Remove the Ads-For-Play system or bring back Free-to-play.

[SilverCruz]

We feel that this move will be a positive for the game, as well as all current and future users. The botters will not want to spend real money in order to troll. Even if they do, they will be very limited in the amount of accounts they can make this way without committing credit card fraud.
This also means that every account has an inherent value to it, as being banned means you will need to buy the game to play again. Any user that is suspended for breaking the rules will have to actually think about what they are doing, because if they end up permanently banned they can’t just make a new free account anymore. Better games in every facet should be much more common. We as developers can go back to trying to make a good game, rather than focusing on how to stop botters or how to rework reports to stop toxic behavior.

In the current day, the bolded text is a lie. Bad actors can create burner accounts and run ads to get Classic Tickets on them, use those Tickets to get into and wreck some rounds, eventually get the account banned, then start the process over again. That this doesn't work for Coven Tickets is why Coven is allegedly cleaner than the standard game, not that I'd know from experience.

I'm not too charitable in my outlook, so I'm inclined to believe the only reason free-to-play bad and ads-for-play good even though both lead to bad actors wrecking rounds is because free-to-play accounts wrecking rounds didn't make any money, but ads-for-play accounts wrecking rounds still brings in those ad bucks.

Thus, there are two options that aren't just staying in place.

The first option is to accept that if you give bad actors an inch then they'll take a mile and go back to free-to-play. The upside to this is that it allows honest players who might not be willing to spend on this game to once again come in and join the proceedings, adding a greater potential that the game's playerbase will perk up. The downside is that it will also make it even easier for bad actors to turn up, meaning that more babysitting would be necessary in order to close the holes that they exploit to mess things up in the first place, rather than just trying to kick people out for exploiting those holes without doing anything else about them.

The second option is to stop cutting any slack and get rid of Ads-For-Play. The upside is that this should oust the bad actors after a short while since the bolded part of the quoted text becomes true again, while the downside is that it keeps the potential for the anemic playerbase's growth restricted, indeed restricting it even more since I'm sure there are some honest players who rely on Ads-For-Play to stay involved, however scarce they may be.

Also, both of them would obviously imply no longer receiving those ad bucks unless Ads For Town Points were brought back or Ads For Coven Tickets were introduced. That's the price of doing the right thing, though.

[Flavorable]

Seeing as free players need to link to a Facebook account nowadays, I don't think people creating multiple accounts is as easy as you claim.

Also, there is already a free Coven ticket system, so I'm not sure why there would be any changes for that.

[dbpeanut]

Seeing as free players need to link to a Facebook account nowadays, I don't think people creating multiple accounts is as easy as you claim.

Also, there is already a free Coven ticket system, so I'm not sure why there would be any changes for that.

One, creating a Facebook account is easier than a lot of people seem to think, this is why scam/fake accounts and blackmail accounts are still a huge issue.
Two, linking to a Facebook account is a flawed system, and always has been.

Three- don't get me wrong the free coven ticket system is nice and all, but is also flawed as it ultimately keeps Coven from having as many new players as it should. Because how would 1-5 games or even 20 of Coven realistically attract anybody? As good as Coven is, the most populated thing on Coven is full RNG and that can always go south quickly. Not like the normal modes can't as well.
It's kinda a similar situation with actual real free to play players. They have a very high chance to see the worst side of TOS. How many new players are you really getting off of that? I can only assume negligible.

What should be done is a method for Grandfather's and whatnot to get permanent Coven for free. Which would bolster the game decently well given how good Coven actually is.

[Joacgroso]

Which would bolster the game decently well given how good Coven actually is.

This is the first time I see someone speaking good of coven in the forums.

In any case, I agree with SilverCruz. Allowing people to play for free makes the paywall pointless, since trolls can always come back and abuse their newbie immunity to ruin a lot of games before being punished.

I really think private lobbies are the best solution. Not only those would be appreciated by many old players (including myself), they could also be reworked to be the "demo" of the game. Basically make it so non-premium players can only play in private lobbies created by premium players. This way, free players can't ruin the games of premium players, unless they invite them.
Being able to play with friends will probably attract more people, especially the shy ones who don't want to play with 10+ strangers. To tempt more people into buying the game, you could restrict "free" lobbies so they can only have a certain amount of players. Maybe you could block some roles too. I honestly think that would help a lot, though I must admit I'm not a game developer so this suggestion may be naive in some way.

[SilverCruz]

Seeing as free players need to link to a Facebook account nowadays, I don't think people creating multiple accounts is as easy as you claim.

