Effect of live game limits on the live game community

[quote=aeronautic]This topic has to be careful not to lose track of two important points. One can, without fear of contradiction, decide how to spend their money. One can not decide how much of something they are given for free.[/quote] At the risk of once again quoting the wrong part from your post, I'm not sure the above is particularly relevant for what's being discussed here. No-one on this thread has asked to be given things for free and the discussion has been, I feel, both thoughtful and constructive. Perhaps you are foreseeing someone eventually would and you’re simply trying to prevent that from happening? So far half of those above speaking against the daily limits are premium users. The ones who aren't are nonetheless good members of the D12 community who contribute to the site in other ways. In any case, let's not get sidetracked into financial theory. The purpose of this thread was to examine the effect of the restriction on live games for ALL players, whether they be paying members or not. The reason for doing so is to see if a better solution can be found, as per Fendi’s request. The limit on live games may not have been introduced due to financial considerations. I think it would be useful, in order to have as meaningful a conversation about this as possible, if someone who knows better could explain what was the main reason they were introduced. As I asked above: [quote=Machiavelli] 1) Were they introduced for technical reasons, because the site can't handle the number of games being played? If that's the case I feel there are better solutions. 2) Were they introduced for financial reasons? Either because the site is running at a loss, or because it runs at too small a profit (and perhaps were it to run at a higher profit further improvements could be made). If that's the case I feel there are better solutions (thanks due here to those who have proposed some of these!) 3) Is it to help police bad behaviour (the argument going that bad behaviour comes from non premiums and so by reducing the number of games such people play you therefore reduce bad behaviour). I'd like to discount this one, but leaving it in here for completeness as it has been brought up. 4) Is it none of the above, but rather a belief that those who don't pay should have their playing restricted in some way, even if that adversely affects those who do pay? [/quote]

Yes, what Mach says ;) The reasons why the restrictions were made is paramount to finding a solution.

[quote=TheMachiavelli]The reason for doing so is to see if a better solution can be found, as per Fendi’s request.[/quote] Be careful. As far as I am aware Fendi has never said the current solution is wrong. She is just saying - on behalf of the entire staff I believe - that we're happy to look into other suggestions. Just to be clear, that does not mean we're going to do away with our current solution just like that. I haven't heard a better solution as of yet, and since we have discussed this at length with the staff, have little faith in there being so, especially since I think people's view on this matter are too coloured. [quote=TheMachiavelli]1) Were they introduced for technical reasons, because the site can't handle the number of games being played? If that's the case I feel there are better solutions. 2) Were they introduced for financial reasons? Either because the site is running at a loss, or because it runs at too small a profit (and perhaps were it to run at a higher profit further improvements could be made). If that's the case I feel there are better solutions (thanks due here to those who have proposed some of these!) 3) Is it to help police bad behaviour (the argument going that bad behaviour comes from non premiums and so by reducing the number of games such people play you therefore reduce bad behaviour). I'd like to discount this one, but leaving it in here for completeness as it has been brought up. 4) Is it none of the above, but rather a belief that those who don't pay should have their playing restricted in some way, even if that adversely affects those who do pay?[/quote] I do not think it has any use to repeat the same statement over and over again. It is a combination of these factors, and they're all fully disclosed in the [url=https://dominating12.com/news/2530/new-website]corresponding announcement[/url].

@Cireon: I'm sorry if you (or anyone else) thinks I've misrepresented what Fendi said while chatting with Lionesse and myself. Here is what she actually said for everyone's reference: [quote=Fendi]Would you mind posting these ideas and thoughts in the Suggestion/ Feedback section? Maybe we can get more people involved in the discussion and hopefully come up with a better solution[/quote] Thanks for directing us to the announcement above. I think we've all read it and in fact the information on that text informed this discussion. I does not however answer our questions (which since I believe you've read I won't repost for your convenience).

@aeronautric : 'i'm all for supporting the site and more so, if you can afford more' That statement appears to mean you agree, at least in principle that some people, who can afford more, could pay more... your other statements merely indicate that you personally wouldn't pay more. My point though was if only 1/4 of people paid more in the way i outlined, that would double the income raised, thereby alleviating financial difficulties, assuming that is actually an issue. I am not expecting 100% of people to pay more.

[quote=Cireon]As far as I am aware Fendi has never said the current solution is wrong. She is just saying - on behalf of the entire staff I believe - that we're happy to look into other suggestions[/quote] That is correct. @TheMachiavelli and to every doubtful member, I'm aware of the fact that the current way is frowned upon by some, but to be honest, trying to please everyone is a little far fetched. Yes, it's not perfect but it's the best we've got so far and the discussion we had about this limitation went on for ~1 year, so it's not something that popped up over night (and we are not some evil overlords trying to make your lives miserable). Keep in mind that with each time passes we gain more experience and knowledge on how to find the best solutions and so just have a little patience. And you are of course more than welcome to help us out along the way.

