so, i was thinking. to encourage more people to donate.

1. There should be a system developed to track paypal donations back to the EE account that donated them.

i had a quick spy on google and saw that there are quite a few PHP Classes written already to do just that, so it would just be an issue of integration. i'm quite sure they work a bit like the voting rewards call-backs that are already being used.

2. I never like games that give you a huge advantage in regards to gameplay if you donate/pay-to-play so i would most likely be against any of these kinds of game changers.

3. One game i played that had donator options had a set price for X days as 'subscriber status' but i guess it would be Patron here, to keep with the history of the game.

The system didn't offer any real strategic/game-play advantages that couldn't be achieved without paying, but it did allow patron's to change the way the game looked/felt.

I guess that i'd suggest allowing patrons to change attacking news to fit their preference.... Like let them make it so instead of saying 'your forces were successful' they could set that msg to whatever they wanted, like 'you completely decimated your opponets defenses!!!' and something similar for defends.

Could do something similar for news like 'some nub bought XXX Troops for $155' or whatever suited their preferences.

Could even go one step further and let them change the name of their military... Not sure if that would be good tho, as it might cause confusion.

4. Now this suggestion is something i normally wouldn't want, but so many 3rd party sites already offer this that i feel it would be ok for EE to make some money from it...

I suggest allowing all players(even if they don't get patron status i guess) to purchase SMS credits and have some kind of automated alert system built in. Not sure how advanced it should be.. dont want to give too much of an advantage to those using it. but i think its still a worthy suggestion.

5. Possibly make patron's countries have some kind of identifier(as Patron) in the scores list(and give patrons the option to turn it off if they dont want to stick out).




Could probably think of more, but maybe we should discuss.

maybe a better place to post this was on b&s board instead of the patron board :-/

wonder if an admin could move it because i cant copy/paste on this phone.

1: could be done with a text that said you could put in your forum username in the "extra info to recipient"-box

2: agree, but i think the admins have said this already

3: dunno, i personally don't see the value in this, but maybe others do

4: i like that

5. don't really like it. sure, give forum usernames their own color, italics, whatever, but leave ingame stuff out of it

1. I was thinking more along the lines of paypal instant payment notification(IPN). with that, you can send 'product' and 'identification' (among other variables) codes to paypal during the payment process and once the payment is made, your script gets all that information back.

so, theoretically, u could send a unique id for the member paying and once they've paid, paypal instantly calls a script on ee saying ID-XXX paid $YY, thus making it easy to manage crediting specific accounts!

Not sure how well that integrates with donation buttons, but if it doesn't maybe bore is right about a less automated method. i just imagine ee getting thousands of players donating and admins not being able to keep up with the backlog.

3: i feel it actually gives donators some since of actually paying for something, thus gives more incentive to pay.

5: yes.. Its a bit far fetched. Maybe customisable color schemes for gameplay then?

if ee gets thousands of donations i will volunteer to administer patron status:)

:-) it isnt hard to believe such a thing could happen. especially with hard work and determination

thanx for moving this thread slagpit!

yea this is another one of those things we need to do sometime here... man i need more time... I like these ideas generally speaking though :)

I'd donate if I knew how.

I like that idea of adding premium non-gameplay features for people who subscribe.

#1. Option to remove ads
#2. Option to automatically get bonus points usually obtained by voting or ad views
#3. Implement some of the "it's not necessary but it would be really nice to have a button that did this" suggestions for subscribers
#4. Allow longer country names and/or punctuation in country names
#5. Punch and pie

1) already have that ingame... not on the forums though admittedly... could do that for forums

2) hmrn maybe, but atm the bonuses are for EE exposure online...

3) more ideas? :)

4) urgh we can do that easily but it would really be a PITA for alot of the hosting sites (boxcar, evolution2025, GHQ, LKS, etc...) because most of us set up stuff for Earth2025 and didn't expect *anything* to ever change lol

5) I'd prefer cheesecake myself, but yea... we could send you a picture of a cake or something...

how does the patron system currently work, i've donated a few times but it never said 'donate this much' to be a patron status.

maybe just having different levels of patron would encourage, like $20/yr bronze, $50/yr silver. $150+/yr gold patron?

ads removed always from your account would be awesome, same with the not having to click on the bonus voting things. the 'not necessary but nice' features is a good idea. if someone could work out a Premium setup that made things easier/faster, i'm sure a lot of folks, especially in FFA would jump on it. and it still wouldn't really hinder folks that didn't donate.

currently we haven't made anybody a patron... with the exception that anybody who has a third party hosting site that gets info from the game using the API has access to a forum discussing the API implementation stuff, and that access atm automatically grants Patron status... (the idea was that they're providing a useful service to the community anyway... or something...)

is there currently a way to donate absolutely anonymously with no chance that certain people could extract your RL data?


possible donor recruitment ideas
1) set naming rights
particularly on clan servers letting a group name a set might generate some cash

2)minor rule tweaking rights
if a donor gave enough some minor rule change could be done or undone to cater to to the donor's wishes
for example the no drop land rule could be abolished if a donor so desired
or the PM for oil could be added to for one set to alliance

There is a difference in donating to the game and attemption to buy/bribe the game

what you are suggesting Gregg is the latter, and I fully am against that.

If you donate enough money, we'll let you drop ALL your land :)

lol jk ;)

As you can probably tell from the fact that this is more of a hobby project for us than a job, we're not really motivated by money -- we're here to keep the community we've been part of for years going, and to try to revive it a bit (which, hopefully we'll have some major FB-related steps of in the not-too-distant future...).


While I realize that the land-dropping thing is an imperfect solution, it continues to be one of the easiest ways to stop certain abusive behaviour without impinging on 99% of legitimate behaviour.

