Money Making Ideas

BreenzyBreenzy ✭✭✭✭

Please Niantic, introduce more store options, people are willing to pay, you just need to make them available. Below is some thoughts/math/ramblings.


Yearly Player Cost

I understand not everyone can afford something as simple as a WoW subscription, but I will use it kind of as a benchmark for supporting an always on MMO game as I don't know how much it costs to support Ingress, as well as the "Big Mac Index" for comparison.

WoW Subscription: $14.26/month AUD

Big Mac: $4.35 AUD

https://www.statista.com/statistics/274326/big-mac-index-global-prices-for-a-big-mac/

Yearly Costs: $171.12 AUD

Translating this across to Ingress, let's make a few assumptions, every player attends a weekly P8 frack event where 4 are used and 8 people attend.

Frackers used per year: 206

Divided evenly among 8 people: 26 frackers per person or ~$62 AUD.

Still $110 short.


Earning CMU

As there will always be a free element to the game we need to introduce options to earn CMU, from First Saturday, anomalies and other events. There would be participation criteria (earn the badge only) and CMU criteria (perform X activities, eg Field test style)

Hopefully we also get something like individual weekly missions which can reward CMU.

My goal is to have fair pricing based on frackers, as well as items that don't break the game and still require team work to benefit from them fully.


Items

I'm basing items off whats available in PoGo and pricing around usefulness

Disclaimer: Prices are based on AUD and working out CMU value from lowest to highest amount of CMU you can buy.

Inventory booster - +50 spots

Price: 2000 CMU = $2.39 - $1.59 AUD

Maximum 40 for total of 4000 inventory space.

80000 CMU

Cost for all 40: $94.60 - $63.60 AUD


PoGo Equivalent:

Buying all inventory/Pokemon storage: $171.12 AUD


Could easily double the price to match PoGO.


AP booster - 50% AP bonus for 30 minutes - 1/5/10 bundles

Item Booster - 50% increase in hacked items - 1/5/10 bundles (stacks with frackers to encourage purchases)

Price:

1 - 2000 CMU = $2.87 - $1.92 AUD per item/total

5 - 9600 CMU = $2.29 - $1.53 AUD per item = $11.45 - $7.65 AUD Total

10 - 14900 CMU = $1.78 - $1.19 AUD per item = $17.80 - $11.90 AUD Total


VR Dupe Capsule - Niantic to decide mechanic, limit of 3 active at once, can only use for X amount of time/items/km walked

Price: 14000 CMU = $11.20 - $16.74 AUD


I think we can make up the final $110 from these options and more.

Comments

  • I was going to list most of the ideas above so I'll add just a few of my own or my own versions:

    VR Dupe Capsule - Duplicates based off of AP gained. Say 1331? With a max of 4 per day like the other quantums?

    I second the AP and storage boosts. Similar mechanics from POGO (take several pages out of their books. I have spent more money on POGO than I care to admit. )

    Sell more swag. Car vinyl anyone? Ship anomaly swag to off site players that want it.

    Rechargeable cubes. Gather XM from on the ground to be used later.

    Expand the key locker max limit. Add other 'Lockers' like one for media/boosts. They wouldn't break the game but would be good for the people that like to collect stuff.

    Get more sponsors? Think AXA, IITO EN , MUFG, Circle K in Ingress; Boost Mobile, Starbuck, & Sprint for POGO, and AT&T in HPWU. And others that I'm not aware of. You've gotten sponsors before, do it again.

    Charge POGO and HPWU even 1% of their income for use of the portal network developed by Ingress players.

    But most of all communicate with your player base.

  • I think a 13.31% AP booster would be more thematic and balanced lol


    PoGo will have a portal review system one day, don't count on ingress needing to life forever just for that.

  • I've heard dozens of people in varied circles say they would pay for more inventory in a heartbeat. I know I would. I'm on record saying I'd drop a Jackson on even getting another key locker.

    I'd also pay handsomely for the ability to increase my portal submission slots, either as one-time use tickets when I exhaust the free ones or some kind of on-going limit increase. I and others would also pay for upgrades to our submissions and edits a la OPR Live.

    Also, the swag store is super lame. Remember agent cards? Bring those back already. And maybe shirts, hoodies, and the like with your agent name printed on them. Or those co-branded battery packs. Think about all the crazy **** we buy (or used to buy) to play this "free" game.

  • I just posted a similar discussion, my ideas:

    More inventory space

    More portal submissions

    A media capsule that I can put as much media as I want without counting towards inventory

    A capsule for souvenir keys, once they go in they can't be used, but unlimited keys allowed

    A redacted skin (not reacted itself, but a skin that lets me reminisce)

    Other skin options for the scanner

    Greater data access, even if just for my own account, I would like to be able to go to the Intel map and have it highlight what portals I haven't interacted with before for example

  • I would LOVE a meetup beacon that would be invisible to the other faction and would be visible in comms for, say, a radius of 20 kilometers for an hour. It would help to get newer agents to meet up sooner and into the communities faster, which would help with new player retention rates. I would buy one every time we held a frack.

    I loved the Field Test event. I would pay money and travel to a Field Test like an anomaly, if the event was longer and had more challenges and had a mission day tacked on to it.

    More swag. I know physical swag is hard logistically, but people throw the **** down for faction specific swag. Even just simple things like coins.

    Temporary storage space. I feel like I spend a ton of time traveling and cajoling other agents into holding my gear while I work to get the perfect load out for an event. I would rather just pay NIA five bucks or whatever to have a weekend-long storage for items that I don't want to get rid of but I can't recycle (vrlas, vr hack mods, keys) when I go to a FS or MD or anomaly.

    I don't think any of the above ideas are new, but it seems like NIA is trying to make Ingress sustainable and these are the things that I know for sure I'd spend money on.

  • AkceptorUAAkceptorUA ✭✭✭✭

    People are the most time asking about:

    • more inventory space
    • more portal submissions
    • more mission submissions
    • additional souvenir capsules (keys, media, etc) where you can put stuff but not retrieve from

    These are non-game-breaking abilities so that making them paid is a good idea

    • Paid API access
    • Buffs (like increase your range by 10 meters, increase certain item drop probability, etc) - monthly subscription or once per 30minutes

    Might be a deal but it's complicated one...

    Personally I’m interested in buying bacons as well but they have to be significantly cheaper

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