I don’t see a post from him in that thread so he may not have. It should be moved into the Blades section for clarity.
1 Like
^^^^ this. It wasn’t swept under the rug, JP tweeted a few times about scheduling issues and then they posted that thread about Blades when It seemed like a show wasn’t going to be possible.
3 Likes
Thanks for the info! I looked everywhere, Guess it’s my fault ofr not checking General instead of Blades forums 
Not rude, I was rude
It’s not like JP isn’t trying though.
he can’t just snap his fingers and get people to commit to a show, and find a DM he thinks will fit into Rollplay.
Especially seeing as they’re all content creators and content creators PERSONAL streams or businesses will logically take precedent for the most part over Roll play… This isn’t 2011? 2012? when Twitch was still a small site and streaming wasn’t the industry it is now. That’s what has happened with Blades (at least from where I’m sitting)
As content creators get bigger ll more opportunities open for them, paid events, etc. Wheat has a family and Twitch, Geoff has his own stream as well as Anne. Scheduling isn’t “easy”.
Going to echo some comments above for emphasis. This announcement leaves me with more questions than answers.
-
What was the deciding factor in moving the $1 tier to $3? The feedback from the community was consistent and negative about that decision. If the answer is, “We still make more money losing 600 people” that’s cool . . . It’d just be nice to have some acknowledgment. Asking for feedback and disagreeing is totally in your purview (obviously) but from a customer service or communication sense, not showing you heard or understood those concerns is worse than not asking.
-
Statements without a plan are pretty meaningless. So saying “increased dedication to producing behind the scenes content” means . . . What?
-
What will content be going forward? Just CoS and Nebula Jazz?
I was looking forward to this announcement because I thought it would offer something better to supporters. For a second the battle maps bundled with the ezine sounded awesome–but the sample map was so plain/uninspiring that it undercut my interest in shelling out more money to see the other maps.
So I guess my point is: my take away from this post is
A) some higher tiers have been lowered, but are still huge investments.
B) Battle maps (based on 1 example) are not worth paying for (and the ezine is a fan mag, which is fine but not something I personally find interesting)
C) Low tier costs more money without justification
D) No concrete plans for how things will be improved
9 Likes
Agreed so waiting until a new resident GM is in place before raising the price seems like a smarter option.
3 Likes
I find myself watching DMs who are, or used to be, on Rollplay on their own shows on their own channels, more than I watch Rollplay anymore.
I think for Rollplay to be even more successful, JP has got to find a way to make sure the best content is produced here on Rollplay. That means working on GM retention, too.
Personally, I’m done with pledge/sub for now, but am not against pledging again later if Rollplay has the content I want to watch again.
3 Likes
To me the 1$-3$ increase is not justified at all. You want me to pay now just to look and see if I want to pay more? What kind of reward is that for pledging at all. Also you want people to pay three times as much for a service that they have been been getting for a 1$ pledge for a year now. You have nothing to show them with the new amount other than than saying we will do more. Well maybe do more first and then ask for the increase. Since then that would show that there is some kind of actually value in what you are say.
I have been subbed for a long time and also am donating as well on Pateron, but it’s starting to get a bit to much in my opinion. $5 sub plus $3 donation so $8 a month to watch shows and just see some characters made is asking a lot. I get you want more money to do more, but maybe don’t move the bottom end as much since more people can afford that amount.
Anyway thanks for the shows and the content, but I’ll be stopping my Pateron support more than likely it’s to much of an increase for no proven increase in content.
4 Likes
Welp, I’m out then. As I commented on the poll, I don’t even watch all the behind the scenes stuff, so $3 is not a price I’m willing to pay on top of a $5 sub.
3 Likes
[quote=“tangent42, post:26, topic:1819, full:true”]
Going to echo some comments above for emphasis. This announcement leaves me with more questions than answers.
- What was the deciding factor in moving the $1 tier to $3? The feedback from the community was consistent and negative about that decision. If the answer is, “We still make more money losing 600 people” that’s cool . . . It’d just be nice to have some acknowledgment. Asking for feedback and disagreeing is totally in your purview (obviously) but from a customer service or communication sense, not showing you heard or understood those concerns is worse than not asking.
[/quote] This is something i would also like answered.
4 Likes
Yeah I hear that. Well maybe we will get a solid answer about what they are supposed to be actually doing to make the money increase even worth it at this point.
2 Likes
Totally reasonable. I wasn’t really affected by the new tiers and never felt ripped off in terms of content so I’m glad to keep supporting JP as a sub and patron. People have a right to feel however they want and do whatever they want with their money.
