Thread: What paid perks would YOU like to see?

I need to do some thinking for more perk ideas, but my immediate reaction to this is that I would never want to see subscriptions. I personally wouldn’t engage with any of these perks if they were subs, no matter how cool they were. Subs are a drag to keep up with in real life and I want ChickenPet to continue being the chill and relaxing place it is. I agree it’s important that we have more to spend eggs on though so I would rather see any features cost double or even triple the prices you suggested if it meant it was a permanent unlock. The price itself doesn’t really matter that much imo, I’m happy to have a long term goal if there’s something I want.

Editing to add: I think the TV room makes sense as a sub, as players would be paying for the time their custom image is displayed. If I understand the idea right, it sounds like buying ad space, so paying by the month would be best way.

@Coelacanis That's fair! The truth is that I'm only floating these ideas because I currently think there's less of an incentive for players to buy eggs with real money, after we stopped sponsoring irl chickens. The income keeps the game online and makes me able to put time aside to update the site.

I definitely don't mind doing away with the subscription element, but I think things like site customisation features don't make sense as something to purchase, either it would be available to everyone for free or it's something that people would only get for contributing to the site ongoing.

I am also open to suggestions for big once-off purchases - I think they would have the same intended effect. Things like custom accessories (i.e. draw them yourself) could cost in the range of thousands of eggs.

I agree with Coelacanis in that I don't want to see any subscription features. I would much rather have permanent unlocks at high prices. Subscriptions frankly really irritate me as a concept, and I would be sad to see them implemented. The one exception I could see is the TV room feature.

@circlejourney For sure, and I think subs can work for certain things to make them more palatable. I mentioned this in an edit to my initial response, but if I understand the idea of the TV room correctly, it's kind of like paying for ad space? "Ad" used loosely here, I'm sure people would upload all sorts of fun things. This makes sense as a sub to me because people would want to update what they're sharing. They're paying for time, not for a game object that they will lose at the end of the month.

I'm not sure where the line is between "best of both worlds" and "too convoluted" for the vision here, but maybe there can be a little of both involved for some features?

Like I think site skins would be great one-time purchases personally, but I also don't see why limited sub ones couldn't be available from time to time as well (like themed holiday ones, for example). I don't think of additional skins as something that should come free at any rate.

For the custom chicken sounds, maybe the 3 slots are high priced one-time purchases where the player can freely upload their own anytime. After they have at least one slot bought, if they choose to they can pay a more moderate priced sub to use a selection from a library of sounds on site. That library could be contributed to by players if building it yourself isn't practical. Just throwing spaghetti at the wall lol.

I love the spirit of the idea that everything is available to everyone even if they can't spend money on eggs, but I also agree that regular support of the site should be encouraged by those who can. I don't hate the approach Lorwolf has, which is a monthly Membership (for $5/mo you get a little currency every day and by the end of the month it adds up to a better rate than if you bought currency one-time). It's low priced, has no complicated tiers, the currency reward is received at a drip so it limits the advantage over other players, and is easy to pause or re-sub at will. I'm sure the tone of this style of idea would need to fit ChickenPet more specifically if you thought it was a good fit at all, but I figured I'd toss it out there with the rest of the spaghetti.

Anyway, I'll let you know if I have any more specific ideas. Thanks for the response and for all the work you do, I've been enjoying my time with it immensely

i had a thought about the subscription/versus purchase thing, specifically about the chicken noises, what if instead of a sub or a general purchase you a one-time purchase for custom noises on the individual chickens? like on the chicken page there's a buy custom noises for this chicken? i think that could be a compromise (don't know how good of one though, its just a thought)

+1 on custom noise per chicken, I'd love to be able to upload SFX for my character based chickens.
+1000 on "draw it yourself" custom accessories that cost several thousand eggs. You could make it a chicken tailor or something LOL! I think it would also cause a drop in accessory suggestions, and rise in people spending eggs peer-to-peer as people do commissions for custom accessories.

I personally like the idea of a monthly subscription for a custom site skin, it reminds me of the first ever pet game I got into, though i would also like a single purchase site skin. Idk i want my chicken dot pet to be blue i would be happy either way tbh

Draw your own accessories is such a great idea (that reminds me of another pet game too lol) its such a fun feature, and if you can incorporate things like the artist getting a small cut for every accessory purchased form mum more people would be inclined to do it i think :]]. I really love this one, even if its limited to like 3 per month or smth it would be really neat for the community

Also, being able to upload avatars would be super cool! I’m not really sure what would go into that im just thinking out loud now

I do think the custom accessory suggestion is perhaps the best way to do things without it feeling like a subscription (Because depending on how it's implemented it wouldn't really be LOL) from someone on both PCE and FR, user made assets are like... The Thing that keeps the economy afloat. But I understand that 1. You have a specific aesthetic that you want CHP to stick to (which could still theoretically stay if there's strict rules on user made assets) and 2. The backend for implementing that is probably WAY more effort than just adding new sound effects LOL. I'm definitely the #1 User Submitted accessory fan though since I do think it's the easiest (and most fun) way to implement an egg sink (and a reason for people to actually want to buy thousands of eggs) without you having to pump out new accessories yourself all the time to keep people interested OTL

i like the TV room because it kind of reminds me of the way PixelCatsEnd does 'ads' - they're all submitted via ko-fi supporters and are just cute cat pictures, sometimes with links to like etsy shops or w/e. The TV room could be kinda similar, only chickens instead of cats.

Otherwise, speech bubbles? i'm so into that!

Thanks all for the thoughts and opinions, it helps me figure out what players want so the site experience continues to be enjoyable!

I'm leaning away from a one-stop subscription format at the moment, and more towards a combination of expensive once-off purchases (custom accessories, speech bubbles) and maybe a single subscription feature (TV room, which - yes, is sort of like an ad space but it can be general pictures too).

The custom accessories feature already has a design draft as I've been floating that idea for a long while, and I'd like to implement that at some point.

For site skin purchases: What if you were paying a large amount of eggs once-off to access the site skin customisation form for 30 days? Once the month ends, the skin can still be used, but you cannot edit it. So it gives you a ticket to create a site skin, basically, and you have 30 days to do it.