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Letzte Beiträge - Seite 190

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TheEmu
Mitglied seit in Jul 2012
7424 Beiträge

New VIP status / New price

Alles über iStripper
31. July 2023, 209 antworten
@dar2112v

Either raise the price of the show and hope members continue buying at the same rate or just sell more shows by getting new members and encouraging current members to keep spending.

That is of course quite correct. But on what basis do you conclude that Totem could do much better than they currently are at attracting new customers ? From the little evidence I have based on the user Ids that are allocated when a new user is registered Totem were enrolling about a million new users each year - that was a few years ago but I have no reason to believe that it is much lower than that now.

I always thought that selling more shows was the whole point of the exclusive shows but if it's not working then they should stop doing it

Why do you think that it may not be working ? It may not work if everybody reacted to it like you but that does not mean that it does not work for the user base as a whole. What little evidence we have, namely that Totem started slowly with the games and have ramped them up over the years, indicates to me that it has probably been a successful strategy.

@minko

Why do yo think the company still exists?

Because Totem have over the years pursued a viable strategy with respect to their product, their customers and the prices they charge. A very important part of that is not selling for less than the combined cost of production and of their other business expenses - these other expenses affect old stock as well as new production. It should be noted that us old established customers are far from being Totem's best customers as far as current sales are concerned - a significant proportion of new customers buy more cards than we do (often more than we possibly can) and pay far more for it than we do.

Given that inflation is something that affects us all there will inevitably be a point at which a price rise is inevitable. To repeat a point I made in an earlier post a 20% increase over something like 8 years is nt unreasonable. If you did it in smaller steps you would need to have base prices like 25.125 credits and it would make the prices seen by triple diamond premium member for the cheapest cards be even siller - unless you are happy with rounding up the prices.

You know you messed up when long time users start to consume less or even leave.

Do you have any evidence that there has been any significant change in the number of long time customers that are leaving. It seems to me that there have been a few who have said that they might be leaving but over the years I have seen many of those actually remain.
dar2112v
Mitglied seit in Dec 2007
920 Beiträge

New VIP status / New price

Alles über iStripper
31. July 2023, 209 antworten
Why do you wish for iStripper to Fail ?

I have not seen anyone wishing for IS to fail? just the opposite from my prospective.

There is resistance and concern that DOLZ and exclusive content has and continues to ***** the IS experience.

I know I am concerned that the current direction will cost iStripper revenue and shrink membership leading to the inevitable.

I can tell you personally (just my opinion & feelings - nothing more):

1. I don't care about DOLZ and the sooner it goes away the better as far as I'm concerned but I enjoy iStripper and have invested thousands of dollars and years of my time supporting it and hope it's here for many more years to come.

2. I'm OK with a raise in price but I'm concerned it will not actually generate more revenue because buyers will either buy fewer cards, or quite all together, and new potential members could pass all together. Just a concern; only time will tell.

3. If I'm paying an increase because of DOLZ or members are tired of play games then that is annoying. I'm not saying it is but I don't know one way or the other. I have no idea why they feel the need to raise prices but if it's to buy equipment, pay models and their expenses, etc then so be it but I don't think it's data center cost (in my very limited experience with AWS pricing seems flat or even lower cost in the last few years.

Bottom line is the shows probably do cost more to produce BUT there are two ways to compensate for it. Either raise the price of the show and hope members continue buying at the same rate or just sell more shows by getting new members and encouraging current members to keep spending. I think most members would prefer the latter but maybe harder than it seems. I always thought that selling more shows was the whole point of the exclusive shows but if it's not working then they should stop doing it so members can buy the shows they want again.

I could go into how the investment in the catalog is also a hedge against inflation but maybe another time.

But to reiterate - I can tell you I hope iStripper and Totem prosper for years to come.

Omgman
Mitglied seit in Oct 2014
22 Beiträge

New VIP status / New price

Alles über iStripper
30. July 2023, 209 antworten
And they have done exactly that.

They created DOLZ and NFT trading cards.
which you can gift to another member if you want.

