Revamp Subeta Referrals
Replies
The way that Subeta is currently incentivizing referrals is "For each new user you refer you get 1 referral point and you get 10% of each Cash Shop Credit purchase your referrals makes." For a referral to count they must "adopt a pet and have at least 10,000sP on their account!" These referral points then can be used in a special shop that has some awesome plushies, stickers, wearables, books, minions and .etc. As it stands to buy one of each item you need 349 points which equates to referring that many people. Collection items alone are 105 points and only 15 items. Currently this means that referral items are low in circulation which is a problem for collectors since there are items needed to finish their collections in this referral shop. (15 needed only 5 available to purchase with 3 being single items and 2 having multiples available for sale) Another huge problem is retaining these new players and having them active on site instead of playing for a few minutes and leaving.
I think this suggestion has two separate parts to it.</p>
<p>Part 1 - making the current items more attainable
So this could be done by moving them out of the referral shop or by making points easier to come by. This part is important for the current users, but not so important to staff
Even the sought after rewards that are in there right now aren&;t incentive enough for most people to try for referrals, or else there would be more of them out there. There are probably many users out there like me that only really know their family and don&;t have friends to refer, or don&;t want to out of embarassment or they just don&;t want them to be subeta with them. If things stay how they are now, these collection items will remain some of the most difficult to get on the site, which is against the spirit of the site because there is an effort to make sure all collections are completeable within reason.</p>
<p>Part 2 - making the referred user more likely to stay. This part should happen no matter what, even if part 1 doesn&;t happen at all. This part is important to staff because it results in a healthier site with more revenue.
My suggestion- Point Revamp
What I am proposing is changing the referral point system. Increase the number of points that referrals are worth via activity based tier system, plus make it were the referrer gets a point every year their referrals are active (Measure this activeness by tying it to the loyalty box that is received only when users go to their user dashboards at or past an anniversary date). So yes leave the original point for adopting a pet and getting 10k sP (very easy targets), but also making other goals worth a point as well. These other goals should be one time only opportunities. Here are just a few examples:
Posting on the forums 100 times - 1 Point 10 Battle Wins- 1 Point 50 achievements earned- 1 point Restocking 100 items- 1 point Vending 500 items- 1 point Adopt a pet from the Adopt-R-US - 1 Point Have a pet zapped into an experiment- 1 Point
Suggestions from Have 50 recycle beast points- 1 Point Buy an item from the Cash Shop- 1 Point Gain access to the blue building- 1 Point Complete Map for access to Omen Islands- 1 Point Have 1 skin- 1 Point Have 100 plushies/beanbags- 1 Point Reach level 2 in the bakery- 1 Point
Something along those lines so each referral could be worth multiple points and it is totally dependent on their activity or playing on Subeta. This encourages referrers to help their newly recruited friends to be active on site by different means, increases the number of referral points given, increases opportunities for referral items to be bought, hopefully incentivize people to recruit new players again.
As per concerns of devaluation the goals should have a cap limit. Say 5 points so each referral is max worth 6 points 1 for the initial goal and 5 for reaching 5 of the other goals. Though I still do really like the extra point for yearly anniversaries. Cause we need to improve retention rates.
Also it would be nice to also put in a CSC card into the referral shop since although the 10% csc kickback is nice not all referrals will buy csc with real money. CSC being available for referral points alone might incentivize players to recruit.
's idea to add pet slots in the referral shop. HUGE incentive for those who aren't into collecting, wardrobe .etc. Essentially if you do this I will be motivated for sure to be recruiting when I can.
