Patreon Changes. Evolvution

[Guest]

Hello, all!

Have you checked our latest Patreon patch?  

If not, please do, it's here: http://www.kinkoid.com/patreon-changes-evolution/

This topic will be dedicated to your feedback! We are open....and waiting... for it

Jessie Kinkoid

[Habi]

i'm not a patreon so i can't speak first hand but from what i observed on the discord the patreon kobans (and probably the event girl for higher tiers) are provided manually each month. that seems to cause a lot of work, troubles and sorrows too. will this process be automated with the patreon update?

for clarification: do 500 patreons receive 2 event girls each month?

it seems the patreon only girl(s) have been removed. is that correct?

Edited March 21, 2018 by Habi

[DFyre]

Let me just start off with... I understand. As the amount of Patreons grew, the glut of rewards that had to be dealt with each month would have become quite a burden. I am sorry to hear that bonus' on Kobans was a 'trouble' point...I always took what I got and was happy with that....seems to be yet another case of 'you can't please everybody'. The revamping of the tiers is quite significant on all levels. When a lot of your creative time is spent with just the reward system, then it cuts into the amount of time dedicated to the game itself and furthering the story. I will miss what I will no longer receive each month...but once again, I understand. The purpose of the creators was to break that corporate environment and do something they 'wanted' to do. We love what you do and want to see it continue. Change, is good...and I think in this case...it was also very necessary.

[Snarlingsnarf]

I can't seem to understand, are the changes just changes or have things been removed? is there still a koban amount for the $5?

[Guest]

Hello, dear all.

We are glad to see that you react and you give feedback! We are going to read it all and discuss it! 

Few points:
What you see in the post, can be changed, still.
If you have doubts, ask us.
If you like what you see, tell us.

We are here to support and make the best out of our Patreon page for you!!!

Best,

Jessie Kinkoid
 

[Chthugha]

Not a patreon, but I do have one question.

The 200 and 500 tier have "Event girl of our choice" each event.
Is this going to be a pachinko event girl, or a villain event girl?
I think patreons of that tier would like to know that.
Right now it can be either of them.

And as I read it, I can understand you choosing, because then you can automate the distribution.

[Monorail]

As I see now, you are cutting a lot, which is fair. You started with giving a bit too much love and we started to take that for granted.

Now I don't think the plans for changes are perfect as they are now, but the cuts on kobans are fair. You don't want it to be "another way to buy kobans".

 

Looking forward to see how it plays out, but I'm sure you'll manage to find a good solution together with the community!

 

Edit: I, however, don't think it is a good idea to cut the kobans that harsh. Personally, I would prefer if we did get some bonus to keep Patreon inviting. Even if that makes Patreon "another way to buy kobans", I don't see why that would be a problem.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Monorail

[Dandot]

I only support on Patreon for the Kobans. By removing the 'bonus' kobans without any compensation in the set amount of kobans, you are significantly reducing the amount we will get per month. That means it reduces the incentive to support on patreon as it levels out with the price of just buying them instead. And if it came down to it, if I was just buying them straight up, I probably wouldn't at all as I trust patreon as a middle man on payments, not so much the credit card facility that you use. I understand the need to reduce the work load, but if your going to take something out of the list, you should compensate for it to keep that incentive there to continue supporting. 

[Tristelune]

Hello,

I think the bulk of these changes goes in the right way.

The increasing bonus per month only served to create confusion (“did I receive all my kobans? Did they forget to send some of them to me? How much am I really supposed to receive in the first place?”). Now, there is no more increasing bonus per month.

Several pledgers were rewarded with art of their choice. Collecting their answers about which art they wanted and distributing them by email was a long process. Now, there will be no choice and art rewards will be on the patreon website.

To let the higher pledger chose for their free event girl was just a big loss of time and energy. It resulted in the girls being delivered after the event, which was not pleasant. Now, kinkoid will chose the free event girls.

The highest pledgers were receiving an exclusive girl every few month (there was a single one so far). I have some knowledge of the overall production costs of a girl, and I understand it was a loss of time and money for kinkoid. Exclusive girls are gone, now. So, rewards are streamlined and simplified. We can expect a better quality in delivery and efficiency.

I think overall it goes in the right direction.

As a 200$ patreon, I believe I’ll keep my pledge level as it is.

 

Yet, I believe some of the changes are inappropriate for the de facto situation of the kinkoid patreon.

Patreon is initially a system to support artists.

Rewards are expected, but not a requirement.

Yet, the history of kinkoid’s patreon turned the platform into a de facto premium subscription. I believe that most of kinkoid patreons didn’t join the program as benevolent donators, but for the rewards they expected to receive. Exactly like if they would subscribe to a premium program. I can foresee this fact to result in a consequent reduction of the pledger numbers and/or pledge levels.

