F2P - Premium features

I don’t think contributing to CoGC should be on the premium list. It shoulders all the costs - normaly borne by all players on the planet - on a select few.

However, limiting the benefits to paying players sounds exactly like the type of P2W thing you guys want to avoid.

So.

  1. Tying the upkeep costs to the number of premium players on planet doesn’t change the issue, only reduces the costs.

  2. Restricting construction only greatly reduces the impact of this being a premium feature.

  3. Restricting construction and voting seems the best option. Leads to a situation where only the patrician elite votes and the rest must comply, but even long-established players are probably going to have a lot of basic industries on the main hub planets, so are likely to vote in a manner that benefits all. (though some people may feel like ‘no taxation without representation’, and remember what happened last time someone said that…)

Or maybe someone can think of a completely different solution.

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Hey, thanks a lot for providing your thoughts on this!

I see your point, and personally I’m open to an intermediate solution like only restricting voting rights. That doesn’t count for much, though, since I don’t call the shots in our game design department. :wink:

It’s true that denying access to the benefits of the CoGC somewhat disadvantages non-paying players. At the same time, if those player can’t contribute to it either, they just don’t have the same opportunity to make this investment and get something in return; it’s not like Premium players get a free advantage.

That being said, @molp and @martin are better qualified to weigh in on this. :slightly_smiling_face:

I didn’t think of if that way, but you’re right, it’s more of an additional investment opportunity than a direct advantage. And a minor advantage at that. So I guess it could work that way as well.

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Thanks for your suggestions @Ardis. You are right, contributing to the CoGC should not be on the list of limited features. We expect more players to arrive with F2P and that increases the upkeep cost a lot. Since unrated players profit from the CoGC bonus just like everbody does, we will keep the limitation on the voting.

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As a f2p player, I personally would not suggest limiting the gameplay for non-premium in such a manner (i.e. restricting construction and/or contribution of the CoGC). However, that being said, from a non-premium player perspective, I would suggest the following as premium-only features:

  • creation of corporations should be a premium feature, however anyone can join, premium or not.
  • only premium players should be able to start planetary projects, or start a vote on the next planetary project to be started upon, if such a thing were implemented. However anyone should be able to contribute to the construction or vote.
  • premium players should have a higher weight multiplier on CoGC votes, perhaps 1.1x or 1.2x of their total population. Free players will be at 1.0x.
  • premium players should have a higher than base multiplier on political votes, or an increase in the number of votes they have.
  • premium players gain experts slightly faster.
  • premium players have more queue slots on production.
  • premium players might have access to a wider variety of ship designs. For example, free players might only be able to design ships up till a certain weight, but premium has a higher limit. At the end of the day it doesnt matter since ships can be traded anyway, so this is more of a QoL kind of benefit.
  • This list will grow as more game features are fleshed out and added…

The idea behind this is that premium features should consist of numerous small QoL improvements or benefits, nothing too big to make too much of a difference, but yet still can be felt. To be fair, giving such small but somewhat tangible benefits to paying players is only right, since after all they are paying.

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I really like the suggestion about additional queue slots.

Ease of management features such as this will allow premium users to check-in to colonies less frequently and lessens the burden of micromanagement.

I understand that there is intent to introduce an additional facility that will increase available queue slots. Perhaps only the base number of queue slots could be increased. Say to 8 or 10 from the current 5. The proposed facility would still remain useful. F2p players would then have the trade-off of additional profit making or decreased micromanagement.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, @Sliverine! The general direction of restricting QoL features is exactly what we’ve been going for as well. We have a lot more of those ideas in our backlog, and I’ll go ahead and throw yours in The Filter for the rest of the team to vote on. :slightly_smiling_face:

When F2P starts (which is pretty soon), we’ll experiment with the first few distinctions and see how it goes. Depending on the data and feedback we get, we might change things up again in the following update. For example, if something turns out to be a massive gameplay advantage, we’ll scratch it from the restrictions list.

Full editing of flight mission plan may be here too. Like to change fuel usage in the middle of waypoints chain to catch the planet orbital cycles more precisely than automatic course.

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