The future of Eliatopia (is not too bright)

[we_can]

Cinos does have a point. I was VERY upset when he added atm storage as pv item. Its like only the rich can access that stuff. I really dont get why this game even has p2w.

Well atm storage is kinda useless if u have an alt

[edk]

never thought id see the day troopas doesn't dickride cinos

congrats buddy

[Zeltonn]

Cinos does have a point. I was VERY upset when he added atm storage as pv item. Its like only the rich can access that stuff. I really dont get why this game even has p2w.

Well atm storage is kinda useless if u have an alt

and its usefull if ur items are full

[peenman]

dude you do realize its 750 gems not 50 dollars, it makes sense that the people who get more coins should have an advantage.

The problem here is having this feature be directly related to wealth at all.

so its not this feature, its the buying gems with real money feature. I think you should be at least lvl 50 before u can buy gems bc if have 1000 gems at lvl 1 thats a pretty too much crazy but than there would be a whole lot less income for robby which would decrease his morale to keep working on game. so idk everything contradicts eachother and its too much thinky work so idk.

[we_can]

Cinos does have a point. I was VERY upset when he added atm storage as pv item. Its like only the rich can access that stuff. I really dont get why this game even has p2w.

Well atm storage is kinda useless if u have an alt

and its usefull if ur items are full

...multiple alts are a thing too

[cinos]

Ok so I'm writing this on phone so expect grammatical errors. Also I havent read any of the replies to this thread so I'm not gonna mention them at all.


So basically your saying this feature is pay to win and is the beginning of the end (as the title implies) but it's just not true AT ALL. First off, the price is NOT $50 which you heavily insist it's in the high $30~ so rounding up to 40 would make more sense but NOPE you say its 50 to help prove your point.

So one of the things you mention is that Robby has been silent when that isnt the case. He provided reasoning for this price in bugs and errors but you didnt seem to acknowledge it and just say he never even mentioned the price.

Next you say this item is just p2w which is just straight up not true. New players are going to spend "$50" just for people to grind for them (they also need guild members to AGREE to this might I add) but even people who are willing to spend more are almost GUARANTEED to be high level so the benefit from boosting will be minimal and again, need people to actually grind for you. It's not pay to win and even if you dont believe me you can easily make the argument item capacity is ALSO pay to win.

How though? Simple. You are restricted to (I believe) 3 lines of inventory space which can hold pretty much NOTHING of value. You need to DROP items just so you can get other ones BUT this pv item allows you to increase it thus allowing more spaces to hold items that you can sell for MORE money. You can essentially pay for more money in this way yet you dont complain about that.

You also conveniently ignore how you had asked for my emeralds to buy the pv item for the guild (well more accurately JoMan pinged me on discord telling me you wanted my emes for it.) So yeah you were going to buy it at one point which kind of makes you look like a hypocrite.

And lastly I dont understand why you think you're going to get Robbys attention when you essentially are attacking him in this post. If you want change you dont immediately start attacking him and boycotting him because you waited like 2 days for a reply on your thread when you should know by now he doesnt immediately reply to this kind of stuff. (Especially this close to the weekend)

So yeah if you actually want Robby to take you seriously you shouldn't be so hostile in every critique you find with the game especially like this essentially going into an Hptest rant.

Okay I can see your point and all, but me trying to buy a feature which is supposedly guild based (aka, people said the price "makes sense" if all members contribute, which is per that whole "asking for emeralds" thing joman definitely exaggerated) doesn't really make this any less scummy, I mean I'm only asking guild members because they're the ones to benefit from this the most. So, realistically you'd only consider my point relevant if I let my guild and character reach total irrelevancy because of a mechanic I disagree with. Didn't let that happen with the ATM, and neither do I wanna do that now. Really, the way I'll ever even get this global exp is by grinding the emeralds ingame, since I simply DON'T WANT to support this practice. I think that's the opposite of hypocrisy considering I'm trying to actively discourage the goal here, that being selling this mechanic with the goal of financial gain. I'll buy whatever stupid cosmetic shιτ robby sells, but I won't support this.
Also, just a note here, there's no "attack" or "boycott" here, this is a very simple post where I say I won't buy this mechanic cause I disagree with it ethically, and that it's a bad sign for the game. Well, unless you consider the money pinching a personal aspect of robby, which is unlikely.

