Dan, You have an amazing game here and I want to start by saying "Thank YOU!"

I keep thinking about your artifact market, and the special items there that can only be bought by Galaxy Points.

I am not a wealthy guy, so spending money on these artifacts is not something I enjoy, and have only done so on very few occasions. I've probably spent a total of $30.

At the same time, there are some great artifacts in there that would be wonderful to get once in a great while.

So it occurred to me, that you could set up a "Gold Membership" for a fee of say $20, that would place all of those "special" artifacts into a players list of possible artifacts when they receive shipments. At whatever frequency or rarity you choose, but acquiring them would then be possible (on a random basis). The membership could be for 6 months or a year... whatever you decide.

You could even promote it by giving one away as a signing bonus.

I believe such a membership would definitely increase your revenue without disrupting the game, and help balance the game for those of us who cannot regularly buy individual artifacts.

hmmm interesting idea i give it a +1 but needs a change it only lasts 3 months OR costs 40+ dollars thus making it ideal for ppl who don't want to spend a ton but also not giving it away

Another thought on the matter...

The membership could also include discounts when buying artifacts.... this would further help sell memberships, AND would encourage those who normally buy artifacts to sign up too....

Maximize profits, and create a more balanced game! Sounds like a win win to me!

GOOD IDEA ON DISCOUNT BUT MAKE IT SAY .... 20% ONLY that way its still fair

That was the idea...

Count me in!

+1

Good idea maybe make it so that you can select what artifacts from eh list you want to get I can't use the human ones and I wouldn't want the probes but someone might. so have boxes to select and deselect the items from the market that you might be able to get. might also have it increase the amount of Exotic matter you get and maybe increase the higher minerals drop rates.

im not a ccer, but this looks like a good marketing ploy to getting people to spend more on the game. as for artifact selection, that should be an all or nothing. ccers shouldnt get THAT blatant of an advantage over the normal player.

Getting a discount for buying? Thats a possibility. But many of those artifacts are only buyable/ insanely rare from NPCs for a very good reason. Getting some of them from time to time, or even having a chance at getting them in AP shipments would be way to powerful. Got to take into consideration the guys with like 20K+ AP/hour.

not a bad Idea by me, but I think the way it would need to work, would be that once per day you had a 10% chance of one of your artifact draws being for an ultra-rare artifact, just my thought. It means on a 6 months membership at $20 you are only going to pull out an average of 18 of those specials in the whole 6 month period assuming you spend your Artifact points every day. That seems fair, especially coupled with a discount to

Also, you should include several of the holiday-only NPC drops in this promotion. Otherwise it's pretty much only getting Fluxes, Energy cubes, Mineral/Research/Artifact Storage Units, Terraformers, and Quasi Spacial Expanders.

I'd pay for a gold membership @ $20 for 4 to 6 months for the discount of 20% off GP purchases, and the 10% chance at getting 1 random GP Only, Holiday-NPC, or Holiday-Daily-Reward Artifact per day.

My suggestion though would be these artifacts specifically:

01) Screw energy cube, I don't want it, does anyone at 10% chance verses the others in this list!?
02) Mineral Storage Unit
03) Research Storage Unit
04) Artifact Storage Unit
05) Planet Flux
06) Terraformer
07) Quasi Spacial Expander
08) Weather Controller
09) Captured T.O. Harvester
10) Gift of the Ancients
11) Gift of the Elements
12) Gift of the Stars
13) Gift to the Naughty
14) Gift to the Void
15) Hallows Bane Trick
16) Alien Star Charts


NONE of these items should be part of this mechanic because they are limited use (you can only use them a couple times, they are only usable on a base, or they are only meant for specific races:

A) Base Comm Interlink
B) Warp Arch
C) Structural Extender
D) Sillixx Starport
E) Human Training Barracks
F) Radiant Surge Cannon
G) F.A.T.H.E.R.
H) Planet Rename Contract

Closer to what could work, but just from the average GP worth of the artifacts you listed thats a $70 value for $20. IDK about you but I think thats gonna hurt Dan's coffers a bit.

Are you nutz?

The whole idea is for a "Chance" to get these artifacts... not buying them directly at a ridiculous discount!

On the contrary, I think it would significantly increase Dan's coffers, as it would pull in a much larger set of people, not the 1 to 2 percent who are regular cc users.

Gotta look at the bigger picture!

for the value to be low enough to fit into $20 per month, the chance would have to be so low that it's for all rights and reasons nonexistant, except for high lvl folks that go through 100k arti points every few hours

and something tells me those folks would rather just buy what they want when they want it, than spend $20 for a chance of getting maybe one of the gp-only arties they didn't want....

Sounds like a free-to-play, pay-to-win kinda bullcrap.

Allow me to clarify. I already took the "chance" part into consideration, the average person would get a $70 value for $20. Some would get more, some less, but the average would get that.


I dont think the 20% discount would be, though I do admit anything the word "membership" makes me think of that.

I think some of you are thinking you need, for example, 20k Artifact points to get a Planet Flux or some other artifact like that......I think that it should be like a .001% chance of getting a 'Rare' artifact that is randomly chosen from a group of Planet Flux, Terraformer, Quasi, etc.

Of course however you go Players with more Artifact Points will have more of a chance because they get more clicks to try....

I Really like the % off of buying Items, but at the same time I think it should be kept as balanced as possible between CC players and Free too Play Players. So I think the % Off is a bad idea for the sake of balance.

im more woried about a guy with 800 null fuses and 40k ap per hour ..... will

what I was suggesting was a 10% chance of getting one of these artifacts, per day, so like the very first time you hit the button, there is a 10% chance you coudl get the artifact, and thats IT.

I understood, and still ppl would be getting around $70 worth of artifacts.
(Average GP worth of artifacts with GP amounts)X($ cost of a GP)X(18)
(26GP)X($.15/GP)X(18)=$70.2

So, your logic is that because cc'ers may get a boost from it, that we should all be left behind them completely because we don't have money to continuously pump into a game?

Or, maybe YOU are a CC'er and are scared of losing some of your advantage????

your little equation looks ok, except for the fact that you left out the probability of recieving the artifacts (which no-one could possible know since this is all hypothetical, and no probability has been set) and you put this arbitrary multiplier (18) for some reason known only to you.... which makes your agrument 100% BullCrap!