Premium vs ads
The digital ads revenue model is starting to show its limits. In April, ad revenues for Firestone per (non-subscribed) user will roughly be 25% of what it was in 2022. This means that the current business model is not viable for me anymore, and forces me to rethink how Firestone generates revenue (or stop working on it full-time).
The space to the right of the app's main window used to contain a single ad space at the bottom, with room at the top for more information. On many screens, nothing was shown there at all.
The right column will now contain another ad space. This lets me rework the app in the following way:
- for free users, the right side of the app is now dedicated to ads
- for premium users, the right side will now be fully available to display information, and if there is no information at all, it will be collapsed to give more room to the main content.
I think it is not too bad. Most of the information that used to be there can be seen it via other (though less convenient) means directly from the app as well. As for the information that is now exclusive to premium users, I feel that it's usually not vital information, but rather nice-to-have bonuses (like the cards history).
As usual, I'm open to feedback, so let me know what you think on Discord
As for the features that will be premium-only, I'm still thinking about it.
The additional ad space for free users means that any information that used to be in the sidebar is now premium-exclusive. In most cases, this was QoL, nice to have stats / information that is not critical to using the product, so I think that giving this to users who financially support the app is ok.
Pure QoL features are good candidates (like showing things in the overlay that you can access otherwise). As much as possible, I want to keep the data (that you, the community, provide) free. There might be paid features around the data if they require some more advanced processing, but basic stats should stay free.
The following features are only available to premium users, starting version 11.0
- BG hero selection overlay and hero tier information to premium-only. The information is already available in the BG window (that you can bring up with Alt + B), and overlaying the information on the hero selection screen is just convenience.
- Quickly see all the heroes information by pressing "Tab" while in the lobby
- View the strategy tips for your current hero directly in the overlay
- See the tier list and MMR / tribes filter on the BG window during hero selection (you need to go to the app's main window to get the info otherwise)
- View your win/loss records against all the opponents of the lobby
- View detailed stats during and at the end of your match
- See a graph of your winrate odds, fight by fight
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The ability to use a remote battle simulator. This is mostly useful if the local simulation causes some lag on your machine, as getting the results from the remote simulator is slower than running the sim locally.
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Tier list summary on the BG heroes page (even if you change the hero sorting)
- View the last replays with a given hero directly on their Stats page
- See the deck overview as well as the last replays for that deck, directly on the deck page
- More comfortable view for the Deckbuilder, which can now take the whole app space
- More room on the Mercenaries page, to show all the Coins columns by default
- Stats summary aggregated over all your Duels runs
- More space when using the Duels Deckbuilder and Buckets tabs
- Stats summary aggregated over all your Arena runs
- Detailed recap of any past match's stats in the Replays tab (only for Battlegrounds for now):
- See your chronological cards and packs history (all-time packs are still available to all users for free)
