[Suggestion] Don't paywall custom scenarios!

Hi,

Let me start by saying that Card Hunter is a fantastic game and is a lot of fun to play. The way it is monetized is for the most part very fair and does not fall into the pay-to-win trap which is the demise for so many f2p games.

There is however one exception that unfortunately stands out. I think it is a very big mistake to only let "club members" start custom scenarios. There are a number of reasons why I think this is a very bad idea:

• You rightfully excluded custom scenarios from loot (I guess primarly to prevent exploits that would undoubtedly happen). So people playing custom scenarios will do so for fun and not to gain some quick loot. This makes it a bad fit for the card hunter club. The card hunter club is clearly designed for "power-gamers", it is a fixed price for a fixed duration, meaning the value you get out of the card hunter club directly depends on how much you play. The more you play the better the value. Because of this, players that are interested in the card hunter club for the extra loot will probably not care that much about custom scenarios and people that want to play exciting and unique custom scenarios are not that interested in extra loot.
• Custom Scenarios will thrive and grow with community involvement. The more people you can interest in custom scenarios the more people will work on custom maps. Putting stones in the way of people wanting to play a custom scenario (it has to be opened by a club member) is a bad premise to grow that part of the game.
• Custom scenarios is the kind of content that can keep players involved or bring them back, something very important for f2p games. But it's not the kind of content that you are playing exclusively. So tying it up into a subscription model is taking it away from the people that are probably most likely to play it.
• Just as a general rule for f2p games, paywalling of features of the game is often a bad move, because you generally want as many people playing as possible. If you look at custom scenarios specifically they could certainly appeal to players that have a background in RPs. I could well see an older player that might not care much about ranked multiplayer but would enjoy a custom scenario with a friend being interested in buying a figurine that better reflects the idea of his character. But by paywalling custom games you are losing these kind of customers.
• If there is a technical reason for custom scenarios to be paywalled (extra server load or something similar), try finding another way. Maybe limit the amount of custom games someone can open in a given timeframe or something in that area.
• If you feel like you need additional compensation for the effort put into the custom scenarios (developement of the map editor and such) this is a very understandable situation. But there are much better ways to monetize community content, take a look at what Valve does with their f2p games. If you increase the options of the map editor and eventually allow to create full-fledged campaigns with story screens and all that stuff, you could allow for the very best of them to be sold similarly to the "treasure hunts" you already have, even giving a small cut to the creator. If that is too far-fetched for now, maybe just try and find another way that does not combine it with the subscription based card hunter club.

I feel like it would be a shame for custom scenarios to be paywalled in the release of the game. I think there is a lot of potential in that feature that would be severely limited or even completely ignored if a large part of the community will not have the opportunity to start custom games...

Keep up the great work and thank you,

h0munkulus

 

As one of the leading contributors to Dungeons of Dredmor's modding community, I can't overemphasize this point enough. Back in the first 6 months of the game, before the mod loader made it easy to contribute, we had like four guys. Once everything got as easy as "change some XML in notepad and upload", we had about four hundred. Making custom scenarios paywalled is going to cripple what amounts to the mod community here in exactly the same way. I'm a paying customer thus far, and I'm still advocating hard for this change.

 

Technically true, but I don't think anyone has actually played either of the maps I posted to the custom map thread. (I certainly can't.) I think freeloaders should be allowed to at least play their own maps.

 

I don't really see what the Card Hunter situation has in common with Dredmor; That sounds like an ease-of-use issue that held modding back at first and not a paywall. (And technically, Dredmor has a paywall too; you have to buy it to do ANYTHING with it, unless you count piracy)

 

Dredmor's "paywall" is less for everything you could ever buy than it is for one month of custom scenarios in Card Hunter. Furthermore, if you can't see the similarities between 'can't participate because difficult' and 'can't participate because broke' (ProTip: it's can't participate), I can only assume that you're being deliberately obtuse. Custom/homegrown anything doesn't work unless it has a substantial community behind it. Anything that hinders the growth of the community is going to keep the custom scenario scene from being anything that matters in terms of the awesomeness of the game.

