v4.0: Deckbox Premium: Features Galore! (Page 1 of 8)

A couple months ago you limited the amount of line items per page, when questioned you sited 'forever loading times' to be at fault and accused me of being overly sarcastic in an attempt to figure out the reason for the change.

Now you are going to expand the line item per page, but only for people that purchase premium accounts? 

Noooooooooooope.

This is where I cut ties with deckbox.  This latest 'update' could not make it any clearer what this page was and is designed to do.

Many of these features are exactly what we've been looking for on this site for ages, some of which, I believe, that I have requested myself.  I've thought several times about implementing my own solution simply because I really wanted some of these things.  Exciting that they're finally getting implemented!  At least until you see the price.  I understand the need/want to drive profits and the ability to develop more features moving forward, but that doesn't stop me from being disappointed that I'll likely never use them.

Deckbox has been great to me; I visit several times/day and have made hundreds of trades.  But, now that I know many of the features that have been promised to being worked on, and possibly any future requests that I make, are being put behind a pay wall, I'm not sure how long that will continue.

I have edited out my original reply, it was perhaps too emotional.

Why do you feel you have to give up a site you love just because there are features behind a paywall? You can keep using the free part of deckbox like you have until now. Nothing has been removed.

Some features are behind a paywall because the significant development and work that is needed for them is simply not doable unless there are paid employees to invest time in them...

Last edited by sebi (2014-12-15 14:09:52)

'significant work'?

So let's step through this:

- Priority Support - Yeah, as a guy myself working in support about 2 years - that could be a full amount of work.
- No advertisments - well, that's a self-evident point.
- emergency collection backup recovery - Well what? Who the hell needs that? Maybe comes in handy for about 1 in 1000 Users?

- Collection Edition checklist View - Nop, not a lot of work.
- Auto Trade - Nop, not a lot of work.
- More cards listed per page - That's a matter of your hardware, so to be honest. This is a question of $$$ not of time.
- Private or Password protected inventory - oh come on, don't try to fool us.

- Built decks - eh,what?
- Public and Private notes for each card - Well again, that's a matter of hardware and not of time.
- The Scratchpad - Really? A Second Sideboard? Now you have to be kidding
- private or password protected inventory - yeah, just the same like inventory.

- Mobile Application - that's actually a huge point - Firstly, we are pissing off the guys, who wanted to build an App for Deckbox and waited for your API to be released or already done it, and freaking build an HTML Parser on their own. Secondly - yeah, this is a lot of work and do cost some money. Average App costs are between 10k-50k$

- Collection Tagging & Card Scan Attachments...ah well. Sorry, I am out.

Okay, I need to say this: Without these suggestions deckbox wouldn't be what it is now. YOU wouldn't what you are now - neither would be this paywall. And 5$ a month? Seriously?

Last edited by 100000520842029 (2014-12-15 14:20:43)

While I don't disagree with the need to put a paywall up for content in order to support you and the growth of the website; I think the sticker shock of the initial pay structure is going to discourage a lot of the community from subscribing to it.

My opinion would have been to have started at a lower cost per month; and once you're off the ground and running, slowly increase the rate if necessary.  Also, maybe this should have been rolled out after the holidays?

Finally, my only suggestion would be to not focus all efforts on further improvements for premium users only.  With each new release of premium content, you should also release something small for the free side as well.  This will increase morality among the free user base and let them know their needs are still important to you; and it will encourage more of the free side to switch to premium.   

Thanks for everything you do Sebi.

I really like and enjoy the features of deckbox and I have always looked forward to support deckbox with a small amount of money.
I would buy a premium account, but the price is a little high in my opionion. My target of paying was a maximum of 1-2 Euro per month.

Last edited by daktr (2014-12-15 14:29:13)

in my opinion a this pay service is unnecessary.

if you want me to pay for premium, you have to offer something for it. here i just get repaired features that were broken, or features that we have had access to in the past. longer lists? locking my inventory? what exactly are you offering me for my money?

when you say something like the paying customer will receive better support, what that means practically is that the paying customer receives the same support and everyone else gets worse. its not like you are planning on hiring a call center to answer tech support problems.

if too much functionality ends up being on the pay side you run the risk of driving away new users. i would have never signed up if i had to pay, and am still pretty skeptical of the whole thing despite being a regular user of your product. without new users the pool of potential people to trade with just wont be there.

i hope that you guys can iron out a pay service that i can get excited about, but this isnt it.

I hope that some of you will take the intention of Sebi's words to heart.  He is putting in his time and resources to make Deckbox for everyone, and he would like to keep doing so.  Any public site has costs, and Sebi and others would like to make Deckbox better than it is now.  The marketplace section and now premium accounts are a way to help pay for the work that has gone into the site.  If you want to help out, then you can buy cards via the marketplace or sign up for a premium account.   This is a great site and it needs some way to support the servers, ISP costs and staff to run it.

If you look at other sites, they also have premium versions.  Pucatrade won't let you trade for foils and holds off on offering many useful features unless you pay.  Star City Games offers lots of great Magic articles, but many of the pro-written articles aren't available unless you pay for the content.  I'm sure that Sebi would love to have all of the feature available for free, and if the marketplace had taken off in a big way, I'm sure that premium accounts would be different from how they are presented now.   Probably the premium accounts would have more features such as the promised tagging, or maybe premium would not be needed at all.

Maybe there is a different way to support Deckbox that would rely on periodic donations to support it, much like a public radio pledge drive.  For now, just recognize that there is a need to support Deckbox in some way if you find it useful.  If you don't want to support it via a premium account, then buy some cards in the marketplace.  Maybe there could be a 'Donate' button so that people could contribue $5 or $10 if the premium accounts are too much money.

I for one, think this is a great plan to get you a piece of some of the value that deckbox is adding to my life.  It's just not quite there yet in terms of pricing for me.  Once you have some of these features premium:
-mobile apps
-the ability to have inventory segmentation (multiple inventories or a field for custom "locations" of individual cards)
-notes on individual cards in inventory
-scans uploaded of individual cards
-linking individual cards or editions to decks
-Report generation for insurance claims
-MTG content (premium articles/videos)
I'd be willing to pay the price, but for now I don't think the value is there for me at the current price level.

Good luck Sebi!

Last edited by bactgudz (2014-12-15 15:41:46)

PhyrexianLibrarian:

Sorry, but if you're gonna offer a premium subscription then it has to be worth it, especially since it's valued at 7€ per month. Sure, 7€ doesn't seem like much, 3 beers.

But like 100000520842029 pointed out, most of these "premium" features are hardly worth it. Making private & password protected decks a premium feature is just moving a feature behind a paywall.

If you actually read the post you're alluding to, the accusation is that Deckbox purposely reduced the matches per page in order to offer a high number of matches as a premium service. It would make the site look sketchy if true.

I don't think framing the concerns as whiny entitled children vs. business-savvy adults is particularly productive.

We did not do anything like that. The matches we reduced were on profile intersections which this updates does not touch at all. I also increased them back after them being reduced, at the request of the user who is now still complaining.

The thing we provide now a custom option for is cards listed per page of inventories / tradelists / wishlists, and has nothing to do with the intersection thing.

I said it initially, but it seems people did not notice, so it perhaps bears repeating: nothing that was free yesterday is now for money.