Voting rework and new rewards

[easy mate 54]

If there is a template for RS servers it's that donations keep the server running, but votes keep the server populated. As it stands we don't receive 200 votes per day on all sites, in most cases we are getting little over 100, which means only around 20 players are voting every 24 hours. which is pretty poor considering you can vote every 12! So I've been speaking to a few people in game,  Ryster and myself have thought of some ways to increase the incentive to vote, I like that the vote store has a large variety of cosmetic items, however this just isn't enough of an incentive to vote for the majority of players. I would like to suggest we introduce a "donator ticket" that will be able to be purchased for 150 vote points and will add $10 onto your total donated. this ticket will not grant any EP,  and it will be capped at $50 so once you have $50 total donated on your account, you cannot claim any more tickets to get to $60+. you will be able to still buy these tickets and sell them to other players. 

This will provide a real incentive to new players and old to make sure they are voting regularly, either to earn their own donor rank or to sell the tickets themselves. I don't believe it will have too much of a negative effect on the number of players donating to the server as in the grand scheme of things $50 done rank isn't end game by and stretch of the imagination and If you want to progress further through the donor rank system you will then need to buy the scrolls purchased for irl $, as well as the fact it does not give any EP.

We have also spoken about incorporating a gold sync into this, where you originally purchase an untradable version of the ticket which can be used by the buyer of course but would cost 250m-500m in order to make it tradable, meaning new players would still benefit from just voting but players who already have donor rank could pay a (relatively) small fee in order to make it tradable to sell to other players. the same way osrs bonds currently work.

*note I would love input on this as I'm not 100% on the ratio of votes to $, however, ryster did some quick numbers and this seemed like a fair ratio to me. swell as this id love to see some other suggestions for new items to be put in the voting shop, perhaps a set of the tickets currently in the PVM shop or EP shops?

 

Ryster: 

I'd say Mate and I see eye to eye on this idea, and I think it's actually a pretty damn good one. There's some things I expect criticism for with this idea, so I'd like to address what I see as possible arguments.

1. This reduces the incentive to actually donate
   • This is a possible outcome if the conversion rate of votes to "total donation" isn't within a certain threshold. It's crucial that we maximize the amount of votes to bring in new players (who will likely either donate/vote themselves for a beautiful feedback loop), while also not over-incentivizing the system so that players will exclusively vote for "total donated" instead of actually donating. With a maximum of ~5k votes per year per forum account, voting twice a day every day, it would take around 2 weeks of non-stop voting to achieve $10 worth of "total donated" at the conversion rate we stopped at.
2. Players will abuse this system by creating multiple accounts to get more "total donation"
   • This is a valid argument, but you have to consider the logistics of accomplishing this and the effects it actually has. You can get around voting restrictions by creating a new forum account and using a VPN, this is true. However, The cumbersome process of doing this is more trouble than it's worth for the reward. The first criticism response comes into player here; If the conversion rate is just right, we will only be incentivizing normal voting. But lets evaluate what would happen in the case that people were doing this en masse. Even if there were some people who were motivated to "abuse" this loophole, all they're doing is working harder to boost the server while only cutting their time down a bit to get $10 worth of non-ep generating "total donated." If this were actually "abused" in any meaningful capacity, it would be incredibly niche and wouldn't last long.
3. Players will just buy vote tickets to get their "total donated" up.
   • Yes, but not anywhere near as fast or convenient as you would think. Vote tickets would very likely increase in value as a result of this change. At 250 votes per $10 (without ep) at 4m per vote you're looking at 1b GP. That would be on par with a normal $10 scroll, but it's also a guaranteed way to increase "total donated" over time, creating demand while the supply of these already useful items is always limited. Any excess vote tickets in the system after this was implemented would get scooped up very quickly.

Essentially, what we get from this is a better incentive to vote, increasing our exposure while also adding a slow, yet balanced, but guaranteed method of increasing "total donated." I believe it's important, After having maxed their ability to use these "donator tickets," that that player could still buy these tickets and sell them on the market to retain the voting incentive. That might be more controversial though.

