[quote=Nigel Overstreet]If I have, say, 3 months worth of Exceptional Friendship before the transition next week, will I still have an Exceptional Friendship subscription for 3 months?
Or will all Exceptional Friendships be cancelled and have to be renewed on a subscription basis?[/quote]
[quote=Hannah Flynn][color=#0066ff]
If you have Nex stored up to put into Exceptional Friendship, you might want to top up now, as from next week Exceptional Friendship will be sold in USD rather than Nex.[/color][/quote]
Probably need renewal after 3 months I guess?
Actually would it be possible to add options for, like, paying for quarter / half / one year upfront for peace of mind? edited by Estelle Knoht on 4/21/2015
Well, I’m disappointed that I probably won’t be able to get Exceptional Friendship anymore (not until some unknown point in the future), but the other changes are nice.
Edit: Nevermind, it turns out that I’ll be able to participate after all. :) edited by Sara Hysaro on 4/22/2015
[quote=Hannah Flynn][color=#0066ff]Exceptional Friends will now receive:
[/color][ul][li][color=#0066ff]EXCEPTIONAL STORIES A substantial, stand-alone story exclusively for Exceptional Friends, every single month. Tales of suspense, romance and adventure.[/color][/li][li][color=#0066ff]Bigger opportunity deck
Your opportunity deck will now hold up to 10 cards. (Edit: your deck, not your hand - hand size is still determined by lodgings.)
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[color=rgb(0, 0, 0)][/quote]Both of these sound great![/color]
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[/color][quote=Hannah Flynn][color=#0066ff]We’re also moving Exceptional Friendship to a subscription. Subscribe, and you’ll receive the new stories and all the above perks every month – but of course, there’ll be a box you can untick at any time if you want to stop. [/color][/quote]Can you please elaborate more on how this will practically work? Is the payment one time for a period of a few months in advance? Are we giving you authorization to charge us the $7 each month? Through which payment options?[color=#0066ff]
[/color][quote=Hannah Flynn][color=#0066ff]If you have Nex stored up to put into Exceptional Friendship, you might want to top up now, as from next week Exceptional Friendship will be sold in USD rather than Nex.[/color][/quote]By "top up", do you mean to buy right now Exceptional Friendship multiple times?If I buy it 3 times now with Nex, does it mean I’ll have the Friendship (with the new bonuses) for the next 3 months? How will existing Friendships be affected?
In general, it’s unfortunate that this won’t be Nex based in the future. I usually buy a big amount of Nex at a time, and then over several months use it where I think appropriate - sometimes it will be on holiday content, some months it feels right to me to buy Exceptional Friendship. This change means I’ll have to be much more calculated in advance on how much money to put into the game, since I won’t be able to choose its usage later.
I tend to use Nex in the way in the way dov outlines above - I buy quite a lot a few times a year and then spend it as things come up, on content or on Exceptional Friendship. This means I dip in and out of Exceptional Friendship - I tend to let it lapse if I’m away or too busy to play, and pick it up again later. (I’m probably an Exceptional Friend at least 75% of the time).
I have always liked the flexibility of this feature, as I tend to be wary of subscriptions, but I can understand why Failbetter would prefer a model with a more predictable income stream, especially if they are going to tie it to the expense of committing to new content.
So while I might need to rethink how I budget for my FL expenses, on balance, for me the new content and the bigger deck more than compensate for the loss of flexibility, and the extra quid and change per month shouldn’t be hard to find.
I do hope a solution can be found for the people who can’t manage to subscribe by the proposed method, though. edited by Lady Eris on 4/22/2015
[color=#0066ff]Subscriptions can be paid for by card, and we’re working on Paypal support at the moment. It won’t be possible to use SuperRewards for subscriptions.[/color]
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You’ll be charged $7 for a month, and it’s a rolling subscription until you decide to switch it off. You could subscribe for one month if you wanted by unticking the rolling option straight away.
