A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Eric Gurt » 7 April 2021, 13:02

nightmar wrote:I am having a hard time to keep up with why this is all of a sudden necessary. What happened and we are required to pay now?


Washington server was removed for same reasons back in the days, we changed multiple servers and I also did reoptimize network traffic used for map transferring and network snapshots mainly because of that.

Coolbuddy been supporting Plazma Burst 2 servers for all these years but wasn't able to have revenue compared to amounts they have spent on servers.

Coolbuddy isn't working with games anymore and is also seeking to cut spendings on their game-related websites. As far as I understand - due to things going worse with their main business because of coronavirus.

We are still figuring out stuff regarding how it all works, can take few days to set all up before benefits for supporters could be implemented.

Unfortunately things aren't free behind the scenes. Sure there theoretically can be alternatives to keeping Plazma Burst 2 official website but will probably won't work as good as it could go with projects like SD2D or any of my future projects I'm developing.

So far main thing Plazma Burst 2 website and servers handle well is being a hub and being good enough middle point between all players - without it only way of playing would be connecting directly, without much anti-cheat support too.
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby ZapruderFilm » 7 April 2021, 13:05

I'd like to offer 15 dollars a month to make DC the only official clan of PB2. Feel free to bid higher other clans images/smilies/kolobok/wink.gif
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Sgt Dwayne » 7 April 2021, 13:53

you give me something, i give you something

pay to win ideas aside (which i will never agree due to the bare fact that UNFAIRNESS will take place), all the other ideas to have exclusive things look considerable

but how many people would actually be convinced to support the game? approx. 150 people play this daily and say half of them decided to support a dollar, which would make 75 dollars... without adding the financial contribution of eric, would this be enough to keep the servers/website running?

come to think of it: eric is developing a new game which will draw some attention so which one would make more sense: paying for the current game or paying for the new game? (referencing to shrooms point in one of the posts)
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Zufix » 7 April 2021, 14:47

Honestly, this is completely fine. The game is incredible in its own right and has every reason to get financial support to keep it running. What's most important and something people for some reason don't mention is the freedom Plazma Burst 2 brings in EVERY aspect. It's what gives its charm, and something that has to be preserved.

All this talk about capes, soundboards and even voice chat is something that would not only heavily damage the competitive and PVP side of the game, it would also damage that same charm. People who support the game should gain novelty rewards like colored usernames, badges for a person's site profile and/or a badge in the in-game leaderboard, not the exclusivity of things like skins, extra permissions or features for Multiplayer or even the ALE, which I don't see happening but it's important to see every possible scenario for this.

This is all my opinion, obviously. The rewards that are gained from supporting the game's servers should be worth it, but not something that affects gameplay itself. Either way, I'll continue to enjoy and love this little game that has not only changed my life, but changed the lives of many others. It's the least I can do. I just hope that the right decisions will be made, because this is something that is not only controversial, but is something that can very easily be done horribly wrong.
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby paulstin » 7 April 2021, 15:05

[quote="ZapruderFilm"]I'd like to offer 15 dollars a month to make DC the only official clan of PB2. Feel free to bid higher other clans images/smilies/kolobok/wink.gif[/quo

The Most Glorious Dark Clan, the oldest and biggest clan in pb2 history, will happily pay for all of PB2 on the following conditions, All Pb2 staff will pay homage and serve the most glorious exhaulted leader Yoshiman the Great, that they accept Yoshiman the Great as supreme ruler of the pb2 world, That there will be global announcements every hour on the hour, that say, LONG LIVE DARK CLAN. LONG LIVE YOSHIMAN THE GREAT. that i am allowed to send my usual spam and advertising of DARK CLAN in global announcements 4 times a day, that Mohamed is made head pb2 mod, and every map contains the DARK CLAN logo...... lol

Seriously though....... I think a paid subscription, is to little to late. you have very few players logging on now, and those that do, some dont have much money, and dont have credit cards to pay, even if they could afford to, ALSO its hard to download the pb2 download, the few players that could pay for a subscription , would not be enough to pay for the running of pb2, THIS SHOULD of been done last year when there was more players online, and a way should of been found , so that players did not have to download anything when flash player ended,

IF PB2/PB2.5 can be made so its played on a browser, and promoted a bit more, then a subscription service could work, after all pb2 is getting over 50 new players making accounts each day, but sadly most dont return, as i suspect they cant or will not download the launcher,,,,

AS for extra benifits, for paid members,, better guns is NOT he answer, as it will give payed members a unfair advantage, Different skins, maybe a logo, when they chat, and a well made members map, WITH the better guns, 3 good bases, with maybe some other good stuff in it, is the answer, as it will encourage others to become payed members, so they can use theses exclusive maps, it really needs to be well thought out and VERY SOON.

