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Deathangel

GoFundMe's for popular changes to pay devs overtime

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What if we could fund a suggested idea or change? Like, let's say we as the community wanted to put our money where our mouths are when we beg for more development in specific areas. This would partially fund said development, especially in cases where developer time is limited or stretched thin.

 

There are some changes I'd put money toward, especially if a certain threshold mandated a response or consideration from development staff. And, for ideas that get "NOPEd" by staff, a full refund could be issued to that topical fundraiser for development.

 

 

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I have no comment on this suggestion but some people gonna say this is just another pay to win. 

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It would really depend on how it was implemented. We could work out how to do so without making it pay to win, however it would quite a bit of discussion on the pitfalls....like for instance staff and dev ideas could be considered that, so we could disallow them just on that principle, however that may cause a lot of back lash too.

I am not sure what, if any other safeguards would need to be in place.

 

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Sounds the ultimate pay-to-win system that can result in some incredibly unpopular changes because someone has a fat checkbook.

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This is a horrible idea.  It's unfortunate, but I think very few people are able to look at things objectively, and see the big picture.  Most would just want, and vote for what is best for THEM, right now, without any consideration for the overall health of the game

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It's a legal and financial minefield. I can't imagine the devs going for it

 

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"especially in cases where developer time is limited or stretched thin." This is more of a issue to look at if anything

As for paying to get ideas added please no other games have done this in the past by setting goals to fund idea's/suggest idea's and whales just threw money to fund every idea they wanted and dev's had to go entertain those idea's or else refund them so a lot of time was spend creating those suggestions to test them out and just made the issues worse.

A way that would work is similar to what a few websites do(cheathappens comes to mind) where you having premium ingame it gives you a certain amount of points per month and you can spend those on certain things like funding of projects to prioritize or fund projects that you like the look of but straight up paying for it is just a no go in my book as it is pay to win in its clearest form

If you want to know what im talking about check out cheathappens as that system works really well(minus the buying more points part)

Edited by Pandalet
Moderation edit
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Sounds like a terrible idea, like overriding the suggestion-selection progress and developing focus by throwing money at it? lol.

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4 hours ago, wipeout said:

"especially in cases where developer time is limited or stretched thin." This is more of a issue to look at if anything

As for paying to get ideas added please no other games have done this in the past by setting goals to fund idea's/suggest idea's and whales just threw money to fund every idea they wanted and dev's had to go entertain those idea's or else refund them so a lot of time was spend creating those suggestions to test them out and just made the issues worse.

A way that would work is similar to what a few websites do(cheathappens comes to mind) where you having premium ingame it gives you a certain amount of points per month and you can spend those on certain things like funding of projects to prioritize or fund projects that you like the look of but straight up paying for it is just a no go in my book as it is pay to win in its clearest form

If you want to know what im talking about check out cheathappens as that system works really well(minus the buying more points part)

Did you literally use a hacking tool as an example lol 

Edited by Pandalet
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38 minutes ago, Archaed said:

Did you literally use a hacking tool as an example lol 

I used a trainer website's business model as a example yes it was the first one that i could think of that introduced such a system properly and made it benefit them and the community at once

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It's not a bad idea actually in case of wurm, since there's been so many bad decision about what to be worked on. And it's a decent way to inculde the community on what it actually wants to see

 

Parhaps devs could offer 3-4 project to be funded by the community and see which one gets funded first, way better then what we have now someone just keep deciding to work on the wrong thing.

 

I agree with wipeot, if such system is done right it actually going to benefit the communty and the wurm development decision won't depends on 4 buddies that keep getting it wrong , doubling down and keep going strong with the same thing.

 

+1 for well thought out way to do this

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If you want to include the community, which is something i strongly agree with, you make polls, of discussions.

you don't make it "pay to choose", because that's just plain ridiculous imho. 
You basically give a lot of decisional power to people with fat wallets, which, to break it down in a cynical way, would either be rich spoiled kids OR people that work a lot and therefore have probably less time to play/understand the game.

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What if there's $ pool and people donate with "reason/comment" only for stuff from the new roadmap?

It's already vouched content.

Better stuff gets in the game sooner, devs get better pay for the stuff that interests people, win, win.

Assuming current pay for current shifts cant cut it otherwise.

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It does sometimes happen with new games where they will fundraise and start building a new game with the money donated.

 

I think if it was to happen on an existing game like Wurm it would be better if the devs were to put together a roadmap of items that would need extra funding, then ask for the funding specifically to develop these items.

 

If funding was to pay for a few extra devs on temp contracts it could get features in more quickly, but its also worth keeping in mind anything added in now will need supporting later which is more costs further down the line.

Edited by HawkHawk

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"I would totally pay about threefiddy for implementing tekken style combat. Take my money and get to work. Is it done yet? What am i paying you for? I demand daily updates. I will go to court if it's not done within next 20 minutes.

Oh, you did it? This isn't exactly to my specifications, gimmi my monies back rightnow"...

 

and so on...

 

 

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Don't like this idea at all, it gives people power in the game with money to have certain changes made to their satisfactory. This is a slippery slope to be on so it's a no from me on this one. Just engaging with the community and letting us know what updates are coming is enough for me.

Edited by DannyUK
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Well its a nice idea but a bit to flawd on a few levels. First is the mangemnet. Geting used to a code base is a week or two on its own. So you basicly allways have half a month of sallery just to put in so someone can be familiarize them self with the code.

So huge usless mony sink on this part. Then the way to decide what to implemnt. While it would be nice to have a option to get a more focused development on certent parts of the game the communety is a bit to divers to really get a good conclusion. A lot of PVE players would be happy with a thousend new decoration items. A task that you can propably realy tackel with just more money and external people. But when it comes to mechanic improvments or development its realy tricky since who shuld decide what to focus on ther? Money as a idicator only go so fare.

Then ther is the problem of testing and bugfixing. What you do when the scope is bigger then expactet? Take bridges and how long Rolf had to tinker with it to get them functional. How to resolve this issue if the money runs out? When do you say "ok this is good for the game we stop here"? I mean we can't build under Bridges because the redo of code to make this work would need some fundamental changes with the layering system for the world. Propably possible but time intensiv for a small addon to a feature.

So no I like the spirit of the idea but I would say its not possible to do this.

-1

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Also imagine if the implementation is slightly not what people wanted lol. 

 

When people say "vote with your wallet" they mean don't continue to sub if you don't like it, not "actually put money towards ideas" 

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People actually voted with their wallets, hence the population decline. You not going to get people sub back into someone else personal playground if they have zero clue what's going on. Some small lottery ticket update can just bump few more people to sub more alts and that's about it.

 

There's nothing wrong with people expecting delivery of what they been offered and promised and put their money where they mouth is instead of this current zero responsabilty for anything

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That's Keenan/Saruman's job.

 

The players often don't know whats good for the game.

 

-1

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30 minutes ago, Timoca said:

That's Keenan/Saruman's job.

 

The players often don't know whats good for the game.

 

-1

No one has known what was good for the game since the departure of notch lets face it gone are the days of 8k subs(currently at 4500 according to gcg) with just 2 servers and 50% of the content we have now and way worse graphics.

The players have been really vocal for a very long time about the missed opportunity or screwup after screwup that has come out and every time we were told "we will do better" and it was never the case so honestly I think the last person who really knew what was good for the game left and made wurm light aka minecraft and look where that went

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1 hour ago, Timoca said:

That's Keenan/Saruman's job.

 

The players often don't know whats good for the game.

 

-1


This is entirely false. 99% of the bugs and mechanic fixes are reported by players. I hope this is a troll post, if so congrats I’m triggered lol. 

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