Edited February 19, 2022 by easy mate

[joel 2]

.

[DevilSkag 75]

*This is slightly outdated since Mate and I discussed lowering the overall number of vote tickets needed but adding a gold sink to trade the new item.

I'd say Mate and I see eye to eye on this idea, and I think it's actually a pretty damn good one. There's some things I expect criticism for with it, so I'd like to address what I see as possible arguments.

1. This reduces the incentive to actually donate
   • This is a possible outcome if the conversion rate of votes to "donator tickets" isn't within a certain threshold. It's crucial that we maximize the amount of votes to bring in new players (who will likely either donate/vote themselves for a beautiful feedback loop), while also not over-incentivizing the system so that players will exclusively vote for "total donated" instead of actually donating. With a maximum of ~5k votes per year per forum account, voting twice a day every day, it would take around 2 weeks of non-stop voting to achieve $10 worth of "total donated" at the conversion rate we stopped at.
2. Players will abuse this system by creating multiple accounts to get more "total donation"
   • This is a valid argument, but you have to consider the logistics of accomplishing this and the effects it actually has. You can get around voting restrictions by creating a new forum account and using a VPN, this is true. However, The cumbersome process of doing this is more trouble than it's worth for the reward. The first criticism response comes into player here; If the conversion rate is just right, we will only be incentivizing normal voting. But lets evaluate what would happen in the case that people were doing this en masse. Even if there were some people who were motivated to "abuse" this loophole, all they're doing is working harder to boost the server while only cutting their time down a bit to get $10 worth of non-ep generating "total donated." If this were actually "abused" in any meaningful capacity, it would be incredibly niche and wouldn't last long.
3. Players will just buy vote tickets to get their "total donated" up.
   • Yes, but not anywhere near as fast or convenient as you would think. Vote tickets would very likely increase in value as a result of this change. At 250 votes per $10 (without ep) at 4m per vote you're looking at 1b GP. That would be on par with a normal $10 scroll, but it's also a guaranteed way to increase "total donated" over time, creating demand while the supply of these already useful items is always limited. Any excess vote tickets in the system after this was implemented would get scooped up very quickly.

Essentially, what we get from this is a better incentive to vote, increasing our exposure while also adding a slow, yet balanced, but guaranteed method of increasing "total donated." I believe it's important, After having maxed their ability to use these "donator tickets," that that player could still buy these tickets and sell them on the market to retain the voting incentive. That might be more controversial though.

Didn't think about this till after I posted, but we don't even hit a daily vote of 200, so with current output we wouldn't even produce 1 $10 "donator ticket" per day.

[joel 2]

support much better to reward players will increase votes massively

[sir enic 45]

I completely support this message, it gives people incentive to vote, everyone wants to get their donator higher and that's one heck of an idea 

FAT ASS +1

[MUNHOZ 1]

I support the idea

[Lation 942]

This is the kind of suggestions I like to see. Well presented, well thought-out and just a solid idea. Non-EP donor tickets that give people a rank is

I'm always in favor of breaking down tall walls between donor & non-donor. There must always be a distinction, and a clear benefit to outright spend money with us (this is why we still exist after just about 4 years now), but small things like this that expose new players to some of the benefits of being a donor without overdoing it (max $50 rank, no EP is perfect) while also incentivizing voting is just great for the purpose it serves but also opens up the door after max donor rank has been achieved for free it encourages further donating like okay i'm already a 50, these benefits are lit, lets go to 100 & they got a discount on the entire thing.

You got my vote & we could likely make this happen, I just would love to see more thoughts/opinions from the players on this.

[jshaffer90 16]

I think great ideal; as long as its capped I can't see much to fault this idea 

[Kari 307]

That is a great idea, I like it - Support

[FranticFreak 8]

Support!