Promotion to bring in new people?

[DanTheTimid]

Most other online games, and especially online card games, I've played have usually had some sort of promotion for bringing in new people to the game. Chronomaster should probably be credited with bringing me in, but since then I've myself probably talked at least 5 or so people into signing up from friends and other players from other online card games I play. Now I'm not saying I deserve anything for bringing people in, I don't even know how many if any will hang around, but I think that if, like many other games, this game had promotions for bringing people in it would not only motivate more people to bring in new players, but also motivate people who currently are only bringing in close friends to more aggressively seek new players for the game from other places, which would both mean more revenue for Alteil and a larger player base for us.

My suggestions for such a promotion would be:

How its tracked
- A private message will be sent to all existing members asking them to respond with the user name of the person, if any, who got them into the game.
- For players signing up for the first time, during sign up in additional to the usual information there will be a field for "person who invited you".

What the rewards are
- Any time a player who you are given credit for inviting pays real money for gran, you will be given 10% of however much Gran they purchase (they still get the full 100% of course).
- If a player you invited reaches level 10 you will recieve 100 FM.

So basically your rewarded only for inviting players who either spend real money, or who are at least active enough to achieve level 10 so creating tons of dummy accounts and marking yourself as their invitee won't gain you anything.

What do you think?

[Grain]

People can make multiple accounts for free & lie.

There are definitely people who would level dummy accounts to 10.

[Random]

Just my opinion but I personally hate when games do that because it seems to me like players are rewarded for having the most friends. I personally will invite everyone I know who could appreciate the game and have a more active community and additional players to duel as the reward

[Kyoshi]

I could see free items for the persons avatar or a free card. But the Gran idea is a bit much. And I think maybe its ok to get recognition to say you invited someone but in small doses and the gran system would have to be built because the fact of if you had 10 friends that used say 10 dollars you get 10 dollars worth of gran. But if you pay 10 dollars your friends don't benefit so in my opinion I would feel like you are stealing from them even if they still get the full 100%. Just weird because in a way this system would have it so the person didn't have to spend any money while his friends he recommended poured their dough into the alteil system. Then no doubt a person could use that system to their benfit by getting on one account and buying something and benefitting still on a mule of that persons.

Just all my opinion on this subject. I could understand gaining a small amount of fight money from reccomendations but not benefitting gran. And yes there are people that would make tons of dummy accounts and level them up to 10 you see it a lot on different MMOs people with mules.

Anyways no more rambling. I honestly have never seen a system that would do that10% compensation. Sounds to me the person just wants to make free money while not having to use their own....

My opinion of course.

[DanTheTimid]

The Gran thing I stole from Urban Rivals, another online card game, since that's what they do for invites. They have 2 types of money just like Alteil, Credits (normally earned through paying real money so the equivalent of Gran) and Clintz (normally earned through fighting so the equivalent of Fight Money) and any time any one who lists you as the person who invited them buys Credits with real money you receive 10% of whatever they receive. Its definitely encouraged me to invite more people to play and has already earned me a handful of Credits. It may seem like alot but in reality 10% is such a small percentage in the grand scheme of things that it really only adds up if they spend ALOT of money and honestly if you invite some one into the game who spends alot of money I think you deserve a free pack or two.

It really is win/win, Alteil gets more money, we get a few gran for bringing in more money for them. I'm not getting any more "advantage" for having friends then any person already has for having more disposable income then I do to spend on gran.

Also, I'm not sure why everyone seemed to overlook where I said dummy accounts won't work. The beauty of this game and why all your logic with the dummy accounts is flawed is that this game does not allow trading. Because of this, foolish people can go ahead and make dummy accounts if they want but all that effort getting to level 10 is wasted . They can't trade any cards, gran, or FM they earn from the dummy accounts so all their earnings are forever wasted. Now I don't know how much FM your naturally going to earn enroute to level 10 but I was assuming level 10 is a pretty high level that your going to earn WAY more then 100 FM to get to it. If I'm wrong on this assumption then either increase the level needed or decrease the FM reward, the point is that making dummy accounts is pointless because in the time you spent getting it to level 10 you could have made far more FM on your main account.

So yeah, people can lie and make dummy accounts, and I'm sure a few foolish people probably will, but all their doing is hurting themselves so who cares, the only people who actually benefit from this system are people who legitimately bring in new players who either spend money or play alot.

[Grain]

Couldn't this give players with lots of friends finacial advantages over others?

[DanTheTimid]

Couldn't this give players with lots of friends finacial advantages over others?

Again, as I said, no more then any player who just happens to be wealthy has over those of us that aren't wealthy. This isn't creating any gran balance disparity that doesn't already exist in a game where currency is purchased with real money. If you couldn't buy Gran with real money and everyone had to just earn all their currency through fighting then yes I would agree with you that this gave an unfair advantage, but thats not the case.

Also again, to really see a significant benefit you not only need to have invited ALOT of people, but they all need to spend a significant amount of real money. Even if you invited 10 friends (seriously that's alot of friends) who all registered you as their sponsor (no guarantee they wouldn't be too lazy to do this) and they all bought a pack with real money (even if I did invite 10 friends I bet I'd be lucky if half of them actually spent real money on the game), all you get for it is 1 free pack's worth of Gran.

If Alteil really feels 10% is too much a lesser percentage would be fine too, I only picked 10% because its what I've seen other similar games use and use successfully with out any issue, its a proven successful percentage.

[Forsakensoul]

^_^ You just know that I spend obscene amounts of money on UR thats why you want it... so I spend obscene amounts of money here.

[Pherguzon]

yea gran is probally to much of a reward and i could see people busing it far to much, so i doubt that it is gonna happen. u never know though

[Forsakensoul]

Honestly, it depends on how much gran costs. If you have to spend $100 (give or take, roughly the same amount to buy a box of any TCG Cards) to gain 1200 gran (I think thats the cost of a box of the cards) Then your friend would only gain 120 gran... not even enough for a pack. In the other game that Dan and I play, 1000 credits is $55 USD. Dan would get 100 credits which is enough to buy 5 packs of urban rivals cards.

SO as you see it isn't TOO much of a system. Now if you had 20 friends that had enough finances to spend on buying 1200 gran every week then yes, you would be set w/o spending any money... chances are though, if you have friends that have that much money then... well you do too.

Maybe they could do something like 25% of the gran purchased of your friends is turned into FM for you. That means if I bought 1200 gran, Dan would get 300 FM. Which could then be used to purchase partners and other things.

3rdly... a promotion for the grand opening would be nice...

4thly... a promotion for new players would be nice.. like for your first 10 days you can buy gran and gain 10% of your purchase.


Oh, and Urban Rivals also has a thing in their agreement that states you can only have 1 account. If you are found having more then 1 account then well... both accounts get banned regardless of how much you have spent on either account. They tell you they don't go LOOKING for people with 2 accounts but if you do things that are SUSPECT of 2 accounts... well then, that is when they check your account, ip address amongst other things and then start banning accounts.