Kbbob's Suggestion- Change Referral Shop Items
Reya's Suggestions- How to Improve New User Retain Rate
Which leads us to the real issue here (for both us players and for Subeta): getting people to stick with the site. When someone signs up from one of my ads I always sent them a welcoming pack, commented them, and did a few other things to help them get some easy achievements (friended, added a sticker, potion lottery, etc.). Outside of that, there&;s not much I really can do, especially if they had already logged off by the time I noticed.</p>
<p>Giving more points for little actions will devalue the items, and more in favor of people who are bringing friends/family (you know, the people who you can just stand over until they&;ve done it all) - it doesn&;t necessarily mean they are truly active players.</p>
<p>Subeta needs to work on making it easier to attract people and to get them to log back in.</p>
<ul>
<li>We needs more banners. I&;m not an artist and I don&;t have any fancy programs, so it was frustrating to be limited to ones created years ago. This includes more styles AND sizes. (Banner contests?!)</li>
<li>Offer a bonus pack of items or a temporary GA status (for like 3 days? that&;s non-transferable) to players who login after a week of joining -- and make them aware they will get this when signing up/activating account, and then send them a reminder email ("log in today to claim...")</li>
<li>Make updates to how the referral page (on our end) looks to make it easier to organize. Perhaps a "last login date" or even the status of where they are before you get credit.</li>
<li>Give a notification event when someone joins using your referral link/user name</li>
<li>etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>I don&;t think I like the idea of pet slots unless referral points become a currency that can be sold as points. Enough people complain that they can&;t get referrals as it is, and adding something that cannot be obtained with sp will only make it worse (because let&;s face it, most people still aren&;t going to do the extra work).
thanks for the ping! :) Well I like this idea, but the problem is to bring people and make them sign up, it's too difficult, I tried many times, I posted in every post of neopets on facebook, on every fan page.. and I got one user but they didn't stay for long, like 1 hour, so I didn't get the points.. So there should be another ways to get points, maybe to make this system more "social", like randomly when helping someone on the help forum, when sending a gift with a wishlist item to your friend.. I don't know..change them to "friendship points"..
Also, it's not going to hurt anyone or the economy if once a year or even 2 years those specific collections items will go into the system in another way (crystal shop, cash shop whatever) for a short time, even for 24 hour, like a rush sale..
btw If I'm not wrong it's 20k or 25k now and not 10k..
I just pulled the quotes from the referral page. If it is 20k now they need to update the main page to say so. I get what you are saying though on trying to convert it to include "friendship points" but that is another suggestion entirely. There are users out there who are able to bring in referrals, I was just looking for a way to increase the points given to increase the number of referral items out for sale.
However in terms of the putting the items out of the referral shop, as stated it is not going to happen. I warned Imp about that and to make a suggestion like this one because I know the referral items have been refused in the past.
yes you are right, I got a little bit off topic xD anyway, your suggestion is great because we need new ways to get points and if we get points from the activity of the user that we referred it can be awesome! About the csc I found it a little bit weird when I got csc because the user that I brought here last year (one month and then poof) bought csc.. I think it's better to just put there the 100 csc like you said..
*the cube and radish stickers were in the crystal shop once after we complained about it too much lol
Any suggestions then for easy goals that increase activity on the site itself? Like you stated you can get a referral and then poof they are done. Like my referrals are not active at all, 1 quit when we broke up and the other my fiance just isn't into petsites but I force him to go on every once in a while to prevent the UN being taken since he likes that UN. Like I am trying to think up of different aspects on site. I do like the gifting a user one but I am not sure how they can track wl gifts.
I love that idea! It encourages people to refer people who will be active and it rewards them for doing so.
I think this is definitely needed considering how many collection items are in the referral shop. And while the top referes seem to indicate enough referral points/items in the system, most of them gained them before the referral shop was even opened.
yes I have some:
- have 50 recycle beast points
- buy an item from the CSC
- unlock the blue building
- unlock the Islands
- have 1 skin
- have 100 plushies/beanbags
- reach level 2 in the bakery
I have a huge list of users that didn't finish the requirements.. it's so annoying..
I love all those. I am going to slightly reword points 2-4 but I will give you credit and edit them up in the first post.
That is interesting. I had no idea that it was retroactive. Thank you for the support and if you have any other suggestions about point earning feel free to post them here.
no problem! yes it's need some rewording lol thanks "^_^
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The referral shop is an incentive to refer people. The rarity of the items makes people want to refer their friends in order to gain those super rare, and cool items. My referral rate is around 1:20 that actually stay and play, which isn't too bad. If you take this away, you take the incentive away for asking your friends to come and play this game with you.
