I would like to know, if by any chance a member of the Failbetter staff comes by, if it is possible to allow gifting a month of Exceptional Friendship to another player ?
I recently introduced someone else to the game. She loves it, but she is very… limited financially. I already offered her 100 Fate, but it would be cool if she could also enjoy the benefits of Exceptional Friends - at least for one month.
Technically I could just give her enough money to buy that subscription, but it just… does not feel right. Gifting it in game would be much better.
So would it be feasible or not ? And what do you think of such a feature, fellow Londoners ?
I think it needs some thought given to what should happen when two players want to gift EF to the same player. Or any other instance where a player would end with more than one subscription at the same time.
Also, how to make sure that people don’t gift to inactive/wrong accounts by accident (the current method at least makes sure that someone has logged into the account recently).
In the meantime … can you “subscribe” (using your card, but without saving the detail) on her account (the immediately remove the subscription, which should leave the 30 days of EF intact, iirc)?
[quote=xKiv]I think it needs some thought given to what should happen when two players want to gift EF to the same player. Or any other instance where a player would end with more than one subscription at the same time.
Also, how to make sure that people don’t gift to inactive/wrong accounts by accident (the current method at least makes sure that someone has logged into the account recently).
[/quote]
Alternatively, it could be an item that if gifted that must be accepted by the user (Much like how fate is gifted in a box)
To ensure that you only have one month of "subscription" at a time, the box’s accept option could be locked whenever the player is exceptional.
This is a very nice idea, but I think it would have worked better with the old way, when buying a month’s worth of Exceptional Friendship cost 20 Fate (and you could have bought multiples, each adding a month).
With the current subscription based model this is both trickier to implement, but also seems to be at odds with what FBG tried to setup up (a steady income stream from subscriptions, instead of EF being a one-off item anyone can buy at from time to time) - otherwise they would have left a way to buy one month’s worth of EF with Fate instead of just an option to buy a continuously renewing subscription.
FBG will presumably not go with anything where you can buy more of them now, to be used one per month. They want stable and reliable regular income. This has already been given as part of explanation for why the fate cost of “old” EF stories is so high.
Sure, but there are lots of subscription based MMOs that also have the option to buy blocks of time.
That way they can be gifted, or sold in retail stores for people who can’t or won’t shop online.
I wouldn’t say it’s a practical option right now, but it’s certainly possible in the future without hurting their ability to have continuous income.
Let’s not forget that if they kept it solely as a “Gift” option, most exceptional players would probably stick with the subscription instead of going through the hassle of running multiple accounts to get the “tokens” that might be used. Likewise this would be a great way to introduce players who are on the fence about subscribing a taste of the exceptional content without cutting into Failbetters profit margins.
Koenig described quite well what I had in mind: something that must be accepted by the person and that can’t be accepted when the person is already an exceptional friend.
And you could also make that gift very slightly more expensive than the normal subscription system so it’s still more advantageous to subscribe. That way, the steady income of FBG isn’t threatened, but you can still give one gift every once in a while ("ok, it’s a bit more expensive than the subscription so I shouldn’t do it too often… But hey, at least my friend will be able to test Exceptional Friendship")
Oh, and by the way, I only had in mind the possibility to give onemonth of exceptional friendship at a time. I would have put it in the title, but the number of characters was limited. edited by Lemexis on 9/24/2015 edited by Lemexis on 9/24/2015
As a fate-user and exceptional friend who also has a financially challenged friend, I’d love to see this. I’m going to give her a box of 100 fate as a little birthday gift, but this would be a nice thing too.
Give them a bit of time! It took them a few days to change my Discernment reward, and that is much less work than coming up with a good answer to your suggestion.
An answer came out of the Void just as I was losing hope.
They said that they wanted to implement this feature, but it is complicated technically and their development efforts are focused on the iOS port right now. But exceptional friendships gifts might be a thing in the future. edited by Lemexis on 10/8/2015