I understand you want to bring back patreon to what it should be, but you should also care about what it is effectively, or all of it might crumble and turn to dust. So, I would humbly suggest you to raise the rewards, so that pledgers don’t feel “cheated” and keep their motivation to be a patreon.

 

A few examples:

- Bring art back to the 20$ pledgers. It doesn’t cost kinkoid any time nor money afaik, and it might make them more satisfied

- Improve a bit all koban rewards, so that they are a little bit more than what can be simply purchased in game. You should not bring back the old “raising bonus” that brough so much troubles, but simply add 10% kobans might be an incentive to continue being a patreon for those who would consider dropping it

- Maybe give a sensitive amount of supplementary kobans for the 100$ pledgers, who lost their bonus event girl What I would like to avoid is that kinkoid’s patreon turns into a desert because rewards were reduced.

So, TL:DR: it’s positive that you streamlined and simplified rewards, yet I would suggest to up these rewards a bit to keep everyone happy 

Edited March 21, 2018 by Tristelune

[DFyre]

My question also in reading the revamping of the tiers is that as I go through the updated column to the next tier above. Do you assume that each tier higher includes what is included on the lower tiers ? 

I do think that @Tristelune has made several good points above....there might be other ways to compensate for some rewards that are lost, in a way that is not any extra work for the Team. You have built Patreons steadily...not everyone is going to view this as a 'positive' change. Some of the suggestions above are worth considering for sure.

Edited March 21, 2018 by DFyre
in response to Tristelune's post

[DRSTRONGDONG]

Can I buy a monthly card equivalent through Patreon?

 

The hentaiheroes site keeps saying that there's an error processing all three of my cards, and I'm just tired of trying to get it to work since I've been at it for four days.

 

Maybe it could be included with the Patreon rewards? The rewards are monthly so it's perfect timing if we want to renew our subscription to Patreon/Monthly card...

[gnarph]

I think the stress you are experiencing is more to do with trying to make your rewards too interactive than any other factor.

I understand managing it all makes for more work.  Post more work-in-progress pictures, completed artwork - that kind of thing for lower tiers.  Its less work - the art is done already - and it builds more hype for new releases. You post that directly to the patreon site and don't have to keep track of who has paid and who hasn't.  Give custom things to higher tiers: its more work and they are paying for it.  There are less of them though and should be easier to manage.  Don't give patreons a choice in which picture or girl or whatever.  Choose one and send it to everyone.  Decide on your rewards in advance and package them and send them in one go.

Instead of making an API call to give out kobans post a link on patreon for patrons to follow that checks their id against a master list of patreon users on your site's api.  Make it a one use link, with a unique code for each month.  That way the onus of getting the kobans shifts to the user and you are dealing with the ones with problems instead of everyone.  Also the patron knows immediately when their allotment comes in and there is less questions for you to field.

[J Brown]

so as i see it the $1 tier is now gone ok no big loss there but the $5 tier seems to be getting the shaft by removing the kobans i dont think i like that still though i see the $10 tier is coming in so that means some of the $5 patreons will upgrade to that tier hoping to keep getting kobans there's 1 problem though there's 155 of them but your limiting the $10 tier to only 50 so 105 will be S.O.L. unless you increase that limit. The only reason I say this is because I myself was a $5 tier patreon until 1 hour ago where in fear of not being fast enough to get in to the limited $10 tier I jumped straight to the $20 tier even though I can't really afford that but i'll dame sure try everything else i'm fine with. on that note the only change i would recommend is that you increase the limit on the $10 tier

Edited March 22, 2018 by J Brown

[Cite]

You should put the free event girl back into the $100 tier, but make that one random (pachinko) and let the $200 tier choose.

If it takes more than 5 minutes to send someone an event girl of their choice, with their user ID in hand, I strongly suggest you look into improving your infrastructure.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Cite

[DFyre]

Another thing you may consider is opening up the slots on the tiers under 100.00. It seems like most of those posts will be on the site, instead of by email. It will also allow people to do the size of patronage they are comfortable with, instead of having to go to a higher tier, because the lower one's slots are all full. It will generate more income, and maybe make another member to the team possible. Because  the rewards are posted on site, there won't be a lot of extra time dealing with the emails each month. It would also be nice if the bonus kobans could stay as well. Make it a 10 or 20 percent of your initial allotment each month...no complex formulas...this is what you get kinda thing.