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The items aren't meant to be easy to get. The fact that you only get 1-2 points per referral (2 for the bonus weekend things), makes it harder to reach these items. Though the 349 points needed to obtain all of the items from the shop seems like alot, you can always buy them from other players who don't collect things, and are in it for the sp/csc ie: me. The items do in fact pop into shops from time to time, and do take persistence to find. As I said, they aren't meant to be easy to get. They're a reward for getting people to join the site.
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There's no way to release these without devaluing the items, and making the players who had bought things from the shop upset. You can't always please everyone, and that's how it has to work sometimes. I know people who paid 300-400 million for the stickers, people who paid 400m+ for the plushies. They're meant to be hard to get, and they're something to work for, whether you take the easy way (referring people), or the hard way, buying them with sp or csc.
There are MORE than enough of items on the site that have been changed, and are easy to get. It's nice to leave a few hard ones so people can work towards getting them, and have goals. The goals shouldn't be outrageous though, and in this case, they aren't. It just takes time and persistence to find what you're looking for.
The ONE thing I do agree with, is changing the rewards, which I don't understand why they were changed in the first place. The one point should stand, but referrals should return to the normal 500 csc gained for every person referred.
By increasing the possible points you can gain per potential referral how does that not incentivize current members to refer people, which even better is awarding based on activeness across the site? Of course the items are not meant to be easy to get and for those in for the sp/csc you can still do so because not everyone is going to refer people. If this plays out and can be retroactively rewarded then I would bump the cost of items then so they still are hard to get, plus hopefully there will be new items thrown in again.
I tagged you mostly for the last suggestion of sticking a CSC card in there as incentive because for players like you I thought you would directly benefit from it.
I disagree with you on changing the incentive back. Users have benefited from the kickback versus the old 500 credits. If it were to implemented back I rather then it be associated with more stringent criteria to earn on a referral.
I have only one referral. A friend of mine but she stayed for like a month and hasn't returned >D AND one random person who put my username as the referral. I think they did that just because they thought it meant something like "I want to be referred to as Jimmy". Just my luck XDD
I'm liking the things suggested here!
When I was referring people, I was receiving two points rather one, before I brought it to staff's attention. I do feel like a bonus weekend here and there to give people double, or even triple points for referring people to the site. I feel like the goals would drastically devalue the items, but it would also require the people to stay longer, which is a plus.
As for the CSC card, I think that might have been a different topic haha, I was just asking if there were any other ways to make CSC values drop.
Personally, I think the shop should be able to have the same mechanism as the forum shop, with the tickets. As Marlboro stated, a friendship point, could be a friendship ticket. You can buy it for one point, and sell it, and whomever buys it can use it to add to their points, and so on, so that way with the people who do have 3-4 points can either sell the points or buy more from people who have no use for them to gain the bigger items.
Well you go bug your friend to return! (Kidding just to clarify) Also the second one is unfortunate but funny. I never would of thought of that. If changes were made would you be more likely to try and refer players?
If the goals were increased in difficulty it would in turn decrease the number of possible points earned. I am not opposed to it since I do understand how it would devalue referral items. I am just not sure how drastically or if there should be an included cap. A referral can not give a user more than 5 extra points from a list of goals making each user worth a max of 6 points. How do you feel though on a point per year of activeness though? As in tied to the loyalty box?
In terms of the forum tickets for points that can easily turn into a means of establishing a going rate for referal points which in turn defines prices for the items. So if 1 referral point can be bought for X amount of sp, then a 15 point referral item is really work XXX amount.
Personally, I just don't see an issue with the current point system, items come out here and there, which is why I am against it. shrugs
It doesn't have to be. The cap idea was an idea which I think is a suitable compromise with your concerns of devaluation.
It is not just the availability of items but also the incentive. I am currently not motivated to try to seek out new players but the site could benefit from it. The kickback is nice but I know for a fact my friends will just buy csc with sp than money so the kickback wouldn't apply.
I just went through every item, and there's about half which are already in shops. Some items just are harder to find.
I should XD And I forgot to mention that the mystery person didn't do enough stuff and is (maybe permanently) a pending referral. According to the "last seen" they spent like two hours on Subeta and disappeared.
Probably yes! And I think it would in a way reduce the accounts that get abandoned the very second the referring user receives their 'perks'.
