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I am sorry you see it that way. While it is true that the community benefits from it (if you upload your tracks), you are making it sound like you get nothing of value in return.
"The value all lands in your hands in promotional videos and for other Streamers who paid nothing to access the content."
If the value of building a track is purely defined as being able to race on it and making clips of it then you are correct, the value would be shared with others. But to me track building is a lot more than just racing on them. I am getting enjoyment and value from the building aspect itself. Building a track is time consuming and takes a lot of effort but at the same time it also keeps you busy and allows your creativity to go wild. If you see the building process just as annoying work then why even build???? Let the others build and you can go race their tracks for free...
"We cannot use them without uploading because it will gain no XP for us and people will not earn leaderboard points."
That doesn't mean you can't use them. You can still race on them, set up custom leaderboards or do simulations. You don't have to upload them. If you upload them to get streamer XP or earn leaderboard points with them, then you are getting value out of them. What sort of value? For example people coming to your stream to get points. Or also the fact that you can participate in the global season ranking system with your personal tracks. Another value of having your tracks out there is that your name will be out there. If you stream and people see your name they will know who you are and could be more inclined to stop by in your stream.
"You could just use the Steam Workshop and we upload the tracks there defering all costs off of you if it really is a server cost issue"
If the server cost is really such a huge deal then that could be an option now. But the game hasn't even been on steam for a day yet. It takes time to develop stuff like that...
Development of something like a track builder costs a lot of time and therefor money. You can't even compare the tilted gamemode to the track builder. The track builder is faaaar more complex than the tilted mode. Are you really suggesting the studio should just work for free or even better, pay you for your tracks? How is that supposed to work?
While other games have "free" map creation tools, those games usually aren't free as a base game.
I can understand your point about others getting value out of it while you have to pay for it, but at the same time I also strongly disagree with you point of getting no value out of it. If you truly feel like you are getting no value out of it, then I am sorry to say that the season pass isn't for you. I personally enjoy building tracks and seeing others enjoy my work so for me the pass is definetely worth its price.
The Season grind attracts and retains racers regardless of whether you make or host Community Maps. I dont host Community Maps all that often, because I find them very difficult to commentate races.
The Track Builder allows you to build custom content for YOUR stream. Uploading them to the Community is a choice, in a plethora of choices. If you dont want to share your tracks, be it for a moral or ethical reason, then you dont have to. Show off your awesome tracks in your own stream to your own viewers. Sharing tracks is not required.
If you provide engaging content to your viewers then people will stay and participate, whether you build or don't build.
The Track Builder has been part of the game basically since the beginning. Certainly long before the Tilted mode was even a thought in Mike's head. It has always been a 'value added' option and remains so today.
I live on a small pension, so purchasing coins has been a choice I had to ponder long and hard, but I chose to invest in my stream to make it as good as I could make it. We all have our own vision of what our Stream could or should be, and we each have to decide if investing in our little Stream business is worth it for our own goals.
I made the same choice for things like Alerts, Overlays and other Stream elements. I could have gone with free Alerts but I wanted higher quality and that comes with a price tag. I could have streamed very easily without custom Audio files, but I wanted more for my Stream, not just random generic sound bytes. Those come with a price tag.
The Studio has bills to pay, just like we all do. They could easily make bank by putting Ads in the game, or the dreaded Loot Box, instead they give us ways to both support the game and our own Streams.
Marbles On Stream is not 'just a game', it is a Streamer tool.
RUST is currently being sold on Steam for 40 bucks Canadian. So, there is the revenue stream that allows that Studio to offer a partner program. MoS is free and relies on its own revenue stream that it creates from sales of in game options and items.
You seem to be unaware of the costs associated with your plan. Accounting has to be paid for, development of a payment interface, tracking payments and processing refunds, chargebacks, etc all has to be dealt with. Insurance would have to be covered, as well as legal fee's for additional work required to make sure the Studio is covered properly and legally.
You also seem to have forgotten that there are a lot of alternatives to outright purchasing anything for the game. Streamer Challenges let streamers earn FREE Coins every season just by running races, along with Tournaments, the weekly Community Day giveaways, and so on.
But yes, I will and do defend the game and it's creators. I see value in what they bring us.
Streamer XP is earned on any of the FREE maps already included in the game, no need to make a map to earn anything. The game comes complete with over 40 high quality maps already included. No custom maps required to earn as much XP as you want to earn. The Chalenges will net you not only Coin but Marble Skins as well.
Of course Bethesda uses its capital to pay people, that how it works out there in the real world. Payment processing takes far too long to reliably make guaranteed payments based only on incoming income. Bethesda pays out from their own assets and recoups as payments get processed and verified. Thats standard out there in gaming and any online payment processor.
Track Builders are paying for the Pass, non Track Builders are paying for Custom marbles, for skins, slots, modifiers and more. Everyone is supporting the game and everyone benefits, even you. You have a Track Builder option with all these Advanced features directly because someone else invested in their game and in their Streams and paid the bills while the Track Builder was in development.
And with that, my thoughts are done. Good luck with your gaming.
