Paid to Play - What's next?

PT.Singer
You said "for those who spend on games etc with zGold and earn zSilver".

That "etc" ... does this mean that there will be other ways to use zGold? Like maybe using zGold to buy Razer gear and earning zSilver for purchasing said gear? If so, then this is very exciting. I've been waiting for that announcement since the beginning of the zSystem.

I'm ready to buy a Razer Phone 2 with zGold ... as soon as they release it in Australia.

I can't wait to see what you actually decide to do with the program, sir.

And I'm ready to grind, as well ... hopefully on a Razer Phone 2 ... bought with zGold ... from the Australian Razer Online Store.

zGold can be used for virtual goods like games and digital content such as virtual items only I'm afraid as it is regulated. So it won't ever be used for hardware.

Now if someday we ever released a cryptocurrency, that's a different story as it would be usable for software AND hardware. But we have no plans for this now.

KTheory
as I like the new changes, I do not agree with the amount of Razer silver you can earn by mining or paid to play. Before paid to play you could make 900 silver in a day for playing a couple hours. Now you can only earn 100 a day with paid to play and 133 with soft-mining. (200 in total). I know there are a lot of ways getting zsilver, but many people cant even get on mogul leader boards (like me), Don't buy enough games for Razer Gold to be efficient and are not religiously on insider. With that, I think that the products you can redeem with Razer Silver should have price changes, because good luck trying to get any of the higher costing products. After reading your responses above I feel like this is now 100% focused for razer gold. Which is sad, cause I think the idea of how people who have registered razer products should be able to get more razer silver in paid to play or softmining. Hopefully this will change in the months.

Some math that would put this in perspective
(Paid to play 1 month (3000 Silver)) + ((Softmining 1 month (4000 silver)) = 7000 Razer silver
7000 Razer silver x 12 months = 84, 000 Silver

After a year you are only getting 84,000 Silver, which you can only buy a select few things, and non of their most wanted higher end products. in addition this is dependent on 1 hour paid to play, and 5 hour mining. Again after a year your points begin to expire so you have to use them. In the old system, which I thought was superior you could potentially get 324, 000 Razer Silver in a year.

Just my thoughts.
Just some friendly feedback, but we shall see how this system works overtime.

The focus on Razer Gold won't change - and if you don't like the system, you really shouldn't participate and complaining about it (or worse for some other making threats) will just shut it down for the people who enjoy the system. So if you don't agree with it - I suggest you go find some other system that meets what you want.

shmekermeister
First things first - it's great news that you have some plans with PtP (Paid to Play in further text), because I believe that everyone will be happy with more options to score zSilver. Thank you for that!

I will try to give you my opinion on each bullet you wrote:
1. I have nothing against it, but I think it defeats the initial purpose of PtP - Razer products to those who can't afford them. Yes, I know that the program was misused and that it couldn't have a future like that. But, because of that program, I came here to the Insider. And you know what happened then? I stayed here even 9 months after it has been closed, because I can discuss about many things that have or have not direct correlation with the Razer products, because of nice mods and community as a whole, and because you as the CEO of the company who visit this forum and give some inputs from time to time. This is definitely something that no other companies have nor do.
What I want to say, maybe to think about those who are still not a part of the Razer family (cult) and give them a chance to become. How to accomplish that? Something like much lower rate at which zSilver can be gathered if you have no Razer item or you don't use Razer services. That way everyone has a chance to score zSilver, and it should discourage those who are farming to get zSilver.
Another way to discourage PtP system abusers is to work closely with game developers who want their games to get to the PtP list. For example, I know that Valve games (Dota 2 and CSGO) have some API which could be used to see if someone is AFK in game or is really playing matches. Probably this is something that you have considered with your dev team.

2. Here I have to agree with @Tackertyp:

I am also a person who played a lot Dota 2 and CSGO, and much less some other games. I think that things have changed in last few years: people spend money for in-game purchases rather than to buy some new games. Maybe I am wrong (well, 'probably' is perhaps better word than 'maybe'), but this is the opinion from my point of view.

3. I can say nothing else but

4. Ah, so it remains for people who don't own Razer equipment to score zSilver. That's cool (and invalidates good part of my post under bullet 1).