This is BS. NFT cards are nowhere near something members wanted. We were asking for a way to trade cards in our own library especially to get rid of all the junk cards we got through "lucky packages" and they implemented NFT,

if Totem were to support users trading the normal cards then every such swap would represent the loss of TWO potential sales. It would require more than a small transaction fee to compensate for that.
This assumption sound right at first glance but it's more complex than that. First of all, 2 cards were already purchased and more users are willing to trade multiple cards for a small fee than buy new cards at all. If buying new cards is too expensive, they will leave the platform for good anyway. Also there are many users who only buy like 10 shows and that's it. However, if you would be able to gift a few cards to a new user (let's say some connections of yours) they might get interested in the app and start buying stuff later on. Simple as that. Free stuff is almost always a good thing in the long run marketing wise. This is why the agry birds developers never took action against piracy for example. This is how they got popular.
And also you never know. Maybe you have users who are willing to buy cards multiple times and keep gifting them to people. And another thing is how do you purchase them? Exactly! Credits. Totem already has the money before you buy any cards. trading one unwanted card for another is basically a pure money sink and does not stop anybody from buying more cards. And even if you have someone dump all their unwanted cards on a throwaway account for a fee, they might redraw those exact cards for credits on the next Slot haul because apparently, this is what everyone does these days. And just from my experience, you always draw random cards you do not want.

If your "summer sales" feel like a ripoff all you do is piss people off. And the human brain works just like that. people are dumb and want the stupid "special event card" so they play lottery for 15 credits each with a like 50% chance of getting 15 credits back, 15% chance of getting a card worth 13 credits, 30% chance of getting nothing at all and otherwise somethign else (numbers made up but semi-realistic)

But what do I know. Maybe i'm just totally misjudging the main audience and I'm the odd one. Maybe most of the users actually want to buy all the cards, play slots for the sake of it and support the studio by investing thousands of credits just to have a complete collection. No clue man. However, 18 year old me 10 years ago would have ignored the app completely, if a single show was more than €5. Or like €3 if you buy 500 credits at a time.
minko
Mitglied seit in Apr 2009
14 Beiträge

New VIP status / New price

Alles über iStripper
30. July 2023, 209 antworten
Nobody is annoyed by just the price increase... this is the final drop that is too much.

  • They added special event cards, which can only be won by playing lootbox like tickets or spending x-amount of credits on slotmachines and other stuff and cannot be bouht directly
  • than they added the VR stuff which have increased prices
  • than they added the premium/vip subscription
  • then they added auctions for the clothes, which I do not know how people have the idea to spend 1000$ for a costme that you can buy for less than 100$ new (the certificate is certainly not that much worth...)
  • now the mobile app needs another sbscription to play "the already paid for" shows
  • dont for get about the newest addition, the NFTs everyone has been askin for (sarcasm!)
  • now a price increase of 20%


Meanwhile people are still ***** about issues and asking for more optimisation for months (like the space issue for larger collections, etc.) but all they do is transform this application more and more into a casino!
Or that WE have to contact staff when they remove cards from our collection which we paid for, so they can give us a refund (meanwhile there is no filter or pae where you can see all the cards that have been removed!)


I do not now when you guys joined, but I remember a time when they sold physical collectors stuff like the 2017 limited premium cards box (which I bought back then). The price back then was also reasonable!


And yeah...
Go price out a Server Farm.
How much do they charge to run 100 Servers distributed around the world ?
Each Hosting 100TB of data...


then come back and ask your Question again...

costs in employing Totem's own staff that are administering that distribution.
...they have been doin this for years now (literally!). You could think it would be a routine by now, but of corse if you keep developing stuff nobody asks for, you will have more costs.
Stanston
Mitglied seit in Aug 2018
3159 Beiträge

Firefox Linux

Alles über iStripper
30. July 2023, 22 antworten
You can leave iStripper open for this Task now.

Create yourself a new Directory inside your Home Directory, and you can give any Name you want,
but for the Fact that Linux is Case sensitive! for Files and Folder names, we will choose

"is_data"

without the Quotes, all small letters and with an underscore instead of a blank character.

So the new Location for your Shows is now,
/home/howard/is_data/
please double check that in your Address bar in Nemo after you have created that Directory.

Now open two Windows of Nemo or you can also open a new Tab in it,
to see the following two Locations at the same time.
/home/howard/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/vghd/drive_c/users/howard/Local Settings/Application Data/vghd/models/
and
/home/howard/is_data/
Copy and paste! now all the Folders form your /vghd/models/ Location to your new created Folder "is_data"
in your Home Directory.
Once that is done, you can delete all the Folders within,
/home/howard/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/vghd/drive_c/users/howard/Local Settings/Application Data/vghd/models/
but do not delete the "models" Directory itself.

