My delusional comment was not meant for you Tannim.

oOStaticOo wrote:

Well, you are delusional but there is nothing we can say to convince you otherwise. How do you think F2P games keep their lights on? You can go and play NW absolutely free, have access to all the content in the game from beginning to end, so how are they making money to stay in business? How are they generating new content for their players to play? Must be pulling something from their posterior region I guess.

Because NW is NOT making new content in the way CoH players understand the term. A zone with no more than 30 repeatable missions (most in the open world usually click x or kill x, maybe 3 mini dungeons each less complicated than a CoH mission), a dungeon and maybe a raid is not the new zones and missions that CoH introduced with Striga etc and is far less work.

GH wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
For these reasons I would say that if we charge a subscription fee
There is no if. The kickstarter was based on providing a subscription model.

This right here sums it up for me. We've heard the phrase 'spiritual successor' for over a year now and one of the best features from CoX was the ease of subbing.

Now if you want to have a Stars system (or whatever) and a sub gets you X number of stars per month then I'm ok with that depending on how many stars you get and how much it costs to purchase something. Some examples:

Say we get an average of 2 new costume pieces a month at the Store and we get enough stars to buy one for free. I'm ok with this because I don't feel the need to have EVERYTHING but those that do can buy Stars for cash.

The hot new TF is almost ready to go live. Pay some Stars (say your monthly stipend's worth) and unlock it a month early! Again, patient people (or folks so busy they won't have much play time) can wait and the 'buy it nao' crowd can get it early.

The AE has gone live. Playing missions in the AE and creating new missions will earn you AE credit you can use to unlock new AE stuff like missions, maps, etc. Or you can use Stars for some of this at some exchange rate of Stars for AE credits.

Your base needs sprucing up. You can pay Inf for a new piece of art or pay Stars for it.

I'm fine with all of these. I'd be REALLY fine with them if I could earn some or all of them some other way (like unlocking capes rather than paying Stars). However, I am NOT ok with charging for anything like regular content unless it's through the F2P model. Anyone who can't scrape up the sub fee can nickel and dime their way as they see fit, I'll pay my sub and move on.

ANY hint at any sort of increased reward, chance of reward, quality of reward or anything like that if an additional fee is paid, I don't care how trivial it is, you'll see CoT turn into Sim Riot. You've already seen a glimpse of the pushback from this sort of thing. Don't underestimate the ire of the hardcore people who ponied up an average of $100.00 during the KS.

I understand the need to earn money doing this. I'm sure many of us were thinking 'if only CoH had earned more, would they have shut it down?'. However I'm sure you understand that your player's faith is a fragile thing. Asking a subber to pay a fee, no matter how small, for TFs or raids feels like charging me to get into the theater and THEN charging me to see the film. Don't do it. Don't hint at it. Don't even dream of it. The results could be disastrous.

Comicsluvr wrote:

... Asking a subber to pay a fee, no matter how small, for TFs or raids feels like charging me to get into the theater and THEN charging me to see the film. Don't do it. Don't hint at it. Don't even dream of it. ...

You forgot one!
[img]http://i.imgur.com/djENsim.png[/img][img]https://p.gr-assets.com/540x540/fit/hostedimages/1381585258/5068439.gif[/img]
Heheh. ;D

It is unlikely that a "full subber" - whatever that winds up meaning - will have to pay fees beyond their subscription for access to what they want. What, precisely, "full subber" will wind up meaning goes to the heart, I think, of the underlying assumptions behind some of these seemingly irreconciliable differences of opinion.

If we go with a "microsubscription" model, one possible definition of "full subscription" is "paying for every microsubscription available." Another, possibly truer one could be "paying for every microsubscription available plus some extra for a positive flow of Stars to spend on Starmart items."

This would be roughly akin to being a subscriber in CoH: you have all the stuff a subscription can get you, plus a stipend of Stars to spend on Starmart items.

Unfortunately, "we don't have stuff set in stone yet" is going to be true for quite some time. This is because, until we get much, much closer to release, even things we heartily plan for may wind up changing due to better ideas of how to implement things, the exigencies of developments we didn't foresee, or simple constraints that emerge from other design decisions we make.

Simplicity will be a goal when it comes to making an understandable subscription model. As I said, one of the easiest-to-find options will be a subscription package that contains all microsubscriptions for a single monthly fee. To those uninterested in customizing their subscription in any way, this will be little different from a "buy a subscription" option. Just select it, give payment information, and go play.

oOStaticOo wrote:

When will that be? 20 years from now!?! I'm telling you, give us something. Like I said, even if it's not the final product we need something. People can only go off of hopes and dreams for so long. You NEED to nail something down. NOW.

