SERVER REGISTRATION FEES (No Gold Server)

First let me start off by saying that Travian is NOT pay to win.....no one person can..."pay to win"....its a team game...sure having gold helps you with your acct....gets you top quality gear...perhaps even 1000's of animals for protection, but none of that will help you win the game....you WILL need the help of your kingdom. Secondly...I have played this game with gold and without....and as long as your within kingdom borders helping your kingdom....playing without gold works just fine. In my opinion the most important thing about this game is being active...having sitters and/or duals to keep your acct raiding/building.

Now if the problem is mid server burnout....than that is a Travian problem...not a gold problem. Travian should introduce more ways to keep people involved in the game like Kingdom quests...sort of like personal quests you get from the start of the game....giving players and your kingdom goals to add bonuses to certain aspects of the kingdom. Travian should also institute some way to help players recover their troops quicker if lost.....I see alot of players delete after losing their hammer.

In conclusion, I think if Travian shifted to a subscription based game....it would drive ALOT of people away from the game. I for one would no longer play Travian if this format was introduced....I like playing with gold...but i dont abuse gold...dont need to.

Having a registration fee is a terrible idea for attracting new players...

Besides that I am pretty sure the free to play business model is more profitable than the registration fee business model, for this kind of games.

Travian already has some restrictions for heavy gold spenders (one bucket per day, one resource/crop chest per day, one extra adventure per day, etc)

I have played without gold, and I was able to purchase the bonuses (travian plus, ress and crop) using only silver. I dont think Travian is a pay to win game, sure, buying gold from the beginning of the server gives you a nice boost, but it is not required to run a good account.

This is the best idea i heard!

I totally oppose this idea!

Perhaps in your country you can earn over 2,000 Euros while in mine a mid salary is at around 450 or 500 Euros. With 1 Euro I can buy 4-5 breads to eat, for example.

Perhaps very few from my country plays Travian Kingdoms, but this is for international community. It should remain open to everyone to play.

And what's the problem on playing by spending gold?

I saw Russians and not only spending over 1,000 Euros in Gold usage. It's even more than just 20 Euro / player. Also, that doesn't solve the "multi-account usage". Who stops someone to create over 5 account paying for each of them to play on a "pay to play" server idea??

It's the worse idea I ever seen!

Around 50% of players might leave this game. And T:Kingdoms don't have any server ever setup for my country. If COM servers might close then where would I play this next?

I've wanted this for so long. Of course normal servers has to be running. But just one or two pay to play servers running. Just pay for each server you want to start, sure sucks if you are knocked out early. But at least people might not delete just because you meet some resistance early on.

The idea is great, remove gold features like instant build/delivery and NPC trade etc. Open up the trade route, farming list for everyone who play on the server. No advantage for people spending more gold than others.

Note, I know of people playing on private servers just to get this kind of game, where everyone stand equal and no one has any advantage over each other. I think it would be great to at least test such a game world out and bring back those lost Travian players.

Quote from Testare#EN(1)

I totally oppose this idea!

Perhaps in your country you can earn over 2,000 Euros while in mine a mid salary is at around 450 or 500 Euros. With 1 Euro I can buy 4-5 breads to eat, for example.

Perhaps very few from my country plays Travian Kingdoms, but this is for international community. It should remain open to everyone to play.

And what's the problem on playing by spending gold?

I saw Russians and not only spending over 1,000 Euros in Gold usage. It's even more than just 20 Euro / player. Also, that doesn't solve the "multi-account usage". Who stops someone to create over 5 account paying for each of them to play on a "pay to play" server idea??

It's the worse idea I ever seen!

Around 50% of players might leave this game. And T:Kingdoms don't have any server ever setup for my country. If COM servers might close then where would I play this next?

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The idea is not that all servers become pay to play. But just one or two, at least to test the waters and see how the interest is on the idea. Normal server must of course run as usual.

Quote from Greak

I've wanted this for so long. Of course normal servers has to be running. But just one or two pay to play servers running. Just pay for each server you want to start, sure sucks if you are knocked out early. But at least people might not delete just because you meet some resistance early on.

The idea is great, remove gold features like instant build/delivery and NPC trade etc. Open up the trade route, farming list for everyone who play on the server. No advantage for people spending more gold than others.