Current Exceptional Friendships will be honoured, so if you’ve been in the habit of buying Nex at bulk with the idea of using some for Exceptional Friendship, you have the opportunity to top up your Exceptional Friendship now, at the current rate. We thought prudent to give you some notice for that reason. :)[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]I’m digging into the exchange rate question a bit more today. I’ll get back to you![/color]
Will that $7 even end up earning more money on failbetter’s end, after all taxes and fees? (compared to what I do now, which is buying the biggest nex pack every ~14 months (not counting the nex spent on anything else)
I am saddened by the thought that there will be content which I will never get the chance to see. Exceptional Friendship is something special that I do rarely. I would consider it an extra incentive to actually buy it if it unlocked multiple Exceptional Stories. As things stand, having seen all the stories in the House of Chimes, the only reason I’d get EF now would be the extra actions - and soon, deck size. Delicious new (to me) content would be more likely to attract my dollars.
I’d even be willing to pay a small extra bit of Nex to unlock each past story, if you’re wanting to maintain some exclusivity.
I bet this change will trouble a lot of people… changing payment-options always do. It works equally well for me, though, and I won’t have to remember to renew my friendship every month.
The only thing I’m gonna miss is doing that clever trick where you make sure you’re mostly out of Actions when your friendship expires, and then immediately buying a NEW friendship, netting you a full candle - and hence, 20 ‘free actions’ as a bonus. ^_^
Still, while it’s all the same to me, I don’t think the whole ‘story is gone forever after a month’ thing is a very good idea. It’s certainly going to disincentivize anyone NEW who comes along, since they can’t get onboard at day one. Just knowing that there are stories you will never play is likely to cause a ‘sour grapes’ reaction, making you go “Well, then, why should I pay for the FUTURE stories? I’ll never see them all anyway…”
Here’s an alternative idea - how 'bout the ‘monthly stories’ always starts from the first when someone signs up? Basically, rather than being tied to a specific month, they’d be tied to the number of months that has passed since you signed up. Would make it easier to make them interdependent, like a serial. An overarching plot! For damn sure, it’d keep the subscribers subscribing…
Eeh. I am generally exceptionally averse to the idea of transitory content, especially if it’s paid for. So while the idea of starting the countdown at the sign-up is marginally better it doesn’t address (what I, personally, see as) the crux of the issue.
Don’t get me wrong, Exceptional Friendship is an excellent deal even without new content and I’d pay for it in any case but those sour grapes, yep they be very sour indeed.
May I ask what the motivation for that is? I understand the desire to keep the content exclusive and fresh but there are many ways of achieving the same. For example, you could have a storylet in the House of Chimes that allows you to pick any of the previously released stories but only one per month. This way you both keep it exclusive to the Exceptional Friends and keep it fresh as noone will be able to just play through all of them in the same month.
It’s not so clever as you think. Whenever you renew your Exceptional Friendship, you get 20 free actions anyway, regardless of whether you are still an exceptional friend or not.
Currently, every time I buy Nex with my credit card I pay a foreign transaction fee (a flat fee of 1.25 usd, I believe), which is one of the reasons I like buying Nex in bulk. Since the fee would essentially bump up the monthly cost from $7 to $8.25, it would be wonderful to pay for several months at once.
Having joined FL only a year ago (and missing out on some Kickstarter backer content), I do rather like this idea. A story-of-the-month could be doled out for every month you are a member. This would also circumvent a potential exploit where people buy Exceptional Friendship in the middle of the month and get access to two stories and then cancel again on the 15th (meaning one could access 12 stories while paying for only six months). The third alternative of having monthly memberships that always expire at the end of the month also seems suboptimal (for one, it would most likely discourage players - especially new players - from signing up if it’s not the beginning of the month).
Logistical thoughts aside, I’m very excited about these additions!
Oh, yes, I just remembered, my credit card issuer (which is quite conservative) tends to send me concerned phone messages when I buy Nex because it’s outside my country, so if we could purchase in advance (and then maybe pause it), that would be awesome.