Something not to do

[LeoReborn]

Not really as grey as you would think. Donating, of your own free will and without reward, is fairly standard. If we start offering things in exchange for these donations, we have done the equivalent of an equal trade. Which, by all means and standards, is us selling a product.

It may be slightly grey, but it would definitely be clear cut enough for an action to be taken.

Okay, Read this again..

See the Bold?

1st one: No profit is gained, The only place the money goes, is toward the game, not The PU Team, not ourselves

2nd one: Once Players get benefits, from either paying, Donating, etc. Nintendo/Game Freak will pull the plug via Lawsuit, and it would end as a waste.

The only thing PU's Money is for, it comes out as the game, THats All.

Seriously, stop, Im not going to repeat myself.

This Doesnt make Any Sense AT ALL!!!! *Rips Hair out*

Someone on the PU Team needs to get on this Thread, and Someone Needs to make sense........ Im not mentioning any Names...*cough*Kamaran*cough*

[ghostman50]

     Not sure what the big fuss is about. The PU team has already made it clear that any profits will go to server costs, not into their pockets. So, any potential payable option will be (*gasp* an option) at the descretion of the purchaser. Think about it, it will be nearly impossible to keep up with server costs and other costs that go into the game with thousands of 12 years olds or broke college students with no means of income, that has absolutely no intention of donating of their own free will.
 
It would be ideal to think that every member of Pokemon Universe (16k+) would find 5 freaking dollars to donate to the project, but that's never going to happen...
 
so if the PU team decides to sell a few things or make a few extra features available to those that are actually contributing (monetarily) to keep the game going, why not just accept it? It's nothing to cry over.
 
As stated before, there is a balance team... so there wont be stats boosting to make mi metapod an Uber.
 
And though the game is free for everyone, it's stupid naive to think that the PU team will continue to use their own money to finance this game through it's entirety. It may just have to come down to offering incentives to earn that extra month... and as said before, the game's free, afterall.
 
Im all for an item mall. It'll add another layer of depth as well.
 
 

[Frenchfry]

It would be ideal to think that every member of Pokemon Universe (16k+) would find 5 freaking dollars to donate to the project, but that's never going to happen...

[rant]
It may seem remarkably easy for you to donate, ghost, because unlike most people that play pokemon games, you have access to a credit card and paypal.
Now, imagine for a moment that you're in the position of a father of two children in a family that goes about their middle-class life with about the standard financial problems in the U.S. Your 8-16 year old son/daughter/transfestite walks into the room and says, "Dad, I need to use your credit card to buy a pokemon bounty hunter badge on an  internet pokemon game made by people on a different continent for free!"

For most of us, it's not that we're selfish, or stingy, or whatever you might be thinking, it's just that we are, as hard as it may be for you to comprehend, incapable of getting ANY form of money to the PU team. If I had any method of transaction, I would gladly donate $50+ out of my unemployed wallet. Unfortunately, the only thing I could do is buy a plane ticket to wherever Mr_Dark lives and hand him the money in person. And as much as I love all of you, I'm just not going to do that to donate what the rest of the world sees as pocket change.
[/rant]

[LeoReborn]

Not really as grey as you would think. Donating, of your own free will and without reward, is fairly standard. If we start offering things in exchange for these donations, we have done the equivalent of an equal trade. Which, by all means and standards, is us selling a product.

It may be slightly grey, but it would definitely be clear cut enough for an action to be taken.

Okay, Read this again..

See the Bold?

1st one: No profit is gained, The only place the money goes, is toward the game, not The PU Team, not ourselves

2nd one: Once Players get benefits, from either paying, Donating, etc. Nintendo/Game Freak will pull the plug via Lawsuit, and it would end as a waste.

The only thing PU's Money is for, it comes out as the game, THats All.

Seriously, stop, Im not going to repeat myself.

This Doesnt make Any Sense AT ALL!!!! *Rips Hair out*

Someone on the PU Team needs to get on this Thread, and Someone Needs to make sense........ Im not mentioning any Names...*cough*Kamaran*cough*

Its not that We dont like the Idea of an Item Mall. Its just That:

 The Whole Thread is a Grey area, because once money is exchanged for benefits, whether Items, Bonuses, etc. It Gives Gamefreak/Nintendo an Excuse (a poor at that) To shut this down. We agreed earlier, Item mall = No, Read the first few pages, and you might see what I mean.

[LeoReborn]

We can't have an item mall to buy poke-outfits or advantages with real money; we got that covered.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but about donations.
Donating is us helping out and supporting PU
Donating is gifting or contributing so we shouldn't and must not get anything in return.
There is no "too much" or "too little", I think if PU returns anything other than text and thank yous, it is considered a trade.  In other words, I don't think people in game should be able to see that they donated.

Donations is about gifting, contributing and helping out.  People donate to support.
PU cannot make people want to donate to receive anything in return, otherwise it's trading or buying.

Chh... There is, apparently, one thing that's allowed. In 'da forums', contributors get purple nametags. Apparently changing the color of their nametag is the little leeway that's allowed. A-but I'm no lawyer.