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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Sgt Dwayne » 7 April 2021, 15:43

paulstin wrote:The Most Glorious Dark Clan, the oldest and biggest clan in pb2 history, will happily pay for all of PB2 on the following conditions, All Pb2 staff will pay homage and serve the most glorious exhaulted leader Yoshiman the Great, that they accept Yoshiman the Great as supreme ruler of the pb2 world, That there will be global announcements every hour on the hour, that say, LONG LIVE DARK CLAN. LONG LIVE YOSHIMAN THE GREAT. that i am allowed to send my usual spam and advertising of DARK CLAN in global announcements 4 times a day, that Mohamed is made head pb2 mod, and every map contains the DARK CLAN logo...... lol


long live dark clan and paul, literally read all that with a smile on my face lol
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby ZapruderFilm » 7 April 2021, 15:56

Sgt Dwayne wrote:
paulstin wrote:The Most Glorious Dark Clan, the oldest and biggest clan in pb2 history, will happily pay for all of PB2 on the following conditions, All Pb2 staff will pay homage and serve the most glorious exhaulted leader Yoshiman the Great, that they accept Yoshiman the Great as supreme ruler of the pb2 world, That there will be global announcements every hour on the hour, that say, LONG LIVE DARK CLAN. LONG LIVE YOSHIMAN THE GREAT. that i am allowed to send my usual spam and advertising of DARK CLAN in global announcements 4 times a day, that Mohamed is made head pb2 mod, and every map contains the DARK CLAN logo...... lol


long live dark clan and paul, literally read all that with a smile on my face lol

I will contribute as well for this, im actually willing to support the game for some sort of endorsement. Dc plays game more than most people anyway and does not break the rules
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby IforgotmypasswordHaHAA » 7 April 2021, 18:02

As someone pointed out, even with a paid subscription model it's not possible to cover the server costs, so my idea is trying to reduce said server costs by any means possible. I'm not sure about how montlhy server costs are measured so assuming server costs get reduced by ''reducing space'' these are my suggestions:

*Archive all useful tutorials and other useful posts somewhere and delete the forum entirely after that. We can use discord to have any discussion.

*Stop paying for PB2 servers until PB3 comes out. The netcode is pretty bad and nowadays people are mostly ''playing'' RP maps, which is not a big lose considering they could migrate to any other RP game to do the exact same thing.
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby ZapruderFilm » 7 April 2021, 18:30

I dont honestly want to help pay if it means Eric gurt is gonna spend more time working on PB2. I'd ratger see that time spent in literally any of his other projects. I dont want to pay for features, I want to pay so he can work li g on the game most of us have been waiting like 7 years for.
If eric starts soending lots of tjme trying to make donations worth it i will probably unsubscribe
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Da Shaaark » 7 April 2021, 18:58

Eric Gurt asking for charity to save his dead game... How pitiful. Why did it all end like this I wonder... I told you, Eric, to properly advertise the game and add premium content when? 5 years ago or 10 years ago? I don't remember. I only remember that I was trying to tell you this multiple times. I also told you to drop PB2 and other projects and focus on finishing PB3 ASAP. But did you listen? This is what happens when a person is too slow at making decisions and when that person sees game as a "hobby" and not as a serious project. Companies are making $ billions out of free games and you're still playing with toys. But we cannot rewind time, so uh, what about finding a replacement for Coolbuddy? Like other company that hosts games? Or just kill PB2 and release an unfinished version of PB3 with help of other developers who can help you with the code, campaign, art and other stuff. You can finish PB3 and add all desired features later after its release. Making colorful names for donators in PB2 is just ridiculous and a waste of time. How many people are playing the game nowadays? 20? Which part of them are children who don't even have money? I think those who "could" support the game already did this on your patreon and remember what did you answer when I asked if you're satisfied with the result?
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby broforce1 » 7 April 2021, 19:28

