I don't know Dave. I think there's lots of people that have some very specific ideas on how exactly Steem Monsters should run, which usually come from one narrow perspective of what they want it to be. I've also noticed it's routinely based around some form of desire that goes something like "I want a higher return for less time and financial investment." In your case it seems like "I want a higher return for others with less time and investment and want aggroed to prioritize what I want more than he does for anyone else."
Our mission is to increase the number of people using the Steem blockchain and grow this business into the first of it's kind international blockchain esport. Our priorities are set based on those two principles.
As part of that I have to take into account a lot of stake holders:
Equity holders
Card Whales
Top Level Players
Casual Players
New Players
Players we're trying to attract, but who haven't started
Pack Purchases
Card Resellers
3rd Party Developers
Other blockchains
And soon card renters
What is your highest priority at any given time isn't the number 1 thing we respond to. I've had exactly one person ask for the mav through hodling rule. It doesn't make it to the top of the priority list.
As for tournaments I don't want a tournament with 8000 people trying to win a large prize pool for which they have zero chance of winning. That's a bad experience for the people who have the cards that have earned their spot. Sorry not sorry, a small fee where 100% of the fee goes to future tournaments is the right call. We're not taking money from the players on those. We're not "greedy pigs." In fact, small tournament fees make it easier to make more tournaments for players with smaller decks, which I think is your hope and desire. It's also 1 steem or 5 steem. We're asking for a quarter for some tournaments or slightly over a dollar so you can win a hundred. You're burning down the house over 1 quarter? It's so weird.
My general challenge in this discussion is that you come with preconceived notions of how the game has to work or else "it is a terrible thing and aggroed is the world's biggest fuckup" so you're not really able to see the benefits of structures put in place. I appreciate the enthusiasm. Keep that. I appreciate the advice and a certain perspective. Keep that. I don't appreciate the SJW-esque approach where "if aggroed doesn't do it my way in the order I want than everything he says it's terrible."
"Fee for large prize pool tournaments is bad" is wrong and doesn't take into account what the experience will be for the players who can actually play at that level.
"Aggroed is a greedy pig..." by charging a fee and giving 100% back to future tournaments is wrong.
Aggroed is a bad marketing person is wrong.
Good talk as always. Here, have some tea. Relax a little. It's gonna be ok.
Part of my problem with the fees - and I think they're a bad idea even if not as vehemently as Dave - is that you've created another broad category of stakeholders, one I don't think you really want: Losing Players. A lot of your core design rhetoric has been based out of the idea that there are no losers, that the game is stake-to-play rather than pay-to-play, and until now that's been at least believable.
But adding tournament fees, regardless of where they go and how much overlay you offer, is inevitably going to create players who continually lose money. That's another group to keep happy on top of the eleven you've listed, and one that's generally hard to find synergies with the others. That's going to end up far more of a headache than not having "too many" people in a freeroll would ever be worth.
(I'm just waiting for the first major "Monsters is rigged" theory at this point. That's not going to be fun. They don't go away. Everyone's going to feel like they don't retaliate often enough, or their same-speed cards don't go first often enough, etc. And evidence doesn't matter. That hasn't mattered when losses aren't meaningful, but it's sure going to now.)
Also, as someone who makes money from people buying cartoon fantasy creatures and having them attack each other, telling people you don't want them to be frivolous is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot. The whole game is frivolous.
We already have the losing players group. I am in that group and been waiting for auto tournaments and/or card prices/sales to pick up to pull me out of it. I am accompanied by many others in the same situation but that's the nature of the game.
I been warning about the, " this is rigged" topics likely to start for awhile. As you pointed out, once they start it will snow ball into something that is uncontrollable and no amount of proof that it isn't rigged will stop the discussion of it. I don't think having buy in games is an issue as long as we are still getting the $100 daily / $1000 weekly freerolls promised. I actually think buy in games to accompany the freerolls is a great idea and helps to replenish the funds that are put aside for creating more games.
I didn't expect you to understand @aggroed, but I appreciate the attempt at addressing my issues. It comes down to this on the fee issue.
#1 there are many ways to keep 8000 people from entering a tournament (how bout starting with their ELO rankings to qualify for it?) ... So charging a fee to enter and saying that's handling the 8000 people issue is a hollow argument. A fee will do the trick for sure, but there are other ways that don't require you breaking the promises you made to people.
#2 What promise did you break in this case? How about first you said 70% of the pack sales would be given back out in the tourneys as prizes. Then when you realized that you had to have other expenses factored in, you changed it to 30% of the pack sales would be given back as prizes.