I read EVERY post. This one sums it up entirely. Passive Points out that we Donate out of generosity, not for any benefit.

Frenchfry, You added That Contributors, like you, Ghostman, have a Purple Tag. This Shows purely that you donated. (Thanks a million.) No offense to You, Ghost, but try to think a little before Ranting...

I apologize too, I have been eerily Strict, and I promise, my Ranting is done.

[ghostman50]

I read EVERY post. This one sums it up entirely. Passive Points out that we Donate out of generosity, not for any benefit.

Frenchfry, You added That Contributors, like you, Ghostman, have a Purple Tag. This Shows purely that you donated. (Thanks a million.) No offense to You, Ghost, but try to think a little before Ranting...

What the hell are you talking about dude? Im talking about an item mall (as per OP)... not donations... not name tags... but implementing a potential Item Mall. Which is nothing like donating. (*gasp*)

 
The PU team hinted at it. Im for it. That was the point of mi previous post. So... yea... 

You think before posting...
 
And stop going after mi posts. You and frenchfry can tag team someone else and be a butthurt somewhere else. thanx.

[LeoReborn]

OP as In?

Look, I apologized before, but I will again, because I thinkRealize Ive missed your point completely.. Thank you for donating, and its like Sora and Frenchfry said, we would donate if we could, We don't have any way to get money to the team, and we have problems too. Just understand, we have as many good intentions as you do, just consider that much.

You have had many great Ideas, but there is a point made in this thread, and its caused mass confusion. We're only confused, and want this BS to end.

[Frenchfry]

And stop going after mi posts. You and frenchfry can tag team someone else and be a butthurt somewhere else. thanx.

Wtf are you talking about? tag team? Just because I disagree with you here, that means I'm going after your posts just to say that you're wrong? That's an awful lot like being paranoid.

[LeoReborn]

And stop going after mi posts. You and frenchfry can tag team someone else and be a butthurt somewhere else. thanx.

Wtf are you talking about? tag team? Just because I disagree with you here, that means I'm going after your posts just to say that you're wrong? That's an awful lot like being paranoid.

Stop! youre only making things worse saying that. Dont be so hasty Fry.

[Frenchfry]

Stop! youre only making things worse saying that. Dont be so hasty Fry.

Hasty?

And stop going after mi posts. You and frenchfry can tag team someone else

Hasty.

[ghostman50]

And stop going after mi posts. You and frenchfry can tag team someone else and be a butthurt somewhere else. thanx.

Wtf are you talking about? tag team? Just because I disagree with you here, that means I'm going after your posts just to say that you're wrong? That's an awful lot like being paranoid.

No, it isnt paranoia; it's more like frustration. I bring up simple concepts and fairly reasonable points but you two still manage to find some way to disagree and with me and agree with each other, thus the tagging begins, manage to get threads completely off topic just for the sake of disagreeing (with absolutely no substance) and completely missing mi point everytime, initiating obvious trolling (and/or butthurting)
 
but whatever.
 
Maybe i didnt make mi point clear.. so here goes....

it is evident that relying on donations wont cover server costs and etc. because of the obvious reasons (like family, schooling, whatever), An Item Mall would be the best course of action. Because not many are going to just throw away the aforementioned 5$, that little incentive may be enough to keep the game going. Even if its 4 people that buy a 2.99$ moopdy-do, thats something that would eventually help the project.... No matter how small a purchase, it would ideally be more than what could be potentially made via donations.
 
The PU team has made the price of US server public, and it's nearly twice the amount of the EU server, if i remember right. Just as you, or your parents, may have trouble paying for foreign services, the PU team can claim the same thing and simply make the game available on an EU server, only.
 
PLus, buying an item in the item mall is a sexier notion than blindly throwing away money via donations.
 
that is mi point.

Even you can agree to that.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Urmel]

When the game is released, there will be some in-game rewards for donations. Why? Because hosting a game like this is expensive. Around the pre-beta 2.0 time there was a small wave of donations which enabled us to buy a second server in the US for our non-European testers. However, a while after pre-beta 2.0, the donations came to a halt and we had to start putting our own money in to keep the US server up. This is why (recently) we had to drop the US server, at least until the next big event (luckily we also found ways to "mask" the lag for non-European players to make the EU server at least endurable). Me and Mr_Dark are gladly paying for the European server (as we have been doing for soon two years) because we love this project, but having to pay for more than one gameserver is simply too expensive for simple students like us. A game like this simply needs more than one server. Even two servers is far from enough if the game gets big.

I know that it could give Nintendo another reason to shut us down, but it's a risk we have to take. If we don't do it, we can't provide the high quality service we aim for and PU would blend away with all the other low-quality (Pokemon) games.

We have internally discussed this a few times already and the so-called "payable features" we came up with are only fun extras. In no way will they put the balance of the game in danger. No stat boosters, rare items, rare Pokemon or whatever.

[LeoReborn]

Ok, I understand now, Thank you for Clearing that up Urmel.

Now that Thats over, Somebody either lock this thread, or let it Die,