Back with more feedback. I was planning to merge this with my recent voting ideas, but decided that they were both huge topics to cover. Anyway, here's my discussion.
In the current state of Wilder's /donate system, rank prices are consolidated at a singular price, no matter what rank you are. However, if you previously bought a rank, the price to buy a better one from that point (assuming you didn't buy Ancient) decreases. This is pretty kind on red's behalf, but something feels off about the votable rank system and the donor rank system being so contradictory.
In terms of the voting ranks, one could be a fully-voted Pathfinder and buy Ancient for the same $75 price as a Wanderer that just joined the server. Even a voted Colossal has to pay the full $75, even though the monetary price for Colossal is $30!
To resolve this, my idea is creating rank discounts for all rankup methods, whether vote or donate. A Colossal that's been spending several weeks voting to their special abilities should be rewarded with a cheaper gateway to the almighty Ancient rank. The discount that players get for their rank is based on, similar to the donor system, what their rank costs via monetary value.
The idea of this change is to "work towards a discount," which can:
- Encourage players to vote their way to a rank purchase coupon (in theory), and
- Incentivize players to buy ranks more often, as they can see the rank price as cheaper, even without spending money initially.
This idea is pretty balanced because it fixes the contradiction of the voter and donor systems. In terms of simplicity to the developers, I think it may be a challenge to find out how to incorporate a discount based on a non-bought rank, which places the complexity at about 5/10, so it's moderately difficult.
I hope this can help players both help the server through widespread voting and (potentially) increased server income!
x 1
Moon4