"Pay to Win" Really a Necessary Evil?

[KC15 340]

I seem to have no life and am in 8 different sim leagues. Well, actually I do have a life, but I have gotten my sim league earning down to an art using a bunch of cross-over posts and a Word document checklist to keep it all straight. For instance, one article like this actually nets me 18 TPE across three leagues. You know the drill – VHL, SBA, and EFL all share the ability to post one 500 word article in one of the leagues and claim it in all three. Good idea as it allows each league to recruit more players. I do the same in the “money” leagues: PBE, WSBL, SHL, and ISFL. One 150 word post gets me the main PT in all three other leagues, plus if it is PBE, I can claim the VHL.com article replacement PT here in the VHL for another 2 TPE.

 

But it is interesting. I am one of the few that I have seen crossing over between the “money” leagues and the VHL/SBA/EFL trio. The money league players are very reticent to join here, because instead of the monicker “money” league, these three leagues have the nickname “pay to win” leagues. That is because of the donation system that we have here in these leagues. Pay real dollars to support the site and you get TPE in the game. Those that can afford to pay get an edge over those who cannot. I am not sure it is much of an edge in the grand scheme of things, but it is no doubt an edge of some sort.

I am wondering if we really need to keep this system going. I am sure the point of taking in money is to cover the cost of our excellent portal and the underlying website hosting that supports that. But how much does that cost a year? How many users would need to contribute $2/year (with no corresponding TPE reward) would it take to support the current model? I know many would contribute that little per year (not season) to ensure we continue our excellence. How much do we have in the bank and how long will that cover the league for? So, are contributions even necessary at this point? Is any of the detail of our league finances available anywhere? They certainly should be.

 

The reason I ask is because our current model of asking for real money donations in exchange for TPE is a real barrier to some excellent users coming into the league. Users who would make this a better experience for everyone.

Perhaps we do not want this influx of new users? Perhaps we feel like there are enough users here now and we don’t need to change anything to remain vital? “If it is not broke, don’t fix it?” But surely, new blood is always a benefit to an organization and more great users would mean a more vibrant experience and more confidence in the long term future of the league.

I just thought it was worth asking the question.

 

512 words

 

[Beketov 8,650]

2 hours ago, KC15 said:

So, are contributions even necessary at this point? Is any of the detail of our league finances available anywhere? They certainly should be.

We’re in the process of moving all our funds so that Sterling doesn’t need to take care of it anymore and once that’s fully complete we plan to be much more straightforward about the funds but to the point of “is it necessary” I would say yes but not in the way you’d expect.

 

General overhead costs aren’t overly high. Some STHS licenses every once in awhile, hosting costs for the forum and portal, that sorta stuff amounts to very little. Couple hundred bucks a year maybe. The bigger costs are advertising, logo purchasing, and the annual charity drive and prize giveaways. Those cost us far more and if all “revenue” (if you wanted to call it that) dried up we would have to stop doing that sort of thing in order to keep the lights on which would not be ideal. The coffers appear pretty full but they can certainly empty quickly.

2 hours ago, KC15 said:

The reason I ask is because our current model of asking for real money donations in exchange for TPE is a real barrier to some excellent users coming into the league.

To be honest I do disagree with this. If it is a barrier for them it is one that they themselves create. Donations are by no stretch required. My last two players were both first ballot HoF players and combined may have had 2 donations between their careers. The max uncapped you get from donating is 11 TPE per season so in total if you did so every single season you’d be in the vein of 100 TPE, that’s not game breaking over 10 seasons. Obviously we aren’t opposed to people doing it but we’ve never looked at it as something that needs to be done in order to succeed or gain a substantial edge.

 

2 hours ago, KC15 said:

Perhaps we do not want this influx of new users?

So yes, we do want them, but yes we also need cash flow to keep the doors open and the lights on, certainly unless people want to give up a lot of the perks we offer. However I completely disagree that the donations are a barrier for entry or that they make anything “pay to win” since they offer a very low marginal increase to TPE. By no means are we ever expecting that people must donate to be part of the site and we would never ask them to.

[Beketov 8,650]

2 hours ago, KC15 said:

How many users would need to contribute $2/year (with no corresponding TPE reward) would it take to support the current model?

Meant to respond to this as well. I don’t have our books in front of me but to have things not change at all and keep the annual charity drive and the large prize giveaways and the advertisements (aka the large spending objects, not counting buying logos) we would be talking about at least 500 members donating $2/ year. Probably quite a bit more actually. To give you an idea, the top prize in our birthday giveaway was $250, same at Christmas, and our charity drives the league has matched $500 I believe to charity. So we go through a lot from these “bonus” items.
 

