I have decided I need Patreon to pay hosting bills, code signing and various other things that were more or less free when it looked like Valve was going to host SK on Steam.
I feel like I’m expected to actually do something before anyone would make a recurring payment, but all my time goes into the actual project itself.
Patreon suggests tiers such as “take feedback from users,” WTF? I don’t need to be paid to listen to my users when they give me feedback =P I need to be paid to keep the servers up and sign my code.
If anyone can think of better “perks” that don’t detract from my ability to work on the project, that’d be great. I won’t even charge you to give me your advice,
Do you need tiers? At most i think tier 1 could be beta access to future builds, tier 2 you also get a credit/thank you in the app (in an info tab or something).
You could also do the cliche Discord server invite for tier 1, if you’re still considering Discord - in which case the previously suggested tiers could be pushed up a notch.
I doubt it, this is not a site that people visit regularly (aside from a few familiar faces). I wouldn’t get repeat traffic beyond the initial download, so there are not many chances to serve ads.
Most of what the server will be doing is hosting downloads, those can be done without even directly visiting the site. I’d have to start embedding ads into the software, which is a funny thought for something that’s open source.
One Patron will prob net you more money than ad revenue on this site.
If Patreon allows for four price tiers, then try adding a $3 option as well, there’s definitely a way to add at least the $1 option (which i know you’re trying to do).
How about:
Tier 1 - Access to exclusive emoticons on the forums
Tier 2 - Name in “special thanks” section
Tier 3 - Access to real time chat (assuming Discourse supports this)
I don’t think it’s a good idea to section off beta testers from other users since beta testers would be able to find and report issues before the beta becomes public.
You mean all I needed to do in the past three years to get a real-time chat with Kal was to have him set up a Patreon with that as one of the tiers?
Discourse basically is as real-time as necessary, I think. It has browser notification support, so if e.g. Kaldaien subscribes to them he’ll get notified in real time regardless of where the post is as long as he gets mentioned.
Beta testers may only work if there’s enough Patrons. The idea here is for Kal to get feedback from users regarding bugs etc before he pushes a public release. It gives those users a reason to be more involved with Kal as well if they want to be, and usually paying people do want to be. So basically just a one week early release before the update is fully tidied up etc, and while Kal continues to make sure everything’s working fine, he’s also getting feedback from Patrons regarding stability. Early access is incentive to pay, which is the point of tier rewards though i think Kal could get away with barely any rewards.
And uhh, regarding the chat situation, we need to work out what’s going on there. I’m assuming everyone is able to message Kal directly in this site, which might not be a good thing for him? Getting rights to DM him is also likely pointless since most users will prob request features, and expect it cos “paying customer”. It should be fine for Kal to block off direct messaging access by default to most users, since he’ll remain involved in threads.
It depends how the beta is handled to be honest. If it’s just one week early access that’s probably going to have the same bugs when it publicly releases then it’d be kinda pointless. If it was direct access to an appveyor page with nightly builds that could be more beneficial for developers and testers IMO.
The chat idea was more along the lines of how Nexus used to be in ye olden days where people from the site could login and chat to developers or other mod users. It could be a worthwhile feature and with it being optional it’d mean no one was harassed via DMs by adding it. Maybe a Patreon-only Discord server would accomplish the same goal?
I’ve brought up Discord, but the more i use this site the less i see a need for a Discord. It seems to cover everything needed, and it could prove too much to have to juggle between Discord and this site constantly.
In general, as long as we temper user assumption and expectations around the Patreon, most suggestions should be fine. What we want to avoid is basically that users don’t go into Patreon expect weekly updates or posts, or the ability to request games Kal should work on.
It’s why the Patreon right now is geared towards covering the upkeep of the servers/services, and the code signing certificate of Special K.
Basically, Patreon should not limit Kal in what he choses to spend time working on or such.
I do second a third, lower, tier at $1 though, just to show support or such. Patreon allows patreons to increase the value if they want to, so a tier at $1 would allow everyone that feels $5 is a bit too steep to still be able to contribute, either with $1, or up to $4 if they so choses.