Also if you think this mechanic is good uh ser plz emes and a free drink

[troopas]

never thought id see the day troopas doesn't dickride cinos

congrats buddy

Ironic coming from you

[troopas]

Ok so I'm writing this on phone so expect grammatical errors. Also I havent read any of the replies to this thread so I'm not gonna mention them at all.


So basically your saying this feature is pay to win and is the beginning of the end (as the title implies) but it's just not true AT ALL. First off, the price is NOT $50 which you heavily insist it's in the high $30~ so rounding up to 40 would make more sense but NOPE you say its 50 to help prove your point.

So one of the things you mention is that Robby has been silent when that isnt the case. He provided reasoning for this price in bugs and errors but you didnt seem to acknowledge it and just say he never even mentioned the price.

Next you say this item is just p2w which is just straight up not true. New players are going to spend "$50" just for people to grind for them (they also need guild members to AGREE to this might I add) but even people who are willing to spend more are almost GUARANTEED to be high level so the benefit from boosting will be minimal and again, need people to actually grind for you. It's not pay to win and even if you dont believe me you can easily make the argument item capacity is ALSO pay to win.

How though? Simple. You are restricted to (I believe) 3 lines of inventory space which can hold pretty much NOTHING of value. You need to DROP items just so you can get other ones BUT this pv item allows you to increase it thus allowing more spaces to hold items that you can sell for MORE money. You can essentially pay for more money in this way yet you dont complain about that.

You also conveniently ignore how you had asked for my emeralds to buy the pv item for the guild (well more accurately JoMan pinged me on discord telling me you wanted my emes for it.) So yeah you were going to buy it at one point which kind of makes you look like a hypocrite.

And lastly I dont understand why you think you're going to get Robbys attention when you essentially are attacking him in this post. If you want change you dont immediately start attacking him and boycotting him because you waited like 2 days for a reply on your thread when you should know by now he doesnt immediately reply to this kind of stuff. (Especially this close to the weekend)

So yeah if you actually want Robby to take you seriously you shouldn't be so hostile in every critique you find with the game especially like this essentially going into an Hptest rant.

Okay I can see your point and all, but me trying to buy a feature which is supposedly guild based (aka, people said the price "makes sense" if all members contribute, which is per that whole "asking for emeralds" thing joman definitely exaggerated) doesn't really make this any less scummy, I mean I'm only asking guild members because they're the ones to benefit from this the most. So, realistically you'd only consider my point relevant if I let my guild and character reach total irrelevancy because of a mechanic I disagree with. Didn't let that happen with the ATM, and neither do I wanna do that now. Really, the way I'll ever even get this global exp is by grinding the emeralds ingame, since I simply DON'T WANT to support this practice. I think that's the opposite of hypocrisy considering I'm trying to actively discourage the goal here, that being selling this mechanic with the goal of financial gain. I'll buy whatever stupid cosmetic shιτ robby sells, but I won't support this.
Also, just a note here, there's no "attack" or "boycott" here, this is a very simple post where I say I won't buy this mechanic cause I disagree with it ethically, and that it's a bad sign for the game. Well, unless you consider the money pinching a personal aspect of robby, which is unlikely.

Also if you think this mechanic is good uh ser plz emes and a free drink

Yeah maybe I went in a bit too much saying you wanted to boycott Eliatopia but i still feel the initial post could have been reworded to seem a bit less...of an attack (I dont know any better word to use I'm sorry)


Also I can see now I'm actually quite hypocritical myself because I insisted you dont attack (again lack of a better word to use) Robby but then go on to attack what you said so yea...

(Typing this on mobile again so probably a few spelling errors)

[cinos]

Ok so I'm writing this on phone so expect grammatical errors. Also I havent read any of the replies to this thread so I'm not gonna mention them at all.


So basically your saying this feature is pay to win and is the beginning of the end (as the title implies) but it's just not true AT ALL. First off, the price is NOT $50 which you heavily insist it's in the high $30~ so rounding up to 40 would make more sense but NOPE you say its 50 to help prove your point.