Now, that might well be perfectly OK with CH staff; I have no idea. But if they want to see a strong custom scenario community develop, keeping the ability to host custom games behind the payall isn't going to get them the results they want.

 

So you're saying that if the Dredmor devs made the game free instead of adding easy mod support, there would be just as big of a modding community behind it? I have to doubt that. And the value for dollar has nothing to do with my point; I was saying that both companies need to make money, they just have the wall in different spots.

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I will agree though that I think a subscription is a bad pay model for that particular feature. Perhaps a flat fee to unlock it permanently would be better, much like the treasure hunts. I do realize that the custom scenario feature is virtually unlimited content and treasure hunts don't really compare (aside from rewarding loot), but having the feature open to players without continued expense would go a long way to encouraging people to stick around and generate more content. I realize the club doesn't have much else going for it though, but maybe this will be more viable once the club has more features and doesn't need the scenario editor included anymore.

 

Why not sell the "Basic Scenario Editor" with a limited selection of tiles, enemies, and/or cards; and then bundle extras in with the treasure hunts? So it becomes like "Buy this treasure hunt, not only do you get this premade adventure to play but you also unlock the contents for use in your scenario editor". They essentially become miniature expansion packs for a base game. You *might* even be able to get away with having to have those treasure hunts unlocked to play other peoples scenarios that draw resources from it.

 

I have only played a solo custom game up to now, but aren't all custom games resulting in no chests / items / rewards at all? I don't think they are in direct competition with the Treasure Hunts, because a lot of people play Treasure Hunts to, well, hunt treasure. If you can't do that on custom maps, the custom maps are more of a multiplayer-for-fun feature.

If you made creating and playing custom scenarios free, you could probably actually make money by taking the best player-made maps and turn them into a treasure hunt. Make some contest, have players vote, give the author of the best maps some pizza, and then make money from those maps.

 

I really appreciate information like this, informed debate is so nice =]

My opinions in brief:
- Getting people to pay for cosmetic-only items is great.
- If that doesn't attract enough revenue, encouraging pizza->gold->items buying is next best. Though this can attract "p2w" criticism.
- Pizza-walls / subscriptions are effective (see above), but may alienate some f2pers.

I've seen pizza-gold trading work in other big online games: Players post offers to buy or sell, the game lists them in order, and then there's a one-click "buy / sell" interface that uses the best offer.

That works both ways.
- New paying players can cash in pizza at a sensible rate, and spend it in Randimar's Rarities.
- High hours f2pers can grind out enough gold to buy pizza for their club subscriptions.

A market like that would take a bit of implementation effort - probably not worth it until later in the game's lifecycle.

 

Personally, I never would have thought of the treasure hunts as money makers. I've unlocked them and haven't bothered to even go through them all as of yet.

I feel that if you were to allow creation of custom scenarios and charge for additional content packs for them you would likely recoup any loss from treasure hunts. My view may be a skewed view as I perhaps undervalue treasure hunts and would myself be more invested in creating a strong community of longer term players and creators. Might be something to talk about though.

 

This is certainly an understandable thought process. Some assorted thoughts about that:

