Nbad wrote:
So, are you saying, an on-going referral award?
Because, I could grab a macro-recorder, and just let it punch 600 moves a day, of just moving, and hell, even attackin towns/searching islands, and it could get all 600 or so, moves in, between the picture verification breaks.
My thought is, everyone benefits from more players. To get more players, current players need more motivation to get players hooked.
To do this, you need to reward Current players VERY WELL. What's wrong with giving someone 20,000 Gold for referring a player?
I've played other games, where it is frustrating, to spend time to explain to a noob how to play a game, only for them to hang around for another 20 minutes, give up, and never return. 20k gold is less than a days work if you have good strategy. And sometimes you have people in chat asking questions for several days. I know I still ask questions, and I'm at about 80k moves. So for what a player may have done to refer someone else is worth 20k gold in my eyes.
Now, you obviously don't just hand these referral awards out. 20k Gold goes out for a referral who has made at least 25 Upgrades. Now, we are talking about a referral award worth chasing, for bringing in a long time player.
And yes, you might refer 5 players, and get only 1 or 2 of them to stay. So in my eyes, you've earned your 20k Gold as a referrer.
Now, another thought to go with this, is some players do not arrive through a referral. They show up, play, and find there way to the Chat Room or Forums and ask questions there.
So after a noob, that does not have a referal listed in there account (which is easy to code), has made their 10th or 12th upgrade, you give them a ONE QUESTION Survey. And that is:
"Has someone helped you understand how to play this game?"
Obviously you can re-word this, but this will encourage current players to help new players as much as possible in chat and forums to get a handle on the game. Because if they answer that question "Larryx6" Then Larry is now in-line for the 20k Referral award.
I would bet a lot of money that there are less than 400, and probably even less than 250 players that have 25 upgrades so far. And maybe 25 is too low. Maybe 30 or 35 is a better number of upgrades to determine a "converted referral." But if you have to give out 2 Million in gold a month from now, because 100 new SERIOUS players are playing, I think that's a worth while trade.
And for those of us who don't know anyone willing to join the game, and all the players we help in chat, just don't hang around. At least there are another 100 players in the game we can fish for. If the Current Number of "Blue Fish" is 300, I'm sure we'd all enjoy an increase of 33%.
Currently a person is rewarded 500 gold per month their referral is active. the reason for not giving xxx gold per referral is the potential for abuse. Setting it so that a pirate had to play for 7 days worth of moves means that they get rewarded for ACTIVE referrals. diskmedel had referred over 200 people to the game. From these he earned 10,500 for the month of May from his 21 active referrals. If we rewarded him for every signup at 20k as you propose that would have been 4,000,000+ gold. I agree that we can modify this as 500 is a bit low, but I think it still needs to be for active referrals.