Just want to say kudos to Polly for having very creative suggestions for tiered senator perks.

I agree that anything votes/government-wise should be maintained across tiers. Any additional perks can help make the sale, while at the same time opening the door to lower priced options with fewer benefits.

Hello
Thanks for your feedback.  I have a few points to address here.

I think you may have missed some changes if you were exiled but one major change we have made is that senators are now exempt from being exiled.
They can still be jailed but they can not be exiled without them going to trial first and then passing through myself and the Presidents legal council. In the Presidents legal council we have very strict rules against exiling loyal Ximbos. The only way they can be exiled is if they have encouraged violence against another ximbo or they have committed treason against the state of Ximboland. 

This is itself is a mechanism to stabilise Ximboland and thus save us from the volatility you mentioned. This is  a reason why we need senators and why you should become one- because they will be able  to hold the government to account and reduce volatility. The PB and government still have the power to exile non senators.

Also all senators can now stand for PB in the elections.    

Secondly to price of senatorship. I consider it to be cheap = its £6.99 in the UK which is not much more than a single starbucks latte. And cheaper than netflix. What is the rate in CAD then? Are we facing the position where its cheaper in some countries than others? 




Timothee Chatroulette wrote:

If you haven't signed up as a senator yet and you can afford it can you please tell me why you haven't in this thread.
What are we doing wrong ? Ximboland is self sufficient project and we don't have any outside funding. We have always been self sufficient but for that we rely on you guys to support us - financially and democratically.

Prior to the great Cowboy Gang banning, I did not feel comfortable applying for senatorship due to the volatility of the site. I saw players being banned left and right for seemingly innocuous reasons.
A huge selling point of BL is being able to elect your own government. But, this creates an inherent volatility, a sense of peaks and valleys depending on who is in power. The inconsistencies don’t make me feel solid about spending real money here.

Now that I’m back, the price is the first thing turning me off about senatorship. Converting to CAD, it’s more expensive than a Netflix subscription. If it was maybe 2/3rds of the price I would buy a month, no second thought. Maybe a tiered pricing strategy with varied perks can encourage a higher purchase rate.

I think Ximboland is my real life. 
Thanks for feedback - please remember you can still make it to the Pink House as a non paying Ximbo via the traditional route of 
Ximbo > SM > PB 

Kandi Bardot wrote:

I haven't signed up to be a senator either, but it's only because I can't afford it since my income is low and I have a mortgage to pay. I love this game, but in the end, real life is more important to me ❤️

Wow Polly you have excelled yourself here - thanks very much. Some great ideas and I have copied and pasted these to my special 'to do' list.

One very important point I must push back on though are these stories of 'hacking' and the site not being safe.
I strongly refute this claim.
We use PayPal as our third party payment provider. We store zero bank details and zero financial information so you can safely say we are 100% safe in that regard. The only way you could worry is if PAYPAL got hacked.  So please do not allow anyone to spread false information on this regard. If anyone hacked our site the best they could escape with is an email address, a password, a few pixelated bras and some bimbo dollars. In other words we are a pretty value less site to hack into. So please do not allow that to be a reason not  to become a senator.

With regards to cancelling subscriptions -  that is usually the fault with the Bimbo/player/end user because thats all done inside paypal. We do our best to help but really the players have 100% responsibility of how much money they send us via paypal and when it is cancelled etc We have ZERO control over that. The senatorship renews on the date they sign up so again that's not in our control.
Please trust Paypal and please trust us.

Pollyx wrote:

One thing I think is very important to keep in mind is that existing free features should not be put behind paywalls, that would cause a lot of discord among the userbase and likely will not increase the number of senators by any valuable amount.

Logistical recommendations:

- Create a tiered pricing structure, like Timothee suggested.
- Make the current senator benefits the lowest tier, reducing the price accordingly (it is not a good deal currently for what is offered, many being benefits players can receive without paying by saving up diamonds over time.
- Offer more expensive senatorship tiers, ideally two more, one being the "medium" senatorship tier with big perks and another being even more expensive with exclusive benefits.
- Audit the site's code and organization surrounding payment processing. There have been recent hacks on the site, so many users may not be comfortable giving their payment information to the site. Others have been unable to cancel subscriptions, encountered issues with Paypal, and had their senatorships renew earlier than expected, causing undue financial burdens. How can you reassure users that it's safe?
- If possible, consider giving a cut of the overall treasury to PB/the Pink House. The Pink House and PB may be able to motivate players to give more money to the site in terms of buying more diamonds for various reasons, but may not be able to convince all of those same people to sign up for a consistent monthly payment. Money in the site's pocket is still money, and while senatorships are important to the long-term stability of the site, you need to consider how to motivate the PH to encourage other forms of buying as well, which is still a benefit to the site overall

