[WEBSITE] IMPORTANT: Changes to VIP, Credits and Admins

[Bot Invex]

There are a number of changes coming to VIP and VIP packages on Invex Gaming.
These changes are happening because we are failing to meet our monthly donation goal.
We are already shutting down 3 servers which should already help us reach our donation goal.
However, hopefully we can gather some extra funds for the launch of a brand new, shiny, never before seen, DoubleDCat, sneaky peaky like server.

Please keep in mind that these decisions have been made by the upper admin team to ensure Invex can survive over the next year.

VIP Changes:

• VIP durations will be changed to 30 day increments
  
• VIP via item donations will be removed
  
• VIP reservation slot package will be removed and replaced with: 2 week VIP package ($5)
  
• A 3 day VIP trial package will be added ($1) for people to try out VIP
  
• NZD currency will be removed (due to currency conversion)
  
• The store on: Jailbreak, Combat Surf will be heavily tweaked. Expect a lot of content to become 'VIP only'. As of right now the VIP store is extremely small compared to the public store. This would be okay if people donated for credits this does not occur due to the credit economy (more on this later). Note any items removed from your account will be refunded as credits equal to the credit price purchased at.
  
• VIP will shortly be fully automated (integration with servers and websites). People will lose VIP perks at most 1 day after expiry. People will gain VIP perks at most 15 minutes after donating (funds clearing).
  
• New VIP features will be coming eventually
  

Credit Changes:

• Gifting of credits is (from right now) disabled. Credit gifting threads/etc will be closed/removed from now on. Credits will now be obtained only through playtime, plugins on server, Invex competitions (comp night), JB awards etc. This change is needed due to the fact that some players have accumulated massive amounts of credits (100k+) and distribute them to many players. This means these people no longer require as much credits and thus will not donate.
  
• The credit economy will need to fixed as new store items come out. One option is to price new items insanely high, but this isn't fair to the average player. Another option is to reset every players credits to 0, and take every XXX amount of credits to equal 1 month of VIP. This needs some discussion below.
  

Admins:

• As of right now, obtaining Admin is fairly achievable on Invex. We've never had a 'trial admin' rank because we believe an admin should be able to admin in full capacity from the start. One issue is people who purposely apply for admin for the purpose of getting free included VIP (some past admins admitted to this). We, of course, want to give free VIP to our admins as a thank you for admining the servers but at the same time, we notice admins no longer financially support the server. For this reason, some discussion will be occurring about admins getting VIP.
  
• One of various things will happen: Admins will only get VIP after 3 months of being an admin OR Admins will no longer get VIP for admining. Being an Admin will be looked as a very positive contribution in a senior member application. Senior members will be able to select 1 server at a time to receive VIP on (but can't receive it on the same server for more than 2 months in a row). Veterans will continue to receive global VIP.
  

We know these changes are big and disruptive, but they are needed as we prepare to release something amazing early-mid next year which should really boost our memberbase.

Byte will be available to answer any questions/discuss the changes below.

[Masta]

I like the three months idea because I don't think people that just want VIP are going to wait that long to get it.

[jynxx]

I agree with you Masta

[aru]

Great changes that will benefit Invex in the long run positively

[Forgotten]

1. Hmm, credits turning into VIP sounds good only as a ONE TIME THING for this change, if they've reached a certain amount of credits that is, like 10,000 = 1 month 5000 = 1/2 a month, and you can do the math from there. I don't see a lot of people reaching over 10,000 credits so only a portion of players will be receiving free VIP because of their dedication (10,000 credits without being donated or winning giveaways is a lot). Then continue to turn off credit giving, and let them earn credits for new things in the shop.

2. For VIP admin changes, I agree with the 3 months of being an admin thing, as that really shows their dedication, however; maybe make it so you mark the playtime of when they got accepted into admin, and 3 months after being accepted, to see if they've actually been on and doing their job in that time they've been admin.

3. And of course, globals should just get perm global VIP as they shouldn't be global if they weren't dedicated and they'll receive Veteran after they resign anyways.

4. The 3 day VIP trial is pretty cool, I like that a lot.

5. 2 weeks VIP is also pretty good, don't think anyone bought the reservation slot lol.

6. The VIP guard skins are very short so it's good to see some more stuff becoming VIP only.

7. Thank god for automatic VIP payments, I wish we had that 3 months ago ;(

Those are my thought about the change

[Razor]

First off, I believe that Admins shouldn't receive free VIP, as there are as said above, plenty of admins that apply just for VIP, and don't actually try to contribute to keeping the servers up and running.


Secondly, lately I have thought of a few ideas for VIP/Store on the servers, and have thought about the possibility of milestones. Basically the way this would work is that once a player reaches a specific playtime, either overall, on specific teams, or both, they would unlock an item in the store, get X amount of credits, or even at a very high playtime to show their dedication, a small VIP reward (a month or less). To check the milestones you would do !milestone or something like that and then it would show rewards up until around 100k PT, the rewards would go something similar to this.

10,000 PT = 1,000 credits

20,000 PT = 5,000 credits

30,000 PT = Some item in the store eg. Banana Joe Skin

50,000 PT = Month or less of VIP

And so on.

And there could be other rewards in between that, eg at 25k PT, 40k PT, 5k PT, etc.



Another idea would be the !jackpot plugin, a few players from other communities have suggested this idea to me, and I'm sure you know how it works, you can do !jackpot X amount of credits and it would give you a chance to win them, based on how many credits you put in/how many credits are already in the jackpot, eg if someone did !jackpot 90 and you did !jackpot 10, you would have a 10% chance of winning 90 credits + your credits back.


