SS Referral Idea

[Static]

A good marketing technique, awarding referrers has helped many websites and games proliferate. I think that it will also bring back a zone's population. Yes, it will fill it with newbies, but everyone was once a newbie.

 

Here's my proposal (you are free to improve/change any part you wish):

 

Preparation

 

1. Create a bot (something like Bot-SS-Referral) that will give prizes for each unique IP you refer. The IP has to fulfill the following requirements:

 

a. Never played Continuum

b. (Can't think of anything else)

 

2. Grant the bot SSC OP access. Yes, I know this will be hard, but without it it cannot check unique IP's. I think the ops can help with this.

 

 

Operation

 

For each person you "refer", you need to tell them to type :Bot-SS-Referral:!referred when they enter the zone. Then the bot will check if you are being truthful and not a lying bastard, and give a prize/award to the person who referred them.

 

We will be using Wormhole Surfer and cooldude12321 as an example:

 

WHS> check out this game called continuum, it's like online asteroids. you should enter zonename and play, it is the best zone there.

cooldude12321> wats a zone

WHS> it's like a gaming server.

cooldude12321> cool ill check out teh zone

WHS> oh, and please type :Bot-SS-Referral:!referred Wormhole Surfer when you get in.

cooldude12321> aight ill do tht

 

And then, the referrer should help out the newbie with the basic controls and stuff, so he won't quit after 30 minutes of death. Your obligation as a referrer is high, that's why you are getting prizes/awards for this.

 

The two main problems right now are:

 

1. Getting someone to code the bot. A great honor.

2. Getting someone to make the OP a bot.

 

I know this will be hard, but I hope it will revive SS's population. Feel free to criticize constructively.

 

Tetris-

[»Purge]

1. The thing is by merely checking IPs the system can be exploited as much as a banning system in Continuum.

 

2. What prizes do you plan the bot to give? Specific prizes for each zone (like a *prize 50 in an EG or a signature item in Hyperspace)? That probably wouldn't be universally accepted by all SSC zones, especially in the ASSS zones. Unless you are planning to foot some cash over... but then my above point will definitely take effect.

 

3. Granting a bot SSC Op to check IPs isn't necessary and probably wouldn't be even considered by the Council (assuming SSC has a central database that we don't know about). Instead, each zone can have their own bot spawn open that collects player data and writes/reads from a central database. But that of course would be a nice bandwidth waster and all zone owners would have to OK it (which is unlikely).

 

Making the bot wouldn't be hard to do, but finding someone to bone out a few hours will be.

[Yupa]

You could more easily check referrals/IPs on Continuum download links.

[Static]

1. The thing is by merely checking IPs the system can be exploited as much as a banning system in Continuum.

 

True, this is also quite a problem. But, there really is no perfect referral system; you can just use a proxy to get by online site referral (Swagbucks and Lockerz are good examples).

 

2. What prizes do you plan the bot to give? Specific prizes for each zone (like a *prize 50 in an EG or a signature item in Hyperspace)? That probably wouldn't be universally accepted by all SSC zones, especially in the ASSS zones. Unless you are planning to foot some cash over... but then my above point will definitely take effect.

 

Heh, I'm sure that not all zones will adopt this, but the more the better.

 

Prizing

 

EG - EGCurrency or prizes, such as 500bty + Prox.

TW - Not really sure what they do in TW.

HS - Hyperspace dollars and experience.

Chaos - I think there is an experience system, not quite sure though.

 

 

3. Granting a bot SSC Op to check IPs isn't necessary and probably wouldn't be even considered by the Council (assuming SSC has a central database that we don't know about). Instead, each zone can have their own bot spawn open that collects player data and writes/reads from a central database. But that of course would be a nice bandwidth waster and all zone owners would have to OK it (which is unlikely).

 

Making the bot wouldn't be hard to do, but finding someone to bone out a few hours will be.

 

True; finding someone to put the commitment and effort into this will be hard. If having SSC Op privileges isn't required, then that would be one less hurdle to cross.

 

 

You could more easily check referrals/IPs on Continuum download links.

 

Good point, please go into details.

 

Thanks for all your feedback,

Tetris-

Edited June 24, 2010 by Static

[»Purge]

Checking via download links is easier to spoof than through the game, though.

[Static]

It is easy to spoof, but one could write a web script to check if the user is using a proxy.

 

The other option right now-

 

Find a dev willing to create a referral downloads page on SSGN, and copy some sauce from the internet to check for proxy use.

 

But wait, a unique download does not translate into +1 population. So there still has to be something in the game to check.

[Yupa]

It's the thought that counts. Getting someone to download the game is a good start.