So one of the things you mention is that Robby has been silent when that isnt the case. He provided reasoning for this price in bugs and errors but you didnt seem to acknowledge it and just say he never even mentioned the price.

Next you say this item is just p2w which is just straight up not true. New players are going to spend "$50" just for people to grind for them (they also need guild members to AGREE to this might I add) but even people who are willing to spend more are almost GUARANTEED to be high level so the benefit from boosting will be minimal and again, need people to actually grind for you. It's not pay to win and even if you dont believe me you can easily make the argument item capacity is ALSO pay to win.

How though? Simple. You are restricted to (I believe) 3 lines of inventory space which can hold pretty much NOTHING of value. You need to DROP items just so you can get other ones BUT this pv item allows you to increase it thus allowing more spaces to hold items that you can sell for MORE money. You can essentially pay for more money in this way yet you dont complain about that.

You also conveniently ignore how you had asked for my emeralds to buy the pv item for the guild (well more accurately JoMan pinged me on discord telling me you wanted my emes for it.) So yeah you were going to buy it at one point which kind of makes you look like a hypocrite.

And lastly I dont understand why you think you're going to get Robbys attention when you essentially are attacking him in this post. If you want change you dont immediately start attacking him and boycotting him because you waited like 2 days for a reply on your thread when you should know by now he doesnt immediately reply to this kind of stuff. (Especially this close to the weekend)

So yeah if you actually want Robby to take you seriously you shouldn't be so hostile in every critique you find with the game especially like this essentially going into an Hptest rant.

Okay I can see your point and all, but me trying to buy a feature which is supposedly guild based (aka, people said the price "makes sense" if all members contribute, which is per that whole "asking for emeralds" thing joman definitely exaggerated) doesn't really make this any less scummy, I mean I'm only asking guild members because they're the ones to benefit from this the most. So, realistically you'd only consider my point relevant if I let my guild and character reach total irrelevancy because of a mechanic I disagree with. Didn't let that happen with the ATM, and neither do I wanna do that now. Really, the way I'll ever even get this global exp is by grinding the emeralds ingame, since I simply DON'T WANT to support this practice. I think that's the opposite of hypocrisy considering I'm trying to actively discourage the goal here, that being selling this mechanic with the goal of financial gain. I'll buy whatever stupid cosmetic shιτ robby sells, but I won't support this.
Also, just a note here, there's no "attack" or "boycott" here, this is a very simple post where I say I won't buy this mechanic cause I disagree with it ethically, and that it's a bad sign for the game. Well, unless you consider the money pinching a personal aspect of robby, which is unlikely.

Also if you think this mechanic is good uh ser plz emes and a free drink

Yeah maybe I went in a bit too much saying you wanted to boycott Eliatopia but i still feel the initial post could have been reworded to seem a bit less...of an attack (I dont know any better word to use I'm sorry)


Also I can see now I'm actually quite hypocritical myself because I insisted you dont attack (again lack of a better word to use) Robby but then go on to attack what you said so yea...

(Typing this on mobile again so probably a few spelling errors)

It's fine.

[Robby]

The tl;dr here is that Eliatopia needs to make money, and purely cosmetics alone aren't cutting it.

Thanks to those who realize that the game must make money, and that I must make a living. It is appreciated. I think everything could really be summarized by the first line here, but read on if you want more info.

Eliatopia costs money to run, server costs, bandwidth costs, and of course I need to make money to work on it full time. Currently it's making an OK amount of money, but still not enough. I can really only increase revenue in one of two ways. Increase the amount of people playing it, which is a challenge to do. Or increase the Average Revenue Per User (abbreviated as ARPU) for existing users, which is probably a little more manageable. Ideally though, both need to be done.

Increasing users alone isn't necessary enough either. Because as the number of players go up, I will need a beefier more expensive server and bandwidth costs will go up. So both will increase. Advertising is hardly even a solution if the ARPU isn't high enough. Advertising is incredibly expensive, and if users aren't paying much money in-game then it's pretty much not even an option. So I need to make sure players that ARE spending money, are spending more than a few lousy dollars.

