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Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-premium

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Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-premium

Postby Aba on Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:22 pm

Here is a suggestion:
Basically I would argue that Premium Memberships should appeal to players in other ways than simply allowing them to partake in games.
The problem highlighted here is that people literally can't even play the game (more than four games at a time which is extremely slow, especially considering the 24 hour turn timer and amount of players who stall when they're losing) unless they buy Premium.
I would argue that a new player won't even want to buy Premium if their only experience is these slow twenty-four hour games and only allowed to play four at a time.

My next argument is that Premium already has enough good features to be appealing to all players who would consider buying Premium, including anybody who simply wants to play more than four games. (Who really plays more than four speed games at a time?)
The real great thing about Premium is the SPEED GAMES, not the AMOUNT of games.

Furthermore, players who are unable to afford Premium will simply quit the site, this means that CC could be much busier than it is, lots more games available to players who want to play but simply haven't got games in their budget.
This means that CC's Premium Memberships are cannibalizing the site, creating a lack of activity (many unfilled games, just look through the Game Finder sometime), and lots of people quitting due to Premium restrictions being too strict.

These are only my opinions, feel free to do what you will, I have been a Premium Member constantly throughout my playtime and will probably buy again. But the reason I'm buying is to play Speed Games because the four-game restriction simply underscores the lack of activity on the site.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Nut Shot Scott on Sun Jul 25, 2021 9:34 pm

So what is the suggestion...?
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Sun Jul 25, 2021 10:56 pm

Let players play as much as they want even if they do not buy Premium.
Allow players to play the game, reducing inactivity on the site and ultimately drawing in more people, better sales of Premium, and a happier player base.
By limiting the amount of play people can have on the site right from the get go, you risk losing a player to boredom and a system that feels like it failed them.

Speed games are an excellent feature for premium players because it genuinely adds value.
Polymorphic is a really cool game mode too. (It’s relatively new.)
Players want to participate in speed games because it solves the problem of games taking forever, and they want to participate in polymorphic games because it lowers variance.
Who is purchasing premium just so they can play more slow games?
Maybe some, but I would argue not many people at all, the amount of sales that would be lost pales in comparison to how much the site would benefit from the increased activity levels that would stem from allowing players to play the game as much as they want, even if they do not purchase premium.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:04 pm

Imagine how bad it would make someone feel if they joined four games and one of them was against someone who missed three turns, it literally would take a minimum of three days for them to win the game and get their game slot back. Now they’re terrified of inactivity on the site, people missing turns or delaying because they’re losing. If they were allowed to just join into another game or as many as they want, they are going to get frustrated with the people who take forever, not the site rules. They will want to buy premium because they want the speed games. The cost of premium is pretty low, people can afford it, but they won’t want to buy it if they can’t even experience the game. Joining in and getting locked into four slow games is not the best experience.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:20 pm

Here's another example of a player who would be upset with the way the site works:
When you are non-premium, you can join into four games and still get invitations.
You get an invitation to join a game, then when you try to accept, boom the site tells you that you need Premium in order to play, "more than four games at a time."

Why wouldn't we allow players to join games, when there are 1994 games unfilled in the game finder.
That's thousands or tens of thousands of game slots that are open but unfilled.
Non-premium players could easily fill that void.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Nut Shot Scott on Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:13 am

The flip side of that coin is that premium is like $30/year or something. That's less than $3/month. If you keep running into a situation where youd like to play more, then fork over the small fee and play all you want - I would make the argument that once the site has you in that spot where you're desiring more, then the solution isnt giving you it for free.

I do believe that there is room for improvement for new and freemium players but your fix and the issue itself are simplistic and miss the larger issues.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Nut Shot Scott on Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:14 am

And literally every player on here can afford premium. They just choose not to.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:40 am

Do you think that the addition of polymorphic games, which have only existed for ~20% of CC’s history, have added significant value to the Premium Membership?
If so, wouldn’t that be a great opportunity to reduce the limitations on non-premium members. (i.e.; let them play the game instead of allowing activity to decline, games to go unfilled, leave due to boredom, get frustrated with 4-game limit, etc.)
Maybe when the site was young, fifteen or so years ago, they didn’t have much to offer Premium Members, but now we have lots to offer, so there is no need to put a restrictions on the amount of games.
Look at other board games, they can play them free lots of places online.
If someone wanted to play board games they would just play them, as many as they want.
CC has some competitive advantages but they lie in the diversity of maps, a new player could not even experience a variety of maps with a four-game limit.
They simply come in and get bored immediately with slow games.
It doesn’t incline people to want to play more games, it inclines people to want to play faster games.
People want to play more games because there are games available, hence why under the current settings there are many slots unfilled and there always have been.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:51 am

Nut Shot Scott wrote:And literally every player on here can afford premium. They just choose not to.


Yes I think this is true.
Many small businesses have this problem, they are so focused on getting new customers that they neglect their current ones.
If the site focused more on pleasing the players that already enjoy the game, such as by making the games fill up, allowing players who aren’t premium to play the game, then they would convert more non-premium members to paying customers.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Nut Shot Scott on Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:10 am

We'll agree to disagree on most of this I think.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby xroads on Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:12 am

Honestly

This is a business, not a public service.