I do not EVER remember you saying that people would have to buy their cards to play and THEN pony up money as entry fee in order to claim their potential at that pot. Its just wrong. We bought the cards, we earned the right to the prize pool that was paid for with the sales of those cards. Period. To require more money to be spent once the product has already been purchased in order to get something promised is the definition a scam. I'm not accusing you of running a scam, but you should think long and hard about the implications of how this appears. Today you determined that the large prize pools go to the 5 steem payers, what about tomorrow or next month, will you make them pay 100 steem to enter to get the money that was paid in by the previous card buyers?... When you can just do whatever the hell you want and think everyone should be ok with it, then just where is the limit?
You are in effect giving the money from the card sales to the people that have enough money to pay your entry fee, all in the guise of keeping out 8000 people from entering. Considering your team can do amazing things, why don't you try to simply add a person's elo rating from the daily quests as the entry criteria? If a person is a bronze level player in the quests, they can only enter the bronze level tourneys? That would solve the problem right there. Any excuse as to why you are going to give away the prize money that has been "paid in" by the past card buyers to only those that can afford or want to "buy-in again" is simply wrong.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time here debating if @aggroed is a bad marketing person or not. But I will say that the numbers don't lie. Not the numbers you like to throw out like 12000 accounts with a steemmonster card in them, but the numbers of active players that are playing the game, the number of packs that have been selling, and the number of active buyers you have in the secondary market. Ohh and one more set of numbers, how many players have left the game out of disenchantment? Those are the numbers you should be measuring. I know you know them, as does Matt. You can't gloss over those when you give yourself the report card, you can pretend that there are "other" factors when making excuses, but the bottom line is those numbers are flat out ugly. You've lost some really great people and someone should take some responsibility for that (at least that's how it happens in the real world).
Ok that's enough for me and we can agree that we will never see eye to eye on this. The sad thing is I'm trying to help your organization by stopping you from making a very very bad mistake. If I didn't care, I would've left quietly and not said a word. I will live through this loss of my personal investment as I have done many many times in the past. But I wanted to see you all succeed. I wanted to be see the friends I've met here do well. Sadly if you don't get it, then there's not much else I can do.
I've said my peace and tried to help you, so take it however you want because I did try. But I'll leave you with one thought that you had mentioned in the past that I knew also to be true. The value of the currency is only dependent on the faith in the people that control it. Your currency is the steemmonster cards and if you look at it objectively, you should be searching for ways to increase that faith and not destroy it. Contrary to your spin, its not the market that's pulling Steemonster cards down, its the faith in you that's been shaken.
ps... It took a lot to push me over the edge, but you did it. I just hope you don't lose the next guy that comes along and wants to help. And btw, for the record I look at ALL aspects of your stakeholders. You are totally wrong when you assume I only look at things from one point of view. I ran organizations with over 1000 employees. You learn to look at all aspects, which is EXACTLY why I know you are fucking up. I have thought it through and that's exactly why I'm pointing it out. Its a wound that will severely hurt you and may end up killing your organization.
I agree with the ELO part:
most imporant part for the game is to integrate ELO to determine the right skills of players in each tournament.
i played games as Quake and Starcraft where ELO is based on skill levels. That is the only way to make it fair.
Thank you for weighing in on that issue @wombykus... I know you are involved heavily on SM and its good to have your thoughts on the issues.
One thing I think you need to serious look at, and to seriously ask a lawyer that has a working knowledge of gambling laws, is are you now trying to turn the game into an online style poker thing. People pay for cards (chips), you charge a fee for the tourney, how is this different from online poker? You may call it a game, but how would the legal system see it. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it is a duck.
I was a serious player, just not a rich player able to afford the entry fee for the $500.00 dollar poker table. I made several comments on post about the ranking system. IF you really had a concern about the Serious player you would have looked at the ranking system. Serious players????are you serious???? Why during daily quest do I as a serious player in the bronze or the silver or gold league, need to do battle against people ranked 500 spots higher than me and are in the champion league....Serious Player's, yeah right your serious players are so serious that they have to step down into the bronze league to maybe win a game or to during the dailies because they can not in reality.....what....win...a game or two....in the league they belong??? Serious - what is a rich serious player doing preventing poor serious players from progressing in the Daily Quest? Why do the Bots get to see our cards and then run screaming from the arena in a fit of fear, and wasting my time for no reward? Why do I not get a win when that happens just because they can not see my cards??? You keep throwing the word serious player out there, when you really are saying only those with money. Just like going to vegas, if you are a serious poker player, you can get in the big payout tables if you have enough money, the rest of the serious players sit at the smaller buy-in tables. You are turning this into an online gamble, and you really should have a lawyer look at your most recent choices about game play/buy in.