I do like that the bonus is back. I do like that it is fixed to match the tiers. This will avoid confusion, and debate. I still think the lower tiers should be opened up for slots so that that they can grow with you. Not sure if this makes it unmanageable, but it is another source of income to the team and allows for another option for growth. Thanks also for the clarification on rewards included from lower tiers...I was wondering about that as well. Thank you for listening and revising. I am interested to see what others think on this now too.

Edited March 22, 2018 by DFyre
Revision to the Revision

[gnarph]

I went ahead and deleted my subscription, no way ill be fast enough to join the new $10 tier even if I was so inclined, and the stuff available at $5 is honestly not worth it in my opinion.

[Rinji-san]

So yesterday I've read the first announcement of the modifications about the Patreon, and honestly I don't like them at all.
Today I've read the new modifications added. Here are my thoughts. (this concern my tier, 100$)

Pros
- I'm glad that Kobans bonuses are back, but this time with a fixed percentage.

Cons
- You removed the free event girl for the 100$ tier, but also for the 200$ tier. I dislike this, I think this is a really bad idea.
- Then I saw this remark in your second record : "Your feedback shows, you dislike the girl idea, so we removed it."Are you kidding me ? As far as I know, I've never seen someone complaining about the free event girl, at least some people may have complained about the way it was organized, but that's all.

Suggestions
- Bring back the free event girl for both 100$ and 200$ tiers, but don't let us the right to choose to avoid work overload, make it random or you (the team) decide for us.
- Bring back for the 100$ tier : "You will receive early access to our content, You will get information about what’s coming into the game before anyone else : events, girls, features..." This is something that shouldn't disappear for the 100$ tier in my opinion.

The 100$ tier is still important because you shouldn't forget that a hundred dollars is quite a big amount of money

[Habi]

26 minutes ago, Rinji-san said:

Cons
- You removed the free event girl for the 100$ tier, but also for the 200$ tier. I dislike this, I think this is a really bad idea.
- Then I saw this remark in your second record : "Your feedback shows, you dislike the girl idea, so we removed it."Are you kidding me ? As far as I know, I've never seen someone complaining about the free event girl, at least some people may have complained about the way it was organized, but that's all.

Suggestions
- Bring back the free event girl for both 100$ and 200$ tiers, but don't let us the right to choose to avoid work overload, make it random or you (the team) decide for us.

as far as i understood it no tier gets an event drop girl. on the 500 tier it says "event mission girl". so they don't get anything for free, they just get something 13 days earlier that is basically for free.

adding that i understand your point. noone likes getting substantially less than they got used to. i'm no patreon myself so i can't really judge if that change is good or bad but sometimes some cuts are needed.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Habi

[GameRaven]

37 minutes ago, Habi said:

as far as i understood it no tier gets an event drop girl. on the 500 tier it says "event mission girl". so they don't get anything for free, they just get something 13 days earlier that is basically for free.

adding that i understand your point. noone likes getting substantially less than they got used to. i'm no patreon myself so i can't really judge if that change is good or bad but sometimes some cuts are needed.

I don't know why there is the word mission in your statement. In the post from following that link at the beginning I found only mention of event girls and this statement:

Quote

Event girl of our choice on each event, this means that on the first day of each event (excluding revival events) you are going to receive a random event girl that we exclusively send to you.

 

[Felis]

I just read about the proposed changes. I'm glad there is a new tire of 10$. I'm happy to contribute more than 5$ but 20$ was a little too steep for me. Couple of questions though.

Firstly: Am I to understand that the 5$ tire will loose koban allowance or that "Rewards Updated" column will be just added to the current ones?

Secondly: Why a 10$ tire has a limit? Is this a technical issue? I bet many more players would be happy to donate in this tire (It's close to monthly subscription in many popular games). I would hate to miss out on this tire just because I wasn't fast enough with my pledge.

Not a feedback per se but I will tell you my personal motivation behind patreon pledging. It's just me but It's possible that there are others wit similar mindset.

For me the HH is mainly a hentai version of pokemon (Gotta catch them all, right?). I do enjoy the story part of the game - it provides a context and variety. Without it it would be a gloryfied slot machine. I realize that making the story part takes a large part of developement so I contribute to allow you guys (and gals) to pay the bills. BUT as most of the folks out there I want something in exchange for my money. Art we're getting is great (lately the wallpapers are getting better and better) but truth to be told I look at them once or twice when I get them in the mail and then they just sit on my hard drive. Kobans on the other hand are something tangible. They fuel the slot machine (or pachinko as the case may be) part of the game. Monthly allowance from the patreon pledge gives me a little more chance to score this perfect dream girl.