Eric can just use the advertisements from the PB2 website so he can get 1$ (still no im dumb and this idea is dumb too)
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby IforgotmypasswordHaHAA » 7 April 2021, 21:21

Da Shaaark wrote: I told you, Eric, to properly advertise the game

You can't magically get a noticeable ammount of active players in a niche sidescroller flash game just by adversiting. Many modern games do this and fail (''Evolve'' is one of the many examples). You can't compete against millonaire companies developing free-to-play modern games and attract said people to play your niche flash game over other games.

Da Shaaark wrote: I also told you to drop PB2 and other projects and focus on finishing PB3 ASAP.


Easier said than done.


Da Shaaark wrote:This is what happens when a person is too slow at making decisions and when that person sees game as a "hobby" and not as a serious project.


He has a job and a family. Do you expect him to drop his job, get in debt for years and play the lottery hoping a decade-long project earns him billions?
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby nightmar » 7 April 2021, 21:50

This may sound stupid but merging the servers into one (and therefore paying for only one of the 2) would not be enough to keep things running without having players pay?
How many bugs does this game have anyway? jeez
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Eric Gurt » 7 April 2021, 22:14

Da Shaaark wrote:Eric Gurt asking for charity to save his dead game... How pitiful. Why did it all end like this I wonder... I told you, Eric, to properly advertise the game and add premium content when? 5 years ago or 10 years ago? I don't remember. I only remember that I was trying to tell you this multiple times. I also told you to drop PB2 and other projects and focus on finishing PB3 ASAP. But did you listen? This is what happens when a person is too slow at making decisions and when that person sees game as a "hobby" and not as a serious project. Companies are making $ billions out of free games and you're still playing with toys. But we cannot rewind time, so uh, what about finding a replacement for Coolbuddy? Like other company that hosts games? Or just kill PB2 and release an unfinished version of PB3 with help of other developers who can help you with the code, campaign, art and other stuff. You can finish PB3 and add all desired features later after its release. Making colorful names for donators in PB2 is just ridiculous and a waste of time. How many people are playing the game nowadays? 20? Which part of them are children who don't even have money? I think those who "could" support the game already did this on your patreon and remember what did you answer when I asked if you're satisfied with the result?


I'm not asking anything really. Servers are owned by Coolbuddy like they always were and were supported by them. I do only believe that keeping old games playable is worth it especially if series will continue. There are alternatives to supporting servers via subscriptions but these would mean something like reworking whole infrastructure to be working on top of peer-to-peer or something like that, while losing plenty of features website did provide including user-to-user anonymity.

Imagine releasing similar game with better graphics without much new to it, especially if it meant to be so much more and plenty of time was already put into that direction. I don't think I have much possibilities to announce each update that will appear in game towards larger audience, and, also, any big updates to PB2 didn't raise its' popularity at all so I take that into account too (these more like slowed down player count decrease). Basically proper game is much better than releasing portions of game when it comes to having wider audience which later can be or can not be kept. Patches and improvements will still come after release but much more can be done if game doesn't start as desync mess which only just a few of today's players were able to witness and remember since first months after PB2 release (to be honest I haven't seen anybody mentioning it after these few months, probably because these players just left instantly, which is also reflected on game's popularity graph from that time). I did talk about these kinds of stuff on my twitter before.

Ask me if you want to know why SD3D and SD2D were made, why PB3 is being made programmed by just me and why I'm not against idea of trying out subscriptions. You could figure that out but feel free to ask if you want via direct/private messages.

nightmar wrote:This may sound stupid but merging the servers into one (and therefore paying for only one of the 2) would not be enough to keep things running without having players pay?


I feel like I still can pay for 2nd server by myself, it is not that much demanding. And additionally I use it for other kinds of stuff I need anyway. Subscription will be only towards 1st main California server unless it will be high enough to let us have more.
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby gsa12 » 7 April 2021, 23:14

What about Sim card money? i dont have credit cart but i have money i put on sim card (for phones) i am willing donate certain amount of money every month, but if i am incapable of being part of discord? what do i do then?