Senatorship benefit ideas (for medium and/or high tiers):
(viability may vary, this is throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. most of these require coding changes and are not something the PB can implement)

- Increase the discount Senators receive on treasury purchases (greater discount for higher tiers)
- Create a special profile/badge color for Senators, perhaps one that matches their state or something agreed upon by the community. Maybe they could even choose what name/profile color to have? This would be distinct from the gold color associated with the PB's state.
- Player houses that are only available to Senators
- A "Senator's early access" shop that allows Senators to buy shop items early and potentially for Diamonds only (though those same items would be added to the main shop some time later, Senators would have the option to buy them first)
- Some kind of special, exclusive, detailed/luxury clothing item, or clothing item pack (like a dress or shirt/pants, an accessory, a bag item, a digital, some combination of these or other categories) higher tier Senators receive every month with their subscription renewal (or just monthly on that date if they bought an annual Senatorship). I know that offering Senator-exclusive clothing is a contentious idea, but having a limited set of monthly items gifted to Senators would be a fun exclusive thing to do. The designer(s) to make the set should be compensated as well, especially for these items that take larger amounts of work and time and need to be refined. This would be somewhat similar to how higher Patreon tier subscribers sometimes receive special art pieces, stickers in the mail, that kind of thing. Something only Senators can get that they get monthly, a very limited small pack. If you sign up for Senatorship later, you should be able to buy the items from previous months with Diamonds.
- An actual detailed chatroom for the site, not like the small ones we have right now, where Senators have more privileges such as the ability to send emotes (if possible), images, longer messages, etc.
- Senators receive x2 Sex Appeal and x2 B$ for every hour they work, as well as larger login bonuses for their relationships.
- Senators have more "relationship" slots, perhaps one that can only be matched with other Senators...? Right now there are very limited love/marriage/dating slots and some people might like more.
- Largest senator tier comes with unlimited favorites for adding users to your favorites list. 
- Largest senator tier reduces the diamond cost for site activities.
- Senators receive an allotment of tokens per month in addition to Diamonds, perhaps 500-1000 tokens? This allows Senators to do more daily tasks as well as engage with the community and politics by starting more fights and debates.
- Currently you can only "store" 3 duels at a time regardless of Senatorship status, and the duels renew every 30 minutes. This means that if people want to make high leaderboard ranks in duels they often have to either damage their sleep schedule or spend diamonds. I believe higher tier senators should have 6 stored duels at once (or a different number). This might motivate people to sign up as Senators if it's going to help them with Duel leaderboards without having to sacrifice sleep. It also might make it possible for people who have jobs and other obligations to be on the leaderboards every once in a while if they are high-tier Senators.
- Fun illustrated icon frames Senators can earn or buy that could show up around their character icon in forums! People love decorations and this is a great option that would add a fun perk for Senators while also allowing free-to-play users to engage in forum conversations as normal.
- Senator forum signatures can be twice or 3x as tall for longer quotes, bigger images, etc! Not so long as to cause disruption (like adding the Bee Movie script) but just enough to have a little extra fun.
- Ability for Senators to "pin" a particular user's comment to the top of their comments if they like it a lot!
- Senators can add a custom status which shows up at the top of their profile (obviously this would require some UI/UX changes, as would many of my other suggestions)
- High-tier Senators no longer have to use their in-game time on "having fun in a club" to gain self-indulgence. AKA when they work, there is no self-indulgence cost.
- Senators receive double the normal stats per hour when they work out in a gym, visit the library, or go to the beauty salon.
- Highest-tier Senators can use the artifact combining/trading function for free, or for a much smaller # of Diamonds.
- Highest-tier Senators can choose a favorite outfit of theirs to be shown at full size on the site login page. This would be essentially an image slideshow rotating between different highest-tier Senators on the login page, or maybe just one is pulled up at random anytime someone opens the login page...?
- Highest-tier Senators get 2x or 3x as many reputation points for every action. Higher budget contributed to maintaining the site = a greater reputation, it ideologically fits.
- Senators can see the wishlist items of other players and gift them wishlist items using diamonds, or perhaps just a "gift a random wishlist item" function?
- Senators can submit ideas for and then vote on items to be made by designers. Again, designers would be paid for this and it could function like picking PXFC themes. With access to the shop and Diamond support for designers from admin, PB could potentially handle this.
- Ability for Senators to link two accounts together; for example, to easily switch between a bimbo and himbo account without having to use a new email or log out and login to the new account.
- Monthly "chat with the founder" restricted forum threads for highest-tier Senators allowing them to ask Miss Bimbo (or you, SweetasNuts) questions and posit concerns. An exclusive sort of conversation with a set time and guaranteed replies from you (this would depend on the number of highest-tier Senators obviously).
- Highest-tier Senatorships also come with a monthly allotment of some diamonds which are sent to their state's SM. This is in addition to the personal diamonds and benefits these super-loyal Senators would receive. This would allow them to automatically support their state and contests held by their SM every month. This would also encourage Senators who love their state and like their current State Minister to sign up for the most expensive Senatorship. Effectively this would be like a "mini" version of paying PB (though PB would also be paid a cut of this Senatorship as well, as per usual) but paying the SMs in Diamonds instead. This could also motivate SMs to do their best and encourage members of their states to sign up for highest-tier Senatorships, and mid-tier Senatorships could potentially do this as well but just a lower diamond amount. This idea would obviously benefit SMs from larger states the most, though, so worth keeping in mind this might create a financial imbalance between SMs of different states. If anyone has feedback on or ideas for this, pitch those too!
- Glittery/moving/motion graphics that can be overlaid on top of your outfits (Senators only). This could be sparkling stars, a fairy light, a moving liquid frame (like some on Steam profiles), etc.
- Ability to buy full pages of the shop at once, or to buy your entire wishlist at once. Useful for people who want to buy many items at once, as otherwise that can be extremely time-consuming.