If you’re talking purely how much would be needed to keep the lights on and not have any kind of giveaways or charity work or anything then we’re looking at probably 200 people maybe.

 

The thing with either of those is that while it’s much less money it would be more or less required from everyone to even keep the lights on and we’d be losing a lot of the big events that we’ve been doing and would be required to cheap out on our logos and not do any charity work which I think would be detrimental. So we’d have an inferior product and may be less “pay to win” (Which I don’t remotely think we are) and would be more “pay to play” which I don’t really want to be. We would put the cost on everyone instead of having it be on the few that can afford to do so if they choose.

 

Personally that’s a trade off I’m willing to make.

[KC15 340]

I think the best argument here is that 100 TPE over the life of the player is pretty negligible.  

I don't think the logos are better here overall than in the PBE and certainly have 0 effect on wanting to play in either.  Don't know what we pay for logos here, but it's $0 in the PBE.  Some GMs commission artists with real $$, but not required.  I'm a GM and paid a teammate in-game dollars and I like our logo.  

PBE does a ton of charity work and no one is paid to donate $$ for TPE so that argument doesn't hold water for me.

 

The portal is vastly superior here and I'm sure that costs more than the PBE pays.  I can only imagine because JCINK sucks.  But again, I love the league so our website sucking doesn't affect my enjoyment.

 

Bottom line is that I get why people complain about $$ = TPE.  Other part of bottom line is that I'm still here so I obviously don't have a huge issue with our system.

 

[KC15 340]

I think my biggest beef with the VHL/SBA/EFL is that I absolutely loathe having to write 500 words for one article every week.  I'd probably not do it if I couldn't get credit across 3 leagues.  If I ever drop SBA/EFL, I'm nearly at 700 TPE on my 2nd player and I'll probably settle for the 5 Welfare TPE over 6.  Writing 500 words for 1 TPE = not worth it.  Funny how much harder it is to write 1 500-word article over 3 150+ word articles.  lol

 

[CowboyinAmerica 2,711]

6 minutes ago, KC15 said:

I don't think the logos are better here overall than in the PBE and certainly have 0 effect on wanting to play in either.  Don't know what we pay for logos here, but it's $0 in the PBE.  Some GMs commission artists with real $$, but not required.  I'm a GM and paid a teammate in-game dollars and I like our logo.

 

Just tackling this one, it's a good idea to pay for logos for a couple reasons:

 

1. You can be assured it's the property of the league, rather than the property of the creator, if it's commissioned by the league. It might be doubtful that a logo creator (or a real team, if you're using a real logo) would want to go after someone for copyright issues given the scale of these leagues. But the possibility exists, and if you have the ability to nip that in the bud, it's better to do so.

 

2. Paying people for specialized work is generally a good idea, no matter the discipline. Legit graphic designers can make bank on the open market. Even if they would do it for free for the love of the league, I think it's ethical to provide somebody with providing that sort of long-lasting impact on your league something to make it worth their time. (I've actually argued for compensating simmers for time spent too, but that's a whole different rabbit hole.)

 

3. It may have zero effect for you, but you're not the target audience there. If somebody's coming in from Reddit or somewhere else wholly unfamiliar with sim leagues, a good logo makes it seem like a higher-class operation. Even as someone who's been in sim leagues a long time, it's not a make-or-break proposition, but I've definitely pre-judged a new league based on how snazzy their presentation looked.

[Beketov 8,650]

13 minutes ago, CowboyinAmerica said:

I've actually argued for compensating simmers for time spent too, but that's a whole different rabbit hole

Let’s get this man into the BOG!

[Enorama 1,980]

27 minutes ago, KC15 said:

Writing 500 words for 1 TPE = not worth it

 

which is why we should nerf welfare to 2 TPE

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

26 minutes ago, KC15 said:

I think my biggest beef with the VHL/SBA/EFL is that I absolutely loathe having to write 500 words for one article every week.  I'd probably not do it if I couldn't get credit across 3 leagues.  If I ever drop SBA/EFL, I'm nearly at 700 TPE on my 2nd player and I'll probably settle for the 5 Welfare TPE over 6.  Writing 500 words for 1 TPE = not worth it.  Funny how much harder it is to write 1 500-word article over 3 150+ word articles.  lol

 

 

They are different strokes for different folks - I personally can never stay interested in money leagues because most of them pay based on word count (and can be prone to word vomit) and/or allow you to keep your money between players, which I am 100% against.