Hi Fendi, thanks for coming by and posting! Rest assured no-one thinks you're an evil overlord. Or overlady as the case might be. As this thread is getting a bit long, here is a summary of the different suggestions that have come up so far which try to achieve some of the goals of limiting the live games without the adverse effects: 1) Money side: provide a higher tier of support for the site for those who are able to do so. No downsides. Might need a bit of thought (what to call it. premium plus? How to recognise such supporters on the site? Maybe move some of the premium only quality of life improvements/aesthetic improvements such as different colour insignias moved over to premium plus?) As I say, would require more thought and input from others if you think it's a good idea. 2) Server stress side. Most of the time the servers aren't stressed. In fact, during a lot of the time, the site has too few people (which makes it harder to get live games going etc as mentioned previously on this thread). A suggestion to deal with server stress when it is a problem was to limit the number of live games which the site can hold at any given time. Again would require some more thought to see how to best make such a thing work/to see if the pros outweigh the negatives. I argued this would improve the playing experience of those of us who play during busy times (better to wait for a game slot to be available than to suffer a lot of lag). Cireon argued the opposite. I think the limit should be to the number of games in progress: you would still be able to queue for a game, and if it filled up you'd be placed on the queue to play when the next game started. I hope some of that is of help.

About the reason(s). There very rarely or even never is 1 single reason for anything. In this particular case there are at least 4 of them. To me the fairness side of things is the most important thing (I'm a bit of a moralist). I guess you some sort of mention something that looks to come close to it in your 4th point, but it's formulated badly. It's not about getting extra restrictions because ppl don't pay. Restrictions already where there (with the obvious reason that things cost money). Now, these restrictions where there only for people who played long term, back in the days live game didn't even exist or were played only very little. Nowadays however, live games are played a lot, so it's only fair if the restrictions are re-divided: so the long term game players have their restrictions lessened a bit, and live game players have gotten some. Other people (like Cireon, he's more a practical person) think that the reason of server stress is important. The reasoning is the other way around though as the way you formulate it: "There is a big server stress, we can fix it in two ways: (1) optimize the code (we are doing this, but of course we can't do everything in a few weeks) and (2) buy more server capacity. We are not doing this because we had a live game limit planned for a long time already, so we can just as well wait untill the major bugs are all fixed and that limit is turned on. The limit also has a very pleasant side effect: it is the only way you can fix the root cause of people joining and ruining games because they don't care about you, me, or a good game. Only about themselves. So we make sure that if they ruin a game, they can't just randomly join another one. If you have other solutions for this problem, please tell us (but make a different topic, because I consider this one offtopic - untill at least we found a solution that really works). I don't really know what the financial status is currently, so I can't say if this is (or was) a reason for the limit. The fact that there are limits of course is pretty much to make sure that buying premium (and thus making sure the financial status is ok-ish) has a use. So yes, defenitely a related reason I guess. Does this help a bit of understanding your 4 points? Usually if you try to understand reasons for something it's best to look at it from different perspectives.

Hi, just wanted to say this is still a big deal. To the owners of the site: So what are your thoughts? Here's some lobby chat from earlier today. We would love to stay and play more, but we are running out of tokens. 10 May, 19:15 I_kill_you_all: I just don't like this attitude here ''pay or leave'', it will ruin this community and thats very sad... 10 May, 20:22 rolyat: agreed, it's sad 10 May, 20:22 rolyat: I love this site... but they're kind of kicking me out with "pay or leave" 10 May, 20:25 rolyat: makes me play just a few games a day. 10 May, 20:35 Axobongo: the ratio of premiums and non premiums wont change much, ever, so the key is big numbers of population,, or some kinda ad system thats not to intrusive or ugly 10 May, 20:36 Axobongo: tooo 10 May, 20:46 Axobongo: limits on gameplay seems insane,, one way to get more premiums may be to give them tools to look better than non premiums,, personalized insignia or names, extra animations in games, something that appeals to image,,? 10 May, 20:47 Axobongo: but you need the masses, even if you dont like their personality so much, the masses make games happen , and thats makes everyone happy 10 May, 21:54 rolyat: yeah instead of making it feel like a paid-only site, and you don't even get any cool bells and whistles for being "premium", you just don't get punished anymore (live game limit)