So you want to monetize...
At begining - i'm spending a lot for Ingress game. Apex was great idea - now i'm using like 4-5 on weekly basis.
But it won't make game proffitable for you as not everyone want to use them or have opportunity to use them effectively. I have some ideas you can consider.
- Frackers price are too high now. Before raise i used them few times during week. Now i'm not using them - not just because of price but they are used so rarely now that people looking into Intel knows i'm planing something instantly. Ergo - i'm not buying them anymore. Bring them back to old price and you will see - it will bring you much more profit.
- Lower price of beacons. Like 66% drop. Make them real MICROtransactions as they do nothing but visual. People will use them just for fun then.
- shop.ingress.com - really. Sell some swag. Sell loadout and medal cards. Sell merchandise. I want to buy some hoodie, want to buy some backpack, wanna get some cap. Official ingress phone gloves, phone covers. Come on. There is lot of stuff that will sell out easily.
- Did i mention cards? Biocards are collectible. Medal ingame is some fun but hunting for pok... i mean biocards and collecting them all - is really fun for collectors. I don't get why you decided to sell them ingame shop only instead of keeping physical releases.
- Host freakin' parties on anomalies and hexathlons alongside with POCs. Seriously. Build your brand for new playerbase (yeah - there is a lot of new players). Host OPR live. Just get easy money.
- From teardown of updates we know that paid inventory spaces are coming. Some people hates an idea, i think it will be great. But... You have to gave people opportunity to earn it free because last thing you want is losing some playerbase. So let's say 5$ for permament +50 inventory space, 15$ for +200. Player can get them by each recursion (+200) or onix multiplier (+25/+50).
- I saw something with subscription and inventory again - make it key related only.
- Add more keylockers.
- Start hunting for multiaccounts. Really easy ML algorithm running on your database once a week. Mark suspicious trades, send them to your team so they can look into it and... remove all so precious items. 3 strike policy in use - warning, warning, ban.
Ok something more about point 5. There are faction divided parties hosted by POCs. Sometimes they are great, sometimes they sucks but... You have a power to make huge, both factions party in "demilitarized zone". Just put few L8 temporary portals in party area, half of them blue, half of them green and make them immune for attacks during party time. Make few tables with your people - Q&A area (it can be optional and kept for NL1331 events only), swag area, biocards area. Maybe even some beers branded by NIA made my local breweries.
To be clear - allow POCs to make their own, faction divided afterparties.
My POV - for playing ingress i spent something like 6-8k$ last year. For travel tickets, gasoline, hotels, car rentals, parking tickets, speeding tickets etc. :D ONLY something like 350$ directly to NIA (some swag paid on NL-1331, Dresden failomaly, APEX, Frackers, digital loadouts of medals). Would be happy to spent much more. Really. Just give me and other players opportunity. In return give us some quality product (i know pepople are biasing Prime, i like it, i understand technical issues and developing problems, but you need to be more transparent in communication, explain, show some roadmap, discuss ideas with playerbase).
Comments
Well 6 and 7 is something that FevGames discovered already in game code. So it's coming. https://fevgames.net/ingress-prime-apk-teardown-2-47-2/
Now it's time to discuss that free players can get it also - just like pokemongo players - just need a lot of time and grind.
To eliminate cheaters they need cash for hiring people who will take care of it. So if NIA is bringing paid subscription and paid inventory spaces - it's good reason to hunt for multiaccounts - as it will ruin their business.
The beacon are currently a luxury item. They're expensive and do absolutely nothing.
If you're not in an event, probably no one will even see it. I rather save my money for Apex now, buying beacons would be literary throwing money into trashbin, in a glamorous way during 4h to everyone nearby see.
Make them 1h only and way cheaper, like 250cmu at best, or even free as a very rare drop or in lv up kit.
Or up the time to 8 hours to justify the cmu price on Beacon.
I concur that the price of frackers is too high. I used to spew them like candy and stopped doing that after the price unexpectedly doubled I've been known to deploy hundreds of beacons in a day: I used 200 toast beacons to get the final 100K to get back to 16 after I recursed, and I once deployed around 500 in an afternoon during a busgress party. I don't mind the current pricing level, but I wish that they were available in larger quantities at a significant discount. Buying 500 beacons three at a time is excruciating. I've never used an Apex and never will, and I'd forgotten that they existed until this discussion.
Oh yeah, it would be nice if purchased items didn't count against inventory.
There are lots of things that I would pay for if they existed:
There are also things that I would gladly pay for if they existed as a subscription service.
My wish list is mostly but not entirely centered around reducing the toil of gameplay, cutting down the time I spend on stupid mechanical stuff so that I can spend more time doing fun stuff.
Oh my would I love this!
I'd even tried one month sub (who knows,maybe more,i'm not a seer) - even if i generally hate sub's model of monetising. But only in one case,if store for "premium users" will be removed from.inventory. Or,imho,i'd better pay one time transaction to move that laggy junk out to it's place. (Really,we have store in menu)
Example of lag: recycle all resos(bursters?) via manage button,swipe to keys to charge,and first -> you will see your cmu amount at the key carousel and second -> even if return to inventory not via "swipe back", you will again be in the store. Too aggressive merchandising imo. Or too agressive lag that i really desire to pay to be removed and not disturb me.
Also im still suprised they dont sell character badges every month rotate different from the archives like 2 or 3 maybe ? And not just green Hank Johnson i dont want green character as a Res player lol, thats also something you could sell instead if someone wants a nice badge you must pay sick prices on ebay... and no money there goes to niantic.. many collect badges and u would support niantic 100% from the ingame store if they had different character badges every month on rotation.. something to consider maybe? And personalized beacons perhaps?.... its your own store add more fun exciting stuff so that more players want buy there.
Agree about **** price, but it seems that Niantic is not going to budge on that. Maybe they think it'll set a bad precedence? Anyway frackers are probably not a priority for most people right now.
As for swag, I don't know how profitable it is. With manufacturing, inventory, shipping, etc. there might not be enough profit in it to make it worthwhile.