 

You can also write 1,000 words for 2 weeks of PT, 1,500 for 3 weeks of PT, etc..., which is my preference (I found 1,000 words to be the sweet spot). There is also nothing wrong with doing welfare combined with media spots - again, you're talking maybe 100 TPE over the life of your career?

 

Also, the other alternative is having someone pay for all of this out of their own pocket, which is what we did historically before donations started.

[Beketov 8,650]

36 minutes ago, KC15 said:

I can only imagine because JCINK sucks.

Others are kinda touching on the other points so I’m just gonna quote this one really quickly. Funnily enough JCINK was the go to for awhile because it’s by far the best of the free options but it’s just that, free. No license cost, no hosting costs. Our forum, being IPB based, has a license fee and a hosting cost and our portal has a hosting cost even with us building it ourselves. If I’m not mistaken these some amount to about $250 a year. It’s not substantial but it’s definitely not 0.

[KC15 340]

7 minutes ago, Enorama said:

 

which is why we should nerf welfare to 2 TPE

 

Wonder how many people would leave the league  over that?  lol

[KC15 340]

10 minutes ago, Fire Vigneault said:

 

They are different strokes for different folks - I personally can never stay interested in money leagues because most of them pay based on word count (and can be prone to word vomit) and/or allow you to keep your money between players, which I am 100% against.

 

 

What's the difference in promoting word vomit?  1) I pay you by word in in-game dollars for you to buy equipment which equals TPE.  2) I pay you to write 500 word articles for 6 TPE.  I have no more incentive to be insightful and erudite under either system.  Just crank out words.

 

Edited November 1, 2021 by KC15

[Beketov 8,650]

Just now, KC15 said:

 

What the difference in promoting word vomit?  1) I pay you by word in in-game dollars for you to buy equipment which equals TPE.  2) I pay you to write 500 word articles for 6 TPE.  I have no more incentive to be insightful and erudite under either system.  Just crank out words.

 

I’m not in the money leagues so I can’t say for sure (not knowing how it works) but I assume he means that more words = more money vs. You get 6 TPE whether you write 500 words or 999 so there’s more of a focus on actually making valuable content instead of just writing as many words as possible.

[Spartan 4,004]

10 minutes ago, KC15 said:

 

What's the difference in promoting word vomit?  1) I pay you by word in in-game dollars for you to buy equipment which equals TPE.  2) I pay you to write 500 word articles for 6 TPE.  I have no more incentive to be insightful and erudite under either system.  Just crank out words.

 

I am in both the SHL and the VHL, and I can easily say I much prefer writing here in the SHL. I had to write 3k words or so to get $3 million or so in the SHL. Maybe that's not the exact number, but I definitely wrote over 2k words. That $3 million got me three weeks of training at 5 tpe each. Significantly less bang for my sim league buck. In the VHL, I know my 2K words will get me 24 tpe total. It got me 15 in the SHL. 

 

As for word vomiting, I definitely word vomited more in the SHL than I do here. Part of it can definitely be attributed to the fact I am much more involved and active here, but even in the SHL, I've resorted to word vomiting season recaps to try and cough up the money for training. 

 

At the end of the day, people will find it easier to write in a league they are more involved in. If you just do your tasks for the sake of doing tasks in either league, you will find them more difficult to complete. I word vomit in the SHL, I'm sure an SHLer will word vomit here. 

 

Extra edit: In August, I wrote 3.1k words recapping my junior career in the SHL. I was paid out 3.4 million. To me, writing 500 words for 6 tpe is easier than getting 5 tpe for three weeks from that 3.1k word article.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Spartan
I can't English

[Enorama 1,980]

7 minutes ago, Beketov said:

I’m not in the money leagues so I can’t say for sure (not knowing how it works) but I assume he means that more words = more money vs. You get 6 TPE whether you write 500 words or 999 so there’s more of a focus on actually making valuable content instead of just writing as many words as possible.

 

That + more of an emphasis on week to week engagement rather than writing one long piece and riding it for a season are the selling points for me

[KC15 340]

7 minutes ago, Spartan said:

At the end of the day, people will find it easier to write in a league they are more involved in. If you just do your tasks for the sake of doing tasks in either league, you will find them more difficult to complete. I word vomit in the SHL, I'm sure an SHLer will word vomit here. 

