I actually like both of your ideas @NinthAnt As long as the subscription fee is not a huge impost then I could see myself getting on board with these. We have needed a better intel map for years and I have always wanted to be able to interact with my inventory and recharge from the map.
@633KYN35D Agreed on capacity, I would also like to see more capacity for keys or extra key lockers would be fantastic. I currently have the max of 6 and keys still choke my inventory. Also making Media excluded from item count would be a great improvement that my son would love as he collects media.
Yeah I'd rather spend a small amount of money to make sure Ingress is sustainable. I'd rather support Ingress than spend my money gambling or getting drunk every weekend.
@NianticBrian I wish I could do a subscription now. I don't care about benefits, or a badge. If those are going to be a thing, you can figure it out later. There are lots of good ideas already in this thread. But I want to show support now, because I want Ingress to be profitable/sustainable. I enjoy playing the game.
In the past, I have bought Anomaly kits and characters, but because of the immediate redeem change, I don't want to do that. Opportunity lost.
I buy frackers and beacons, but because they take up inventory, I can only have a few in inventory. I don't use them enough to be a good source of money.
Please find new ways to take my money, ways that are not Pay to Win. (I know you are already sensitive to this)
A temporary Patreon donation option while you're deciding on a long term answer would both raise revenue for very little work, and would let you know how much demand there is for a low/no-benefits system.
If you needed an easy to implement benefit package, how about:
I don't see a 'no real benefits' subscription getting all that many subscribers - the number of us who would effectively be donating for the sake of it would be small. Even a badge would just be a short-term sugar-hit until the rusted-on completionists have their black, and then it's largely back to where we are now.
I'd much rather it presented enough value to agents that a reasonable portion of the player base would be willing to subscribe. Having like one in five agents subscribe at a few dollars per month, should suffice for Niantic to put several more people full-time on Ingress, and reactivating a gameplay feature pipeline would hopefully get some inactive or semi-active members of our communities playing again, and liven up both the game and community.
Obviously pay-to-start or full-on pay-to-win would be game breaking, but I do think there'd have to be some small in-game advantages for people to sign up
Some ideas:
- More Inventory space. Obvious, mentioned several times, but it really has to be limited because a significant inventory advantage would be completely game-breaking. However I'd totally pay for ~100-200 extra space, and it would hardly be an overwhelming advantage against non-subscribers.
- Daily first hack bonus. First hack of the day guarantees random hackable VR item. VRS/Aegis/Quantum/SBUL/VRMH/VRHS/Jarvis/ADA. This would be a worthwhile bonus, and incentivise people to actually play daily, like when Sojourner came out.
- Quantum capsules duplicating VR items. Would also pay for this alone. I understand that this was removed to reset the item economy more than anything else, but this issue is surely mitigated by the combination of the nerfed dupe rates toward the end (it was 0.1%/item/day I think?) and putting it behind a paywall.
So an example a tiered subscription structure (presumably the amounts can be adjusted according to local conditions on AppStore/PlayStore):
Daily hack streak and a small amount of CMU sounds really good. Quantums should probably not dupe VR for subscribers, though.
A 13.31% AP gain increase would be a great incentive while being thematic, a passive all the time bonus to subscribe, and balanced when comparing against free to play players
I’m going to say a flat out “No,” to an increase of inventory capacity resulting from a monthly subscription. It would give a direct game play advantage to subscribers. In addition to that, I actually doesn’t work. This would mean you’d lose that inventory when skipping a payment. Your inventory would just disappear. Can you for a moment imagine that.
I agree that inventory increases by subscription is PayToWin, and we don't want that.
But... Your excess inventory wouldn't disappear... It would just be over limit so you couldn't hack until you either subscribed again or you used all excess items.
I think 100 items would work well. It's a 5% increase in inventory and not really some insane advantage, but any serious player is not going to want to turn it down.
500 items would be a game changer. Players with it would have a significant advantage. Think; that’s 500 more bursters. I like where you went with it though. I’ve been recursed for a year, and we still haven’t gotten any bells and whistles for it, but really it’s the increments of 50 along with non-trivial game play achievements that I dig the idea of. It makes you earn it.
Comments
I actually like both of your ideas @NinthAnt As long as the subscription fee is not a huge impost then I could see myself getting on board with these. We have needed a better intel map for years and I have always wanted to be able to interact with my inventory and recharge from the map.
@633KYN35D Agreed on capacity, I would also like to see more capacity for keys or extra key lockers would be fantastic. I currently have the max of 6 and keys still choke my inventory. Also making Media excluded from item count would be a great improvement that my son would love as he collects media.
