$5 for a key is pretty steep. I dont mind since I dont really use any other keys (I have my debugging keys from ages ago, but I barely use them).
If its you must have $5 in your account when you get one, will you have to keep a minimum of $5 in there to keep it?
Also, there is the potential problem of just getting a key, transfering $5s worth of dimes into it so it becomes active, and then transfering them back to your main account.
Doing that would allow unlimited keys.
-DogMan
$5 for an extra key doesn't sound steep to me.
I'm with Dog Man on the account transfers though. I'd rather Dantom kept the money. The user can't withdraw that small of an amount anyway. Sure, it could stimulate the economy if the person used that money to buy subscriptions. However, the user could have just bought the subsctiptions with their free key. | |
Dog Man wrote:
$5 for a key is pretty steep. I dont mind since I dont really use any other keys (I have my debugging keys from ages ago, but I barely use them). It doesn't seem that steep to me. It's like the price of a burger these days. I also don't expect very many people to need multiple keys (remember, the first is free), which is great, because it will help cut down on the fraud and spamming (our #1 problems) big-time. Way back in the early days, our whole business model was to charge for keys, period. The Internet has screwed up everyone's thinking that everything has to be free. If its you must have $5 in your account when you get one, will you have to keep a minimum of $5 in there to keep it? No, once you get a key, it's yours for life. Also, there is the potential problem of just getting a key, transfering $5s worth of dimes into it so it becomes active, and then transfering them back to your main account. Right, which is one of the reasons that I am pushing a $5 flat fee per key after the first. I think this BD deposit system is just overly confusing and unnecessary. | |
Tom wrote:
Right, which is one of the reasons that I am pushing a $5 flat fee per key after the first. I think this <big>BD</big> deposit system is just overly confusing and unnecessary. "Bull Dung" "BYOND DUNG" Which one is it? | |
Tom wrote:
Right, which is one of the reasons that I am pushing a $5 flat fee per key after the first. I think this BD deposit system is just overly confusing and unnecessary. Go Tom! (We need to send Dantom to a 12 step program..."My name is Dantom and I do not fear making money!") | |
Deadron wrote:
Tom wrote: I should mention a success story along these lines...for years, EverQuest refused to let players move their characters between servers. They weren't really technically set up to handle it, and it was an administrative hassle. Finally they gave in and made it possible -- for a $75 fee. People howled. And people paid. EQ has made over $1 million dollars on that fee alone. The moral: When you have something of value, don't be afraid to charge for it! Especially if it's a frill. | |
The only problem I can see with this is for game developers who need multiple keys to test certain features in their games.
I myself would be crippled if I didn't have a couple of extra keys to test things out while coding. Perhaps this could be fixed by having several different "Guest" keys available only to developers for private use. You could prevent these keys from accessing the "Games Live!" section. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
The only problem I can see with this is for game developers who need multiple keys to test certain features in their games. Couldn't you just pay the $5? | |
Tom wrote:
Couldn't you just pay the $5? Indeed...and right now I happily would pay the $5 for each extra key I need. But when I first came to BYOND, I would have probably been way less motivated to learn how to code and to actually make games if it was costing me money to develop them. Especially right off the bat, because I found myself needing extra keys for testing almost right way. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
because I found myself needing extra keys for testing Why the big need for extra keys anyway? I can understand one extra for the purposes of testing a multiplayer environment on your desktop, but more than that is really necessary? I develop *and* play with the same key, and have no troubles what-so-ever... | |
digitalmouse wrote:
Why the big need for extra keys anyway? I can understand one extra for the purposes of testing a multiplayer environment on your desktop, but more than that is really necessary? I develop *and* play with the same key, and have no troubles what-so-ever... I'll use DWO as an example. I have a party system in the new version I'm working on that allows you to join a party of a maximum four people. I need to use four seperate keys in order to work out all the kinks...aside from getting them to properly follow you etc, I also have to worry about battle. In my battle testing, I have to see what happens if party member X dies or logs out, and make sure that there aren't any bugs in the system. This would be extrememly difficult to impossible to work out so that four real people were helping me, considering it takes hours and hours of testing to work out the kinks. In short, without the use of four keys, coding DWO would be impossible. Even Proelium required me to use two different keys to test out interaction between players. | |
I think a good compromise might be to have an option for DreamSeeker to generate a random testing key when logging in. Such a key would not be valid when connecting to any world with client/authenticate set to 1 (the default).
If you wanted to get even more fancy, you could have a "test mode" flag much like the DEBUG define. If a world is compiled in test mode, then only test keys will be allowed in. Otherwise no test keys will be allowed (this method would not rely on client/authenticate like above). This will ensure that the developer will remember to properly revert to "normal" mode before release. Thoughts? (yeah, I know, no new features) | |
Deadron wrote:
The moral: When you have something of value, don't be afraid to charge for it! Especially if it's a frill. Ha! Great business plan, especially for a game, let people play the game for free for a while till you get alot of people enjoying it. THEN FORCE A 5$ a MONTH FEE TO MAKE THEM PAY. Haha, Im gonna go start and make a cool zeta rip and force people to pay to play......That's just basically the plan of these DBZ'ers. Im just wantin a good idea for a game. ~*~ Your friend on PRESCRIPTION Pills ~*~ Charlesisdapimp | |
Air Mapster wrote:
If you wanted to get even more fancy, you could have a "test mode" flag much like the DEBUG define. If a world is compiled in test mode, then only test keys will be allowed in. I concur, that's a great idea. | |
Dan wrote:
As of yesterday, anybody can have unlimited keys. Previously, the quota was 3. We were able to eliminate the quota (which caused problems for people sharing network resources), by changing it to a limit of one hassle-free key. After the hassle-free key is used up, you can create additional keys by depositing $5 into your new key's BYONDime wallet. Oh god, why now, its all the stupid dbzers faults for making so many keys! Noooo! I need testing accounts you know. | |
I'm just glad I made two testing keys last week. (I had exactly three, didn't even know about the limit, lol.)
| |
Well, we might do away with 'Guest' in the next release, since it has caused some confusion in the past. I like Air Mapster's idea better. [link] Paying for new keys is good if one has a use for having another key around. Quite honestly, I've posted for extended periods on the forums under about four or five different keys (just to be different, since people treat me differently that way). I only keep the Foomer key around because he's well known (yeah right, you know I've got better reasons than that :oP) But anyway, if you want to stop people from using multiple keys to, for example, spam games with, then charging to make a new key would be the way to go. That way if I wanted to ditch the Foomer key and start using the key named Hazenworth, I'd have to dish out $5 to do it. But it wouldn't cost me $15 to test a silly game with four keys. Some people still like having multiple keys, and they might want to register multiple family members. There are always reasons to register a genuine second key or more. My only question is, do those of us with, uh, more than one key get to keep the ones we got? | |
We are debating that right now.