Yes, in general the development of Special K would almost certainly see benefits of utilizing all the modern tools available for open source projects such as appveyor and the like.
There are a number of reasons I have been avoiding real-time chat over the years, starting with how little thought can go into messages that are quasi-real-time. I prefer to write in paragraphs, so much so that real-time chat just irritates me
Also, I like some quiet time every now and then for my sanity… if I could be reached at the drop of a dime, I would be permanently attached to some electronic device or another.
As for the tiers, I really want to avoid super special private forums that only paying individuals have access to, or beta (limiting who participates in testing defeats the purpose of testing). In fact the only perk I could think of would have been write-access to my planned Workshop features, but … that was intended to be a one-time fee, not recurring; as well as I now have to build a Workshop from scratch.
Patreon has different revenue split structures for greater than $3 and less than $3. Mathematically, it’s not a good use of anyone’s money to give most of it to Patreon for payments less than $3. I’d feel bad, actually, if a user thought a $1 donation was just 1/3 of a $3 when it’s much lower.
Add to the list of things I need financed, a new coffee table :-\
As said before, community bans are a severe afair. I won’t get into exact numbers, but let’s just say he had dozen s of chances.
If people fail to learn from their mistakes this often, there comes a point where they’re just excluded from the community entirely. This comes with it’s own consequences. And yes, they’re excessive but clearly neccessary because ‘regular’ discussion bans didn’t work.
I had no problem with him having a seperate dev-account, but considering he was using that to bypass the existing ban and rack up even more bans.
I destroyed the table after reading this. KillahInstinct is so poorly informed about all of these things. I want to murder the guy; neither he, nor Steam support actually read.
Those ‘regular’ discussion bans didn’t work, because they’re for things including malware, promoting piracy, trolling. None of those are valid and the only thing I’ve learned is that Steam Support is a robot that pastes form letters.
I loathe that guy with all my being, and I’m going to be removing Steam features from Special K over time. The farther I can get away from Steam, the less likely I am to go out and do something stupid.
Sorry, I know that last post doesn’t really belong here. I’m just pulling my hair out in frustration (and am old enough that it might not grow back ). Valve doesn’t seem to realize that their Steam Support could be handled by monkeys by putting treats on ctrl, c, and v. Moreover the draconian reach of these bans – I cannot add a global moderator to my friend’s list to private message them and sort anything out, so I have to go through Steam Support (but of course, I don’t think they can actually read).
I really will be removing Steam features though. I’ll isolate them into a plug-in that someone else can maintain, because I don’t want to touch Steam with a ten foot pole.
The irony of it is that removing those Steam features would, by the sounds of it, at least allow Special K to be released on the platform… None the less, a separate optional plugin would do the trick for those that want to use those features.
But hey, did you hear that Epic Games implemented an achievement overlay recently?
Problem is almost certainly that there’s too many degrees of separation between whomever you were in talk with at Valve and the manager or whatever of whatever outsourcing company/companies they hire to provide staff for their international support.
I think I and many other mod makers would be fine paying a small fee a month to be able to upload our mods so that’s not a terrible idea. If you could make it more streamlined so that noobs can install them that’d be great. Too many people get confused when they don’t read mod decriptions telling them to put it in a folder in My Docs. Common sense apparently goes out the window with mod install instructions.
While removing the Steam Enhancements is something I find disappointing, I completely understand why you’d want to distance yourself from it and the platform.
I’d be fine with a separate plug-in for those enhancements though.
As for the Plug-in itself, would a plug-in be able to add the enhancement menus back to the UI when enabled? Though maybe under Plug-ins instead.
). Valve doesn’t seem to realize that their Steam Support could be handled by monkeys by putting treats on ctrl, c, and v. Moreover the draconian reach of these bans – I cannot add a global moderator to my friend’s list to private message them and sort anything out, so I have to go through Steam Support (but of course, I don’t think they can actually read).