Also, there is already a free Coven ticket system, so I'm not sure why there would be any changes for that.

It is my understanding that you get up to 30 Tickets, period, and it takes enough games that it'd be too much hassle to just make a mess. I can't speak for the difficulty or lack thereof of making a Facebook account. Never done such a thing, and I have no intentions to.

One, creating a Facebook account is easier than a lot of people seem to think, this is why scam/fake accounts and blackmail accounts are still a huge issue.
Two, linking to a Facebook account is a flawed system, and always has been.

Three- don't get me wrong the free coven ticket system is nice and all, but is also flawed as it ultimately keeps Coven from having as many new players as it should. Because how would 1-5 games or even 20 of Coven realistically attract anybody? As good as Coven is, the most populated thing on Coven is full RNG and that can always go south quickly. Not like the normal modes can't as well.
It's kinda a similar situation with actual real free to play players. They have a very high chance to see the worst side of TOS. How many new players are you really getting off of that? I can only assume negligible.

What should be done is a method for Grandfather's and whatnot to get permanent Coven for free. Which would bolster the game decently well given how good Coven actually is.

Can't speak for anyone else, but I'd probably move over to Coven if it's lively enough, though a significant part of that is how stale Classic and Unranked are, and my minimal hopes that an old Ranked List will ever come back as a non-Ranked list.

[kyuss420]

ads for play is a source of income for the business that is BMG.

Every 2nd suggestion/feedback thread you make, is asking a business to reduce their income sources or provide their products for free. You must start to understand that while this is a simple game for us, for BMG its a (very) small business.

I mean, if you dont want to support a small business, dont. They will not listen to the playerbase on decisions they make on how to run their business and nor should they. Its their business and their decisions on how to run it, as its thier money, time and resources they are investing in it. Keeping the business afloat and profitable will always take priority over keeping customers happy if customers are not willing to pay for their happiness.

Here we have a playerbase, that pays very little....Theres no way to whale up, theres no way to spend $500 - $1000 per month (and even devs from those kinds of games hardly listen to their customers), So keeping profitable is a tough job for such a small game....

Idk, Joacagroso seems rich, maybe he can email the devs and offer them $500 if they implement private lobbies for him.....see if they come back with an actual figure of exactly how much it will cost to implement.... I forget the email, but I would pay em $100 cash to fix that fucking Pirate bug thats been ruining my CL games......wonder if theyd take it

[dbpeanut]

ads for play is a source of income for the business that is BMG.

Every 2nd suggestion/feedback thread you make, is asking a business to reduce their income sources or provide their products for free. You must start to understand that while this is a simple game for us, for BMG its a (very) small business.

I mean, if you dont want to support a small business, dont. They will not listen to the playerbase on decisions they make on how to run their business and nor should they. Its their business and their decisions on how to run it, as its thier money, time and resources they are investing in it. Keeping the business afloat and profitable will always take priority over keeping customers happy if customers are not willing to pay for their happiness.

Here we have a playerbase, that pays very little....Theres no way to whale up, theres no way to spend $500 - $1000 per month (and even devs from those kinds of games hardly listen to their customers), So keeping profitable is a tough job for such a small game....

Idk, Joacagroso seems rich, maybe he can email the devs and offer them $500 if they implement private lobbies for him.....see if they come back with an actual figure of exactly how much it will cost to implement.... I forget the email, but I would pay em $100 cash to fix that fucking Pirate bug thats been ruining my CL games......wonder if theyd take it

I always have a hard time figuring if you're being real or not, but we all know that ad money is only worth it in large amounts. By no means are they having that many people to justify having an ad to play system.
They also aren't having enough new players to justify having a reduced entry system.

There's a reason the game was more popular when it was free to play- it was more accessible, meaning even with all the issues that happened, the game had more chance to take off or gain traction.
Which is why the Facebook connection system is flawed- ESPECIALLY MODERNLY.
Not to shit on anybody, but Facebook appeals to older people, and even if it didn't, having to connect a social media account to something you may not enjoy prevents people who would otherwise play from playing.

For all the things people like to say about "this game needs more money " or "they don't get enough funding to do X Y or Z", nothing shot them in the foot more than when they went pay to play. There's a set amount of things current players can buy, and even if there wasn't, there's a set amount of things people will buy.

For example, willing to bet Kyuss here doesn't buy town points just for scrolls or taunts. More willing to bet they use merit points if they even want to get anything like that.

So you want the game to make more money? Attract new players. That's the only solution that will work for this game.