Something?
Like what?
You wan to see a textured 3D model running around a semi done city or two,, using one or two travel powers?

Tannim222 wrote:

I'm curious is the follwowing scenario ok?
Purchase of the game: grants access to standard content from 1-50 (assuming 50 is level cap), all the missions, task forces, etc... which are labelled "standard" are available. Comes with free sub time.

If a monthly stipend of Stars is included then ok.

Tannim222 wrote:

Mission Packs are created. These could be a series of missions, task forces, even multi-team-raid content. Subscribers get access to the mission packs, no additional purchase necessary.
Mission Packs are avaiable in the StarMart for individual purchase by non subscribers.
Mission Pack content is designed in a way to be inobtrusive to the game world. No, you can't entere here without $$ stuff.
Anyone who has access to the paid for content can invite whomever they want granting team members access to the content under the owner's pass.

Not ok to charge for Mission Packs(MPs). This is NOT b/c I don't value good story telling. I'm just concerned that the customer base is really not expecting to pay for mission-based content unless it's under the covers of an expansion release. Expectations are key. I can't say it enough.

Players spend hours-upon-hours talking about power sets, min/max builds, factions and NPCs. Outside of TFs and Trials, they don't do that for mission-based content.

Yet, if it's decided that MPs will indeed be sold then sell them well after Issue 0. Also, they should be new missions not extensions of Issue 0 missions. Exceptions that come to mind would be for 1) the CoT equivalent of a signature story arc, and 2) missions based upon newly introduced NPCs, factions or themes.

I certainly can foresee a forum meltdown if MPs are sold before the game is "fixed" and completely "playable". But I also foresee some trouble if they are sold before the customer base has become enamored with the game. So address the Issue 0 bugs, push out hot QoL changes, slide some more costume pieces out there (maybe even a few powersets), and then sell the MPs.

Tannim222 wrote:

Then there is a Premium level of access to the game which tracks all money spent on Stars in the StarMart (this includes sub fees). The Premium access grants a level of access between non-sub and subcription levels of access. Perhaps customizable by a point system of some sort which can be designated by the player can choose what they specifically unlock once they reach certain point thresholds.

Forgive me, but this seems to vague for me to grasp. I don't understand the relationship among "Stars", "point system" and "thresholds".

Tannim222 wrote:

Finally there is Guest-Authored content to which everyone would pay a fee to purchase in order to cover the costs of hiring on a guest author which would be someone of public repute (as earlier described, comic book writers, artists, internet-fame, authors, etc...). Those who purchase can still grant team members access under their pass.
Would this be acceptable?

Ok. This is an easy sell IMO.

Radiac wrote:

Minotaur wrote:
oOStaticOo wrote:
Well, you are delusional but there is nothing we can say to convince you otherwise. How do you think F2P games keep their lights on? You can go and play NW absolutely free, have access to all the content in the game from beginning to end, so how are they making money to stay in business? How are they generating new content for their players to play? Must be pulling something from their posterior region I guess.

Because NW is NOT making new content in the way CoH players understand the term. A zone with no more than 30 repeatable missions (most in the open world usually click x or kill x, maybe 3 mini dungeons each less complicated than a CoH mission), a dungeon and maybe a raid is not the new zones and missions that CoH introduced with Striga etc and is far less work.

I hate to be an "I told you so" (and if I am, I'm not directing that sentiment at Minotaur) but this sounds an awful lot like they're letting the quality and quantity of their new content suffer. I personally have to wonder if that has happened because they aren't monetizing it well enough to make it worth their own while to make GOOD content and plenty of it, and only roll it out when it's really something worth paying for in the first place.

It's also a function of a game where you beetle up to max level as fast as possible and then the game starts.

Catherine America wrote:

Very good, Tannim. Thanks!
I like the idea of options available on the "premium" branch.

Thanks. Keep in mind again these are only my opinions and in no way reflect any direction the business team may take.

Alright, this took a while to chew through... lots of things have been said and even if I might be a little late on some points, I have a few things to say and I believe they are important.

There has been talk about Guild Wars 2 or in short GW2. Their model to archieve income was used as an example for a profitable "Buy to Play" MMORPG. I played it a lot and I want to share my expieriences with you here, especially on the gem store. As disclaimer, I am a little out of touch with the game, I have not played for a couple of months now.

