Suggested change in memebrship plans

[Schaefling]

I have spoken to some other managers who would love to be able to manage four teams with a silver account instead of three noting the huge jump from three teams to ten teams between a silver and gold account.

Is there any chance you might go to four teams instead of three for silver accounts to encourage people to stay with the game or to encourage more to sign?

In the alternative can a person with a silver account add on a fourth team for an extra fee as gold account members can if they want to manage more than ten teams? I think this would be a great idea and I think many managers with silver accounts might well be willing to pay an extra dollar or so a month to be able to run a fourth team.

[Schaefling]

A brief response would be appreciated. Mainly I want to know if a manager can purchase a fourth team with a silver account like managers with gold accounts can do and how much this would cost. Currently it's $1.25 per extra team for gold accounts. Thanks.

[takaplan]

It's not an option now. I don't know if we are going to change the pricing schedule for a while...at least not until the game gets rolling a bit.

[Schaefling]

I appreciate the update. It won't affect me as I plan on staying with my Gold account. I just thought if you were offering extra teams to Gold account members it would make sense to do the same for Silver account members so some could have four teams instead of three. After all money is money. And business is business.

[James Grove]

Hi, Schaefling -

I'll add a couple of thoughts, too.

One problem right now is a general lack of programmer bandwidth, so we have to queue up each development project.

Also, It's hard to quantify how many people would actually use the new feature. If we were to charge (for example) a silver account $2 for each additional team, then it would only make sense for somebody who wanted to buy 1 or 2 additional teams. Once you get 3 additional teams, it's cheaper to buy the gold account, and you get more teams to boot!

And would somebody actually pay $13.95 for 5 teams, when they could pay $14.95 for 10? I'm a bargain lover, so I'm sure I would take the gold account in that scenario.

And, of course, the biggest issue for us is simplicity. The more options we add to billing, the more complicated the billing system gets.

So that's where we are right now. We'll keep thinking about adding the option for another team or two on a Silver account, but it will probably have to wait until we can get some more development resources.

Thanks for your comments,
James