Alternative funding streams

[Scorpio Shirica]

I'm really loving the game so far, it's the Age of Sail game I have been looking for since I even dreamed of such a game.

 

I understand server costs can be quite a bit, as well as the usual development costs. I'd like to suggest potential optional funding streams. Such as Patreon with little perks like names in credits somewhere or on a developer blog, newsletter, whatever. Or maybe another optional subscription model. Not one with any in-game performance perks, no pay to win or anything, but little things that would cost little in the way of resources. (Such as mentions in credits, thank you email from Admin or whatever you think would be appropriate)

 

There are a lot of generous people that love the idea of this game and what it has so far and I think would welcome alternative ways to keep supporting the game. I would hate to hear the developers start struggling to maintain servers or anything of that sort. Massively Online Multiplayer games are never simple and rarely cheap.

 

Hopefully I don't catch too much grief for this suggestion, keep up the good work devs! I really like what I've got to play so far.

 

Edit: Added Premium Ships as a lot of people seem to like the idea of them. Added Ship skins/ cosmetics as another poll choice. You can delete your vote if you want and do multiple choices. 

Edited January 9, 2016 by Scorpio Shirica

[jodgi]

I hope they release premium ships. I'll buy every single one.

See? Now I'll take the flak, not you scorp.

[manuva85]

Make us able to rename ships and have different flags for $$ and you gonna swim in cash...

[Nathaniel]

Yes, i think renaming ships, alternative paintjobs (still close to historical, no pink ships) and customizable flags and pennants would be a good start.

[jodgi]

...no pink ships...

[admin]

thank you guys! 

[Captain Holman]

Give us customisable mast heads! So then we can have a naked mermaid with tiddies britannia ruling the waves.

[Bigvalco]

I would personally love to see premium ship skins. Now the way they would work is that you purchase the skin with real money and then you get an "upgrade" that you can slot onto the ship that it is meant for and it changes the cosmetic of the ship to something cool and still historical to set you apart from the peasants. This would help with the problem of premium ships being captured by friends and what not, because if someone captured your ship it wouldn't still have the skin on it. Just something to think about.

[JJWolf]

I would personally love to see premium ship skins. Now the way they would work is that you purchase the skin with real money and then you get an "upgrade" that you can slot onto the ship that it is meant for and it changes the cosmetic of the ship to something cool and still historical to set you apart from the peasants. This would help with the problem of premium ships being captured by friends and what not, because if someone captured your ship it wouldn't still have the skin on it. Just something to think about.

 

+1

 

This is the case with the game Elite Dangerous as a decent money spinner except it has become more expensive for even the average avid gamer, they're getting a bit greedy with their prices but that's for another topic.

 

A well balanced and decently priced offering of 'skins', 'flags', 'pennants', 'mastheads', etc. would draw in a lot of extra funds to help the Devs without making it a pay 2 win. Caution needs to be made to keep flags within bounds of the nations they originate from or relate with. E.g. I would gladly buy the Australian Federation Flag/Ensign or National Colonial Flag for Australia to fly as a Brit player.

Edited January 4, 2016 by JJWolf

[BoomBox]

+1 for all of this. it's a good product and i love playin and i would like to keep supporting it.

[poison]

I'm all for optional support, through any method, as long as supporters do not receive any boost to their gameplay. Those who purchased naval action but don't continuously donate should not be punished as they are in many purchase+subscription games (or subscribers rewarded, a slightly less heinous offense), so any premium item should be purely cosmetic. See Path of Exile for an example of how to do microtransactions right.

[Scorpio Shirica]

Of course, I'm not advocating for any pay 2 win systems. 

[Justme]

As long as it don't go down the subscription route I'm happy.

Premium ships definite buy for me, skins, flags etc as long as they are well designed.

[Scorpio Shirica]

Added premium ships and skins/ cosmetics as other options as lots of folks seem to like those.

 

You can delete your previous vote and do multiple choices when voting. 

[Ian2492]

I think that a ''cosmetic'' slot is a great idea but it also depends on how much money they could make out of it vs how much money they need to spend making new skins. 

[Diceman]

Maybe they could let us help fund the creation of new ships...

Kind of a Naval Action Kickstarter program...

[Jacob van Heemskerck]

thank you guys!

normally i would like to see this comming frome the developers themselfes, but with this i do now really know that this is necessary.

i voted Other because i want to vote multiple options.

