/tg/Station13 is crowd funded! Find out how to contribute here (Patreon Kofi BTC ETH Doge)

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Cash: $250 a month for the hire of the server

$The Rest: Some paypal account used to cover shortfall or whatever


My best guess

[oranges]

Where are you getting the 250 a month amount from?

[ABearInTheWoods]

New Goal in place.

https://www.patreon.com/tgstation

180: Upgrade the game servers. This will let us move them from the now slowish ovh network to a better one, as well as upgrade the server to ddr4 and switch to a processor with 15% to 20% better single core performance.

I also merged the sybil and basil goals, as both servers run on the same box, I had copied this from an0n3's patreon, but it just lead to more confusion than it was worth.

In reality, I really only need this met for 2 months, as ads will then cover the rest. Otherwise I'll look at upgrading the web server with the ad money if this amount is sustained.

[ABearInTheWoods]

He's right though, there should be transparency at all times when it comes with money. A lot of WoW private servers show exactly where all they money goes, and it would be pretty good to know where this money goes as well.

So I just noticed I never replied to this:

Basically, I don't because I know it's bullshit.

Nothing I could show you couldn't be easily faked with the single press of F12, so it still boils down to either you trust me, or you don't.

If you don't, that's fine, but I'm not gonna patronize everybody with security theater.

[420weedscopes]

same goes for the store kind of
spreadshirt takes a cut so does sprint or whatever their pay service is called

[oranges]

why did all the prices change?

[LiamLime]

Capitalism!

[ABearInTheWoods]

The game server's price changed because it costs a bit more now that I upgraded it to a ddr4 based chipset on a non-ovh provider for max speed.

The web server's price changed because I was planning on upgrading that that but then found out the 350 donation was gonna be a one time donation. And I never updated it back to the old price.

[peoplearestrange]

As it currently sits were $20 a month short of funding even the server.

Though I assume we have a big "rainy day" fund from that last massive donation?

[ABearInTheWoods]

ya, The server funding being short is less of an issue.

Also, j_mad donated 20 to the paypal.

[Shadowlight213]

So, currently we're about $62 a month short of funding just the game servers. Coderbus is beginning to talk about adding patreon donator only game content on top of the already existing byond member content.

[peoplearestrange]

Could also just put a big shoutout/notice saying "WE SHORT OF CASH! IF PEOPLE DONT PAY NO SERBER!"

Or put a donation/fund goal chart/gauge on the forums and homepage to show how far away we are from the current months total.

[LiamLime]

Or just do what any reasonable person would do and incite people to donate by offering them reasonably priced benefits - be it ingame or in the community. Anyone who is involved enough to be reading this post and who seriously believes that TGS has not given them value in the months or years they have played it, has no understanding of what value is. As I've said countless times, there is no monetary excuse anyone here can have to not donate - you do not need a job to give a dollar, you just do. the only valid excuse is being completely unable to donate - for example not having an accepted debit/credit card or paypal account.

It's quite clear that asking politely isn't working. So if money becomes a problem, add incentives. The added benefit is that the whiniest children will probably be disgusted enough that they might actually finally leave and become someone else's problem.

There are ways to get sufficient funding, which would work - and I see no reason whatsoever why they would not be used, if the alternative is shutting down the whole thing.

[Wyzack]

As annoying as it was how about bringing back forum adds? I would rather have extra banners to scroll past than not being able to play

[peoplearestrange]

But having monetary benifits really divides the community up between those that can afford to and those that can't. Its never been that sort of game, its a pet game or a "for the love of it" game.

Obviously we need money to pay the bills but it shouldn't bias towards people who have disposable income.

And I'm not talking about "play to win" or any of that rubbish, I just mean give exclusive access to in game content is a bad way to go. Specially because it prevents admins from spawning stuff or at least makes it seem like a bad idea. For example, say we made lizards only donator, what do we do when someone asks to be a lizard? Say no? But what if its for a cool event? What about admins making themselves lizards? Is that deadminable? What about giving a lizard character whos gone braindead to a ghost? Where does the limit lie?

I think its more about clarity and making it obvious when we're running short. Most people aren't even aware and people dont often realise that one off small donations can actually be useful too. Having a current goal and current level being clearer, specially on the server, might make people more aware to donate.
Honestly the only thing we've done for exposure is make on sticky thread on the forums.

[LiamLime]

..

The issue is that we are both correct.

Yes, it is a bad way to go, some would argue so far to call it immoral. But on the other hand:

Yes, it works. And simply asking people to donate is clearly not working.

You can really go either way on this as neither of these are 100% correct.

Just another reminder though: The asking price is a dollar. That is how much money you spend on your computer in electricity alone in a day. Assuming you are wealthy enough to even be able to play SS13 and invested enough in it that you in fact do, you are capable of giving a dollar per month. There are no monetary excuses that can be made. None. This would not divide the community, because there is nobody among us who can't spare a dollar per month. Yes, people who can't spare a dollar do exist - poverty is an extremely serious thing - but those of you who can afford a computer, electricity and internet, do not fall into this serious a category of poverty. I'm sure there is some edge case person who this does not apply to. I recognize that and apologize to them, they are however an edge case and the vast, vast majority of people who play here and are invested enough to be reading this forum, can spare a dollar a month.