Then create content for your viewers in that game instead.
If it doesn't take much for you to create content in Rust, then it sounds like you've really found a good groove.
You won't be forced to pay to create content in this game, but you are given the option to. And as you've pointed out, you have tons of other options for creating content. Good on you for identifying what works for you. Honestly that puts you ahead of a lot of other content creators.
Definitely stick to what you're good at.
I couldn't disagree more.
Every game I've ever owned that had a "user friendly" content creation option I either paid for up front, paid after the fact to have the option unlocked, or in some cases both.
In the case of Marbles, as has been pointed out several times already, it is a free-to-play game. Therefore, anything beyond the basic game will need to be paid for because if the developer can't pay the bills, the game will cease to exist.
The one thing I've always enjoyed about the free-to-play model is that I can pay for what I want to use and what I find value in, and not pay for I don't want or need. That goes double being a streamer where I need to shape my content to keep my community happy. It's very simple:
Don't see the value in additional slots? Don't pay for it.
Don't see the value in the track builder? Don't pay for it.
Don't want a particular marble skin? Don't pay for it.
The point is you can spend whatever money on the game that you want to.
Without spending one cent, you can play the full game with over 50 quality built-in tracks, the entire library of user-created content, and stream it from any Twitch account. Again, if you want to spend the additional money that's your choice. You're not forced to do anything.
- Multiselect for pieces with shift clicking
- Window multiselect with shift drag
- Grid snapping
- Coordinate tool
- Object List
- World lighting control
- Skyboxes
- Property settings for a lof of pieces (glass caps, speed controll, angle adjustment ...)
- Better saving options
- New naming system
- Performance improvements to allow for a higher track piece and obstacle limit
- Additional upload slots
- Drop marble testing feature
When you are refering to "1 new part in a season" then you are most likely refering to last season even though it was more than just 1 piece. We also got the dojo dummies as an obstacle that season. One of the biggest game changers that season has been the new window multiselect and the drop marble testing feature. Those 2 features might seem simple but have been actually very complex to develop and took a lot of coding.
Also if you have been around pixels stream the last 3 weeks you should know how much work actually goes into the builder. He has been coding on the builder the last 3 weeks pretty much nonestop to make it better for us. Asking purely for more new pieces and not appreciating the other new features we have been getting since S9 to make building easier and better just shows me that you are limited in your creativity, we haven't even scratched at the surface of all the unique things that are possible with the current pieces we have.
You are right that there might be better ways to monetize, but you always gotta remember that just because you put a pricetag on it, doesn't mean that people will buy it. Even if the Studio spent the time and money (which btw wouldn't be cheap like twidget mentioned) to allow for you to sell your tracks and get a cut of that revenue, I doubt that anyone would be really willing to buy them. Most streamers run a custom track exactly once, are you really expecting them to spend $1-5 for something they are only going to once when they have free options available? I don't understand how you expect this to work.
As for tilted being free, yes it is free just like the royale mode. If you just added it as a paid option most people won't bother to even give it a try since they are mainly playing marbles to conduct races.
You can make content freely with the track builder, that is what the free version is for. Making it completely free can be done, but then there won't be any money to fund future development on this tool. So it would just sit there as it is.
As for a one time cost. If you want a set one time cost than it means that by that one time cost all the future devlopment and support for the tool (until the end of said development and support) will have to be covered by that one time cost. So that would mean either sell the builder as it is right now with no future updates for a "low" set price, or sell it for a very high price and continue development on it. Since the studio obviously wants to further develop this feature only the later option is really viable and then the question is if people would be more willing to buy the builder at one time very high cost compared to the current payment model.
I mean hey, I don't know what you expected. From what you are writing here you seem mad that you have spent a lot of money on this game and you aren't getting the value out of it that you have hoped for. I really don't know why you spend so much money at once on all the skins and skin slots. Very few people actually do that and the ones that do don't do it because it is worth the extra value they are getting out of it, but because they want to support the sudio while also getting a little something in return. The custom marble skins you can buy are advertised as a backer option which you should only get if you either really really want your own marble, or want to support the studio.
"I might come back later and be amazed but all I have to do is look at Resurgence to see what happens when cash flow stops."
What happens if the cash flow stops? Pretty much the same thing as happens with any other compay / project in the world. Companies go bankcrupt or development on projects is canceled since the bills can't be paid. I mean if you have the perfect plan for how the studio could continue paying its bills and fund future development while also offering the builder and other things for free then please let us know. :)
"Honestly the last straw was seeing one of my tracks in the Steam Promotional video for season 12 with absolutlely no credit to the builders who made them. "
I am a little baffled by this complaint. Personally I am honored everytime one of my tracks get featured in one of the trailers. It shows me that my track out of the hundrets of tracks uploaded was stunning enough to be part of the trailer.
But sure this could be handeled better I guess by asking all the people if they are alright with their tracks being featured like this and giving them credit. Honestly, maybe cameratim just forgot about it on accident. In the S11 trailer there is a message at the end saying "special thanks to all the track builders".