further improvement impossible with annual erosion in talent. Leave it to the gamer to decide when to retire his guy, get the FP back and start anew with some rook.

As for the people whining about not getting 100% of the FP back: you lack any understanding of consumerism or economics. If you spend $50 and get back $35 (70%) after OVER A YEAR OF ENTERTAINMENT PROVIDED BY THIS SITE, you've gotten a crazy bargain. I wouldn't have the slightest problem with a far lower return rate.

Wow...
People spending money on entertainment and then DEMAND their money back. I think you really should appreciate that you get anything back at all. 70% is a lot. This entertainment (that is free) and you chose to pay for bonuses, why would you have anything back?

I agree with several others that some kind of erosion of attribute points would be best. Check out other "manager sites".

Originally posted by IrishHand

As for the people whining about not getting 100% of the FP back: you lack any understanding of consumerism or economics. If you spend $50 and get back $35 (70%) after OVER A YEAR OF ENTERTAINMENT PROVIDED BY THIS SITE, you've gotten a crazy bargain. I wouldn't have the slightest problem with a far lower return rate.

I started to think that I might be against this 70% of FP back idea, but then I read this and it seemed to put it into perspective for me. That was good, thanks.

This has kinda spun off in a weird direction but when I created this topic the whole "I'm only getting 70% of my stuff back??? THAT SUCKS!" wasn't what I was going for. This site has to make money I'm more then happy giving it to them so that they can continue to grow and make this service even better then it already is.

My issue is the fact that at a certain time period the character that you've spent a year creating, developing, training, etc just flat out disappears. He vanishes into database thin air. And from what I've heard the only thing you'll have to remember him by is a tiny jpeg in your profile page telling you at one time he exsisted. There needs to be more connection so that it doesn't feel like a character you've worked a year on is disappearing, rather you are closing one chapter and opening another.

Like I said the idea of playing 15 years unlocks a "create son" option is perfect to me. That way sure you're retiring and ditching your old character but it's not like he flat out falls off the map, he'll have a son to carry on his legacy. That way the guys who have been on this site since the get go will see familiar things like "Deacon Moss Jr." or "Rob Fernandez son of Rudy". I just think you are potentially walking into a huge problem if you are telling people one day down the line your character won't exsist and there will be absolutely nothing to remember him by other then a generic jpeg that every other person on this entire site will eventually have.

How about a GLB HOF? The best athletes end up enshrined in there.

whats the big deal?
People spend money on games like madden every year, play them for a year and get the new one without getting any return..

Originally posted by Hagetaka
Originally posted by DigitalDaggers

yes, players will eventually peak and then plateau.

retirement will happen.

Are we talking level 99 plateau or is this still being decided

I like the idea of breaking up a junta of early adopters from totally owning the top of the ranks, but at a certain point it does kinda suck to invest a lot of time into a character then he's gone.

will it be a cap on the number of seasons per player? will the number of seasons basically become that guy's "age" ?

This kind of got lost in the shuffle of the "whaaaaat do you mean you guys are trying to make money" derail, so I'll ask it again. I'm interested in the mechanics of how you guys might put it into play.

I understand the need for a retirement of existing players and I fully support it. I play other online games that are too dependent on when you started and not on how good you are at the game, so I am completely behind mandatory retirement to give newer players their time in the sun.

However, on the subject of how many flexpoints you get back, regardless of whether it's 25%, 75% or 99%, this fact needs to be reflected on the screen where you buy flex points.

Right now the main site itself makes no mention of retirement and no mention that flex points bought with actual money may disappear into the ether in future.

The purchaser should know about this possibility before they break out the credit card, not bump into the information in the forum afterwards.