Another problem is, after a while you have nothing to put credits into, so this could be fixed with either, adding more items to the store regularly, or buying VIP with a high amount of credits, lets say around 20,000 = 1 month. OR you could buy !ws separately for the same duration for around half of that, as that is one of the main reasons people buy VIP.

Let me know what you think of some of these ideas as well.

7. Thank god for automatic VIP payments, I wish we had that 3 months ago ;(

Also lmao ^

[Forgotten]

I like the milestone's that Razor suggested, again it shows dedication (all about dat dedication)

[Byte]

1. Hmm, credits turning into VIP sounds good only as a ONE TIME THING for this change, if they've reached a certain amount of credits that is, like 10,000 = 1 month 5000 = 1/2 a month, and you can do the math from there. I don't see a lot of people reaching over 10,000 credits so only a portion of players will be receiving free VIP because of their dedication (10,000 credits without being donated or winning giveaways is a lot). Then continue to turn off credit giving, and let them earn credits for new things in the shop.

2. For VIP admin changes, I agree with the 3 months of being an admin thing, as that really shows their dedication, however; maybe make it so you mark the playtime of when they got accepted into admin, and 3 months after being accepted, to see if they've actually been on and doing their job in that time they've been admin.

3. And of course, globals should just get perm global VIP as they shouldn't be global if they weren't dedicated and they'll receive Veteran after they resign anyways.

4. The 3 day VIP trial is pretty cool, I like that a lot.

5. 2 weeks VIP is also pretty good, don't think anyone bought the reservation slot lol.

6. The VIP guard skins are very short so it's good to see some more stuff becoming VIP only.

7. Thank god for automatic VIP payments, I wish we had that 3 months ago ;(

Those are my thought about the change

1. It would be a one time thing only.

2. There will be frequent reviews etc to ensure admins are actually active.

3. This is already the case.

5. Mostly by accident lol.

7. Ayy lmao

First off, I believe that Admins shouldn't receive free VIP, as there are as said above, plenty of admins that apply just for VIP, and don't actually try to contribute to keeping the servers up and running.


Secondly, lately I have thought of a few ideas for VIP/Store on the servers, and have thought about the possibility of milestones. Basically the way this would work is that once a player reaches a specific playtime, either overall, on specific teams, or both, they would unlock an item in the store, get X amount of credits, or even at a very high playtime to show their dedication, a small VIP reward (a month or less). To check the milestones you would do !milestone or something like that and then it would show rewards up until around 100k PT, the rewards would go something similar to this.

10,000 PT = 1,000 credits

20,000 PT = 5,000 credits

30,000 PT = Some item in the store eg. Banana Joe Skin

50,000 PT = Month or less of VIP

And so on.

And there could be other rewards in between that, eg at 25k PT, 40k PT, 5k PT, etc.



Another idea would be the !jackpot plugin, a few players from other communities have suggested this idea to me, and I'm sure you know how it works, you can do !jackpot X amount of credits and it would give you a chance to win them, based on how many credits you put in/how many credits are already in the jackpot, eg if someone did !jackpot 90 and you did !jackpot 10, you would have a 10% chance of winning 90 credits + your credits back.


Another problem is, after a while you have nothing to put credits into, so this could be fixed with either, adding more items to the store regularly, or buying VIP with a high amount of credits, lets say around 20,000 = 1 month. OR you could buy !ws separately for the same duration for around half of that, as that is one of the main reasons people buy VIP.

Let me know what you think of some of these ideas as well.

7. Thank god for automatic VIP payments, I wish we had that 3 months ago ;(

Also lmao ^

Credits are already given out based on playtime (every 3 minutes). Milestones are nice but the value would have to be carefully crafted. Its a fair bit of work so maybe its an idea for the future. As for jackpot, yeah that idea is great mainly because it decreases the total amount of credits on the servers (as a tax is applied). I guess we could add that in later on as well as an extra gamemode.

Also buying VIP with credits isn't something we want to have permanently available, and pricing it too high means only like 1-2 people every few months would even get it. We'd much rather have credits for the store only and VIP through donations. Also all VIP perks come bundled together

As for the store, new things will be added soon. I'd be on top of things but I unfortunately have been sick since Monday

[CableTV Gaming]

I agree

[n8]

THIS ISN'T RELATED TO THE VIP PART OF THE MESSAGE

Admins:

• As of right now, obtaining Admin is fairly achievable on Invex. We've never had a 'trial admin' rank because we believe an admin should be able to admin in full capacity from the start. 
  

I have to pitch my thoughts into this little section. 

I feel as obtaining Admin is mainly a "popularity contest". Like yes, people like the specific person, so they +1 him/her. Half the time the specific person won't be a decent admin, and doesn't obtain the qualities needed, but are known and liked w/in the community.

The certain statement - "We've never had a 'trial admin' rank because we believe an admin should be able to admin in full capacity from the start. " is understandable, as i understand the thought process w/ this. However as I've mentioned some specific individuals don't contain the qualities needed, but are just liked, so they gain an excessive amounts of +1's. 

Don't get me wrong, i agree with you completely. Admins should be capable to start admining insanely. However some individuals both past & present, did not and do not, contain the qualities needed, and overall don't benefit the admin team. 

I'd like to discuss this further w/ any global or staff, if i'm able to