What is their shop like? First you can buy gems for Money to spend in their store, convert them to ingame currency or convert ingame currency to gems. But the rate for the latter is rather high, my style of gameplay earns me not enough ingame currency to consider this much of an option.

The gem shop contains various items for style and convienience, but they also have lockboxes for wich you can buy keys. True, you get a few keys as reward for completing story chapters, but the droprate for those boxes is rather high, I have thrown away whole stacks (max stack size is 250) of them, while I maybe got aroud 30 or so keys by playing 9 characters to max level and beyond.
Some other thing is, minipets don't get sold seperatly, you get a package of them wich gets you three random pets of variable rarity. They are tradeble, so if you want a specific pet you can buy them from another player, wich can get quite expensive if you happen to like the rare ones.
Some of the boosters offered apply a minor buff to performance affecting character stats, they can make you tougher, boost your damage or chance to find magic items. And some services do offer ways to get crafting materials more easily, like ressource nodes in your home instance or a pick-axe that spawns extra materials otherwise relatively hard to get and sellable at quite a high prize.

On further notice, sometimes the admins seem a bit distant and indifferent. When reporting issues and bugs you never get feedback and it took them months to fix a rather annoying clipping problem that not a few players expierienced. This, I feel, gets especially frustrating when you talk about it with a WoW- player, whos response was: "I had a issue like that too, reported it, got a response from a GM and after a few hours it was fixed." Furthermore farmbots you reported you could still see running their skripted path a whole week later.

As for the community they seem to attract with that: I met a few really nice people there, but seems to me most of the players are farmers. The biggest guild on my server is openly dedicated solely for that purpose, get loot, get money, as fast as possible using whatever means there is. Yes I know, farming is not as such a bad thing, but in this game I saw and felt it everywhere. I marked the days on the calender when I met a random player willing to do teamplay. And I do not mean to say I did not get team invites, but the feeling that everyone played just for their own benefit was very strong. It was a very popular strategy to just stand there and spam all AoEs available into events, just to tag as much opponents possible since every enemy damaged by you gave you a chance for loot, when he died. Most of the time all you got to see from the enemies was their dying animation.
This is personal expierience and might be a problem of the two servers I played on or just bad luck. It is however personal experience gathered over a long time, I played it since the beta events and at first thought it was the best MMORPG ever made. And I do not regret buying it, the content they have created is stunningly beautiful and shows a deep love for detail. But their monetisation model should be examined very carefully before taken into consideration.

Okay, so much for that.

As for some of the ideas thrown around in this thread, some of them are very interesting and promising, even if they might still need work.

For example if we take Radiacs idea. The setting is: there is content you will have to subscribe for. I do not want to advertize for a paywall, honestly. I'm kind of indifferent on that matter, I understand both sides. But in a fictional setting, where the content behind a paywall exists, those tickets would be a good idea. I especially favor the version that would allow you to play said content for one day, sold quietly in their own section of the star-mart. A bundle-deal where you would save a little would be nice, but buying just one should be definitely there.And I envision said content as instance, you could only enter through a menu option, players who do not have access would not even see, so they will not get tauntet everytime they try to enter the zone.

Please note that I am not saying the paywall should be there, only that those tickets would help in reducing it's impact IF we should get one. I also think everyone who has subscribed for the paywall content should receive free tickets to give away to friends, as additional bonus. That way you could save some up and then invite all your friends to a 'behind the paywall'- sunday or something like that. Everyone has fun, no one needs to stay online no matter what and the rest of the week you could go back to play the normal content. And I do not believe there will be a lack thereof. Most of the game should not be paywalled, even in an example like mine. If you could only play the normal content until max level and then got nothing to do escept you pay for it. I too would be seriously affronted, no doubt about that.

As for the paywall itself... I am not fully convinced it would alienate so many players. Especially if we consider that a full subscription is not the only model. Segev's microsubscription idea is very interesting and offers the possibility that the paywall would be dramatically reduced in impact. We are all used to subscription fees of 15$. That is quite a high wall to climb. But with segevs idea, the 15$ get splittet up between all the things a subscription would normally cover. And access to the paywall content would not be half of that. If you just want to play that content, you might end up paying a fee of 3 - 4$ per month. Could be more, could be less, just my guess here. But to me, that looks a lot less negative, considering there are even ways to circumvent having to pay real money at all. The only ones left out of that are people with no income, no free time to play and earn ingame currency to buy stars off of other players and no friends with at least that much income (or free time) to get some free tickets.