5. It's maybe harsh to punish whole community because of a few individuals, but I do understand. Death threats should have zero tolerance everywhere.
But don't be too harsh towards the complains. After all, it's in human nature to complain :smile_:

All in all, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Specially regarding those great news!

Yes - I'm completely overhauling the system where we move away from the initial purpose of Paid to Play - if we ever bring it back, it will NOT be focused on bringing products to users who can't afford it. All the complaints and death threats etc came from users who felt entitled to something we wanted to do good for them - and yes, it was a small group of people, but I cannot let my team be subject to that.

The focus will still be on users who are already part of the Razer customer list - specifically zGold users as its the easiest for us to track. Games on Paid to Play will only be focused on zGold supported games, we will give more zSilver to zGold users etc. And the list goes on.

Finally - yes, there will be still free ways to earn zSilver, and lots of ways - but anytime anyone feels entitled and starts complaining about how slow the free ways are to earn, we will just tell them that the whole point of the system is not for anyone to earn it for free and that there are paid ways to do it.

imReqi
Thanks for taking the time to respond to so many posts in this thread. It's refreshing to have more of a conversation as opposed to a single post. So, thank you.

Simple suggestion, but can the Insider rewards award more zSilver? Those should probably be looked at since the pay to play option is suspended. I'm newer and never took advantage of that, joining just a few months ago. I just buy all my Razer stuff and use the forums because I love the brand and enjoy it. But let's be real, it's highly unlikely all the zSilver Insider achievements in the world are going to get me a free Huntsman.

I think you get what I'm saying...I like the community here, and I'm not doing it for the zSilver (well, maybe if the mug comes back). There is an opportunity to revive this Insider community with the proper incentives.

We'll have different ways of earning zSilver but all free ways will have small award amounts. And yes - it's not meant for you to have all the zSilver Insider achievements to get you a free Huntsman - as I mentioned, we're pivoting it such that those who use zGold regularly will be how you'll get to the free Huntsman (and the free ways are to help you get there faster).

thehitchno
That doesn't make sense. It seems like you're punishing the people who were trying to get into the ecosystem but couldn't afford it. And instead of say going after the abusers civilly or criminally you're letting them dictate how things will go in the future. I will guess...within 3-6 months, you'll see stupid people doing stupid things, and knowing that because you've bowed to outside pressure, will bow again. Then it'll become a case of rinse and repeat, because they know every time they do something you'll act in a manner that they know will screw over other people.

Well whichever, but turning your nose up at people as potential news customers hasn't worked for any company yet, especially one that doesn't have a dominant marketshare. And actions that effect the community, are more likely to cause a wider amount of negative feedback.

It's not punishing people outside the ecosystem - but rewarding the ones in our ecosystem. As simple as that.

Sounds good, whatever works best! I'm still loving the Razer Game Store, especially the 4 Exclusive games each week, they're the best deal you can get online.

**I'm wondering if a mod is going to come through and put the two consecutive replies that @mltan made into a single post** ^^^ @kajira I dare you.

As someone with lots of Razer peripherals and a Razer case I am loving this idea. It's about time to reward just the loyal fans and not have entitled people ruining everything.

I like the idea of giving it to Razer customers instead of just everyone having access to it in large amounts, and free little ways are good for the public (Daily login and all of that). I would just like more ways to gain ZSIlver in general now, Mogul is a great way if you are good at predicting ESports teams, but otherwise it is a bit hard to get anything out of it.

One thing I used to like was the voting methods on Razer Arena, where you would vote and put so many ZSilver in the "pot", and then the people who voted for the winning team would split the ZSilver. Sometimes it would not equal out the same or would give off the same amount, but I used to really like that way.

Fun little activity's are nice too, things like the current photography contest going on where you can win a rouge backpack. Those could be done in photography contests, maybe photo editing / Photoshop contests as well, just to give an idea.

Also another thing that would be neat (although it is in a way already a part of Insider Rewards), is to give a certain amount of ZSilver per each Razer product owned, instead of just limiting it to just one keyboard achievement and what not. Some people (including myself) have several of the same products that would be nice to register for a little extra ZSilver, and it would be nice to be based on tiers (so more expensive keyboard would give a few more ZSilver then the less expensive ones), like some other companies do.

The whole Insider Weekly thing that was going on for a little bit was really nice too, it would give people in the community a bigger chance to show off their setups and chroma profiles and get rewarded for it. Not quite sure why that was stopped anyways.

