Monthly subscription

Instead of relying on internet hours bought and credit put on the mobile account, now there is the option to buy a monthly subscription.

Monthly subscription can be purchased both for home based internet (the current internet we have), mobile internet and mobile calls and text messages.

The monthly subscription gives unlimited internet and unlimited calls/text messages for a month. It renews every month like a utility, and is paid either automatically if the playeer opened a bank account, or they have to go to the a Megafon shop to pay it in cash.

There is an argument for only using the bank account, and make it a requirement for the subscription. Using the cash destroys one of the main reasons for the subscription system which was to make it automatic, so players don't have to remember to buy internet hours when they run out. However, it is realistic, so maybe leaving in the option makes sense.

The subscription starts from the date the player purchases it, and renews every month on the same day, i.e., if the player buys a subscription on the 17th, it will renew every month on the 17th.

If there is not enough money to pay the subscription fee, the service has a a few days long grace period, but if the player runs into this issue repeatedly, the subscription will be suspended, and no new subscription can be bought until a fee is paid.

The number of times the player can be late is to be decided, maybe 3? Also, late payments can age out, so after a few months of paying on time, the counter goes down.

The monthly home internet subscription is tied to a home, thus if the player buys several places, they will have to buy the internet separately for each home or property. The existing active monthly subscription can be transferred between homes, so if the player buys a new place and moves there, they don't have to buy a new subscription, they can simply request a transfer to the new home. More on homes and internet can be found under Homes, properties, locations

This I think balances out a little bit the fact that now they have unlimited internet but they can use it only in one home, unlike with the old internet setup, where internet hours were universal, and accessible everywhere.

Metered internet and calls

For the mobile phone, the player can purchase minute based metered internet and credit based calls and text packages. This works like the old internet but instead of hours, we track minutes, because previously every action took an hour, even if it was just checking the "Fuck or Not" website.

The actual price and amount of minutes purchased need some rethinking. Giving 60 minutes for the same price as one hour used to cost is not balanced, because with switching to a minute based tracking, 1 hour gives more than one internet session now.

Mixing monthly and metered plans

It is guaranteed that some players end up with a mixture of metered and monthly plans - they started to buy a metered plan, because the were low on money but now looking at a monthly subscription.

The two plans don't work together, so a player can't have both a monthly mobile internet subscription and a 3,000 minutes from a metered plan. The way it is handled is the following:

If the player has a monthly mobile or call subscription, they won't be able to purchase any minute or credit based plans of the same type, i.e. a monthly mobile internet subscription blocks the metered mobile internet, and the monthly mobile calls and texts subscription blocks the metered mobile calls and text subscriptions.

If the player has metered a plan with remaining minutes or credits, they can buy a monthly subscription of the same type, however that will remove the minutes/credits they had, and convert them into a discount that is used in the initial price.

It may become necessary to add something that keeps the discount longer. I can see some players one day rolling up to Megafon with 10,000 remaining minutes and buying a subscription. In this case the discount will be greater than the subscription monthly fee, so adding a way to keep track of that and gradually use it up could become necessary. I definitely don't want to get into 'Purchased minutes expire if not used for X months' type scenarios, that would mean keeping track of every purchase, using the minutes up from different pools and then every day checking if any minutes expired. Not going to implement real life telco logic in QSP :)