Still, I do not say that we should have paywall content, I have read some arguments against it that I well understand. But I wantet to offer a different viewpoint, it might be not as good as some say, but it might also be not as bad as some of you fear it will be.

I hope you're just using placeholder numbers, there, GH. CoH ran with a $15/month subscription, and that was considered LOW by the standards of MMOs. With the way inflation's going, calling $15/month a "premium" as if it were a high-priced subscription may lead to a great deal of disappointment.

We don't yet know the monthly costs we'll need; it will depend on a number of factors on which we're still gathering data. But I would be very surprised if anything resembling a "full subscription" were less than $15/month. I'm concerned it may have to be higher than that, depending on our population. It's one reason we're looking so hard at how we structure our cash shop; there's a limit to how high a subscription can get before people just won't pay it, and if it's set too low for the population of the game, the game won't be sustainable. Using a cash shop typically proves more lucrative as it increases the number of players by lowering the barrier to entry, but allows those with larger pocketbooks to support the game more strongly by giving them something on which to spend that cash.

Izzy wrote:

brainman wrote:
Segev wrote:
I would be very surprised if anything resembling a "full subscription" were less than $15/month. I'm concerned it may have to be higher than that,

How high are we speaking here?

If i had to guess, Segev Does Not want to allow a Monthly sub that includes Everything (not pay an extra penny for anything else, ever). Even if it was $20+, cause he believes MWM will be loosing money if they ever do that. :{

True that! That is the exact feeling I get as well. Which is why I am now hesitant about this whole thing.

I do believe it is not a matter of if he wants to or not but what he can do. They have not yet determined the costs they will end up facing and so there is no way of ensuring a sub fee of 15$ will work. I understand the concerns, but I think we should wait until there are facts presented.

Izzy wrote:

brainman wrote:
Segev wrote:
I would be very surprised if anything resembling a "full subscription" were less than $15/month. I'm concerned it may have to be higher than that,

How high are we speaking here?

If i had to guess, Segev Does Not want to allow a Monthly sub that includes Everything (not pay an extra penny for anything else, ever). Even if it was $20+, cause he believes MWM will be loosing money if they ever do that. :{
Well, he might actually be concerned with there initially only being 15,000 - 16,000 players on average (with a little growth) in the 1st (and 2nd) year. So the $15/mo wont cut it if it turns out that way.

A full sub may include all content, but it doesn't mean those people won't still spend money on other things. I subbed in CoH, but didn't expect unlimited storage for example. A full sub can and will still be augmented by one off purchases, to me it's just "all the things payable monthly".

I honestly do not know for sure where our "necessary average revenue per player" will fall.

I suppose the thing I need to keep reminding myself and others is that there was no such thing as a "100% full subscription" in CoH at the end. If you were a subscriber, you had a stipend of c-store cash precisely because there were things in the c-store which simply being a subscriber did not "rent" you.

The best I can do is give some very rough - and I do mean VERY rough - estimates of where I think the pulse of customers willingness-to-pay might lie. The dirty little secret of selling anything is that something is worth what people will pay for it. If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is [i]not worth creating[/i]. Not until either the costs to create it come down or the desire of people for it rises.

The absolute maximum - and this is in the "getting too expensive to expect many people at all to pay" range - that I can see is $17/month. I doubt we'd make money there because we'd probably not actually retain enough subscribers. Honestly, that's about twice what many MMOs charge per month. Subscription-only MMOs go for $13-$18/month, with discounts if you pay more in advance. Sony Online Entertainment actually offers "all-access" to all of their games for $15/month or $120/year. WoW is $15/month, or $13/month if you buy 6 months.

I therefore do not expect us to be able to compete if we charge a "subscription fee" that is supposed to be our top-of-the-line that is more than $20/month, and THAT is relying on the extreme desirability of targeting our product to an audience who will pay a premium for it. I'd prefer not to rely on such things; not only is it a gut-wrenching way to repay our customers' loyalty, but it simply is not competitive.

All the games I've looked at have a c-store, whether their subscription is required or not. For those (like WoW) where the subscription is REQUIRED, there is not even a stipend provided for the c-store (as a general rule); there's no need, since the incentive to pay for a subscription is playing the game at all. Those where there's a free-to-play option tend to have, on top of other perks, a stipend of c-store cash along with a subscription, allowing players who subscribe to eventually get anything they want without paying more than their subscription fees...although they still are encouraged to spend more for c-store items if they don't want to have to wait.

