Lottery

[tdk1023]

Gambling is bad, blah, blah, blah. But it can be fun too!

My suggestion is quite simple; have a weekly lottery in the game. Once a week, or twice a week.
Lottery tickets can be purchased with greenies (or maybe a large amount of yellow coins), and you can win some great prizes, but also some stinkers; eg sauna, exclusive building, a large set of passengers (no, not 10, not 20 either!), a large barrel of fuel, greenies, a large sack of coins, special planes, maps, etc, etc.

I'm just thinking that AC could do with a few new features. Apart from 7.0, there's not really been much added recently.

 

[jpm-wv]

Actually, I sometimes think things like "Mystery Super Building 1" and "Mystery Super Building 2" are like lotteries. You have very valuable prizes such as "Training Center" and "Planetarium" that I would argue have more value because they provide stuff for your space program in addition to increasing your population cap slightly as opposed to the other buildings that are provided. All of the buildings are probably very rare since the only route to get them directly might be less than once a year. There is a lot of shades of grey within this discussion that can easily turn easily into black should things go too far.

Given this, a majority of greenies are probably bought with your REAL money, not what you earn in the game. Of course this does get muddied when you talk about games that provide a low amount of greenies for things like leveling up or a door prize. What other legitimate paths would there be to earn 1,000 greenies for "Oil Refinery Level 3"? I will be sporting in admitting it could be a faint possibility but only FAINT (there's only 80 levels to the game = max 80 greenies).

As I say, you can argue with me about this stuff. But I actually did have to walk away from another game from another company because of some of some of this and looking back on that, there actually were several things that started looking like a casino (in some ways, I could actually respect a casino more because they are being 100% honest in admitting it's gambling). I'm not disparaging a company for making a free game that's being monetized but rather pointing out something subtle that can ultimately harm people. This is why you hear stirs in the gaming communities when a company starts getting too greedy. I honestly hope I don't have to walk away from this game because I actually love it as I've always been a fan of games like Monopoly even as a kid.

 

[Thelegoguy09]

Sounds good! Why not use coins or greenies (like a real Lottery) and have a smaller chance for getting buildings/items??

 

[jpm-wv]

I can give a very good reason why that shouldn't happen. The sells coin and greenie packages for REAL money. That can go down a slippery slope and if you aren't careful, you run afoul of gambling laws in various jurisdictions (note that I'm not a lawyer). One part of the definition may involve "giving something of vlaue to play for chance"). Those gambling laws vary considerably from jusrisdiction to jurisdiction and they may define gambling very differently. as well as exempt some things or at least license them with regulations to to the hilt (exclusion lists, security requirements, transparency requirements, reoirtung requirements, taxes, etc). And yes, there has been efforts to crack down on some things such as loot boxes.

Even if the laws are not violated, it can still create a strong backlash among users and even some stores might not like it. Some game developers have called on the carpet when they get greedy with their monitization.

Now I get that some people enjoy playing the lottery even I did it in the past and yes, there is a thrill to something that is chance. What I'm saying though, is that there are fine lines and roads you don't want to cross. If you want to gamble, that's your business although I'll give you some kindly advice, don't spend what you can't afford to loose money wise.