Referral Programme

[Mens Rea]

I propose a referral programme whereby current players are somehow rewarded for bringing people to the shard.

It would have to be a requirement that the new players play for a certain amount of time or achieve a certain skill level, might I add.

Could work?

[Sandro]

Rewarding (donations?) players for out-of-game actions never was a great policy.

[Mens Rea]

I think offering an incentive to bring new players to the shard is a good thing. There is an infinite amount of ways to reward players for bringing more people to the shard.

But now for you, Sandro.

Rewarding (donations?) players for out-of-game actions never was a great policy.

Do you want to tuck off you slimey little cockatoo?

You offer so little to these forums, and take away so much with your nonsense. That's right, you are an absolute count and you can eat my shirt.

The only reason you would be against this idea is because you are a complete tucking reject and you have no friends to bring.

*Checks watch* cry............ NOW, Sandro!

[Derrick]

I kind of assume that players here would invite and bring their friends. Referral programs are more for profit centers. The primary beneficiaries of bringing more players here are the players, not the staff. UOSA will continue to exist whether we have 20 players or 2000.

[Coloram]

I think that a system like that could be easily abused. An existing player could just create new accounts and claim they were new players. There could be ways to monitor it but it would create additional work for the admins.

[Mens Rea]

Bring a friend to the bar and get a half priced drink.

A friend who brings a friend to the bar, as it follows, gets a half priced drink too.

The more people in the bar means more fun for everyone.

The more friends bringing friends to the bar means that there is more people in the bar.

Therefore, everyone has more fun because people have brought friends to the bar.

[Wise]

Your response to Sandro was quite well.... sad, if you are to be taken seriously (which i wont be doing in this thread) you should reply with something better then shit talking. Sandro basically told you what the server policy was on in game rewards for out of game actions/donations, and Derrick has said on more then one occasion that this will never happen,

Bring a friend to the bar and get a half priced drink.

A friend who brings a friend to the bar, as it follows, gets a half priced drink too.
The more people in the bar means more fun for everyone.
The more friends bringing friends to the bar means that there is more people in the bar.
Therefore, everyone has more fun because people have brought friends to the bar.

The problem with this analogy is that at the bar you cant leave and come back twice after you already showed up, claiming that you are bringing yourself as a friend to get half off drinks (comparing the use of 3 accounts in game)

[Wise]

UOSA will continue to exist whether we have 20 players or 20,000.

fixed for you Derrick, think big!

[Mens Rea]

If the distinction between in-game and out-of-game actions is the problem, then perhaps look at bringing people into-the-game as an in-game action.

If a new account is made from a unique IP and it plays from the unique IP to a point of being a developed character then that's a good thing.

The registration process already checks the IP address of the original connection which made the account, what is wrong with the idea of using that to stop people from exploiting it?

Discussing this from points of interest... it is in all of our interests to bring people to the shard. There was no discussion at all as to what the reward/s would be for a player who brings people to the shard, so it seems a bit silly to jump to the conclusion that it would upset the applecart.

Let's look at it like this:

How can we reward people for bringing new players to the shard who play regularly, without the rewards causing an imbalance in the game or taking away from the authenticity of the shard?

Not bothering to try it at all because of some loosely applied principle of not rewarding out-of-game actions with in-game rewards is counterintuitive and completely ignores the potential benefits of this. Think of reasons to say yes, instead of no. It's a good idea.

[Downs]

What about out-of game rewards? Kinda like the pieces of flair you get on your forum account for donating?

I think an in-game reward isn't such a great idea as the abuse will be bad, and against Staff's wishes.

[Mens Rea]

Good call Downe...

Especially considering I said "somehow rewarded" not "rewarded with blessed vanq kat + neon horse".

You have good lateral thinking skills, and I presume you are a cherished part of any team.

[Jill Stihl]

The registration process already checks the IP address of the original connection which made the account, what is wrong with the idea of using that to stop people from exploiting it?

All I (or many other people) have to do to acquire a new IP address is restart my router. "My friends" could probably create a new game account every few minutes if "they" really felt like it. As you'll know a character can be macro'd to 'developed' in a day or two. Some people might find the motivation to do this if there were rewards on offer.

I'm not really for or against your suggestion, but using the IP address to check for abuse would not be effective in many cases.

[Wise]

What about out-of game rewards? Kinda like the pieces of flair you get on your forum account for donating?

I think an in-game reward isn't such a great idea as the abuse will be bad, and against Staff's wishes.

Good call Downe...

Especially considering I said "somehow rewarded" not "rewarded with blessed vanq kat + neon horse".

You have good lateral thinking skills, and I presume you are a cherished part of any team.

rather the fact that this topic has been discussed about 50 times in one sense or another over the course of the past 2 years,

There are not and will never be any in-game rewards associated with making donations to the shard. We will not pocket any money. All staff are volunteers and Love working on this project.


The donation page is here

Derricks official stand on in game rewards,

we also have a player compassion system to help new players along

http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4291


The topic of forum flair has come up before the ideas that are tossed around most often are

-Changing other players forum avatars
-special icon like the donation gold piles
-named on the UOSA main page with a list of donors
-other sort of ladder board for donations


I don't believe we need a 'bring a friend' system, UO players who love UOSA will bring every UO player they know to this shard.... if they know whats good for them! but besides that we have has steady and constant growth for the past year,

http://my.uosecondage.com/Images/stats/ ... growth.png


Lastly I dont think we need another program which can be abused, we already have account limits of 3 which I am sure a large portion of the shard abuses in the way of a 4th account (and likely some with more) Silver rewards with multi clients in events, and a few others I will leave out,

While your right, checking IPs on accounts and verifying they belong to whom they belong to is not difficult, just time consuming for our GMs and Admins who have better things to be doing (fixing bugs, adding new patchs etc) and can become increasingly difficult when players say things like;

"I got my roommate/GF playing so we use the same IP, give me rewards now"

or simply creating a new account on a rouge free wireless IP,

these are the two simplest ways of cheating this kind of system I am sure there are a bunch more but I dont feel like brainstorming them, but needless to say if a system like this was in place some one would.


while I good idea in principle I just dont think that it has any merit on UOSA.

[Karik Verlee]

Heres my two cents....
I've already gotten 2 of my friends to play that use to play back in 98/99 and then one of them has since gotten their gf(lolz) to play.

The reward for ME bringing new people to the shard, is so I[/b] have it more enjoyable. But hell if we're giving away free stuff for bring new people hand it all over!

I like it the way it currently.

[Mary Read]

This is a battle... that you will NOT win.