Notably, mission/quest content (either total access or early access) is an explicit subscriber perk in SOE games (e.g. EQ and EQ2) and DCU, amongst others.

Precisely what you get for a subscription varies by game, unsurprisingly. Of course, thsoe which mandate a subscription give you "able to play the game," but some offer more c-store incentives (it's basically a discount club for the c-store), while others offer unique access to rented costume pieces, or the above-mentioned content access, etc.

As I've stated, I'm less of a fan of rented costume pieces, character slots, and other things which lock characters. I know others feel that is the only valid incentive to keep people paying a subscription. Personally, I'd rather they pay for their subscriptions based on a desire to be able to keep doing more cool and fun things rather than out of a fear that they'll lose access to something in which they've invested a lot because of one or two things that happen to be suddenly paywalled. That feels at least as much like extortion to me as does "well, we're offering a game they want more than those other MMOs, so we'll demand $20/month!" It's the kind of "now we've got 'em" hand-rubbing villainy that is actually bad business because it upsets and alienates customers.

The last thing I want is for somebody to stop paying a subscription and decide, "Well, my character is locked...I guess I won't play this month." I would much rather him say, "well, I can't do the newest mission, and I don't have as much inventory space, and I can only chat with my good friends who have me on their personal chat list...but I can still do missions with friends and get out there and play the game." That way, they're still playing and, when their financial situation allows, they will look at the game they've been playing consistently as a place to spend some of their now-surplus cash, gainig conveniences they'd lost.

I don't want to charge $20, $25, $40 per month. I would love the OPTION to exist for players to spend that much! Such high-spending players help sustain the game for a broader base of lower-spending players! But if we set ourselves up such that that was "the maximum" or "the full subscription," we'd upset those who couldn't afford it, possibly drive them off (especially if it's the only tier we offered). There have been suggestions for tiers of subscriptions. The "microsubscriptions" are just the logical extension of that. Buy what you want. Simplicity is re-achieved by offering pre-built packages of microsubscriptions - probably 1-3 of them - which are cosmetic packages to create "tiers" of subscriptions.

To me, the ideal situation would be akin to how players can feel with existing "subscription" models: they have subscriptions which give them a number of perks, but there's always something they might want in the c-store, and even if they have a stipend they either have to anticipate saving up for it or spend more cash to get more c-store currency to get it now. This isn't exploitative; it's always offering something more so that nobody gets bored. Anticipation, I've learned, is as important to people's enjoyment of a game as anything else. (It doesn't replace other elements of quality, but it also is not replaced by them. It is critical.)

To borrow a phrase, when engaging in the entertainment industry (which we are), "always leave them wanting more." The corrolary is, "always have more coming up...soon."

Believe it or not, I actually agree with Radiac for once. If you sell the box at $59.99 per person and then charge a $19.99 a month Subscription I don't think that would be too much to ask. Even if it is, I am sure that most of the CoHers will be willing to pay for it. I'm pretty sure they would like to see MWM flourish so they can once gain have a home and a proper Superhero MMO to play.

I recently started playing Warframe again and something that I like from that game could also be a good idea for CoT - Login Rewards.
http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Login_Rewards
Basically each time you log in (but no more than 1/day) the game rolls a random reward based on the number of consecutive days you have logged in. More than 1 day NOT logged in and it resets the counter.
Rewards include XP (Primary Weapon XP, Secondary Weapon XP, Melee Weapon XP, Warframe [armor] XP, money, Weapon/Armor Blueprints, etc).

For CoT this could also include single/multiple use unlocks as a way for players to not have to purchase access to some features.

If the game does this any type of XP reward (if any - pure XP, XP Booster, etc) or item reward should go to the first character you log in with.

Just an idea :)

All I know is that by now, something should have been put down regarding what MWM wants to do going forward with monetization. All this talk about "How about this, or this, or this?" is not getting us anywhere fast. If anything it is frustrating us. It's time that MWM starts making some clear decisions about it and give us an idea on where it is going. If you want some feedback, that's fine. Just give us a poll of some kind with a few options to choose from. Not everybody is going to like everything, but there may be some things we are willing to live with over others.

Segev wrote:

I suppose the thing I need to keep reminding myself and others is that there was no such thing as a "100% full subscription" in CoH at the end.

(...and a lot of other good stuff...)