Note, I know of people playing on private servers just to get this kind of game, where everyone stand equal and no one has any advantage over each other. I think it would be great to at least test such a game world out and bring back those lost Travian players.

The idea is not that all servers become pay to play. But just one or two, at least to test the waters and see how the interest is on the idea. Normal server must of course run as usual.

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Alright then if just few, 1 or 2 servers of this kind might exist as special servers. We have normal servers and speed servers. There could be created few special servers too, perhaps called as "Special" (if one) or as "SP1" and "SP2" (if two). There should not be more than 3 (or maximum 4) such special servers.

So, let's say that such a special server would launch soon. Its name might be "COM-SP1". For registration a player pays around 10-20 Euro/Dollars. There nobody can buy "gold". For a first test, I recommend the first SP server registration to be set at 10 Euro/Dollars. It shall last 6 months long same as the others.

Potential benefits:

-Travian get enough money to keep the server running and make a profit.

-Players gets a well balanced world.

-New players get less bullied by experienced players who usually gold stuffs up.

-It might lower the temptation of multi-accounts.

Supposed benefits:

-Increases player's commitment for playing till end.

-It eliminates the use of multi-accounts greatly.

Anyway, if you paid for a Special server (this idea of server) and didn't play on it, let's say for more than his first days or his first week, I suggest to include a benefit to let open an option to play again on a new SP server (or maybe with a less 2-5€/$) for the already "paid-to-play" one that wasn't played before. So it may be 15€/$ paid in total. I mean, a 10-20% less to pay for a new one.

Let's say that there are 2 special servers, SP1 and SP2 (on international COMSP1 and COMSP2). For 1 of them you pay 10 (or up to 20) €/$ as an example. You play one and you might like to play both. There might be 20 (or up to 40) $ paid in total.

Oh, I forgot, what if someone paid for a registration but didn't login back for a while? We know that inactive accounts don't last long. Should he pay for a new registration on the same SP or may continue forward on it?

TLWR? The current business model is far superior to a subscription based model based purely off profit alone.
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This thread doesn't seem that old so I wanted to throw in my opinion as well.

I mathematically calculated the initial start times and success rates based on all known variables and data.
Gold gives a insane advantage to those who are willing to buy it.

Now I understand some of the shills arguing against a "subscription" model, but I also looked further into why people would support a pay 2 win game.
1. They don't actually play the game, and are content with the current profit model.
2. They are content with not winning, because they often find someone else to play with as their peasant (Governors).

First point, I took a look at in-game ranking based on who seemingly get too far ahead (assuming perfect play) early on.
There was no way for these players to get that far ahead without two things. One, insta completing everything. Two, farming another village early on.
Another thing I noticed, was some people had over 30k silver within the first day. THE FIRST DAY.
I can only assume this is from paying money to buy gold to keep rolling the cards for silver, or just hard converting gold into silver.

So right off the first day, a player near you could have dumped a fair amount of money and basically have full equipment and basically be capable of insta killing you as soon as you leave beginners protection.

Now, why would the company allow this? Money.
I did some basic estimations, assuming the top raiders were all spending $200~ a month.
That is around 100-200 people spending a fair bit a money on the game.

To put that in perspective, that's $40k a month for ONE "world".

I don't know how many employees they got, but the business model/upkeep can't be too bad for maintaining this game.

On the other hand, say they made a $5/month subscription model. With the average world having around 1500 active players, assuming they all enjoyed the game enough to pay.
That would be $7500 a month.

If they raised the price higher than that, I don't think many would be willing to pay.
Even if they bumped it to $15 a month, it would be $22500 per month, still less than what they are making now.

This is nothing more than a cash grab.
I can't blame them though.
I use to have this dream where I would make a good game that isn't pay to win and money wouldn't guide my direction.
Well unless you are already financially in a very good spot, you basically won't live by this philosophy.
If I was them, I too would probably just milk those who are willing to pay to win.
They basically, have "rich people" keeping the game afloat, while the poor people just have to deal with it.

What can be done?
Well there does appear to be others who are making similar games like this genre in a free to play format, but they are not enslaved to it because they make no money. Thus it never really stays maintained or takes off.
The issue here is motivation.
No one has principles anymore. Well, I should say their main principle is making money.