 

That is, of course, a great point.  My point is that in the PBE I can write a 150 word article for 2 TPE and another 150 word article for 3 TPE. 300 words for 5 TPE.  Here I write one 500 word article for 6 TPE.  That's not good bang for the buck and it is significantly easier to develop one simple thought two times for those 2 150-word articles than it is to develop a longer theme with 2-3 points in a 500 word article.

 

And I do NOT write articles in the "money" leagues to buy training or equipment.  I take league jobs like updater and GM.  No writing at all and yet it helps move the league along.

[Beketov 8,650]

10 minutes ago, KC15 said:

Here I write one 500 word article for 6 TPE.  That's not good bang for the buck

I'm not in the PBE but what are there attributes like? What is their update scale like? More TPE does not necessarily automatically mean better between leagues, it's a metric that doesn't transfer. For example it's way easier to get huge piles of TPE in the SBA it seems (just based on my player) but their update scale is very intense so each TPE means slightly less. It makes the metrics difficult.

 

Honestly I think people should just look at what they enjoy about the leagues and aim to do that instead of being hyper focused on what's the most optimal TPE path.

[KC15 340]

True.  Different update scales and different amount of TPE given out make it nearly impossible to compare.  Fair point.  

[Spartan 4,004]

38 minutes ago, KC15 said:

My point is that in the PBE I can write a 150 word article for 2 TPE and another 150 word article for 3 TPE. 300 words for 5 TPE.  Here I write one 500 word article for 6 TPE.

We do have minor tasks here as well, 150 word VHL.com is 2 TPE, and 2 reviews of like 100 words each is 2 TPE. Add in a press conference with another total of about 100 words, another 2 TPE. 6 TPE for like 350 words. So really, it's 850 words for 12 TPE if we're getting that detailed . And I'm being generous with the word counts of reviews and press conferences.

 

41 minutes ago, KC15 said:

And I do NOT write articles in the "money" leagues to buy training or equipment.  I take league jobs like updater and GM.  No writing at all and yet it helps move the league along.

This is also a very, very important point. For people like you and me who have jobs in our main leagues, we don't necessarily need to write as much. Half of my cap in the VHL comes from being a GM and updater. I don't have to write those extra 350 words from minor tasks. I also just don't have the time to take up jobs in the SHL. I GM'd the WJC this past season, and I realized it took more time than I had to offer, so I won't be pursuing more jobs in the future. We all have finite time, and our commitments are ultimately to one type of league. For you, your pain point is to do extra writing here in the VHL that seems cumbersome. For me, it's writing one massive article in the SHL every so often to be able to afford my basic training.

 

However, specifically to the pay-to-win point, sure there is a significant benefit to donating. 11 TPE per $10 donation is not insignificant, but I don't think many people do it consistently. The folks who are absolute tryhards (such as myself) donate before we get drafted so that we can maximize our draft position. We're all a bit egotistical in that manner, there's competition to be the best earner in our class. However, as someone who was consistently 100 TPE behind the top two players in my S72 class, that 100 TPE did not stop me from enjoying a career as good as, if not better than, those top two players in my class. I won an MVP award, neither of those two players did. While it seems significant, and seems so from an rainbow flavoured unicorns point, it is absolutely not essential to having a great career.

[Spartan 4,004]

rainbow flavoured unicorns

 

edit: this forum and league sucks

Edited November 1, 2021 by Spartan

[Beketov 8,650]

41 minutes ago, Spartan said:

rainbow flavoured unicorns

 

edit: this forum and league sucks

Lies, the filters are our best feature.

[Spartan 4,004]

Just now, Beketov said:

Lies, the filters are our best feature.

burn it all down, Best people here but socially distanced included

[Beketov 8,650]

Just now, Spartan said:

burn it all down, Best people here but socially distanced included

Oh this only gets better!

[ROOKIE745 572]

21 hours ago, CowboyinAmerica said:

3. It may have zero effect for you, but you're not the target audience there. If somebody's coming in from Reddit or somewhere else wholly unfamiliar with sim leagues, a good logo makes it seem like a higher-class operation. Even as someone who's been in sim leagues a long time, it's not a make-or-break proposition, but I've definitely pre-judged a new league based on how snazzy their presentation looked.

I literally joined the VHL because I saw the DCD logo and loved it, and I had no sim league experience before hand, the strat is working XD

Edited November 2, 2021 by ROOKIE745

[bigAL 2,176]

8 minutes ago, ROOKIE745 said:

I literally joined the VHL because I saw the DCD logo and loved it, and I had no sim league experience before hand, the start is working XD

FUCK YEAH DRAGONS, BEST LOGO IN DA LEEEEEEAGUE