Aurora's Blessing cost = subscription

[GeneralZaphod]

You will quickly be thinking: him again. Well, yes, I am back with more debate, but It is a good one! I now have 3 co-workers that play as well. They all 100% agree with my general position that the store prices are at about 10x too high. We are all engineers and working for a large software company. Of the 4 of us, I am the only one that has paid anything. The only reason I paid is because I feel I have played enough now that I should contribute a bit, and also wanted to get a good jump start on 76 (which has nice world stats).

Was it worth it? Maybe. Would I buy more? Likely not. Would I if it was reasonably priced? Absolutely. How much would I spend? A few bucks a month. Can I afford more? Absolutely, but it is a matter of principle. Plus my wife would kick my butt if I dumped that kind of money into a “silly iPhone game” (her words).

The new addition to the topic is that of the Aurora’s Blessing. The conclusion I have reached after finally understanding exactly what this is (one of my co-workers got this for his “freebie”) that this is absolutely an essential component of the game once you progress to a large number of cities. What is its cost? Over $10 per month, per world. This effectively is a subscription based service that not many are paying. The word that we collectively have used for that is “ridiculous”. How many are paying for this regularly? A few hundred? Less? The people who do have a huge advantage. The people like me that think it is “ridiculous” will eventually just stop playing out of frustration. You are certainly losing a lot of customers this way. I had about 40 cities on 45. It was pretty fun up until the management of the empire became too hard, and I am not going to fork out $10 a month to make it easier. However, I hold out the hope that somehow you will see the value in the economic principle of lower cost = more buyers, and reduce your prices to that which many will be willing to pay.

I have seen moderators making comments like “that makes us sad”. Well, I think this should make you sad that you are most certainly breaking your notion of creating a wonderful world full of insomniacs that are addicted to world domination. World domination is a obviously a pocket-book breaking dream in Valor. In world 45, I am in a high ranked guild. Most of my guild-mates have dropped off the world, and of course the reason is that it is just too much to manage, and they are not willing to pay for making it easier. It is simply one big disappointment. Of course there are other reasons as well. Lack of guild coordination ability, too hard to have a big guild war as it is just impossible to make progress, etc (I guess that is Aurora’s blessing again, isn’t it?).

Solutions to getting Aurora’s Blessing into the hands of the masses:

1. Reduce the price. A fair price would be about $2 and fit into a model where most dedicated players could, and would pay for this service. This includes myself and my 3 coworkers. I am not sure this is the best way, but it would work.
2. Move to a “free version of Valor”, and a “full version of valor”. The full version may either have a monthly subscription fee of a couple bucks a month, or a one-time fee that enables features. This would certainly include Aurora’s blessing, and should include other things such as increasing the queue size from 2 to 3 or other perks. How about priority server connectivity? I think this method will prove the best for profit in that it is much more likely to capture revenue from players who don’t stick it out very long.

Again, you live in the world of the $1 app. People don’t blink much at paying a buck for something they enjoy. Live by it and reap the benefits. If you can get 20k people to pay say $3 a month, $60k a month isn’t too bad. The biggest benefit? Happy customers that don’t leave! It would seem hard to run a business if customers leave out of frustration and disappointment.

[Richie03]

I wouldn't pay $1 a month to play I would leave I only play free apps I have never used money and I still like the game I won't quit because others are using money. They may have a advantage but they still lose all It takes is planning before attacking.

[larlis]

The aurora blessing has been up as topic in numerous threads. I personally think its a feature that should be included in the game for free as it as GeneralZaphod so eloquent pointed out makes the game playable when you reach a certain numbers of cities.
Can't say Im loving the idea of having a playable game (the paid version) and a less playable game (the free version) but at least this is a constructive idea on the aurora blessing issue.

[LordYeldarb]

I too am an engineer. Funny that! Anyways, I agree with this idea whole heatedly. One tweak I'd like to see is the ability to to have the purchase applied to a cellular bill, but I'm not sure apple would let that happen. That way it just becomes a part of my phone and possibly auto-renews. Early in the game, I'd like that feature to be resource boosters. I haven't survived long enough yet to want auroras blessing...

[Fire820]

I disagree with the cell phone bill idea. Not quite sure I agree with the different versions either. But I wouldn't mind paying a dollar every few months or a few dollars once a year to get aurora's blessing, an extra slot, and a third thing that you can choose and change whenever. Just a thought

[MechaStorm]

yeah im not liking the idea of the different versions either. im only in high school and dont have a job yet. if i have to pay a few bucks a month ill eventually run out of money. And also abt the different versions. would the people in the free version be able to play against the players in the "full" version? cuz that would mke it even more unfair to those guys. and if they werent on the same server and playmesh made two different systems for the different versions thik about how much more downtime there would be if on only one version so far there have been a lot f downtimes already. you would begin going like "what the hell is going on?" and many other people would be going nuts about the downtime. i dont tink its worth it for playmesh to do that

[donut]

@GeneralZaphod- 60k a month!! That's horrible money. An engineer gets around 60k a year. So are you saying Playmesh only needs 12 engineers?? How about the costs of: property tax? Electric bill? Other employees like janitors? Air conditioning? Profits? Etc?

@Richie03 I use to be like you. Then my friends came along and transformed my thinking. I'll try to transform your thinking too.

There are tons of apps that are 99 cents. Now close your eyes and think of all the things you could buy for 99 cents or under. Not many eh. Let's see.
• a pack of gum - $1=par
• a one time arcade machine with horrible graphics and gameplay - $1=par
• any regular game for Xbox, PS3, or Nintendo - $30=30x more costly
• a plain, no brand t-shirt - $6=6x more expensive
• soda from soda machine - $1.25=still more expensive

Don't you see. The free version of angry birds only has like 20 levels. The full version is $1 and has 100+ levels and new game mechanics. My last point today is, you are wasting money on a apple device if you don't take advantage of all the cheap apps that have excellent functions and cheap games that have awesome graphics and gameplay.