In response to your second point:
This is already implemented (in part). Site supporters have their names in yellow everywhere on the main OGS site and in the chat room they have a yellow orb next to their name as well (both of these have the option to be turned off, but are on by default for all supporters).
When you visit their profile page, under their name in big letters is āsite supporterā with a star either side of it.
The only aspect they have not implemented is making this label a hyperlink to the ābecome a supporterā page.
Seems to me that the most obvious prefered situation is just a bunch of supporters.
For that to be more effective i think there should be more bling for the supporters.
Like maybe limiting namechanges, discount-deals on stuff/partnerships or something.
ive always lked that idea of having x amount of ābombstonesā a game, where you can place a stone and trigger a little nuke or bomb-animation. Perhaps used when you play a nice tesuji or kill a group . say 3 per game or something. that would be fun =) and wouldnt break the game.
Iām okay with giving supporters cosmetic, non-gameplay affecting stuff, but being a site supporter should still feel more like a donation than a āpremium subscriptionā, and not paying shouldnāt feel like youāre a second class citizen. So none of that āanalysis/conditional moves/score estimator/zen mode/etc. only for site supportersā or āX free days then pay upā stuff. That would be a surefire way to drive out majority of the players.
There are so few supporters that I guess Iāve never run into one, and the fact that my own was in gold led me to erroneous conclusions about its meaning, if I bothered to think about it at all. (Players see their own names in gold, each playerās name is in a different color, etc.)
Thereās no explicit symbol or hover text, which is absolutely key. Otherwise, you depend on players already knowing what the gold means, but the whole point of the symbol and hover text is to spread awareness of this very option.
But this is good news, because it means OGS can enhance the power of what theyāre already doing significantly with just a very minor tweak.
A bomb animation for killing groups? I have no problem if two players agree to that but I sure do not want it in most games⦠I might as well migrate to Fly or Dieā¦
A number of people have mentioned a one time payment option. I think this should be looked at. I would consider it. But I do not care for monthly withdrawals.
And something I have not seen is how much money would it take to increase foreign servers and other upgrades? And how much would it be divided among regular users?
Soooo, if we want some merch, how about helping make it happen? I am sure there are some graphic designers among us that could help making it easy for OGS to make this whole thing happenā¦