Rewards for smaller donations sound great! I personally only donate when I really, reeeeally love the gotq, because 20fc are a lot of money. With 5fc or 10fc gfts, I might not be quite as picky and donate more regularily.

As for what those rewards should be ... tricky question
-I don't think giving out past items is a very good idea, since that could decrease their value quite a lot and and surely upset some users.
-The gold-silver-bronze recolor idea is very cute in theory, but I agree that the silver/bronze items might not be as popular because browns and greys aren't very popular colors in general.
-Picking a favorite color for the King or Walla is a nice idea!

-additional idea: something like a donation fairy? Have a set of items in several recolors, and if you donate at all, you get one random item a month, and if you donate beyond a certain threshold, you get a second random item? Or tie them to certain amounts of FC in the first place, so x amount of FC gets you one random item.
Or make it a donation nymph or something, so there's no rivalry with the fairies xD
Possible problem (as seen with the wild knuffel items): when new items are added, the old ones become a bit of a nuisance because there are already quite a few of them in the pool. But maybe that would make them more accesible after a while for users that can't donate, which would also be nice ... I dunno. Just an idea I had!

As for giving out a gift for very high donations, like 40FC ... I don't think that's a very good idea, honestly.
In past discussions about site activity, one major complaint and source of frustration I remember was "the things I want are too hard to get". So adding items that are behind an even higher paywall sounds counterproductive.
Not to mention, with kofk being so small, how many potential donors are there even that could afford donating for a 40 fc gift? If Firn had to come up with an extra pretty donation gift for extremely high donations, and only 2 or 3 people got it ... that doesn't sound like a very good use of Firn's time, creating items that only a tiny amount of people will posess. And other users might get frustrated, because the item is basically impossible to get for them...
I think getting some users that don't donate yet to donate a little is a better plan of action than trying to get the people who already donate a lot to donate even more. Just my two cents however

The reason why I think 40fc is counterproductive is because there are already people who donate 40fc so its not really more incentive for them to donate. Its trying to get people who can't donate a lot to donate for the smaller tiers. So I dont think that's the problem...

Also the average to make the tiers is a good idea but that still affects the people who already donate. I was trying to give more incentives for users who don't donate at all. People are still donating 5fcs without that and now they will get rewarded for it instead of trying to get one more fc out of them.

Some people can only afford to donate such a low amount. I don't see how that would be far-fetched to reward someone for donating all that they can spare... It's not a little amount either.... 12.50$ is a lot of money for people struggling and especially if you aren't American... I imagine in other countries that could easily be a whole lot more.

But my original idea included that there are so many nice items here you can get without donating (event, troth items, caravan items, fairy items, digging items and a wide range of commons and limited commons) that to me the reward of getting an MT/TT set is very little incentive. Especially if you're hoping someone else decides to sell it on market or trade it to you. Now if people who can donate only about 5fc worth amount could get their hands on an "exclusive pretty" item then that would shift their pov to donating rather than just passing on it. That would be extra 12.50$ the site would be getting that otherwise it would not have.

Because current as it is I would not donate anything more than maybe 1fc every month and thats only if the MT is to my liking... I have more than enough items to last me forever without donating. I was just trying to help get people who currently don't donate to have more incentive to donate- even small amounts. Not people who already donate since to them current situation for them is incentive enough. Not everyone thinks the same way unfornately

And this way the people who currently donate will also benefit too. It's not like Im just thinking of new donators but also the ones who do it still.

Also making new colors just seem like more work for Firn...

It's up to Firn, but I'm not so sure rewarding a super small donation is very desirable. Incentivizing more people to donate is good, but with what Firn explained of the fixed fee, I'm not sure if incentivizing super small donation would be worth it.

That was also another reason why I suggested a higher tier donation gift; so that we aren't merely incentivizing small donations but also big donations to offset the bigger percentage that is taken from more smaller donations. However,

Pernelle wrote:If Firn had to come up with an extra pretty donation gift for extremely high donations, and only 2 or 3 people got it ... that doesn't sound like a very good use of Firn's time, creating items that only a tiny amount of people will posess. And other users might get frustrated, because the item is basically impossible to get for them...

that is a very good point. I myself, at my current donating habits, would probably only get the higher tier gift once a year. And I certainly wouldn't want to spend time and effort on something that people won't be able to enjoy.

But I still believe that we need to find a happy medium of having more people donate but having those donations be big enough to offset the fixed fee.

Fire wrote:The "random item as a reward for donating" idea is a bit counter-intuitive to me - isn't the "reward" for donating the ability to purchase a limited-edition, special item from the MT or TT?
Remember, originally users who donated were rewarded with a special set of items each month - the original Monthly Treasure. It was not until later that the Fairy Coin was introduced to that users could choose what they used that fairy coin to purchase. The "reward" was, and always has been, an MT or TT set. So the idea of an ADDITIONAL free, special item to each person who donates seems a bit far-fetched, no? Though, that's just my opinion.

That's a really good point You're right, the fact that a fairy coin and the things you can buy with it are already a reward seems to have slipped a few minds, including my own lol

Nonetheless, with donations being as they are, I think it's a valid discussion to have, to try and get more people to donate or donate slightly higher amounts.

Okay, different idea:
How about having a sort of donation event every once in a while where small donations get an extra reward, instead of always additionally rewarding small donations?
Pick a two week period or something, and everyone who makes a minimum x fc donation (2fc? 5fc?) in this period gets the extra gift. It could be a recolor of a popular past gotw (in rose gold? ) for example.
Not all the time of course, every couple of months to half a year maybe?
So it would be a sort of sale, but not a fc sale but a gotq sale

Pernelle wrote: Okay, different idea:
How about having a sort of donation event every once in a while where small donations get an extra reward, instead of always additionally rewarding small donations?
Pick a two week period or something, and everyone who makes a minimum x fc donation (2fc? 5fc?) in this period gets the extra gift. It could be a recolor of a popular past gotw (in rose gold? ) for example.
Not all the time of course, every couple of months to half a year maybe?
So it would be a sort of sale, but not a fc sale but a gotq sale

At first I thought I liked this idea (Just with old event items and doing it during events), but the more I think of it, the more I can think of downsides: What if people start expecting periods where they get an extra item and start holding back donations to wait for such a period because they think "Why donate now if I can donate next month or the month after that and get an extra item?". Such an attitude could be fatal for KOfK because if we don't get enough donations for the deadlines of our server payments, we would need to shut down the site. There is, unfortunately, a limit to how much we can come up with out of our own pocket.

Sorry if I am a crabber, it's just that a lot of things we tried to motivate people to donate more had negative side-effects in the past, so I am thinking through all possible worst-case scenarios.

I think any kind of donation perk must be something that would be available all the time, otherwise it might not really help to get more donations, just change the time when people will donate.

I absolutely agree that limited time sales can be very dangerous. I used to play a browser game (not an avatar site, but similar enough in that you could buy items for a premium currency) where they introduced limited time offers of getting an additional item if you bought some currency. I stopped buying anything outside of these times. They eventually devolved into having big packs of items that you'd get on top of the currency itself available at all times, just changing the packs each week or so...
So yeah, I think whatever you decide to do, don't do limited time offers. They also feel like baiting people into paying with the feeling of "if I don't do it now, I won't get anything extra!", which doesn't really leave a good feeling in the long run. (Yes, I intentionally said paying now and not donating. Because the more items you directly get for it, the more it might feel that way...)