The Discussion of Premium: Pro's and Con's

[Tags]

Hey. I am creating this thread because from the conversations stemming in "W21's Current Top 20" the discussion of premium is making the thread move to a "new topic". So. I moved your posts, and hopefully this thread will help you guys.

-Tags

 

[DeletedUser]

I dont think we're going to get affected by the price changes at all. Barely any of us use premium :/

Understandable.
None of you are big enough yet :icon_razz:

 

[emaneht]

it's absolutely ridiculous Premium Points have to be even involved as consideration as to how tribe's will pan out. I agree with the inclusion into the predictions as Midnight has done, but for it to even be a big enough issue that it has to be addressed is shame.

in the end, this will end up being the most expensive game many have ever played-----with some of the worst graphics. I mean atleast add an "attack" or "defend" animation that I could replay 1000 times over instead of just getting a report. [by the way, that last part is sarcasm---kind of]

 

[DeletedUser]

it's absolutely ridiculous Premium Points have to be even involved as consideration as to how tribe's will pan out. I agree with the inclusion into the predictions as Midnight has done, but for it to even be a big enough issue that it has to be addressed is shame.

in the end, this will end up being the most expensive game many have ever played-----with some of the worst graphics. I mean atleast add an "attack" or "defend" animation that I could replay 1000 times over instead of just getting a report. [by the way, that last part is sarcasm---kind of]

premiums has a lot to do with this game thats why it was brought up.

Simple, if you have a 500k+ account and do not have premium, you are screwed, you will not live in this world unless you are never attacked and you can play this game 24/7, it's just not possible. Premium is a requirement for success in this game.

 

[emaneht]

I wasn't arguing Midnight's inclusion of the Premium Point factor in the tribal predictions, I agree with it---I'm arguing that it is ridiculous that an outside, un-related factor, such as money, could determine the ultimate outcome of this---a browser based game.

Like you pointed out, Chad, it reaches a certain point where you basically HAVE to pay to play. Theoretically, one could be the single greatest TW player EVER, but if you can't afford premium you can only do so much. If you pay, you gain an advantage on your competition---that's simply an unfair premise for a game such as this, IMO.

 

[Tags]

I know it may not be my place to chim in.

But most good games are Pay to Play.

I remember when Everquest came out in 1999, beta, and knowing we'd have to pay for it. It is really the benefits that you get from paying.

Playing for free can still be fun, just not all the benefits. Which in the end makes the "premium" factor worth factoring in because it has the outcome of changing what happens to players to their village builds, how they attack, and how they defend.

 

[busamad]

Its funny how so many players mention a lack of premium at 500K & you cannot do it.

You should have played this game years ago no option to bank packets or mass recruit no scripts around for anything at all.

At one stage you could only make nobles in the village with the packets saved in it. (one reason why markets can be made so high) & why the coin option came about.

Now as for graphics I run version 4 plus have had the classic view from day 1.
Only look at the map when needed as most in game things can be done without even looking now.

So add what you can now get looking at what you did get before for the extra money & its not that bad.
The only downside to all this is value for money on this world & thats where you noobs need to up your game play to make it fun for me

 

[elmoblue]

i am currently 600k on this world without premium, all premium gives you is a little bit extra organisation that you can do on an excel spreadsheet instead.

in the past i have played a 5 mil account without premium, then a war started...

i eventually ran out of troops because i simply couldnt be bothered to build more. (perhaps not the best example).

anyway my point is that premium is not neccessary and those that pay for it are wasting money when a couple of excel spreadsheets do exactly the same thing...

 

[busamad]

in the past i have played a 5 mil account without premium, then a war started...

Only a couple of spread sheets.

i think you need more than that. Moving resources, Farming, Recruiting are the 3 parts I do look at the premium more of giving me back time that I can use in RL (Like buying your freedom) than a dire need.

 

[DeletedUser]

For most things you don't need premium and if you are skilled and smart enough (i.e. able to write your own scripts), you can compensate with just a little more activity.

However, there is one thing that makes a huge difference between premium users and others: the ability to tag incomings.Without it, it's way more complicated to play when you have several thousands of incomings. Not to mention that if you don't have premium, many sitters will simply refuse to take your account. I've seen several players leave because of this.

Without premium you are at a serious disadvantage as soon as you are involved in a serious fight.

At this stage, I think this game should be considered as pay to play (as long as you plan to ever have a serious fight and not just play sim city, or attack easy targets). The problem is that many players don't realize it's pay to play.

For those that argue that this game is not worth to spend money for, I believe they should ask themselves how much their time is worth and how much time they spend with this game.


PS @ Busamad, you should understand that not having premium is not a problem as long as other players don't have it either. But it becomes an issue when you have to compete with players with such a huge advantage.

 

[DeletedUser]

in the past i have played a 5 mil account without premium, then a war started...

Only a couple of spread sheets.

