i don't know if this would work, but what if they had an option where you could agree to watch commercials/in-game advertisements in exchange for 150 or 200 mist energy a day?
Or some kind of energy for advertisement model. That way people that need it can play a little more, and 3 rings could (possibly/hopefully) get some advertising dollars compliments of players who wouldn't have paid to play in the 1st place.
I'd suggest implementation something along the lines of a Hulu thing. Say, up to 10 times per day, you could choose to watch a commercial. Watch it all the way through, get 10 mist energy. It's a new option, rather than interfering with the current forms of play, so it shouldn't make things unpleasant for anyone. It's mist energy rather than CE, and it's a limited amount per day, so you won't find people breaking the economy by gaming the system somehow or another. It would allow people who want a bit more energy in their day to get a bit more energy in their day, when they need it most, and not bother anyone else at any other time.
Of course, there are difficulties. It would require infrastructure that OOO currently doesn't have - you'd have add some way to pipe ads in to the client. You'd have to solicit for ads to pipe in, and so forth. Given the number of flash game sites out there with integrated ads these days, there may be a service that they could deal with that would handle at least some of this for them (what do Hulu/Kongregate/etc do? Do they do it all in-house, or are they working with someone?) but they'd still need the coding, and Iguarantee that it would require some man-hours in maintenance. Also, I don't know what kind of payoff you can get per advertisement with plans like this. Energy is about $.003 per point, which means that in order to make this work out like it should, OOO would need to be making three cents profit per advertisement - as it can be expected to directly cannibalize normal energy sales. My understanding of things suggests that this should be achievable, but I don't know but so much about it.
I don't want F@#$%$@ adverts in my game.
godofskype - the point is they would be optional, from what it sounds like. click somewhere to view an advertisement, and you get paid in some amount of mist energy. as much as I don't like the notion of in-game advertisement, a system where only players who WANT to see the ads in exchange for some mist energy would see them. no one is forced to. however you aren't rewarded for NOT watching them. is that the problem that you have with it? that you would want free energy, but don't want to see ads, whereas other people who also want free energy, and are willing to watch, will get it? im wondering if you feel like this system FORCES players to watch ads, like you feel the current system (essentially) FORCES players to buy energy, even though its not absolutely required?
GodofSkype is a troll. He's an obvious troll, and one of the major reasons that people want anti-troll options on this board. He is apparently opposed to OOO making money. Please ignore him, and discuss the idea on its merits.
Every game that i play that went to free offers, has had many complaints of the offers being scams, so NO!
OK, that's about 3 times you have personally tried to attack me and/or smear my name on the boards. Trust me I don't need help, and trust me I am not a troll.
I rather doubt that I have made such waves that people are actually implementing a system to get rid of me, but uh nice way to inflate my already huge ego XD.
I am not opposed to OOO making money at all, I have no idea where you came up with that disingenuous assertion.
Also fact: I apologized to the forum personally with the exception of a certain someone, and we all know why, perhaps you must of missed that post.
Trolls don't talk like this, trolls don't' respond like this, trolls don't suggest things, and trolls certainly don't apologize.
What was that about me being a troll?
Every game that i play that went to free offers, has had many complaints of the offers being scams, so NO!
Yet another of my personal reasons to have adverts in my game.
Also, they spam your email.
Well i just see so many people coming on this site and flooding the forum with complaints about the energy, but never offering any solutions. So while it wouldn't be perfect at least it's more productive that complaining or making suggestions like, 'make crafting free, make elevators free, i should get to play as much as i want'.
@djbiznatch, you got it exactly. The idea is that it's optional.
@everyone, also the idea i kind of had in mind is that if you do this you'd get 140-150 ME , ideally allowing you to do two runs through a tier in a day, instead of 1. And hopefully it would be a small enough change that it wouldn't actually cannibalize what people are already paying. Also, i'm not quite sure how spam would play into this. And lastly, i think any adjustments made to an already not broken (IMO) system, would have to be something that potentially actually helps OOO financially and gives them a stronger position from which to improve their game (again financially or otherwise). I think that's the idea of a 'suggestion'. ya know, win-win. Most peoples suggestions are win-lose, i.e. win for the player, lose for OOO.
There are other ways to make money than free advertisements. The energy "issue" is still debatable. This is a new game, and it hasn't settled yet. An Auction House might even fix it. If they start forcing me to watch advertisements between loading screens, I'll stop playing their game. I'm sure many people feel the same. You want to give OOO money? Give them money. I did.
And I don't know who GodofSkype is, but anyone who thinks that's trolling doesn't know much about the internet.
@eshajori - did you read the entire thread? no one said anything about ads in loading screens.. maybe you are just saying how much you would hate that type of thing, but its certainly not whats being suggested here.
@jebruk - i think thats the right attitude. if you're going to complain or feel something needs to be fixed, you better have a suggestion for how to make it better, or else you're not really doing much to help the situation.
also i would say that you would still have to have the 100 mist cap, but when its running out have the option to look at a few ads or whatever. nothing shady, or spammy. and a limit to how much extra energy you could get from doing this each day. though the amount of money they get for the ads would probably not be reason enough to give you 5 extra mist, let alone 10. its a nice idea, but i'm not sure it would work. but at least you brought something different to the table!
I actually like this idea.
* Optional
* Does not give out your email or any other contact info
* Gives you mist, not crystal, energy
* Small amount, roughly as much as an hour of wait
How much would a single ad view be worth to company?
Just some quick numbers: If I did the math right, one energy is worth about .25 to .30 cents -- fractions of a cent. If a person watching an ad is worth 5 cents to an advertiser, that's about 18 to 20 energy.
Hmm, so the ballpark numbers are actually valid. What's the value of a 15 to 30 second commercial per viewer? What does Hulu get -- anyone know?
Even at 3 cents per ad, that's about the right range. You can pay for your elevators that way.
In fact, if you're worried about abuse, maybe "You can only do this if you have less than 20 mist energy"?
NO