[Joacgroso]

Idk, Joacagroso seems rich, maybe he can email the devs and offer them $500 if they implement private lobbies for him.....see if they come back with an actual figure of exactly how much it will cost to implement.... I forget the email, but I would pay em $100 cash to fix that fucking Pirate bug thats been ruining my CL games......wonder if theyd take it

As I said in my previous post, maybe my suggestion was naive. But is it really that expensive to implement a lobby system? Among us has one and it isn't exactly a high budget game. This is the only multiplayer game I know where players have no way of playing exclusively with their friends, unless they happen to have 14 friends.

For example, willing to bet Kyuss here doesn't buy town points just for scrolls or taunts. More willing to bet they use merit points if they even want to get anything like that.

You are talking about the person who brags about having every item in the game because they logged in every day to use the cauldron. They will probably tell you that they don't buy TP and that they can get every "premium" item for free from the cauldron, since it can't give them anything else.

[dbpeanut]

Idk, Joacagroso seems rich, maybe he can email the devs and offer them $500 if they implement private lobbies for him.....see if they come back with an actual figure of exactly how much it will cost to implement.... I forget the email, but I would pay em $100 cash to fix that fucking Pirate bug thats been ruining my CL games......wonder if theyd take it

As I said in my previous post, maybe my suggestion was naive. But is it really that expensive to implement a lobby system? Among us has one and it isn't exactly a high budget game. This is the only multiplayer game I know where players have no way of playing exclusively with their friends, unless they happen to have 14 friends.

For example, willing to bet Kyuss here doesn't buy town points just for scrolls or taunts. More willing to bet they use merit points if they even want to get anything like that.

You are talking about the person who brags about having every item in the game because they logged in every day to use the cauldron. They will probably tell you that they don't buy TP and that they can get every "premium" item for free from the cauldron, since it can't give them anything else.

Oh I figured he barely spent anything on the game. Most people don't, because they don't feel like it's a worthwhile investment.
However, there are people like me who have a heftier price tag on the game, I've personally spent around $30 on the game total. Which included me buying the soundtrack.
It's funny how people who's definitely spent the least want people to spend the most money though.

[SilverCruz]

ads for play is a source of income for the business that is BMG.

Every 2nd suggestion/feedback thread you make, is asking a business to reduce their income sources or provide their products for free. You must start to understand that while this is a simple game for us, for BMG its a (very) small business.

I mean, if you dont want to support a small business, dont. They will not listen to the playerbase on decisions they make on how to run their business and nor should they. Its their business and their decisions on how to run it, as its thier money, time and resources they are investing in it. Keeping the business afloat and profitable will always take priority over keeping customers happy if customers are not willing to pay for their happiness.

Here we have a playerbase, that pays very little....Theres no way to whale up, theres no way to spend $500 - $1000 per month (and even devs from those kinds of games hardly listen to their customers), So keeping profitable is a tough job for such a small game....

Idk, Joacagroso seems rich, maybe he can email the devs and offer them $500 if they implement private lobbies for him.....see if they come back with an actual figure of exactly how much it will cost to implement.... I forget the email, but I would pay em $100 cash to fix that fucking Pirate bug thats been ruining my CL games......wonder if theyd take it

It's a "source of income" that is a very direct contradiction of the stated reason they had for leaving straight free-to-play in the first place, and could easily be replaced with Ads For Town Points or Ads For Coven Tickets (neither of which would allow people to get in for free and wreck rounds, with Ads For Coven Tickets being the closer parallel since it's using ads to circumvent a one-time paywall) regardless of whether they went back to free-to-play or just terminated Ads-For-Play. Try again.

Maybe they should listen to me when I say they should just open a donation box and see who's actually invested enough in this game to support it without getting anything in return.

And yeah, of course the playerbase pays very little. Cosmetics are extremely weak in this game because they're never the center of attention. Nobody cares what skin you use or house you have when they've seen it all a hundred times, and the center of attention is a chat box in the bottom left corner of the screen. If all the visual elements of this game were removed, it'd still function perfectly. BMG is not entitled to being paid just because they made a game. This isn't a work of passion, it's a product that relies on a server to function, so it's their responsibility to figure out how to handle themselves. Again, that donation box would be a good litmus test of how much people actually care about this thing in its current form.

Okay, buddy. Find that email and pay up. We'll be eager to hear back from you on how that went.

Oh and by the by, private lobbies would be dirt cheap because the brunt of the workload is already done in the form of the public lobbies, most of it would be a copy-paste job.