There is another kink to my spending habits. On some subconcious level I really don't like an idea of buying currency in online games but if it is in the form of subscription or pledge it feels different even if technically it's basically the same. It's psychological - can't explain that but that how it feels. So yeah, I'm using patreon to get more kobans, mainly. And I can still pretend in front of myself thet I'm playing free to play game.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that there's something wrong in monetization, microtransactions and treating the game like a product - you guys work hard on it and you should be paid for it, and that money has to come from somewhere. Just loose the limit on lower tires on patreon (maybe up to 20$) so more people can give you more money

[blackjacuar]

So today i read all the proposed changes and comments and i agree with you that there need to be some changes.  Personally i think the involvement of Kinkoid is to high, especially the personalized choices. BUT i think that if you are a patreon (which i am) you should get something. However i think that getting your reward in the mail is going to be a bother real soon. So why don't you use Patreon to post every reward. so here is my recommendation. please keep in mind that i'm not an it-guy or an artist so it might need some changes.

tiersystem: At the moment it is hard to see what you get at each tier. I suggest a pyramid system. this way it is possible to see what rewards you get. ex: pledge tier $20 you get everything in tier $20+$10+$5 (according to the new tiers). also make it clear under what category each reward is (art, Kobans or involvement). Up until $100 tier shouldn't have any direct contact with Kinkoid. indirect is fine though

Art: consult with each other how much art you think are able and willing to produce each month. divide that with each or almost each tier. it is only logical that the more intense and awesome art is locked behind higher tiers. But you might want to throw the lower tiers a bone every once in a while.

Kobans: I agree with others that you should be able to subscribe to them here. Others have said some thing about an one-time use hyperlink. I think that will be best to do a day or two after the monthly subscription payment. because you said in a pachnote that NU and HH are two different servers, make a choice when clicking on the hyperlink asking ''where are you playing?'' with only the option Nutaku or HaremHeroes after it goes straight to the right server and corrects for the right kobans. here you can have a blank box where you need to submit your username. this way you can keep it fair. and the possibility of cheating with an other IP is zero because it is in the name. except if that person has 2 accounts.

Involvement: I think your current idea of involvement is correct. Discord gives you the option to submit ideas which in the long run will improve the game. as does access to the patreon blog. However if you start to use patreon more it might be nice to do polls. and depending in which tier you are you get more involvement and more choices to make. ex $100 poll can be on hair colour of event girl whereas $10 poll can be situation A or B in next storyline.

Tiers: I'm happy with the introduction of $10 and $500. However i am sad to see the $1 go. As a student i have a small budget to spend on patreon. for this i can make 2 choices. 1 spend everything on 1 creator or 2 divide where i spend. I have chosen no matter how much i like HH for the later and i think there are more low spenders like me on Patreon. the $1 tier are still supporters of your work.  maybe keep it but as a reward they get just 1 sketch a month. Which the rest gets as well

Edited March 23, 2018 by blackjacuar
typo

[J Brown]

well i'm fine with everything now but i'll say this it will definitely put a strain on me moving up to the $20 tier from the $5 tier I'll just make it work somehow that said I feel that by boing this it's the only way I'll keep getting what I've been getting. thx.

 

[Habi]

7 hours ago, GameRaven said:

I don't know why there is the word mission in your statement. In the post from following that link at the beginning I found only mention of event girls and this statement:

 

it's mentioned in the followup blogpost: http://www.kinkoid.com/patreon-changes-pt2/

seems @JessieChan forgot to post a link.

[CR0]

Hi! 

I think Patreon never will be fully popular. In Eu, I have to pay 6,35$ for the $5 tier because of the taxes. It's 27% here. 
Anyway I like the new % bonus koban system however the patreon site is still a negative trade for us.

Only the tiers with the bonus girls have considerable value.

In my opinion  if you really want to be "big", do in-game vip levels, limited in-game offers, new level offers, where we can support you directly and where everyone pays the same. 

[Rinji-san]

 

I would like to add something to my feedback. It's about the Kobans bonus.

In the new record it is said that the 100$ tier will get 15600 + 2730 bonus Kobans, so it makes a total of 18330 Kobans. But with the VAT I pay 120€, and 100€ (15600 Kobans) + 20€ (2760 Kobans) = 18360 Kobans. Consequently, Kobans corresponding to the VAT should be included in the base amount of Kobans and not considered as a bonus. Plus, the bonus amount of Kobans offered does not even correspond to the bonus amount for the 20$ tier. (a difference of 30 Kobans) So basically, it should be 18360 + the bonus.

Don't forget that in Europe we need to pay a VAT adding to the Patreon tier price, and you should take this into account, because 20€ isn't nothing.

The idea of the bonus system is good, but you need to add the VAT Kobans into the base amount of Kobans, and that for all tiers."