How to improve my tiers rewards? (Patreon)

I always felt like I never gave enough. The 5$ tier, for example, is barebone to say the least. And the 1$, we won’t even mention it. Unfortunately, I am not an illustrator, and so I can’t easily give rewards like bonus artworks and such. Also, while I do try to work on writing a small project on the side, my productivity output is really limited. My priority is A Promise Best Left Unkept, and writing is only one of my multiple responsibilities. The time it will take me to produce a smaller project is way too long for me to use it as a viable option to improve the privilege of my Patrons.

I think aiming to be the best is only natural. And in order for me to be the best, I feel like I need to aim for constant growth. With a better budget, I can have better artists, better sound effects, better features, you name it. It’s just that, right now—maybe because we just reached the first ending, maybe because of piracy—we’re going into a downward trend. We’re getting closer and closer to the 3k mark, which, at that point, will make it harder for me to pay for the animations. I don’t want to downgrade—I probably won’t, even though that might be a stupid idea.

For something like piracy, there are always ways to make it harder, but those ways are anti-consumer in my opinion. I’m the kind of person that thinks that giving incentives is way more productive than taking privileges away. I just don’t have any ideas as to where to start. I looked around, on Patreon, but didn’t really find much.

I won’t be doing a public release of the game because I plan to release it on Steam. Also, I feel like the quality of my product has value, so I don’t intend to give it away for free.

I also saw things like sharing CG sets in high resolution, but I don’t really see the value in that. Then again, it’s not my thing, so I wouldn’t know.

I’m not a fan of bonus scenes for higher tiers either. I feel like everyone should be able to eventually have access to the same amount of content. Also, since my game is very story-driven, bonus scenes would be kind of hard to create.

I also see that there’s an opportunity to create an even higher tier for those who really want to support me. While it would help with increasing the budget for sure, it still wouldn’t solve the problem of the lower tiers missing incentives. Also, the last thing I want is to look greedy. Then again, maybe that kind of worry is unnecessary and my job should just be to try and maximize the amount that I can make. It’s just not really my thing if I’m being honest.

This post is a bit embarrassing in a sense since I’m pretty much asking for help and ideas. We’re 400+ here, and there are quite a few of you that are more intelligent than I am, so I was hoping that someone would hit me with a great idea. Though, what’s most likely to happen is that there is probably no easy solution to this problem. But, even if that’s the case, just reading your opinion will probably be worth it.