- premium ships

- cosmetics like different color sails, hulls. custom SHIP NAMES and Figureheads (historical accurate, as much as possible!)

- more things to do in OW other than exploring, battle and trading

but yes everything to keep Naval action Running and as interesting as possible!

Edited January 10, 2016 by Jacob van Heemskerck

[ThunderMark]

I'm not a fan of premium ships, everyone should sail every ship is in the game without paying extra cash.

Nonetheless, buying rights for naming ships ,large variety of flags sails, skins(although there should be a basic form of costumization for free, afterall it's a MMO game) extra slots for outposts etc  I'm all in.

[jodgi]

Explain why opposed to prem ships, please. I'm trying to understand the motivation and line of thought.

[ThunderMark]

First of all, it's titled as a MMO game. This kind of genre must have diversity of free choosing, in our case ships. If you lock content under the context of money , some people might be upset about it. I've played a generous number of mmos and I had encountered only one game with "premium" content ( StarWars- The Old Republic) where you can choose only 3 free races and about 10-15 paid races. The result of that was ... let's say shameful. 

 

I said I'm no fan of premium ships but I don't mind them IF the ratio between free ships and premium ships is consistent ( in my eyes a good ratio would be 1 premium ships to above 5 free ships).

[manuva85]

Explain why opposed to prem ships, please. I'm trying to understand the motivation and line of thought.

If they are like yacht(you cant basicly loose them and get back) + if they are big enought to enter pb you got one free ship to fight pbs. Kind of close to ppw for me. I would buy them prolly either way. I like the idea of ship cosmetic more.

[Xoosch]

If they are like yacht(you cant basicly loose them and get back) + if they are big enought to enter pb you got one free ship to fight pbs. Kind of close to ppw for me. I would buy them prolly either way. I like the idea of ship cosmetic more.

this could be adressed if you just unlock the right to purchase them ingame, but still need to buy them for gold.

 

Another (better i think) possibility is just to sell Premium Ship recipes. So to be able to build them you need to buy the recipe with real money but once build you can sell them ingame for gold. So the devs get a bit money for maintaining servers but nobody is realy forced to invest real money to be able so sail all ships.

[Grongash]

As long as it doesn't involve pay2win I am fine with some sort of Subscription (more xp/gold gain or something) and/or Premium ships. It is impossible to fund the complexity of the game we want and hope for with just the base game. I enjoy the game and wouldn't mind to pay some to reduce the grind.

 

I don't know how other players see it, but if you really are going to try to fund it just by Base-game sells i would most likely jump ship rather soon, those models never work.

[Cmdr Thrudd]

I'm most keen on cosmetics though I know I'd also be happy to buy premium ships. They would have to be a blueprint unlock then craft them in game rather than redeemable like the yacht or the economy would suffer.

I'm not very keen on an optional subscription as those always become non-optional in my head. They need to have a big enough effect in-game to encourage folks to pay for them and I personally always find that it usually means playing without one is disadvantageous.

[jodgi]

Another (better i think) possibility is just to sell Premium Ship recipes. So to be able to build them you need to buy the recipe with real money but once build you can sell them ingame for gold. So the devs get a bit money for maintaining servers but nobody is realy forced to invest real money to be able so sail all ships.

I used to think this was a weird sales object before crafting was added into the game. I was afraid the crafting would demand crazy amounts of time to do, so I was worried it would be something I wouldn't have use for. Even I can force myself to a bit of crafting, so those special ship blueprints would be viable to me.

It is still a weak product, though. It appeals mostly to collectors.

Just look at what Warthunder, WoT, WoWS and all those games have proven to be a fantastic source of income: Player's willingness to pay to accelerate the grind. Players achieve that by buying premium time and premium vehicles. Last time I checked WoT's main source of income was premium time, next up was premium tanks. They also have cosmetics, and it does sell, but it doesn't float the boat, so to speak.

In Naval Action we have an additional deep set player desire you could tap into: Fear of loss. There is a tiny fraction of players here who love the fear of loss, for them it adds excitement. The rest of us get little out of it and dislike the idea of losing grinding time.

Premium ships you cannot lose would be wonderful! If we could get stuff we're not afraid to lose the amount of players actively looking for fights in the OW and events would increase, maybe even sharply. That would be glorious!

It's easy to avoid pay-to-win. The war is won with SOLs, so just don't sell prem big ones. You can even cap premium ships at 12lbs frigates if you're really worried.

Premium ships would be pay for comfort, convenience and FUN!

They would sell like crazy, too.