It has expenses, and needs to generate a profit like any other company would.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Nut Shot Scott on Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:24 am

xroads wrote:Honestly

This is a business, not a public service.

It has expenses, and needs to generate a profit like any other company would.



This.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:56 pm

While I agree with you completely, and you have a valid point, I believe that increasing the amount of play allowed for Non-Premium members would be a financially beneficial choice: As you increase the amount of playability for Non-Premium members, which make up most of your userbase, you will generate increased activity. This means that your users will spend more time on the site. Obviously this is true because they will have increased number of games they're allowed to join in, thus making them spend more time on the site, which is ultimately what drives sales and leads to an increase in traffic, rather than a decline.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:58 pm

You could test my theory easily: Do not take my word for it.
Send out a survey and ask the users how much time they spend on games and see how Conquerclub ranks compared to the time they spend on other games that they could spend here.
I'm sure you'll find that Conquerclub is not the first (and definitely not the only) game they play.
Last edited by Aba on Mon Jul 26, 2021 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Donelladan on Mon Jul 26, 2021 2:00 pm

If you keep running into a situation where youd like to play more, then fork over the small fee and play all you want - I would make the argument that once the site has you in that spot where you're desiring more, then the solution isnt giving you it for free.


OP's point is that you don't get into a situation where you'd like to play more, you're bored before that because of the 4 games limitations.
I think he is at least partly true there.
And I think he's right as well on that giving more games to freemium would increase activity, which means happier premium and losing less people.

I disagree on the fact that most people buy premiums to play speed games though.
Some but not most, and definitely not among the people I know.

I've seen and made similar suggestion on the past.
I personally think there should be unlimited classic games speed and non speeds for freemium, maybe with a couple of restrictions. Like basic settings only, 6 player classic esca/flat sunny/fog). Let people get hooked up, generate activiy, show them all the other cool settings/maps without letting access them.



This is a business, not a public service.

It has expenses, and needs to generate a profit like any other company would.


Yes but there are tons of free games out there, still making profits. And it's not like this suggestion is about making the site totally free, it's about generating more activities to generate more revenues. I don't think unlimited games for everyone is the best approach, mainly because I don't believe speed is the reason for people to buy premium, hence site would be losing premiums. But still some valid points.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Doc_Brown on Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:09 am

Donelladan wrote:I personally think there should be unlimited classic games speed and non speeds for freemium, maybe with a couple of restrictions. Like basic settings only, 6 player classic esca/flat sunny/fog). Let people get hooked up, generate activiy, show them all the other cool settings/maps without letting access them.

I like this idea. I'd also suggest unlimited polymorphic games on the classic map for freemium players. While speed appeals to one type of player, there are plenty of people here (like me) that are not interested in speed games but do like the polymorphic games.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby HardAttack on Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:57 am

4 games at a time for freemium is little bit too stretch imo...
make it be 8, that is far better advertisement for the site itself....

polymorphic game style is, as we all well know, very well sitting between 1v1 and team game approaches....
is it brilliant gaming option ? of course it is...
cut down access for fremiums to play it then disable fremiums see such a lovely option site does have then expect them to pay for something they did not even see and exprience how.
does not make sense imo.

in perfumery, no one is paying a full bottle, doing a blind buy without testing it....
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Nut Shot Scott on Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:53 pm

HardAttack wrote:polymorphic game style is, as we all well know, very well sitting between 1v1 and team game approaches....
is it brilliant gaming option ? of course it is...
cut down access for fremiums to play it then disable fremiums see such a lovely option site does have then expect them to pay for something they did not even see and exprience how.
does not make sense imo.

in perfumery, no one is paying a full bottle, doing a blind buy without testing it....



translating your posts is some serious work but i do agree.

giving free players the option to play every game type to give them the opportunity to find what they like and play more does make sense. i also think the 4 games should be a mix of speed and 24 hour. we live in a "now" society, playing a turn then waiting 3 days for another one = never coming back, as don alluded to.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Shannon Apple on Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:25 pm

The problem with your suggestion is that giving freemiums more than 4 games would take away incentive to buy premium in the first place. I've been freemium myself for a time. I'm not playing a lot of simultaneous games atm, but the sole reason that I bought premium this year was because I needed to be able to accept the odd clan game, but I've still not been playing more than 6 (ish) at a time due to not having the time to focus on it for the moment. My main incentives for buying premium at any time have been poly games and being able to play more than 4. I do not like, or play speed games. The people playing those put me off years ago. "Hurry up, you're so slow.... Oh my Gosh, it's a pain to play with you, do you need the full 3 minutes?" Nah, screw that. Instead of being relaxing, that's stressful. LOL! It's like that impatient asshat driver at an intersection who keeps honking, even though, you do not have an opportunity yet to move.

Don's suggestion isn't a bad one. However, on saying that, many new players don't even stick around long enough to give a speed game time to fill up, so there is that too. But allowing people to play certain settings only on classic map could work.

