chinook wrote:
It just seems to me that as bandwidth gets more easily available and cheaper, and while CaravelNet remains basically the same, that I could see it becoming a free feature of DROD games.
Caravel.net is probably quite an important source of revenue for Caravel Games, and probably pays somewhat for the costs of keeping our site and forum running. Plus, the features that it comes with (most significantly, joining the online demo/score competition) are things that it seems are still desirable for people to buy. So, in terms of Caravel's business model, I would have thought that the subscription system is actually quite a good thing; it's a desirable extra functionality whose absence doesn't necessarily detract from the game.
I had bought it for a while, but didn't play DROD very much at the time (life). Now, when I want to play DROD, I don't have it, which is typical. (Just like my xbox360 Gold membership, currently, sits idle.)
Saying that, though, I agree with the point you are implying; it would be nice if Caravel.net subscriptions didn't expire if you aren't actively using them. I think this is just the sort of thing that might put people off actually subscribing, since you can't really predict if you'll end up not being able to use your subscription later on and if you do end up in that situation, it would be a waste of money.
I wonder. Would it be possible to implement a system whereby you can manually (but reversibly) deactivate your subscription in your profile for a period of time? People who then become absent in the DROD community will still have a chance to pause their subscription until they are able to return.
Of course, I can see how such a feature could be abused (you could turn it on and off repeatedly only when you want to upload demos), so a possible solution might be a system whereby after deactivating and reactivating a subscription, you cannot then deactivate it again for some fixed period, for example, 2 months. Or alternatively, we could set a maximum number of times you can deactivate and reactivate your subscription.
Edit: Oops. Post collision!
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[Last edited by agaricus5 at 02-19-2009 01:36 PM]