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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby x4y2z » 8 April 2021, 08:45

The advertisements aren't enough so for whoever is generous to subscribe then it's up to him/her, there isn't an idea that can be given for this as long as it's up to the developer himself... it's also difficult to give ideas about the subscription model because we haven't even experienced it anyway... but if you thought about how many people really view PB2 site in 2021 and it seems quite a few so it should be fine if nobody applied for the subscription... and make sure all website did the same thing, tried it's own best and we will hope for the future.
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby astrodex pl » 8 April 2021, 18:33

i would like to pay once instead of paying monthly because i dont have any income im 14 so i dont have any job
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby phsc » 8 April 2021, 19:10

ok so hear me out, would you guys pay for something like a fancy colored username? emotes? really? i wouldnt

so lets take a look at modern games and how they profit: skins
cs go fortnite dota 2 league of legends also idk much but that new cod n such also has that right?

the actual skins, emotes and fancy names and such barely do it, skins are the way to go

maybe even something like a form of battle pass could work???


anyway if a kid has money to spend w pb2 it is likely that htey have a good computer... why would they play pb2 instead of idk, fortnite? the older audience would either support the game in any way if they truly like the game, but like, i myself wouldnt support the game unless i got some super deliciously exquisite pizza sauce cool skins

not to mention how this in pb2.5/3/whatever would be super poggers and easier to execute, i understand skins are very hard to execute in modern pb2 but thats the only thing i consider poggers i mean even in games i have an absurd amount of time, i barely spent money with like emotes or anything i hate that, however skins are super poggers and also at least dota had good battle passes w actual cool content in them and also ways to get many rewards n such, and it was super fun to spend money w them

turns out dota 2 has the biggest esports prize poll in the industry and a lot of this is because of how the battle pass sales influence the prize poll of the international, so it clearly shows that valve is making an absurd amount of money with that, not to mention how a ton of other games have been adopting this, allow something like that from time to time

also for those mentioning "instead of something thats a subscription, why not just pay it once?" theres an issue w this, servers are generally paid monthly, it has to be consistent, money runs out if sales dont keep going in, a subscription allows a stable model, but i think its too greedy for pb2, also it shouldnt be much of an issue considering pb2.5/3/whatever is going to release in the future i hope, so running out of money out of pb2 shouldnt be rly an issue?
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Tortoise » 8 April 2021, 22:08

I'd just like to remind everyone that multiplayer has always been totally jank and has either had game breaking glitches or massive latency issues for all 10 years the servers have been running. I know it's upsetting to the few dozen or so people still playing online regularly, but if Eric can't make enough money from advertisements to break even there's not much you can do.

This isn't an issue with the game being mismanaged or not advertised enough, there just isn't money in flash games anymore and that's probably why Coolbuddy is cutting their spending. The kids who would've been playing flash games 10 - 15 years ago are now mainly mobile games or free to play stuff like Fortnite or Dota 2 or whatever. I'm not a game developer guy but I'm pretty sure that's where the money is these days.

Personally I wouldn't pay money for stuff like merch, skins or rainbow coloured usernames. While I'm sure some people would, the community is too small for this to be a reliable source of income. I'm also sure some of you would be willing to donate money, but again this wouldn't be reliable enough to run a business on. Like phsc said, you need a consistent stream of income and I don't see where that could come from.

No offense to this game, but there's just no way it could work on a subscription when so many other games which aren't janky 2d flash games from 10 years ago are free to play. So unless someone is willing to front the server costs themselves, It's just not viable. I dunno, I'd like someone to prove me wrong because I like this community a lot, but Plazma Burst 2 and flash games in general have been on a slow steady decline for years now.
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Re: A Paid Subscription Model ideas?

Postby Gashadokuro » 8 April 2021, 23:45

I considered supporting but
1 - I don't know where my money goes; the California server? Hosting the forum?
2 - I get nothing. The 40€ Patreon tier for example only has a 3 month old poll.
3 - There's about 30 people left.
4 - A site option doesn't feel safe.

I did subscribe for like a 1$ about a week ago, just cancelled it though.
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