I'm with you on your thinking here, Segev. The CoX sub model at the end worked well for me because it straddled that line between "included with" and "choose what to get with your points this month."

2 questions:

1) You mentioned other games offering pre-paid discounts, e.g. pay sub for a year in advance. Are you looking at offering this for CoT?

2) Should I ask what the current thinking is on some variation of the old veteran rewards is, or is that a can of worms better left for another time?

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Here's what has been set in stone on monetization at this time;
We will have it.
The market is changing around us all, what was established as hard-set rules even a few years ago now is unheard of. To determine today what monetization model will work next year is just asking for trouble.

So far, this is the only thing set in stone after 2 years of development. I'm sorry, but that last statement is crap by the way too. Any smart investor that puts money into some kind of project will first want to see a business plan designed to show how they plan on making all their money back. Before you do any kind of a business you have to have a plan laid out. Of course nobody will know what the market and the economy is going to be like from year to year, but you can't wait until the last minute to figure out what you are going to do to make money.

That does not instill confidence in the people investing in your project. As I've said, we've heard a lot of promises and words being spoken about things that they'd like to see done. Now we're being told it's going to take longer than they thought. How much longer? We don't know. Next I feel like we're going to be asked to fund another Kickstarter because all the money has been used up and now they need more to keep going. Then more things are going to happen that were unforeseen. More delays.

This is why I say, "Show us something." I don't care if it's an incomplete rendering. Just show us something that will say, "Hey, see. We're working on stuff and it's getting closer to being done." Give us an idea on what we can expect to be paying for the game. It really shouldn't be that difficult to say, "We are going to have Subscriptions.", "We are not going to have Subscriptions.", "We are going to have a combination of Subcriptions and F2P.", "Here is what will be included in the Subscriptions.".

You seriously can't tell me what a Subscription will have? Seriously? I call B.S. There are plenty of examples as to what people pay for a Subscription. You can't tell me you don't know what to include in a Subscription. You can't put down a couple of options considering Subscriptions and let people vote on which one they feel is the best one they would pay for? There doesn't have to be a price put down for them right away. But the options CAN be stated.

Would you pay for Option 1 Subscription package? Option 2? Option 3? List options in the Option 1 package, Option 2, etc. People vote on the one they like the best. Cool. We now have a plan on what we will consider a "Subscription" package. Now we'll figure out how much to start charging you for that package. It might be divided up into smaller Micro-Subscriptions to make it easier for some people to decide on what they want to pay, or you could just buy them all at X price. How flipping hard is that!?!

Static I understand your position but a little perspective is required here.

It is not unheard of for an MMO to take upwards of 7 years to develop and launch. Much less be upset with changes in schedules in one that is less than 2 years in development.
Your typical MMO during this time of 7 years has a full time team of paid people working at mostly a centralized location,

In 2 years we have had to create a start up company which resulted in multiple splits into the current company and game. A company staffed by unpaid volunteers spread out across the US and other countries. We switched engines from one that was older and complete to one that is itself still in development. Sometimes this results in us tosssing out something we have worked on to be remade or in the process of being remade.

We know people want to see work in progress and work is being done and we wNt to honor those whom supported us to get us this far so please keep all this in mind when patience begins to wain.

As to the specifics of what is going to be offerd within a specific monetization model i think you would be hard pressed to find any mmo developer that would release any specifics within this stage of development much more thN what has been said.

Segev wrote:

I hope you're just using placeholder numbers, there, GH.

Why? [devils advocate.. not being a really horrible person, really]

Segev wrote:

CoH ran with a $15/month subscription, and that was considered LOW by the standards of MMOs

Well.. actually.. I played CoH, it was a multi million dollar game run by a large, professional studio that was making a profit. You want more than that as an indie developer in an oversaturated market from a bunch of ex-players that have largely moved on.

So we kickstarted the project and gave you some money which should have covered licences and setup costs. After that you're probably all working unpaid and want to get paid. Which is right but at the same time.. CoH.. big studio.. making a profit.. ran on $15 a month. You should be coming in below that surely? At $10 a month from 100k players you wouldn't make enough money for what? To give you all a living wage from day 1? Well that has to be expected surely.. you get us up and running and start making a profit / wage when you get 500k players. You all retire and sell your shares and live on converted oil rigs when you get 5 million players.

And you're really going to say "inflation" is what makes this game cost $20 over every other listed games lower monthly cost (not counting all those free to play MMOs)?