Yeah I'd rather spend a small amount of money to make sure Ingress is sustainable. I'd rather support Ingress than spend my money gambling or getting drunk every weekend.
@NianticBrian I wish I could do a subscription now. I don't care about benefits, or a badge. If those are going to be a thing, you can figure it out later. There are lots of good ideas already in this thread. But I want to show support now, because I want Ingress to be profitable/sustainable. I enjoy playing the game.
In the past, I have bought Anomaly kits and characters, but because of the immediate redeem change, I don't want to do that. Opportunity lost.
I buy frackers and beacons, but because they take up inventory, I can only have a few in inventory. I don't use them enough to be a good source of money.
Please find new ways to take my money, ways that are not Pay to Win. (I know you are already sensitive to this)
A temporary Patreon donation option while you're deciding on a long term answer would both raise revenue for very little work, and would let you know how much demand there is for a low/no-benefits system.
If you needed an easy to implement benefit package, how about:
$5 a month - nothing
$10 a month - one AMA question
I don't see a 'no real benefits' subscription getting all that many subscribers - the number of us who would effectively be donating for the sake of it would be small. Even a badge would just be a short-term sugar-hit until the rusted-on completionists have their black, and then it's largely back to where we are now.
I'd much rather it presented enough value to agents that a reasonable portion of the player base would be willing to subscribe. Having like one in five agents subscribe at a few dollars per month, should suffice for Niantic to put several more people full-time on Ingress, and reactivating a gameplay feature pipeline would hopefully get some inactive or semi-active members of our communities playing again, and liven up both the game and community.
Obviously pay-to-start or full-on pay-to-win would be game breaking, but I do think there'd have to be some small in-game advantages for people to sign up
Some ideas:
- More Inventory space. Obvious, mentioned several times, but it really has to be limited because a significant inventory advantage would be completely game-breaking. However I'd totally pay for ~100-200 extra space, and it would hardly be an overwhelming advantage against non-subscribers.
- Daily first hack bonus. First hack of the day guarantees random hackable VR item. VRS/Aegis/Quantum/SBUL/VRMH/VRHS/Jarvis/ADA. This would be a worthwhile bonus, and incentivise people to actually play daily, like when Sojourner came out.
- Quantum capsules duplicating VR items. Would also pay for this alone. I understand that this was removed to reset the item economy more than anything else, but this issue is surely mitigated by the combination of the nerfed dupe rates toward the end (it was 0.1%/item/day I think?) and putting it behind a paywall.
So an example a tiered subscription structure (presumably the amounts can be adjusted according to local conditions on AppStore/PlayStore):
Gold Tier - $2/month
- 1000 CMU per month
- Daily first hack bonus
- Progress toward tiered subscriber badge
- Subscriber discount on merch/events
Platinum Tier - $5/month
- 2500 CMU per month
- Daily first hack bonus
- Quantum capsules duplicate VR items
- +100 inventory capacity
- Progress toward tiered subscriber badge
- Subscriber discount on merch/events
Onyx Tier - $10/month
- 5000 CMU per month
- Daily first hack bonus
- Quantum capsules duplicate VR items (at a 50% higher probability)
- +250 inventory capacity
- Progress toward tiered subscriber badge
- Subscriber discount on merch/events
Daily hack streak and a small amount of CMU sounds really good. Quantums should probably not dupe VR for subscribers, though.
A 13.31% AP gain increase would be a great incentive while being thematic, a passive all the time bonus to subscribe, and balanced when comparing against free to play players
If you’re not too picky about what comes with a subscription, come join us on December 1 as we make a subscription out of what we already have.
I’m going to say a flat out “No,” to an increase of inventory capacity resulting from a monthly subscription. It would give a direct game play advantage to subscribers. In addition to that, I actually doesn’t work. This would mean you’d lose that inventory when skipping a payment. Your inventory would just disappear. Can you for a moment imagine that.
I agree that inventory increases by subscription is PayToWin, and we don't want that.
But... Your excess inventory wouldn't disappear... It would just be over limit so you couldn't hack until you either subscribed again or you used all excess items.
I think 100 items would work well. It's a 5% increase in inventory and not really some insane advantage, but any serious player is not going to want to turn it down.
I think an extra 500 items would be acceptable if:
500 items would be a game changer. Players with it would have a significant advantage. Think; that’s 500 more bursters. I like where you went with it though. I’ve been recursed for a year, and we still haven’t gotten any bells and whistles for it, but really it’s the increments of 50 along with non-trivial game play achievements that I dig the idea of. It makes you earn it.