This is just a bunch of suggestions thrown out there to see what everyone likes. Obviously there are many more than this that could be suggested or implemented and I'm sure I'll think of some of those later :) Thanks for reading!

Thanks Gemma - I have called Dr Chops in to the Palace to take a look at the bunnions. Hes coming tomorrow at 2 pm.

I refer you to the post above and I will repeat myself.
Please do not confuse the payment information you share with paypal with what you share with us.
We do not see any of your payment information other than a receipt. We dont know your card details etc Only paypal know that. The only way for your money to be hacked would be for PayPal to be hacked. No one is getting any payment info from us because we don't have any! And we dont want any either! So please dont worry about that and please dont use that as a reason not to become a senator. 

Gemima1984 wrote:

Hi SweetasNuts, congratulations on your promotion from masseur to secretary. I am sorry to hear about the condition of Miss Bimbo's feet and I hope she recovers shortly. Perhaps Dr. Chops knows a good podiatrist who can soothe her ailments.

One of the main reasons I am not currently willing to pay for senatorship is because I'm worried about my payment information being shared. The website has been hacked several times over the years and users have discussed incidents when their email addresses were leaked by these hacks. The previous hacking in Autumn last year was seemingly done by some young users from a competing website so it looks like it's relatively easy to do. I would be nervous about giving any payment information at all to the website in case somebody were able to breach the site and obtain it.

I would be more willing to support the site in a different way if that kind of thing was managed by a secure third party. For instance, I'd buy merch continuing some of the site owner's more iconic quotes for instance ("shut up and buy more bimbo dollars".

P.S. Your continued engagement with the site and userbase is really appreciated and my opinion on you has changed drastically in the past 3 months. Keep up the good work! 

Haha - yes not my finest marketing strategy ever

bxdcherri wrote:

i would 100% buy merch that said Shut up and buy more bimob dollars, its truly iconic 

£15 ? sorry can you elaborate what you mean by that? 
Its £6.99 in UK
$9.99  in US

Dad wrote:

Congratulations on your new position, Mr.SweetAsNuts! You will do a great job, I'm sure.

I've actually been considering becoming a senator but I can't bring myself to spend the money for the same reason as Timothee. I just can't justify spending 15 quid plus the exchange rate from CAD for the benefits that it offers.

If there was some kind of greater benefit like new senator-exclusive clothes, player homes for only senators, animated overlays for profiles, etc. then I would become a senator in a heartbeat. I hope to see a Ximboland where you, our PB, and Team Bimbo make that a reality.

Shut up and buy a Bimbo senatorship 

Timothee Chatroulette wrote:

If you haven't signed up as a senator yet and you can afford it can you please tell me why you haven't in this thread.
What are we doing wrong ? Ximboland is self sufficient project and we don't have any outside funding. We have always been self sufficient but for that we rely on you guys to support us - financially and democratically.

Prior to the great Cowboy Gang banning, I did not feel comfortable applying for senatorship due to the volatility of the site. I saw players being banned left and right for seemingly innocuous reasons.
A huge selling point of BL is being able to elect your own government. But, this creates an inherent volatility, a sense of peaks and valleys depending on who is in power. The inconsistencies don’t make me feel solid about spending real money here.

Now that I’m back, the price is the first thing turning me off about senatorship. Converting to CAD, it’s more expensive than a Netflix subscription. If it was maybe 2/3rds of the price I would buy a month, no second thought. Maybe a tiered pricing strategy with varied perks can encourage a higher purchase rate.

Interesting considering no one was getting banned while you were playing. Don't worry, no one in their right mind actually expected you or your friends to ever be senators. No need to repeat the same excuses we've heard 20 times already.