Segev wrote:

there's a limit to how high a subscription can get before people just won't pay it, and if it's set too low for the population of the game, the game won't be sustainable

What if that limit is $10?
The answer is you need a bigger population, not a larger subscription. And a series of price points where things happen. If you don't get enough money, they don't happen. You can't expect to launch with everything and go "there you go, there's everything, that will be $20 a month" because what if we go "lol"?

Segev wrote:

If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.

I'm stealing that.

By this metric, the game isn't currently worth creating and maybe that should be looked at. Are you releasing this as MVP (minimum viable product) or are we getting a fully blown game on release?

Radiac wrote:

I for one find it in very poor taste

I should charge you for my cleaning bill.

JayBezz wrote:

So how do you, as a company, collect more than the rather limited $15 per month and still keep a subscription model with a low threshold people feel comfortable paying?

What I might do:

- Buy the Box for $30
- Play for 2 or 3 months
- Subscribe after 2 or 3 months with a plan thats close to $12/mo , if i feel there's something good about CoT
- After 8 to 12 months, if i feel things are getting better, and its worth it, I will upgrade my subscription to $16/mo, or if i dont feel things are going well, i might downgrade my subscription to $8/mo (or F2P)
- I will stick around for 2 years to see if kinks are smoothed out, balanced, etc.... and decide to stay or go.

- Micro subscriptions? Err, well... I'll most likely Seldom get any. One or Two at MOST! Its just on Principle that I AVOID things like that. (Maybe from past bad experiences? I cant put my finger on it.) I just feel like extra subs are like Leeches all over me and I have to get rid of as many as i can before they suck all the blood from my body. :/ Sowwy! :<

Well, I MIGHT consider a micro-subscription if it fits my playstyle. What do i mean? If one particular micro-sub gives me access to TF/Arcs/ or other content that i ENJOY play on Tank/Scrapper/etc... (melee like Archetypes - my preference), across all my ALTs, then I Might pick up that micro-subscription. :)

- Store Bought Items? Yep, no issues. Well, i'm more likely to buy things that i can reuse on ALTs. and try and ignore Store items that are One Time use, and maybe locked to a single character.. sometimes. :/

Now you know.. Im not just lazy, but also a little cheap, too. ;D
Hmm... I might put that in my Signature. :o

Just like GH said, If you don't have enough people playing the game I don't care how much you charge you'll never make enough to make a profit. If you try to charge more money than 15 dollars a month you won't have enough people willing to pay for the sub to play the game. Then you will be relying solely on cash purchases from the cash store. We've already noticed that there are trends of people not liking that system anymore. There have been some articles published that show that people are starting to wise up to the F2P system and are becoming increasingly unhappy with it. As Radiac has mentioned as well, the more people you have that buy the box then the less you'd have to worry about charging for a subscription period.

So your key is people. Making people happy enough to buy your product and keep buying it. Do you remember the early years of AOL? You paid a fee to have X amount of free minutes to use to get online and chat. If you used up all those minutes they charged you 2.95 an hour. I know several people, myself included, that would sometimes rack up close to 1000 dollars a month on AOL. That was ridiculous! People started realizing it wasn't worth it. So what did AOL do? A genius move by turning that payment into an unlimited access plan. When they did that, millions of people signed up for it. They started making MORE money than they did with the 2.95 an hour deal. People were happy. they were willing to pay that much.

I can imagine there were plenty of people that thought AOL was basically "Handing over their price-tag gun to their customers". AOL took a gamble, and it worked. After that, everybody started doing the same thing. Much like MMO's. Now the trick is to find that gamble that will pay off for MWM. Right now everybody is doing Subscriptions with F2P and a cash store. There are only a few MMO's that are using the Subscription method only with a cash store for QoL purchases. Perhaps the trend is slowly swinging back to the Sub method. Perhaps it is moving back into the B2P method. Perhaps the best bet is to go with both. The trick is finding that sweet spot that people will say, "Yep, I'll spend my money on that." Money is increasingly difficult to spend right now with the Economy not as strong as it was. People don't make as much anymore. People don't have as much disposable income as they used too. So you have to find that spot where a person is willing to give up what little disposable income they have and feel good about doing it. Right now, less is more in the eyes of the consumer.

Segev wrote:

Now, your microsubscription package overall costs $6/month: $2/month each for perks C and E from the original "$8/month" subscription, and another $2 for that one perk you wanted that was originally part of the "$16/month" subscription.
All the "microsubscription" model has done is broken the 10 perks available down into a menu of items A-J, and assigned a price to each, rather than bundling A-E together in a subscription package, requiring you to have them before you can get F,G, and H, and THOSE before you can get I and J.