2 Likes
I understand the decision JP. However, I am already subbed to your channel and with the $1 tier now being the $3 tier. I had to choose between continuing my sub to your channel or upgrading to the $3 tier to continue watching the behind the scenes which I enjoyed. I am dropping my Patreon support and I hope you reconsider this choice as it may not have been you intention but it seems very money grabby without any increase in quality and goals not being met to begin with. Hopefully, I’m incorrect and this change will increase the quality of the show but I can’t afford this increase nor do I want to support it at this time even if I could.
3 Likes
If things didn’t really fall apart near the end of Year 1 then I think more people would be inclined to say “Hey, what we’ve got so far has been great, but I can see where they need more capital for improvements. I’ll up my pledge cause I can see how that will help!” I think the main issue is there’s no link between paying more and getting better content. There’s not a whole lot of clarity about where the money is being spent and how it improves viewers’ experience. The equipment is great, the players are generally great choices, but the video calls get really messed sometimes and scheduling/cancellations are a little too frequent at the moment for me to accept paying more.
I think the issues with Rollplay aren’t solved by throwing money at them, the biggest is really scheduling and consistency. I get wanting to have popular people as cast members but they also come with a shit-load of baggage in terms of other commitments. In fact most people will find it hard to maintain 100% availability every week for X months so it’s hard to blame anyone for that, but there IS a solution in there somewhere…whether that’s to do a more “seasonal” based schedule where we have X months of weekly shows, then a month of one-shots or something so that the cast of the weekly shows can take an extended break, or something else.
I’ll probably keep my $1 pledge because I really enjoy what you guys do and like that you have lots of plans and ambition to do better but that’s a lot of talk, unless I SEE improvements in year 2 I won’t be upgrading to the $3 tier for the additional content. All in all, I really wish I wasn’t getting “locked out” of the content I’ve been enjoying for past months while lately going through a… rough Rollplay experience.
6 Likes
I think that’s the truth… People are upset with Blades, some people are probably still upset about Steven or even Neal not being DMs anymore but I think the good is overlooked…
The 3 animated shorts. The one shots and getting f’in Matt Mercer on Roll play. The live shows that did happen so far… (just to name a few of my favourite things)
Maybe people feel differently about those things, or maybe they place a different value on those things than I do, but I think there was a lot of quality in Rollplay this past year.
To each their own.
1 Like
I agree 100% with you, Loads of great stuff!
The bad stuff usually gets remembered more than the good stuff.
2 Likes
You ended with “to each their own” so we all get that there are different priorities for different people here, so I’ll throw my hat in the ring on that; I like the live shows, the shorts are cute and Matt Mercer is a cool dude. But absolutely all of that is background noise to just wanting a stable, consistent and high quality stream of RollPlay content. People call this a “bad patch” but (and JP has to his credit said this himself) this has been a truly tragic year in terms of consistency for RollPlay.
I stopped backing the Patreon two months ago for financial reasons, I actually quite enjoyed the behind the scenes content, but I can absolutely understand why people who are still backing feel bitter that the prices are being hiked up when RollPlay is basically punch-drunk right now. This month of One Shots is nice, and necessary, but I think what a lot of people really want is to just get back to some level of consistency. The problem is not that there’s been no good, or that it’s all bad, but that the good is fleeting, one-off occasions right now and the bad is this constant stream of disappointment. And I am 100% sure it’s worse for JP than any of us - but these are the people putting their money down.
10 Likes
For sure it does, and it gets messy when you start talking to people about money. lol.
1 Like
I’m not going to suggest you shouldn’t be frustrated that the $1 tier is getting shifted to $3 for the same content. I do think it’s unfair, even counterproductive, to blast JP over results from the poll/discussion thread on the topic.
When you raise the price of a service, you expect fewer people to pay into it. It’s pretty reasonable to expect those who are no longer able to justify the purchase to be unhappy about their loss of service. Despite that, JP had enough conviction to face the question head on by putting up a community discussion thread. That thread produced some excellent compromise suggestions- I think it’s a bit unfortunate that none of them have been implemented. Having the most frequent videos (post-show) behind the $3 tier, with the less frequent (character creation) behind $2 or $1 sounded like a potentially reasonable way to split the difference.
I’d love to see this dedication to transparency expanded. Others have suggested releasing some mild amount of budget information that makes it clearer where, broadly, the Patreon money ends up going. I wouldn’t expect a line-by-line budget. Even a single pie-chart showing where things went without absolute numbers (live shows, GM salaries, player payments [are there any of these?], graphics costs, etc.) would raise my comfort level with continuing to contribute.
2 Likes
Quick question,
with the Zine tier moving down to $10, does that mean everyone at the $10 tier will have access to the previous zines or just the new ones going forward?
2 Likes