Ads? Ads pay very poorly and you need an insane amount of views on them to make any amount of money worth a dang. They also degrade the play experience a lot. I may be making an ad version of the game in cooperation with another website in the near future, but I don't have much hopes for that.

Donations? I don't think this is really a feasible solution to making a living at all whatsoever. Sure, maybe someone, somewhere, at some point in time was able to get some good donations, but for the vast majority of games (or any form of business for that matter), relying on donations alone wouldn't come close to cutting it. Heck, players are already free to "donate" if they want. They can just buy a big wad of emeralds and never use them.

Subscriptions? This could be another option to consider, but also has it downside, and I'm sure there are loads of players who would complain about this option as well.

Dev blog, videos, etc? Since these don't offer any direct benefit in the game itself, I'm seriously doubting these would contribute to much additional revenue. Furthermore, they would require constant time from me, sucking dev time away from the game.

Keep in mind that Eliatopia is completely free to play. In other words, it's literally costing me money for someone to play it. Another note is that I need an adequate amount of things for players to buy in the Payvault throughout the lifetime of their account. In other words, if DragonSlayer69 with his level 99 account has bought everything the game has to offer in the Payvault a long time ago, then there's no opportunity for them to buy anything ever again. Which means they will just forever be costing the game money and never giving a dime in return, once they made those initial purchases. So I need an adequate amount of things for players to buy. And a few item colorizers or small cosmetic items don't pay the bills much. Someone spending a measly $1 or $2 doesn't go a very long way.

So again, bottom line is that the game needs to make money. There's really only a few options as I stated:
1. Ads? Won't pay well and players will complain.
2. Subscriptions? Might not work and players will complain.
3. Donations? Won't work.
4. P2W items? Best chance, but will degrade play experience and players will complain.
5. Cosmetic only? Will work a little bit, but not enough. Some players will still complain.
6. Up front cost? Would probably hugely reduce the player base and has it's own hurdles to overcome. Players would complain.
7. So that leaves me with this option. An in between of cosmetic while also offering a little bit of in-game benefit to be worth the purchase, while not feeling too P2W by others. It's a very fine line to skate. And of course like all other options, players will complain.

I've come to learn some people just don't have anything good to say and will just complain at anything no matter the case. Which is usually why I don't entertain these kinds of discussions much.

To finish up, here are the percentages for the payvault sales in the last 30 days. These show where the majority of tickets are being spent:

billboard rental: 0.6%
shout: 3.7%
guild flag: 5.2%
skill reset: 12.8%
colorize: 7.89%
cosmetic change: 3.3%
custom menu: 3.4%
more items: 11.8%
points reset: 24.7%
guild global XP: 15.6%
emoji pack: 2.3%
vendor insurance: 0.1%
drum kit: 1.21879
vendor promotion: 0.05%
more friends: 0.9%
bank items: 4%
dances: 1.7%

As can be seen, the purely cosmetic things aren't playing a big role in ticket expenditure. The colorizer is doing ok, but other than that most are pretty poor. I tried to be creative and experiment with other cool non P2W items, such as the drums, billboard, and dances. But as you can see, those account for an atrocious amount of tickets spent. Vendor promotion and insurance are so bad they are almost nothing. Guild global XP is already at 15.6% of sales for the past 30 days. While this may be in part because it just came out, it's also only been out for 6 days.

Now, I could try to experiment and raise prices on some of the cosmetic items, so that paying players will have to spend a few more dollars to get them. That may help, and might be something I might have to do in the future. Like all other solutions, I'm sure players will complain if that were to happen as well.

Conclusion again, is that purely cosmetic only items don't sell very well and cannot support the game on their own. This proves true in the above stats, and unfortunately was also the exact same case with my game Helmet Heroes, in the past. The guild global XP doesn't generate any "free" XP, it only takes from the creator. So in that sense, I don't really feel anything too bad is being given. Sure someone is getting free XP, but someone else is also losing it.

If anyone has any cool ideas for non P2W items that they think will sell well, I'm always listening. I'm doing what I can to skate that fine line and if anyone has any better Payvault ideas or solutions, I haven't seen them posted in the Suggestions page.