My head hurts. Me no like calculus! :<

Let me try this again, because this really is no more complicated than the "$8, $12, $16" tiers that GH talked about.

We are comparing two models. Model 1 has 3 "tiers" of subscription - $8, $12, and $16. Model 2 is "microsubscriptions."

Model 1:

For $8/month, you get perks A, B, C, D, and E.
For $12/month, you get all the perks in the cheaper subscription, as well as perks F, G, and H.
For $16/month, you get all of the above, plus perks I and J.

Model 2:

Perk A costs $1.50/month.
Perk B costs $1.50/month.
Perk C costs $2.00/month.
Perk D costs $1.00/month.
Perk E costs $2.00/month.
------------------------------------ Everything above this line is what would comprise the $8/month subscription tier
Perk F costs $2.00/month.
Perk G costs $1.00/month.
Perk H costs $1.00/month.
------------------------------------ Everything above this line is what would comprise the $12/month subscription tier
Perk I costs $2.00/month.
Perk J costs $2.00/month.
------------------------------------Everything above this line is what would comprise the $16/month subscription tier

When presenting this to the players, we could even present Model 1...and then offer those who want it the option to add or remove perks they do or do not want without having to change tiers. In reality, each "tier" is just a preset package of perks.

Well, you're assuming the "cheapos" would have paid $8/month for A, C, and D, when that's all they wanted, rather than saying "meh, it's not worth $8/month for those things, and I don't care about B or E."

If all you want is A, C, and D, why SHOULD you pay for more than that? On the other hand, if all you can afford is $3.50/month... well, now you can get A, C, and D, and MWM gets $3.50 each month it wouldn't get if it charged $8/month minimum.

Segev wrote:

Let me try this again, because this really is no more complicated than the "$8, $12, $16" tiers that GH talked about.
We are comparing two models. Model 1 has 3 "tiers" of subscription - $8, $12, and $16. Model 2 is "microsubscriptions."
Model 1:
For $8/month, you get perks A, B, C, D, and E.
For $12/month, you get all the perks in the cheaper subscription, as well as perks F, G, and H.
For $16/month, you get all of the above, plus perks I and J.
Model 2:
Perk A costs $1.50/month.
Perk B costs $1.50/month.
Perk C costs $2.00/month.
Perk D costs $1.00/month.
Perk E costs $2.00/month.
------------------------------------ Everything above this line is what would comprise the $8/month subscription tier
Perk F costs $2.00/month.
Perk G costs $1.00/month.
Perk H costs $1.00/month.
------------------------------------ Everything above this line is what would comprise the $12/month subscription tier
Perk I costs $2.00/month.
Perk J costs $2.00/month.
------------------------------------Everything above this line is what would comprise the $16/month subscription tier
When presenting this to the players, we could even present Model 1...and then offer those who want it the option to add or remove perks they do or do not want without having to change tiers. In reality, each "tier" is just a preset package of perks.

So I want to spend only $5.00 a month. That gives me..........A,B,C.......C,D,E.......C,F,G.......C,I,D.......I,J,D......ummmm........where was I?

More than likely what you'll see Radiac is transaction G includes the ability to run TF/Guest Author content. Not a pay per run basis.

oOStaticOo wrote:

So I want to spend only $5.00 a month. That gives me..........A,B,C.......C,D,E.......C,F,G.......C,I,D.......I,J,D......ummmm........where was I?

Honestly? That's not how people shop, generally.

People look at the list of things, and say, "Oh, I'd like that," and then consider whether they can afford it.

Rather than looking at the menu and seeing, "Well, I want to spend $5. What will precisely fill that amount?" it's more likely they'll look at the menu and say, "Okay, what do I want? Now that I know what I want, what can I get for $5?"

There will be suggested packages. The idea that the only way to avoid confusion is to FORCE players to spend $8 to get A, B, C, D, and E, and refuse to take the $5 from the guy who only wants to spend $5, is ... well, I reject it. People aren't that simple-minded, as a general rule. They're able to shop.

Heck, even saying, "If you want to spend only $5, you can only get A, B, and C!" is simpler...but it's also far less satisfying for the player who would rather have C, F, and G (as you noted is another valid combination).

Shopping with a menu is easy, as a general rule. You select what you want, and if it's too much money, you take things you want less out of your "cart."