Or maybe give freemiums a taster of what premium membership is like for one week and take it away. Like getting a 7-day trial. In that case, I'd support something like being removed from unstarted games as soon as it lapsed. People would use the loophole of being able to start a gazillion games while premium and start a new account to do it all over again when their games ended. :lol:


Aba wrote:You could test my theory easily: Do not take my word for it.
Send out a survey and ask the users how much time they spend on games and see how Conquerclub ranks compared to the time they spend on other games that they could spend here.
I'm sure you'll find that Conquerclub is not the first (and definitely not the only) game they play.

What would a survey like that accomplish though. I mean, I am a gamer myself beyond CC. I don't play video games every day, but I definitely play them. I don't think that's time I could or should spend on CC, it's just a different kind of experience. Sometimes, I want to play a CCG, sometimes an RPG, sometimes a 4x game with friends. Depends on my mood, but still come here to take my turns. And I do have an extensive Steam library of games (of 100s of games), yet here I am playing on CC. :lol: The fact is that CC is still the best site to play Risk on in my opinion, and I have tried out others for the heck of it over the years.

You'd have two sets of people. Those who play other games, and those who only play CC. But I don't think playing other games is a bad thing by any means. Might be different if they were playing a competing game.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Tue Jul 27, 2021 9:32 pm

The survey would measure CC's marketshare, how much of a gamer's time is spent on CC, or playing other games. It doesn't have to be precise, it just has to ask the player to rank CC compared to the other games they play, find out what other games they play and how much they play it compared to CC (some people will be like you and play many other games) it is our job to find out why they are playing those games and find ways to appeal to them and make them want to play here instead.

It is quite simple when you think about it.
If someone spends most of their time playing CC, they are going to spend money here.
We need to get them to spend more time here, instead of playing other games.
I think the survey would show you that many of the site's players do not spend most of their gaming time here, CC is losing marketshare to other games that are more entertaining for whatever reason.
One of the major reasons is that players are limited right from the get go to only four games, slow games.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Tue Jul 27, 2021 9:42 pm

If I were you I would keep speed games premium, and polymorphic, but allow players to play here as much as they want.
But that is up to you, if you think limiting players' ability to play here is helping you win them as customers, fine.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Shannon Apple on Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:44 pm

Aba wrote:The survey would measure CC's marketshare, how much of a gamer's time is spent on CC, or playing other games. It doesn't have to be precise, it just has to ask the player to rank CC compared to the other games they play, find out what other games they play and how much they play it compared to CC (some people will be like you and play many other games) it is our job to find out why they are playing those games and find ways to appeal to them and make them want to play here instead.

It is quite simple when you think about it.
If someone spends most of their time playing CC, they are going to spend money here.
We need to get them to spend more time here, instead of playing other games.
I think the survey would show you that many of the site's players do not spend most of their gaming time here, CC is losing marketshare to other games that are more entertaining for whatever reason.
One of the major reasons is that players are limited right from the get go to only four games, slow games.

I got that, but what I mean is that CC is a different experience to video games. I personally don't want to spend half my day on here playing turns, because that would mean I would have to do it every day. That might sound a bit weird coming from a moderator, but that's truth. I don't think the amount of time someone plays per day is the issue. It's retaining players in general. If I felt like playing Civ for 4 hours today, well... I don't need to play it again tomorrow, or anytime soon. I can choose when to set up a game. As I said, the experiences are different. Not better or worse than each other, just different.

As an example, I could play up to 10 games at a time here and feel comfortable playing that because my turns aren't all going to come up at once. But those 10 games mean that I have to log in every day and take my turns as they come up, co-ordinate with team mates wherever I need to. That kind of thing. If you're playing team games, they take more time than a single player because you have to decide what to do with the team, especially if you're the game leader. I might hang out for a while and check in on the chatroom while I'm here. Depending on the day, I might visit a few times a day, but ultimately, I'm playing it casually and as a relaxed thing. If I see something going down in the chat, I'll deal with that, etc, etc.

I used to play up to 40, 50, 60 games at a time, and those were way too much. That was all fine and dandy during the days that I'd feel like taking multiple turns, but on the days where I didn't, I'd be like "okay, this is a chore." At one point I kind of got burned out and left for a while. I have left CC a couple of times for various reasons and came back because I had a clan and some friends here to draw me back. I don't think the site could do anything to make me play more. It's a log in every day or lose kind of thing, so it comes down to what your personal happy place is.

I think perhaps that CC could use an update in terms of user interface. I have invited friends to play here and those friends were like "what do I do, this is confusing." I had to explain that over Skype. The thing is, I shouldn't have needed to explain the panel interface to them, they should have been able to log in and play without instruction. I would love to see it simplified down. Create a nice looking, simple interface with the advanced options on a separate tab, or button. Unlock the tab when they leave NR status, but leave the advanced options hidden, unless they choose to click on it. Pull new players into playing the more basic settings and maybe we might retain more of them. The more people playing the basic settings like standard escalating, the faster games would fill and maybe it would engage new users for longer.
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Re: Part of the reason CC has been declining is that non-pre

Postby Aba on Wed Jul 28, 2021 6:47 pm

I expect that the admins will have to take it from here.
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