I’m working on a game called Monster Hunt. The basic summary is this:
Monster Hunt is a round based game where you team up with your friends and enter the lairs of powerful monsters to earn unique armour and weapons!
I’m eventually going to add VIP servers to my game, but I’m not sure if I should give people in VIP servers special “privileges” per se. I was basically going to have the player have all the obtainable weapons and armour in the game for them to use freely. They wouldn’t transfer across to non VIP servers.
I can’t decide if this is a good idea. I can imagine to some it might be because they would get to play with weapons that might be hard to or yet to obtain but it could make players not bother because “Why should I play in a vip server if i get all the weapons and armour, what’s there for me to do?”
If those weapons can be transfered that feature will be easy to abuse. All players will need is one guy with VIP server. And they can just friend that guy, go in VIP server, get the “hard to get weapons” and continue on non-PVP server.
Maybe you can make it an option? So players who want to have all the items in the vip server can have them and if they just want to play with friends it’s the normal game in a vip server.
Assuming these unlocked weapons stay in this specific VIP server, it would only be profitable if the price of the VIP server was high enough. This one VIP server gives this god-like gameplay for potentially many many players, so you must consider that in the VIP server price. Don’t make it cheap!
That being said, I feel like it’s a good idea as long as in-game achievements, leaderboard, stats, etc. don’t count the VIP server (because that would definitely be unfair to those legitimately playing fairly in the public servers.) It could be compared to a sandbox mode, I guess.
Personally, As a fellow Developer myself… Giving a VIP server owner and players all access tools will cause a loophole to do the following
Achieve Free OP Items
Give too many unfairness towards Players in Normal Servers
A great idea if you’d like to have players get an advantage is pricing for a game pass of sorts to achieve small skins, items, and exclusive accessories.
The basic expectation for a VIP server is that gameplay will be the same as in a public server, and the value is only in being able to restrict the players to friends and people you want to play with. Anything else is a value-add that you’ll want to specifically call out in your game description if it affects the pricing.
As for whether or not things should be unlocked: is unlocking items part of your monetization strategy? If items are just time/xp/level unlocked, it could incentivize playing on VIP servers, but not affect your overall profit. You still need to consider if having everything unlocked is actually fun. Players enjoy advancement and unlocking things, and might not like it if the only option in a VIP server is for everyone to be at end-game.
If selling items is part of monetization, you probably don’t want to unlock items in a VIP server, because you’ll either lose money or need the server to be very expensive to ensure it’s not undermining sales in the public game. Players buying VIP servers are only expecting to play with their friends, not also cover all their expenses.
What I’ve done as the value-add in my game’s VIP servers is give the VIP server owner elevated privileges, basically a subset of admin privileges that doesn’t impact public servers. For example, they can kick players, and give titles/ranks valid in their server, and control the environment (music, lighting), but they can’t ban players from the public game, or grant in-game currency that transfers to a public server.
Adding onto this, if it’s a round-based game with different maps and game modes, letting the owner of the VIP server pick what map/game mode the next round plays under seems suited for a VIP server privilege.