• I am not sure that custom games would really be in competition with treasure hunts. You already have essentially unlimited SP content that even gives rewards (repeating campaign adventures). In addition I feel like the keyword in "treasure hunt" is treasure and with custom scenarios not giving loot (the right call!), I think there is even less potential competition.
• I can see custom scenarios as a great stepping stone into multiplayer. In fact this is how I found out they can only be started by club members, I wanted to play some "sheltered" games against the AI with the MP rules/maps to get a feel for it. I think often people are a bit hesitant to go into mp (especially in 1v1 formats), because of the competitive and at times "agressive" nature that people on the internet can have. You access custom games over the MP screen, sure people might start with their SP party and some SP focused scenario, but maybe one day they want to see what MP is all about, use a MP party and a victory squares map and they are essentially playing MP. I later realized that you first play against Gary when you select the ranked button, but simply clicking on that button can deter some people (on an unrelated note, maybe adding a tooltip for first timers that they will play Gary fist might be a good idea).
• I think there is a lot of potential to monetize community generated content in f2p games. Valve essentially has thousands of community contributors creating items for them, that they than sell for a profit. As a much smaller studio you probably don't want the legal headache of directly paying out money and stuff like that. But maybe a system where community contributors can submit there best work, you review it and even potentially unlock loot for it and then sell it for pizza at a new kind of ingame store and maybe give the creator a small cut in form of pizzas (I guess like 10%-25%). This way everything would stay ingame and you would potentially have an unlimited supply of "treasure hunt"-like content.
• In my experience the backbone of succesful f2p games is a dedicated MP community. I already talked earlier about how I think custom games could bring primarly SP gamers into the MP. But I also want to iterate on what I wrote in my first post about how I see custom scenarios as a "keep and bring back"-players-feature. Often with games that have a primarly competitive MP (1v1 ranked) you can run into a problem with players that feel like they don't have the skill or time to compete and get frustrated. Custom games can be the perfect outlet to keep these players playing. It is a break from the competitive setting, maybe a laid back game against the AI, maybe a game against another player on a goofy map. I also find that players are often more likely to engage in conversation and talk about stuff when they are in more laid back situation. In competitive matches you are very concentrated and try to play your best, but when you play a custom game it comes a lot easier to talk about the game and other stuff and maybe find people that are a lot of fun to play with.
• Finally I think community generated content is often the best viral marketing you can possibly have. Some game of thrones or lord of the rings inspired custom map, cross-posted in a fan-forum or sub-reddit can reach massive amounts of players that might otherwise have never heard of your game. There are so many great success storys of seemingly small games that hit it big, because some very talented community members got involved and created some awesome content.

It is certainly a difficult position for you to decide what is best for the game and it is always easy to argue from a position with no risk involved. My gut is telling me that custom scenarios in the fantastic framework that you are building could hit it really big. Even from a more conservative, financial standpoint I feel like tying in custom scenarios with the card hunter club is not going to generate a lot of extra profit. Personally I can't see many players going for the card hunter club solely because they want access to the custom scenarios and at the same time a don't really see people forgoing treasure hunts to play custom scenarios with no loot. Then again this is very much my personal, subjective viewpoint that might very well be off in comparison to the complete player base.

Thank you again for the great game you are creating and best of luck that you achieve the success you deserve!

Best regards,
homunkulus

 

My gut instinct is to suggest that the custom map maker and ability to play them be a one time purchase. The idea of tying them to the club I dislike because it means that if your club membership lapses you lose the ability to play maps that you have made and played in the past.

However, I think homunkulus has made some excellent points as to why you might consider going further and making it free. Alternatively a limited free version and an expanded one-time purchase version is certainly something that seems like it would be worth considering.

 

I would like it to be free but i do see the problem with it taking money away from premium dungeons for a lot of people.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with this part. A one-time purchase will definitely goes a long way. If people have to pay for a subscription fee, they will have to find a way to justify its worth. As homunkulus said, custom game is in direct competition with loot-earning game. Coming from the mapmaker community of Starcraft 2, I can't stress enough the importance of a large community to keep the scene active. Even with a 60$ price tag, the editor for SC2 is still largely available for free and players can still play any single-player map for free (if they know where to look). The reason SC2 modding scene is not as blooming as it should be, however is a different issues.

About making it free, I would have to say no. Otherwise there is very little else Blue Manchu can monetize. Monetizing the custom maps will cost a significant ammount of resources from Blue Manchu, especially when they have to make sure there isn't any copy of their premium treasure hunter floating around. Putting a paywall on the ability to play custom maps is fine, but not a subscription services. However, there might need to be some other benefits for subscribers to make up for this.