[peoplearestrange]

Hmmm true. I guess we try to find the happy middle ground. People pay for stuff that effects little except for "snowflake" style stuff etc, like that OOC color is changeable for donators.

Its a hard call as people will complain whatever we do as you say, because people always want things for free, but the buck has to stop somewhere and someone has to pay for the services.

[LiamLime]

It's possible to make perfectly fair monetization systems, which do affect gameplay. Selling telecrystals for money would obviously be a horrible idea, but there are things you could sell. I know they are considered a joke here, but selling something like antag tokens in a clever way could work and potentially even improve the game.

Now I know you are probably experiencing a knee-jerk reaction and are foaming at the mouth already, let me begin by saying this is nothing more than a thought experiment. I doubt the current admin/coder team would be willing to put through with the backlash that something like this would cause and would likely rather go through a full server shutdown than have to deal with the hot heads of TGS for a few months, before they realized how innocuous it actually would be.

Anyway, disclaimer over, selling something like antag tokens would have to come with limits on their use. Because there is a finite number of antags that can be distributed and you definitely don't want paid antags to become anywhere near the majority. So you could find out how often a player is expected to play an antag, and allow players to use a token only this often. So say that comes up as "on average, each player plays an antag once per week", well then you only allow players to use one antag token per week. On top of this, you limit it to some percentage of antags - for example, only 2 of the 8 traitors in a round can come from antag tokens, even if more people want to use tokens that round.

By adding all these conditions and limits, the game remains perfectly fair for non-paying players, the tokens can be cheap and you have lots of parameters you can tweak if the situation changes (for example if too many people start buying tokens). In most games, the only parameter you can tweak is the sale price. Here you can tweak lots of much easier-to-tweak things.

Just a brief mention though: There are benefits that systems of this sort can bring - specifically by making games more available to players with less time. For example, if you can only play a game or two per week, you'd likely want to play that game as an antag. A token could ensure that with negligible impact on non-paying players and a monetary benefit to the server host (which in turn benefits non-paying players). This obviously assumes the system was well designed and fair. I don't know how big an impact this would have on SS13, but I did want to mention this. And while some MMOs and mobile games also cite this as a benefit, they are only really in it for the money. Here, the system could actually be designed to optimize for the benefit of having more players with less time play.

Please don't take this post as a suggestion, idea or anything of the sort. It's merely a thought experiment. The truth would obviously not be as rosy as this post might make it seem, but it would also not be as dystopian as that knee jerk reaction you experienced at the start of this post would have you think. The truth would be somewhere in the middle... but at least the server would be funded

[oranges]

We were short because my patreon donation was held by my banks fraud department.

We're okay at the moment, all though more people donating means my stake is reduced!

[ShadowDimentio]

>Pay to get benefits

Wew we a GMOD server with buyable admin

[John_Oxford]

Don't worry shadow, i'll just buy it immediately and ban all the admins so that they can never commit such crimes again

[stoovan]

Why would we want to pay """you""" money for a banner no one gives a fuck about

[Incomptinence]

So mso has done a good job posting about this on the patreon but the email sent out can slip by real easy I know it got by me just get so many fucking emails from patreon.

Fees are going up patreon is charging patrons the third party service fee on top of the donated amount instead of taking the cut from the donated amount.

This essentially means everyone will pay more and all the neat numbers we decided on when allotting dosh for this will be messier and waheyhey big surprise patreon's 5% cut is from a larger final amount now.

At $20 dollars I know it won't bother me but if you are donating a very small $1 to $5 dollar amounts to tg and other creators on top of the new 2.9% service fee is a fixed 35c amount. Meaning lots of $1 donations will as an example balloon your money into patreon by like 38% which is skeevy as shit considering $1 dollar donations are something people with less money to spare would do.

[ABearInTheWoods]

As a note, anybody who gets surprised by this on january first can msg me for a refund. the way refunds are processed any bank side service charges from overdrafting might also get refunded and if it isn't most banks will waive the fee if one of the transactions that caused it ended up getting refunded if you ask them.

I'll be posting more about this as we get closer to the 1st as well as mass emailing all patrons (since their email is on the manager) on the 19th when the change actually takes effect and (in theory) patrons can see what the new amount will be.

I really wish patreon had made this a patron side option, as that makes the most sense.

[Arianya]

I can only presume their reasoning is to swell their cut, which brings up the rather interesting question of what Patreon exactly spends money on that they need more revenue, considering they're basically getting paid in exchange for hosting a single page and acting as payment processor.

[oranges]

bumped in 2023

[BlueMemesauce]

Mr Stoned One is the ko-fi still under review
Also is the bitcoin address still good

[ABearInTheWoods]

Mr Stoned One is the ko-fi still under review
Also is the bitcoin address still good

kofi is good.

bitcoin address is still good.

[Diasyl]

I read through the Patreon tiers again and noticed that forum banners are not mentioned on a single one, although I remember there being one.

You can no longer get your own banner up on main page of the website?

[ABearInTheWoods]

I read through the Patreon tiers again and noticed that forum banners are not mentioned on a single one, although I remember there being one.

You can no longer get your own banner up on main page of the website?

I have been thinking of deprecating that because most people who qualified for it didn't bother to use it but anybody who donates $25/usd a month or more can still submit one i just don't plan to advertise this fact as much. (and don't worry, I won't kill the current system until there are no banners left in rotation.)