Provide non-recurring 1 month support options

Discussion in 'Suggestion Box Archives' started by ShelLuser, Jan 27, 2019.

  1. Hi gang!

    So here I am.. after a long leave of absense I decided to drop in and look around. And being in my weekend mood I figured.. why not? I want to go gold. Only problem is that I cannot because my paypal isn't linked to a credit card, and then you cannot purchase re-occurring items.

    Having gained quite some experience within this field over the last months I now wonder: why not?

    Sure: I get it: it's a sales pitch. You hope that people purchase 1 month, ignore the small print and end up paying for more months.

    But I honestly wonder if you guys ever thought about how much sales you missed because of that? Not too many people speak up about these things. Not to mention that most $other_places ("Those we do not speak off") usually apply support status more or less indefinitely.

    My point though: why can't we pay 1 time for 1 month support status only? It makes no sense to me, especially not from a technical point of view. There doesn't have to be a difference between paying for 1 month subscription or one month without.

    As such my suggestion: allow 1 month non-reoccurring supporter status as well. Ergo: pay $amount and see your support status get activated instantly but only for 1 month.

    I honestly think that your sales might go up.

    <warning: Shel vent incoming!>

    Reason I say so? Well....

    So here I am on SMP2; only 1 player is supporter (dia: Yo Mancub!!).

    SMP1: none
    SMP3: 1 dia
    SMP4: none
    SMP5: none
    SMP6: none
    SMP7: 1 dia
    SMP8: none (the heck?!)
    SMP9: 1 gold
    Utopia: none

    Total players online (according to website): 56.

    So out of 56 players only 3 are supporter.

    Surely EMC can do better than that?

    Why not insta-activate for one month as well without the sneaky (no offense) subscription obligations? If you want to continue making some profit then I think you're going to have to.
  2. As far as I'm aware the solution staff have mentioned for this is to start a subscription and then cancel it, making it last only one month. Personally I feel this works, but seems to be a lazy way for staff to allow single month supportership.
  3. I've been caught before when there was a recurring payment after I canceled on the website. It was addressed but, I do believe it should be changed so there isn't a "catch" and paying what you purchase. I guess we will hear from Krysyy about it
    That's not counting the players that are away and have supporter and or purchased perm direlect statuses. Which I imagine is a lot
    FadedMartian, jackrhoades32 and 607 like this.
  4. I mean i think there are 2 players on smp3 with dia supporter counting me of course but i think this would be a very nice thing to do +1 from me
  5. Most places do it the same way EMC does. Music and video streaming services offer a subscription the same way EMC does. If you only want a month of said service, just start a subscription and then cancel. However, it would be nice if voucher activation was quicker. Say, for example, you buy a voucher and then just right click it in-game and it asks if you want to use it like vault and stable vouchers do and then you would have the rank you purchased for a month. If that sort of system was implemented, then the subscription service could be left alone for those who want to support monthly.
    Gawadrolt likes this.
  6. WHAT ONLY THREE, no there gotta be more then that, you mean like 3 active members, or 3 members that are supporters
  7. Hmm, that's strange - my PayPal account had a Debit Card attached to it for a while, and it would let me set up a recurring subscription using that. Though, if you're trying to use just cash sitting in the PayPal account, that may not work. I didn't know that PayPal had these types of rules in place though, since I've never encountered them myself while using it. I always did the same as was previously mentioned, start the subscription then cancel it right after to just get 1 month.

    My question though about this, is how would we know the difference between a 1-month purchase and a recurring subscription? I don't like the idea of just adding more buttons for 1-month purchases, since that would just be more confusing imo. Maybe a checkbox to mark the difference between recurring or 1-month? But then the question becomes do we default to recurring and make you switch to 1-month, or default to 1-month and make you switch to recurring?

    Edit: I also see confusion regarding the checkbox-like system, so setting up the design for this won't be an easy task. Making this as unobtrusive yet as easy as possible for players is important, so probably would take quite a bit of effort to make it look right.

    I'm not against the idea personally, I feel like there are many people who buy vouchers simply because they don't want to set up a recurring subscription (or can't). Then these people have to wait for it to be activated by Krysyy. This would provide an alternative for them, meanwhile also cuts back on the number of vouchers that Krysyy would have to redeem.

    The largest potential problem I see though, is if this is even possible. As we have heard, one of the reasons the EMC forums can't be updated is because things like our billing system relies on the current setup so heavily. Due to that, I don't know how feasible it is to change that system. It seems like an easy change, but I have no idea how any of that is setup, so that would be an Aikar question honestly.

    Anyways, nice to see a shel-post around again ;) Hopefully I will see you in-game!
  8. Perhaps a link to a separate page in the "cancel immediately if you want just a single month" sentence? :)
  9. Me too. I've had to pay an extra 60$ american (79$ CAN?!) because I didn't know you had to cancel subscriptions!

    Shel is talking about the supporter status right now
  10. I guess my agreement wasn't clear but that's fine, I agreed that there should be an option for just a 1-time purchase for supporter.
    ShelLuser and Mochoa_Frap like this.