 

I'm curious what percentage of people who buy pizza do not buy club memberships.

Two things are basically guaranteed to keep people coming back:

• Daily chests given to each player first time they log in each day, rewards reset when you reach the end or miss a day (note that ounces are premium currency in that game)
• Role-Play chatroom and forum board

But logging in every day does not necessarily mean they'll buy anything. This is advertised as a free game, so most players (like me) will come and play and not pay anything. Also, you're claiming that all the non-cosmetic content is available to free players, yet there are all those maps I can't try (treasure hunts and custom).

 

I don't know, I feel like even a one time purchase would have largely the same negative effects as tying it in with the "club-member" subscription.

The problem is that paywalling features or gamemodes has a horrible track record in f2p games. I think the primary problem is that it stands in direct competition with other ways a customer can spend money on the game. For most customers to spend money on a free to play game they want to "feel" like they are offered a fair value proposition. And to determine whether that is the case they need to understand what they are paying for. All the ways to spend money in Card Hunter perfectly fit that requirement (the "glass cabinet" to showcase the club benefit is a very good design decision!). But custom scenarios don't really fit in here really well, because they don't give you loot and they are not directly visible cosmetics, you are essentially paying to play the game a different way, this makes it very difficult to judge for most customers.

This brings us to the second issue with paywalling features or gamemodes in f2p games, the conflict with the business model itself. It can often raise the "you can't have it both ways-defense mechanism" in customers. Oftentimes this can cause significant resistance in customers because they feel like they have been advertised a f2p game, but then they find that the developer is purposefully withholding parts of the game for profit. Custom scenarios are certainly a fringe case, but in my experience success in the f2p market is all about perceived value. And if customers have difficulty judging the value or feel like someone is withholding value they oftentimes keep their wallets in their pockets.

If indirectly monetizing the custom scenarios is not a realistic option and Blue Manchu thinks that the potential from making them fully available does not outweigh the risks, I like the idea of Pengw1n best, limit the amount of custom scenarios you can open. This way you limit the risk of custom scenarios being a direct competition with treasure hunts but still give everyone access to the feature, even if only in a limited fashion by default. If technically possible it would be great if you could at least play your own maps as much as you want, because I think it would be difficult to create maps if you can't really test them properly. In this scenario I think a one time payment option could work and would still be superior to the tie-in with the card hunter club, because customers can now freely test the feature and then decide if unlocking unlimited use of it is a good value proposition.

But for the record, I am still convinced that making custom scenarios fully available for everyone would pay off for the game, even without monetizing community content. Because ultimately I feel that the best way for success is to offer the best product possible and having an active community that is contributing in the form of content creation is one of the strongest assets any game can possibly have in todays gaming world!

 

I'd like to add the perspective of someone recently added to the beta (as of last week). The monthly requirement as well as the increased search timers in multi-player games for chests disincentives me to buy Pizza. I also find the argument where something might drop the purchasing of pizza and competing with treasure hunts perplexing as this is a Beta. Isn't the point of it to test things? I'm sure the community would be accepting of you turning it on premium club one month and off the next both for internal metrics purposes and to give people a chance to see more aspects of the game.

If not to test the game, what is our role as beta testers? Are we just early adopters here to help monetize the "release" or to kick the proverbial tires of every aspect of the game. In addition how can one reasonably expect the bugs in custom scenarios to be fully fleshed out if not tested at load.

I (as an of now unpaying) customer & beta tester also stand behind the idea of a one time purchase to open up custom scenarios. They could in addition be a valuable tool to game masters in traditional pen & paper campaigns. Roll20.net, while a tangental product but still in the roll playing vein, offers something similar by charging to host campaigns but free to play, in addition giving basic tools for mapmaking but charging for some pre-made layers/tiles/pieces.

I'd also like to add that I do like the product as a whole but there are pieces that make me hesitant to pay into it.