[kyuss420]

yea idk if you were around in the weeks/months before they went p2p, but it wasnt fun, especially in classic. If you think leavers and throwers ruin games now (which i have seen you complain about recently), it is really nothing compared to having 7+ bots in every lobby. The decision to go p2p was made after all their efforts at keeping the bots out, failed.

Coven wasnt affected much by the swarm of bots because of the paywall, and as soon as the move to p2p went ahead, the bot problem soon disappeared. So removing the bots was the push behind P2P, not removing the odd idiot who makes a new FB account every 3rd day because his account got banned

[dbpeanut]

yea idk if you were around in the weeks/months before they went p2p, but it wasnt fun, especially in classic. If you think leavers and throwers ruin games now (which i have seen you complain about recently), it is really nothing compared to having 7+ bots in every lobby. The decision to go p2p was made after all their efforts at keeping the bots out, failed.

Coven wasnt affected much by the swarm of bots because of the paywall, and as soon as the move to p2p went ahead, the bot problem soon disappeared. So removing the bots was the push behind P2P, not removing the odd idiot who makes a new FB account every 3rd day because his account got banned

I can tell you right now, that their attempts to stop the bots only failed because they never made a single concrete solution. All their solutions were, were band aids when they needed gauze.
And if you played AFTER the game went pay to play, you'd know that going pay to play still didn't fix anything. In fact, we had bot issues for up to a year until it finally stopped.
You wanna know why it stopped? The game died. Lost all momentum that it had gained from YTers and Coven.
Bots made to ruin people's games only exist to ruin people's games. And if there aren't as many people playing the game as before, they're not interested.

It's dirt easy to create new accounts. I have 3.

The only difference is that they don't see value in trying to ruin a game that's already ruined itself.

[dbpeanut]

If people want to ruin the game, they have a path of no resistance to do so. There's easy access to fake emails, easy access to fake phone numbers, easy access to fake Facebook accounts and sure as shit easy access to TOS.
They don't have to put in effort.
Because of how they create accounts, they even have brief immunity to the rules that normally stop them- at least if what trial peeps say are true. And even if it didn't, it takes 20m to file a report. Do you know how many games you can ruin in 20m plus how much time it takes to respond to a report? At least 3, definitely more though.

If people want to ruin the game, there has been nothing put in place to stop them. The only thing stopping them is there's barely anything to ruin. Keep that in mind.

[Joacgroso]

In any case, proposing solutions seems more productive than just bashing the game. I was lucky I never encountered bots, though I have faced many gamethrowers and having a game without a leaver/thrower is almost impossible. Out of my last 26 games, only 4 had no toxicity whatsoever (toxicity includes leavers).

But I think the situation could be improved a lot of they implemented what I already said, and also if new accounts lost their punishment immunity (though with the first suggestion, this wouldn't be needed). It would also help if the devs created some exclusive cosmetics for people who gained a certain amount of TR and advertised them ingame.

[dbpeanut]

In any case, proposing solutions seems more productive than just bashing the game. I was lucky I never encountered bots, though I have faced many gamethrowers and having a game without a leaver/thrower is almost impossible. Out of my last 26 games, only 4 had no toxicity whatsoever (toxicity includes leavers).

But I think the situation could be improved a lot of they implemented what I already said, and also if new accounts lost their punishment immunity (though with the first suggestion, this wouldn't be needed). It would also help if the devs created some exclusive cosmetics for people who gained a certain amount of TR and advertised them ingame.

Apologies for being heated, but honestly it's incredibly frustrating to propose solutions or identify problems and for mods and the like to dismiss them or insult you over them.

That being said, I think your solution would work very well.

My solution could be simplified as going F2P again, removing the brief immunity to rules and making reports file 5-10m after a game to reduce the possible amount of games one person can ruin.
Simultaneously, updating filters and the spam catcher would help catch bots more effectively or make it harder for that to be a method to ruin the game.
And if monetary value is an issue, making exclusive cosmetics only available after X amount of games or exclusive deaths/death cards (IE- instead of saying someone died by Mafia, say they were shot for betraying the family, or something along those lines.) would likely increase the amount of spending older accounts would do.

Also, more cosmetics with exclusive animations or features such as the Werewolf and Beezlebub would likely increase purchases as well.

All that being said, none of this matters if the game does not attract more people. And as of the typing of this message, the thing they have been teasing has failed to be revealed or have a substantial impact.

