Greetings
I am a new player of IH, used to play for 2 weeks IO too. I have several suggestions, which treat one problem, but from multiple angles. My suggestions are based on my experience, so they might be biased.
I am 35 years old, and I have been playing online games since they appeared. Both games have a premium account problem. The problem is not the existence of the premium option, but the access to it, and how it affects the game.
I will be quick about the IO experience, although this is more IH related.
IMPERIA ONLINE issues ( I will treat the premium specifically after this )
I quit IO after 2 weeks because the paying members had an enormous advantage that can not be tackled even if playing extremely active. I quit with a big army, and no defeat, beside the raids of other big players on me ( no armies caught ).
The number 1 alliance, most of them paying customers, cannot be tackled by anybody, unless if they are heavy spenders too.
This gap between paying players and the others is such huge, that I have never seen something similar in around 15 years of gaming ( I am 35 ). And from the chats I had, this is something common on all eras.
IMPERIAL HERO issues ( I will treat the premium specifically after this )
I started yesterday. Everything was awesome. Got a lot of Energy, and could play all day long, until I went to sleep. Today, I got a few energy points that barely give me, at most, 30 minutes of game play a day, including the time to wait for troops to move.
So what's the point in playing this game? You forbid the core of the game from day 2. Unless you pay.
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Now here is the part where I treat the premium options specifically. To get more playing time, and not much more, because 300 Energy points will give you more time, but will not allow you to play the game as much as you want in a specific day, weekend or not, as MMO's do.
You know, most of the big guys out there turned from Pay to Play to Free to Play with options to pay, check the big companies, I won't advertise them here. And the Paying options most of the time are not stronger than activity, meaning that an active player can kick the ass of a paying player, unless he spends 200 euros a month.
300 Energy points cost 59 diamons a day. That is 9000 diamonds a month. I am talking roughly, since you get diamonds from quests too. That means around 150 Euros a month, that will not give you full acess to the game, because you will still spend them.
More or less, using the VIP too, the cost is 150 Euro/month to play a game, but not as much as you want, because you will always be limited by the energy points.
The cost is outrageous.
I am a paying customer, I always pay when playing, but I will not spend 200 euros a month on a game, I am from a developing economy, as you Bulgarians are too. And I will not pay 20 euros a month either if what I get is just a small part of the game experience.
So I quit Imperia, and most probably this too if there is not a future quick fix to the issue. The other month I spent around 60-100 euros on a Travian account, but those money were spent to pay for a full server/era/world bonus package, and to have gold available for free spending for the medium term.
You should tackle the Energy issue, and the premium options, in my opinion, in both IH and IO.
I can suggest you multiple alternatives.
1. Offer different prices related to geo-location and purchase IP. Else, charge the normal price ( if the credit card is from Romania, and the ip is from US ). IE, if the client is a customer from Bulgaria, with a credit card from Bulgaria, and from a Bulgarian IP, charge him 10-20% of the normal price. The logic is simple. Average wage in the developed countries is around 3000 Euro a month. In Bulgaria, the wage is around 400. And do this for all countries. Your sales will rocket. And there won't be such a huge discrepancy between various players with different budgets.
Unless players like to suffer and be hurt, they won't stay around to be kicked around.
This is the most difficult approach to implement, but the most profitable one.
2. Cut down the diamond costs. Allow a player that spends 20 30 euros to be able to enjoy the full game, 24/7. If he wants more premium features, he can pay 200-300 euros a month. Allow free players to enjoy the full game too, but with a bit less advantages than the premium ones.
Everybody around us people embrace the Free to play/to use model, including Microsoft with Windows 10, nevermind the MMO. The pay to play is an obsolete approach, my 2 cents.
3. Add activities that give more Energy points for active players. The inactive ones won't need more for sure.
Cheers, you did a wonderful job for both IO and IH, but the premium issues, for me at least, and I am sure that for most of the people in developing and under developed countries ( which are the most on this planet ) too, is a huge turn off.
PS: You can win much more in terms of monetization by using a more balanced approach, because the "whales" are the exceptions, not the rule.
