To Donate or Not To Donate, That Is Thy Question

Started by Joshy_1289, Oct 28, 2008, 06:06 PM

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asdfqwerty123

The main purpose of donations are to keep the server alive. 

If that means paying the server bills or paying for advertising, the goal is to keep players playing.  If you're rich and can afford to pay massive server bills every month, good for you.  For everyone else, a reasonable donation option should be available.  If you're doing it for profit, you're in the wrong place for that.  I don't think donations should give real advantages that free players can't obtain, at least relatively easily.  Appearance based rewards are good, overpowered stat buffers are horrible.  Unfortunately some admins who don't care about their players can make outrageously overpowered donation items, make a huge profit, and still keep their players.  The whole reason I created my own server was to avoid that and create a server players go play for free and still get most of the same experience.  You still walk a fine line of fair donations to worthless donations, trying to keep a good balance but still keeping donations valuable.  It's difficult to manage.

Never set "make money" as a goal.

Goal 1: Keep the players happy in the long run, not immediate wants or requests/suggestions
Goal 2: Keep the server online and stable, and updated often

If you can't keep a stable server of happy long-term players, then there is no need to ask for donations.

Shinae

#31
The best donation system would be new hat sprites to replace your existing hat sprite. Makes you look different, nothing else. It doesn't affect stats balance at all. It doesn't bring zeny to player who donates.

And you should make these hats obtainable by some very long quest line. Or collecting some stuff a lot. Since there will always be players who want those hats, but can't afford to donate.

This way donators will be happy (they don't need to spend weeks doing quest or collecting items) and hard core players, who can't donate, will be happy since they can get those hats too by playing.

I personally don't like OBBs and OPBs as donation reward, since it has zeny value in game. OCAs are the worst.

Edit: Also you could add player name to something like "donators hall of fame" or something. Or give them special donators rank in forums.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Hutchy

There are always players willing to close the gap, though, by trading donation credits/items (or rather, their money o.o;) for ingame stuff. Somebody could say "I want that five-dollar pack of OCAs. I'll give you 5mil zeny for it." or something.

Or wait... do servers frown upon that? :c

Shinae

Quote from: Hutchy on Nov 04, 2008, 10:32 AM
There are always players willing to close the gap, though, by trading donation credits/items (or rather, their money o.o;) for ingame stuff.

Aye that could happen in case of custom head gear sprites. So there is zeny advantage in my suggestion then. I didn't think about it through.

Maybe some sort of donation system to unlock some special options on stylist or some sort of features. Like special hair style or color. That's not tradeable to zeny. At least not easily.

Anyways I don't personally like those huge zeny advantage donation servers. Donations should be as neutral as possible. But if you leave it to donate and gain nothing, you won't get much donations. It's nice to have some sort of carrot to make people donate. I remember donating once back in my EuphRO days just to get that cool pirate corsair.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

DeAmascus

I'll say this as an admin first, then a player.

Admin: the donation is YOUR choice whether to do it or not. It is not FORCED upon a person whether to donate, nor can we reach into your pocket and pull money out of it [unless we know you in person]  XD

Player: it causes problems because some "donation" items are really useful and really good. Therefore, nearly FORCING players to "donate". All in all, the word "Donation" means "giving of free will". When you see an item you want on an RO server, and the only way to donate..it's more of forcing it instead of giving the "donations" of free will.

That's MY opinion on it though. =x
~Proud Leader of Colorz~



HellRose

asdfqwerty123

Quote from: Shinae on Nov 04, 2008, 10:04 AM
The best donation system would be new hat sprites to replace your existing hat sprite.
If you use Xray you can have unlimited custom headgear sprites and not have to replace any default ones.  Just make sure you use a free Xray client they provide rather than a newer or beta one that requires you to pay to have that advertisement announcement removed.

Pandora

Xray is awesome, actually I see nothing wrong to pay for a client with no advertisement if you can afford it. We expect players to support the server, likewise I think it's nice to support someone who works for all private servers ^_^; it's only like 5$ anyway if I recall, just saying, of course the free client is nice too.
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Orange

Didn't read the whole topic, but in the hundreds(server hopper ftw :D) of servers i have played over the year, donations can make or break a server easily.

I would say a server with no donations would be the best way to go, fair on everyone.

However having things such as non-stat headgears etc would not be bad, though none at all would be better.

:3

asdfqwerty123

Servers that don't take donations are losing money and die quickly.
You need money to stay online, hosting isn't free.

mickiedeez

#39
Quote from: Defaced on Oct 28, 2008, 08:44 PM
Anyway, a good server doesn't need donations to survive. If they will depend on that system, much likely, it will end up on what you said. I may call it at first a weird economy. But as it progress, a stable economy will be made and the rewards will get to use on it.   

That's like saying a good government doesn't need taxes lol.  You'd have to have a friggin multi-trillionaire to keep the government running efficiently.

Most server have to have donations eventually, unless the owner really can afford to spend hundreds on hosting, ads, and everything else each month.

On a mid rate, donations similar to justRO's are great,  donations on a low rate should be somethign like opb's or something.  On a high rate or super high rate its much harder and I think donations kind of get way too overpowered, unless they use items made for looks only.
Quote from: Temjin on Feb 16, 2010, 12:07 PM
You are a f*** idiot. Why you even bother to post here, I will never know. It is BEYOND ME.

Orange

Quote from: mickiedeez on Dec 07, 2008, 11:24 AM
On a mid rate, donations similar to justRO's are great,  donations on a low rate should be somethign like opb's or something.  On a high rate or super high rate its much harder and I think donations kind of get way too overpowered, unless they use items made for looks only.
(got nothing against it, its a great server but)

Servers like JustRO i would disagree on, where everyone has donates etc.

When i played there just about everyone had donation items, I think it is quite stupid when EVERYONE is using donates... Just my opinion :/
:3

asdfqwerty123

Well, ScytheRO has a good amount of people with donation items, even those who aren't donators can obtain them.  People donate to keep the server alive, and as long as we can keep above that line (server cost), we're ok.  If there is a problem, I'll limit the amount of new items coming into circulation and offer to buy up existing ones to kill the supply and raise the demand.  It's just a balance people need to find when offering donations.

Guest

xD i'm going to bring another thing about donations up

what do you do when your server has too many donations?
like say you have 10 people on your server, and you only need a max of 10$ from each, but your getting like 15$ from each, so what do you do?

kinzoku

I can't believe that no one has posted the idea of donations that are purely for CONVENIENCE.
Screw stated custom head gear. It's alot more balanced if it's just something that is more convenient to the donator than the normal player, yet still obtainable by both.