[Joacgroso]

I don't think filing reports quicker will help at all. Reports usually take days or weeks in order to be completed, since there are lots of cases to vote on and only a handful of jurors. Encouraging people to participate in the obscure trial system would help. It's a shame that the system isn't advertised ingame.

If we want to reduce the impact of trolls, a possible solution would be not allowing them to start new games until the game they just left ended. This could backfire considering that some people leave after dying without doing anything wrong. But it's still an option.

I have no idea about how to deal with the bot problem, since I'm not a programmer.

Selling custom death announcements sounds interesting, but it may confuse newbies and the game is already pretty confusing. It may work, though. Another cosmetic ideas I just had are last will/death note designs, some fonts for speaking in the chat and maybe new UIs.

I think private lobbies for free accounts/going f2p + some publicity (maybe youtubers) would help to bring some people here. The game has potential. Just look at the amount of among us videos where they give roles to the players. That's clearly something people like.

[SilverCruz]

yea idk if you were around in the weeks/months before they went p2p, but it wasnt fun, especially in classic. If you think leavers and throwers ruin games now (which i have seen you complain about recently), it is really nothing compared to having 7+ bots in every lobby. The decision to go p2p was made after all their efforts at keeping the bots out, failed.

Coven wasnt affected much by the swarm of bots because of the paywall, and as soon as the move to p2p went ahead, the bot problem soon disappeared. So removing the bots was the push behind P2P, not removing the odd idiot who makes a new FB account every 3rd day because his account got banned

Sooo let's take everything you say at face value. Don't go back to free-to-play and just get rid of Ads-For-Play. Problem solved. I really don't care which one happens, but I'll just say that I'm not convinced that the health of this game is more important to its creators than the ad bucks.

[dbpeanut]

That moment when everything they've been teasing is basically TOS 2 Electric Boogaloo, but they still haven't learned from this game.

Also, why are they releasing another game instead of fixing this one?

[SilverCruz]

Yeah this game is dead meat and BMG is going to go under sooner rather than later.

All that talk about "it's a small studio!" and they weren't even paying attention to this game in the absolute slightest. What a joke.

[Joacgroso]

I'm just sad. But I don't think we should be angry at the devs for not wanting to be tied forever to a game they don't care much about, especially since it probably doesn't make a lot of money. I don't intend to defend or justify anything, but it must be pretty discouraging getting backslash for every decision you make.

At least once the game dies I will have something very similar to private lobbies.

[dbpeanut]

I'm just sad. But I don't think we should be angry at the devs for not wanting to be tied forever to a game they don't care much about, especially since it probably doesn't make a lot of money. I don't intend to defend or justify anything, but it must be pretty discouraging getting backslash for every decision you make.

At least once the game dies I will have something very similar to private lobbies.

It's reasonable to be sad, but what makes this worse is that they're clearly trying to go toe to toe with Among Us, without knowing exactly why Among Us lives.

It's simple really, even though BMG got backlash for everything they did, it was really more for the lack of communication and understanding.

Bluesloth or whatever, literally canceled Among Us 2 to continue supporting the current game which people enjoyed, and keeps communication with the community rather than assuming what they want.

[SilverCruz]

I'm just sad. But I don't think we should be angry at the devs for not wanting to be tied forever to a game they don't care much about, especially since it probably doesn't make a lot of money. I don't intend to defend or justify anything, but it must be pretty discouraging getting backslash for every decision you make.

At least once the game dies I will have something very similar to private lobbies.

I wouldn't say I'm angry. It's more of a "Well, that figures." kind of position for me. I was off in what exactly was coming, but I still got more or less what I expected. Something that won't help this game.

[Joacgroso]

It's simple really, even though BMG got backlash for everything they did, it was really more for the lack of communication and understanding.

To be fair, some decisions seemed to be supported on the forums but BMG still got backslash for implementing the changes. I'm thinking about going p2p and changing ranked's rolelist.

[dbpeanut]

It's simple really, even though BMG got backlash for everything they did, it was really more for the lack of communication and understanding.

To be fair, some decisions seemed to be supported on the forums but BMG still got backslash for implementing the changes. I'm thinking about going p2p and changing ranked's rolelist.

Completely fair, but keep in mind that P2P was supposed to be a temporary fix, and was never supported by the brunt of the community. Whereas the ranked rolelist change highlighted flaws with certain roles more than ever before.

That being said, ultimately they kept no real communication.

[Joacgroso]

The sad part is that no change will ever be supported by the brunt of the community because those people don't visit the forums. Many of them probably don't know this place exists.
I agree that the communication could have been better.