Let's put in another perspective for some of y'all.
Say there is a woman, and she wants to be a good wife. BUT, she also wants money.
She can pick MULTIPLE poor/cheap guys that would be good to her in general, or she can pick the guy who has money and she can attempt to buy her happiness.
She's going to pick the guy with money, almost every time.

So unless we are ALL willing to pay $25 or more PER MONTH, they will never change their business model.
And it would be LOGICAL.

The only way to really fix this is to create a game of similar genre with similar quality.
That would cause the poor/cheap people (including me) to move to that game.
If there are no peasants to defeat, the rich people will eventually leave, and their business model would then have to change.
For a simple game like this though, I don't see too many people going out of their way to make another game.
Plus, there may be enough "rich" people to keep themselves entertained and thus keep the game "popular".

So to conclude,
I agree with you Gonner, about this game being pay 2 win.
However, I logically cannot see them even making ONE world a subscription based model. As this would create a precedent that might cause their high paying customers to end up paying less.

Quote from Elevenx#EN

The only way to really fix this is to create a game of similar genre with similar quality.
That would cause the poor/cheap people (including me) to move to that game.
If there are no peasants to defeat, the rich people will eventually leave, and their business model would then have to change.
For a simple game like this though, I don't see too many people going out of their way to make another game.
Plus, there may be enough "rich" people to keep themselves entertained and thus keep the game "popular".

So to conclude,
I agree with you Gonner, about this game being pay 2 win.
However, I logically cannot see them even making ONE world a subscription based model. As this would create a precedent that might cause their high paying customers to end up paying less.

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well this is easy, if people see they like this "fair" server more than the other "normal" pay 2 win servers, there wont be much players keep playing normal servers which means the whales wont invest that much money in normal worlds anymore, because there wont be much players.

Anyway this is not a new topic and many great ideas about this reach back more than 5 years, so my answer doesnt matter anyway, but i hope once in some decades TK will maybe quit beta version, add a 4. tribe and a tournament server.

But before that will probably happen, they have to fix the many multi accounters. And to prevent that, they need to ban multi accounts permanently and give new accounts an disadvantage in the early game and block for important servers/tournament server. But that wont generate much money so they just keep the running system without any changes until nobody will be left to play this

Quote from Harbinger

But before that will probably happen, they have to fix the many multi accounters. And to prevent that, they need to ban multi accounts permanently and give new accounts an disadvantage in the early game and block for important servers/tournament server. But that wont generate much money so they just keep the running system without any changes until nobody will be left to play this

A tournament server would be interesting.

As far as the multi account thing, I sadly don't think that can be solved in this day and age.
I looked into this as well, as I was confused as to how seemingly some people have totally obedient, loyal, servant tier governors.

At first I thought maybe they are playing with brothers or friends. But it seems to be much more than that.
I can't confirm anything obviously, as it would be near impossible to confirm unless there was a webcam rule where people were literally being monitored to make sure they weren't using multiple accounts.

The other issue, is that there may be some extremely well off (rich) people that are either paying people to play or paying for multiple computers and different IPs.
You again couldn't confirm if they were cheating unless you had access to their bank records and could question where there money is going.

The game is simple enough for them to pull it off as well.

Even other games, big games, had similar issues.
They simply put caps per battle though, and this for the most part alleviated the problem.
There was some multiboxers in certain RPG games that caused them to ban overt multiboxing, but now instead multiboxing has become a subvert thing.

Bots are another issue, which has greatly evolved into something impossible to detect.
Unless the company requires a webcam to play, some of these bots can't be detected at all.
Too humanlike, and all input and calculations is done from an external source.

I am sure though, there are efforts to detect those who are using multiple accounts.
However, the people who basically have literal slaves/family/friends that aren't really interested in the game are still allowing certain players an unfair advantage; that technically doesn't break the current rules.

The game would have to drastically changed I think to maybe get close to fixing it.
But it would basically turn into a 1v1 type game, or a 1x versus 1x. Where x = friends or slaves under your control.

Still though, it probably isn't a priority for them to fix. Cause one rich guy could be paying his employees who have their own home IP addresses to basically play as governors/dukes so that he can farm them.
If that one rich guy is dumping $200+ into each account, they will ignore/allow it.
Same thing happened to the multiboxers with *lizzard Games.