I bet you did started using premium when the war started

You can't look into the attack ID's using a spread sheeet can you and its kinda hard/a Headache to keep up with the incoming attacks with just a note book/ a spread sheet if you have [spoil]Then great you wasted a lot of your RL time or you fought with noobies >_<.[/spoil]

 

[elmoblue]

if you have loads of incomings, you block the ones you know are fakes, then you get the co-ordinates of all the attacks. write down which villages have trains.

its just organisation and planning.

 

[busamad]

Which war are we talking out Bwah has pushed me into one war after another :icon_biggrin:

I use premium on this world

I think the main reason why players before did not use premium was that it did not offer much of a gain like it does now. Mind you it took me 6 months to even realise that there was a main forum to read :icon_redface: so might have missed out on a few things early on.
And please do not ask me about farming on my early worlds I never knew you did that to grow.

 

[DeletedUser]

You can't look into the attack ID's using ...

Managing attack IDs without premium is no problem at all.
The only thing that can't be done without premium is tagging incomings (except useless stuff like the COA).

Premium is supposed to make the game easier to manage, not to enable additional things.
And that's the problem with the ability to tag incomings.

 

[DeletedUser]

I agree with Eleandar here, the main advantage to premium is it makes the game easier and saves time.
Imagine having lets say 4,000 incomings, you can sort them out without premium but that would take too long with premium its not a problem at all.
You can group villages, mass recruit, store packets from many villages at once and switch from village to village quickly, this all saves time.

 

[DeletedUser]

That's not exactly what I said :^p

Premium is supposed to make the game easier to manage and nothing more. Without premium, a very skilled player with good scripts can probably manage the account as well as with premium and without spending much more time in the game (I have no idea, but I'd say only 50% more time to do the same as the premium user).

But there is something that can be done with a premium account but can't be done without: it's tagging incoming. No matter how skilled, or how much times the player spend ingame, he will never be able to tag the incomings.

And I consider that tagging incomings is an action, just as sending attacks or supports (you have to press the "ok" button), and it is as much important.

Imagine the game if only premium users could support other players... Wouldn't be much worse than what we have.

Imagine having lets say 4,000 incomings, you can sort them out without premium but that would take too long

You can sort them out almost just as fast with or without premium. You just need the required scripts. I've started writting mines, but I stopped when I realized I couldn't tag (actually I stopped when I activated my Premium and couldn't test the scripts anymore), besides tagging, all I had left was fixing minor bugs and make the script that opens a tab for each village under attack.

But the whole point, is that identifying an incoming is pointless if you don't do anything about it. And the first thing to do is usually to tag the incoming.

 

[DeletedUser]

i have never used premium(besides the free 10 days they give you or w/e) and only got rimmed once but that was my first world and didn't really know how to play (i still built my villages to max points at that time). It gets annoying to attend to all villages once you get up to 70 or something villages but its definatly manageable...i had to play my million point account and perma sit another million account at the same time both without premium and during a war and partially on the front lines and i barely lost any villages.

 

[emaneht]

I know it may not be my place to chim in.

But most good games are Pay to Play.

I remember when Everquest came out in 1999, beta, and knowing we'd have to pay for it. It is really the benefits that you get from paying.

agreed to an extent. though comparing the two games and the benefits you gain for what you pay----it's apples to oranges, IMO. true, MMORPG are incredibly popular----but they also offer MUCH more gameplay/variety/options for the money you put into them.

I do not disagree with a "premium" option, I'm all for supporting the game. However, with the current system and how little money it seems is put into the "improvement" of the game, it feels more like I am paying TW rent than investing in anything. And my landlord just increased the rent significantly without fixing the A/C. :lol:

Playing for free can still be fun, just not all the benefits. Which in the end makes the "premium" factor worth factoring in because it has the outcome of changing what happens to players to their village builds, how they attack, and how they defend.

again, I agree with how Midnight applied the "premium" factor to the predictions. As much as this pains me (given our rocky history) :icon_wink:, I was very impressed with Midnight's consideration of this factor as it is something that I would not have thought about. I just think it exlempifies the PROBLEM with increasing the cost of premi-points so drastically.

Regardless, I realize it is basically a moot point as whats done is done. I just wanted to throw in my .02 regarding how the ability to afford premi-pts could "negatively" affect the outcome of the game for many players. And Tags, as far as I'm concerned, your welcome to chime in any time. Hearing the "other" side of it in a calm/constructive manner is always helpful with these sorts of topics/debates/discussions.

 

[elmoblue]

if you had paid premium from the beginning of this world, and bought it in packages of 5 points each month you would now have spent £69 on this game.

now if you bought the same package each month with the new prices you would have spent £103.

that is a huge increase of £34 for just over 2 years of playing, i am intrigued to see if some players who are not as wealthy as others will deliberately keep there village count low so that they do not need premium to manage a large account.

 

[DeletedUser]

Solid responses from both sides of the table, however, I think we are skirting around the main issue here.
And that is, that the cost of premium is going up.
Is that right? Good? Bad?
Whats going to happen?
Will innogames make more money?
Or will they lose mass amounts of customers?
At the end of the day, who wins?
Are we happy for this to happen? Do we feel the game is worth it?
These are the questions we need to be asking, my friends.