Now go back to iStripper -> Settings and scroll down to the Data Section again,
to click on "Change Directory" once more.

Click on that Trash Can Icon to delete your current Path, and click on the Apply Button to confirm your action.
After that iStripper will immediately restart, be aware this might take a while depending on your CPU speed.
So no matter how long it takes, you just have to be patient for that process.
Once iStripper is up and running again, go again to the Settings -> Data, to select now your new Location.

Click again on "Change Directory" and "Add new Folder" and now a new Window should open,
generated from PlayOnLinux.

  • Single click on that Disk icon on the left, and you should see your home Directory
    between "etc" and "lib" on the right.
  • Double click on that and you should see your Username "howard", double click on that too.
  • Now you should see your Folder "is_data" Double click (that is important) and you should see now
    an empty space on the right side in that Window.
  • If that is the case, click on the "Open Button" down right in that Window, and once that Window is closed,
    click on the Apply Button in iStripper to confirm your action.

  • I hope this Screenshot will help you to identify all that.

    https://i.imgur.com/r3GyuL5.jpeg

    Once iStriper has closed and is up and running again, go to your Collection and all your Shows should be
    "greyed out" again, if that is the case all was working so far.

    Now go to Settings again and hit now the Button "Rebuild Collection" and your iStripper Logo in your
    Taskbar will turn into a spinning circle.

    This shouldn't take too long, but you have to wait until you can see the iStripper Logo again, and your PC
    will become unusable during that process, as always patience is the key.
    Once that is done, go to My Collection and you should see now your two downloaded Shows.

    Like mentioned before and if you are unsure for all that, you can leave your Shows in the default "models"
    Folder, but i can't tell you if you will loose Access to your Collection, in case something goes wrong
    on the Totem Servers again.
    Stanston
    Mitglied seit in Aug 2018
    3159 Beiträge

    Firefox Linux

    Alles über iStripper
    30. July 2023, 22 antworten
    First of all your default File manager in Mint is Nemo, and you have to make sure to configure your
    Address bar, to make the full File Path visible, instead of using the Breadcrumb Navigation.

    I hope these Links help you to do that, because that is important for our next steps.

    https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2015/10/basic-guide-for-nemo-file-manager.html

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff78iE7q2sE&t=685s

    As next, please do not change anything any more within your Wine Configuration Window,
    underneath the Drives Tab, this looks all fine for now.

    Next, here is how to find the Location to your Animation Files,
    and you can do this while iStripper is running, it doesn't matter for this Task.

    Bring up the POL Window, highlight again with your Mouse the iStripper Logo,
    but it might be already highlighted.

    Now pay attention to the left side in that Window, and you should see several options
    including "Open a directory" with a Folder icon left next to it, please click on that.

    Nemo should open now a new Window and should take you to this Location here,
    /home/howard/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/vghd/drive_c/users/howard/Local Settings/Application Data/vghd/bin/
    and you are now in the "bin" Folder of your iStripper installation.

    Click now in your Address bar in Nemo and delete the last "/" and "bin" in it, and press Enter.
    Now you are in your "vghd" Folder
    /home/howard/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/vghd/drive_c/users/howard/Local Settings/Application Data/vghd/
    and you should see only three Folders which are "bin" "data" and "models".

    According to your second Screenshot your Animation Files are stored in "models" and will be always
    downloaded to this Location.

    Also and from what i can see on your second Screenshot too, you have plenty of space on that Disk (4 TB)
    and it seems you don't have a separate Root partition on your Mint installation,
    but there is no need, at least for now! to investigate this further.

    You can leave everything like it is, but there was a big Server Failure from Totem in late 2018 or early 2019
    (not sure any more it's been a while) and everyone lost the Access to their Collections, including myself
    while i had all my Animation Files stored in there as well.

    After everything got fixed from the Team i moved my Collection to another Location on my Disk,
    and since that i never ever lost the Access to my Collection any more independent from any Server
    issues on the side of Totem.

    I will leave it up to you, but in any case here is how to do it on your own machine.