As always we welcome well-reasoned suggestions from the community, and encourage discussion :)


And, also as usual, we move slower on somewhat controversial issues, as that's when balance is clearly required.

*Allow patrons to reserve permanent tags and country names so someone can't be a troublemaker and swipe their usual tag/name
*Increase number of stored PMs on the forum
*Store sent messages in-game
*Store spy op history in-game

1) the alliance bit is actually part of my plan for a revamped alliance system :)

2) it's already infinite isn't it....?

3) that should be something we do with the new inbox plan...

4) errr.... is that an advantage? i'd never thought about adding that for just patrons...

It's cool if PMs are already infinite. That's one of the perks of premium membership on a lot of forums that I visit.

I'd love for spy ops to be stored in-game just because I'm dumb and I've lost a lot of ops by accidentally closing the wrong tab or navigating away from the op :P

some good suggestions here. glad it got moved off patron board.

I would pay $10 a set to limit slagpit to half the normal amount of turns! I'm sure there are others who would do the same for you and Pang. Lets take this hatred of the admins and make some $$$=)

will say one thing abt sms and that most bulk sms companies accept paypal payments, so in that aspect, ee wouldn't have to pay paypal commission on some of the donated money!

Also, custom css / colors shouldnt even cause problems with status tidies b/c most ee is all css/class run now anyway!

Guess if anyone was bothered, they could make their own skins anyway with the use of browser addons like greasemonkey

Patrons should get avatars and custom titles on the forums

status thing

Just to advance the original idea a bit, an ajax control panel with interchangeable tools would be a SUPER cool perk for Patron status. Being able to drag/drop tools/stats onto your portal screen for FFA, for example, would be freakin stellar.

tags reserved might work for some but there are many alliances who change tag every reset.

it will be tough to solicit donations for patron status if you just give it to anyone who has a third party clan site

where is the ooomph in that?

particularly if it means only people who play clan games can be patrons
you might get quite a few vets that way but you will have a slanted forum

a third party site like eestats should get patron status because a lot of work and dedication went into that

if patron status is to mean something how about awarding it to the winners of each set? but only until the next set ends so the primary winner would be a patron for two months but the express winner only a week

if someone posts misinformation about the qualifications to be a patron that misinformation should be corrected

i tell you what i would like some day and i would be willing to finance it if the price were not prohibitive
we are a ways away from it judging from admins' past comments

a new server, if it has to be on a different website i have plenty of empty ones sitting around doing nothing
the server can only accomodate eight humans and only lasts about five hours
it would essentially be like a casino sit and go poker tournament

it would be an elimination tournament with 1430 turns to start and everyone comes out of protection after one hour, 240 turns an hour until all have conceded to the winner

the host would have a dashboard so he could adjust thins like spy rules, gdi rules and a few other things like market conditions and eventually the number of bots in the set

how much would such a server cost?
what would the turn time be?
and how much up front?

just make them pay cold hard cash.

why did you buy up a bunch of domain names that you're tiny ass can't handle?

are you stating that you do web hosting as a living?
why are you willing to give away free web space if you do it for a living?
do you think you'll gain an unfair advantage by having direct access to the data?

meh, i forgot to quote the dink.

i dont host web sites geez

i obviously know nothing about coding and i have to hire people to build my websites
so no i said no such thing

i just said i have some empty urls
they cost close to nothing and are hosted for pittances until you actually do something

Lincoln , the patron status from what I can see is just a place for site admins who use the feeds from earth for their sites to discuss issues with the feeds,

Has nothing to do with just clans, its all sites that use the API code
So that means the eestats admin should already be a patron.

I thought "Patron" status was a status reserved for those who had donated to the game? It used to be you donated $15 to play limited (lifetime) or $5 (3 month) and you got platinum membership/patron status.

At least that's what it was in old E2025. Not sure if it's taken on new meaning here.

There is really no patron status ATM... it's a dev artifact when we had another system for managing boards.

lots of good thoughts on this thread, and good timing because we were just discussing this stuff a bit late last week :)

ZARCON CAN READ OUR MINDS!!!!

<---

...and a very good and proactive one he is too (while I'm here I thought I'd say: I suggested an eestats improvement recently, and it was implemented yesterday. This responsiveness is very impressive and deserves a little recognition here)

All hail bore.

*hails bore*

lincoln, the purpose of this thread wasnt to discuss current patrons but ways of improving upon it.

I'm not looking for special treatment.. just pointing out ways to bring in cash that can improve many aspects of gameplay.

More stored turns for patrons and if late start within reason higher proportion of turns. And I agree bonus for patrons as its exposure to costs. And if u make money from ur hobbies good for u!

That would be a significant gameplay advantage that wouldn't be possible without patron status so I would oppose that. I'm all for the game being easier to play/taking less time and looking nicer for patrons as long as it's possible for a non-patron to achieve the exact same gameplay results.

yea, I agree with dantzig, if you want to grow a community you don't penalize non-paying people...

I'm all for fanciness that doesn't actually affect gameplay, but patron vs non-patron should be same wrt gameplay

swirve's patrons got bonuses (before mehul-bastard removed those) and those weren't that big (more turns and land, not significantly and bonuses came in pieces unless was restart or made country very late set).

Yea, I finally gave in and bought Platinum in E2025, and then 2 sets later Mehul removed the bonuses =/

I think on the level that Mehul did it with platinum membership, it probably wouldn't be too harmful to implement. an extra 2 turns/day, or an extra 20 acres, etc isn't a huge advantage..but I do generally agree with not making the reward system based on enhanced game play abilities and would prefer to see more UI bonuses instead.

Although feel free to use my ajax tool kit idea for us regular members too! :-)

I think I had 4 active platinum emails, so folks who couldn't buy them could come play Limited....I was rather peeved when they were shut down.