Little giveaway type things are always nice too, like the 12 days of Christmas event last year where you would have chances to earn more ZSilver for doing certain things, and those type of Arena giveaways that were done in the past where you could win products or zsilver, etc..

Just a few recommendations, I do like the idea of rewarding razer customers first though, or at least giving us extra chances to earn ZSIlver.

SESNut
Amazon gift card balances never expire

But that is a gift card balance: money for equal money. @ARMOR_152 misspoke when he said that ALL gift cards expire.

Gift cards are not the same as a rewards system, though.

SESNut
you didn't actually give me a good reason as to why they need to have zsilver expire anymore since paid to play is gone.
also, use it or don't otherwise tough tiddies is kind of a terrible argument by the way

Expiration of promotional credits is so the provider of the promotion can better plan how the promotion works. When the original rewards catalog came out, prices were very low. When zSilver was opened up to the masses with the very generous Paid to Play, keeping the catalog full from the beginning was hard to do because people who had hoarded points before hand had a leg up. For the promotion to look good, the rewards catalog can't be constantly empty. Because of Paid to Play, the costs in the rewards catalog were reworked. To keep those prices low, Razer needs to make sure they don't get spiked by dormant users who show up with massive points and buy out the catalog. Razer chose to have points expire as their way of combating this. Other options could have been taken, yes. But it would kill 'hype' over the program. Razer thrives on hype, and considers it a badge of honor when their announcements basically DDoS their servers to oblivion.

Again, we don't know what changes are happening right now. They are saying the whole program is in jeopardy because of the entitled attitudes Razer is dealing with because of the program. People demanding that the program work in their own best interest, damn everyone else, to the point of threatening employees of the company running the promotion is the real problem.

@SESNut, your point is that points shouldn't expire as zSilver can only be earned from zGold purchases, and the rewards for that are too overpriced. Yeah, that would be a valid point if it wasn't a straw-man argument. You are making assumptions to something that is currently in flux. We don't know if new was of earning silver are in the works. The information we have is kind of spotty. We are possibly looking at regional rewards catalogs. We are looking at pricing changes.

I'm not saying don't discuss how to make the program better, I'm saying don't demand the program work better for you. If a lot of people are having problems collecting the points to redeem, talk about it. But don't throw a tantrum because others can while you can't. Just understand that the program isn't for the proverbial "YOU" to get free stuff. It's a trade off and Razer holds all the cards. Constructive criticism is criticism that takes all parties into account. If it feels like you are not wanted, but other people are, don't try to burn down the house is all I'm saying. If your reasoning behind thinking a change is warranted uses a pronoun that points to yourself, take a second and reflect on what you really want and make sure it isn't out of selfishness.

I also would like to point out that when I post on forums, I try for a narrative tone and try not to single out a particular person unless the discussion calls for it. Since I both tag and quote @SESNut, I just want to point out I'm not focused on you personally. I don't want you to think I'm singling you out as a problem user, because I honestly don't think you are. Like I said, you have a valid concern for the future of the program. My point is that pointing out potential problems to people tends to bring out trolls, and trolls are the real problem here. No point getting worked up until everything is done and we can accurately gauge what is going on.

I miss Paid to play that much its not funny 😳 With in the last year I have had my hopes RAZER and the share holders would change there minds 😳. They implement mogul arena to replace P2P I spent 6 mounts on it and never seen 1 Zsilver at all 😳. When I played paid to play it kept me coming back and felt proud to be apart of the RAZER family ! As I don't have money to buy games and get Zgold I get $20 a week for luxury's including like a treat for my kid or take them to a fun park. I had to save up for ages to get the RAZER keyboard and mouse I got ! It gave me faith in the RAZER company that makes Billions of dollars profit all around the world every year that gives back to the people that play there supported games and help out people that don't have money but buy RAZER products when they can afford it ! But now that RAZER is even taking away the daily sign in I am losing all my faith in RAZER :frown_:. Its starting to look like that RAZER best interest is the share holders as the compony says its going to make it better for the RAZER family and the opposite happens ! I have faith that RAZER with your help Mltan can turn this around with Paid 2 Play ! ! ! ! . Ps Please keep the RAZER family together for ever mltan I have faith in you :wink_: