Recently I've suggested a couple of ideas people seemed not to like, they were made with the assumption that there will be a subscription option and a non-sub option.
1. Pay to Raid (which was roundly rejected), or later, "Pay a sub and have the right to form your own private raid/trial/TF group (even if it only contains you, a single toon) without having to use a public-access queue system that works like a line at an amusement park ride, sort of"
2. Restrict the non-subs to dealing through NPC vendors for all swag they need to buy and sell, while allowing only subscribers to access the player-to-player market system directly. Note here that the NPCs would be buying and selling on the market as well. They'd try to sell stuff to players for more than they paid to get it off the market, and they'd buy stuff from players for less than they think they can sell it for on the market. So basically the non-sub is dealing with them and paying "retail" prices (in fake game money, like INF or gold) on everything, but the subscriber can trade at better rates on the auction house, if they try, one assumes.
People mostly disliked both of those ideas, well maybe not the second one so much, but neither one has met with a groundswell of "YEAH! That sounds awesome!"
Now here's my third idea, which I've been reticent to talk about because I can pretty much guarantee everyone will really hate it:
3. Give the subscribers SLIGHTLY higher hard-caps on things like damage, recharge time, etc for their powers.
While it's true this might limit the non-sub in PVP, you can still give them a handicap like allowing them to have a larger team (team of 4 subs vs team of 5 non-subs etc.) For 1 on 1 fights, you might give them some other kind of optional thing to make up the perceived differences, like available temp powers or something etc.
Depending on how hard it is to get anything to the hard cap limit, the differences may well be totally invisible 99% of the time, but they're still there. I feel like being able to compete at THE highest level in the game, period, like you have all of your difficulty sliders maxxed, could realistically have to come at the cost of paying a subscription.
To the extent that this is a form of Pay to Win, I agree that it is. I don't care, I still think it has merit in and of itself despite that fact.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Allow me to be the first hater, then. :-) But perhaps not from the direction you expected.
I would not find this to be a significant enough perq that I would want to pay for it, whether offered as part of a subscription or standalone in the store.
I have to admire your sense of humour in anticipation of replies, though.
Spurn all ye kindle.
You're right, that's a terrible, no good, in your face favoritism idea. All thumbs down.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I guess I would come at this by asking what problem are you trying to solve with all this? Are you worried that the subcription players are not going to get enough value for their sub?
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
In a word: yes
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Your opinion, not fact.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
While I don't ever like people stating opinion as fact, I have to say that in this one case I think Radiac is pretty much an unassailable authority on whether he's worried about something.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Just saying it's only his opinion that he thinks subs will not be worth subbing for. I, and I'm sure plenty of others, don't feel the same.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
But the real question is: Does the alignment system scare him?
Lay your hands on me
While I'm bleeding dry
Break on through blue skies
And take it high
I'm sure other games can be used as examples but I'll talk about Elder Scrolls Online's new hybrid ESO+ subscription system because I'm currently playing it and it literally just started a week ago.
In case you don't know ESO just switched to a B2P format. Everyone has to buy the game to play but after that you can either play subscriptionless (just buying things in the cash store if you want) or subscribe to their new ESO+ deal. As a ESO+ subscriber you get 1) a monthly allotment of Crowns to buy stuff in the cash store 2) full access to any future DLC updates and 3) +10% bonus to XP, gold, crafting research, and inspiration. I honestly don't know how valuable the DLC thing will be (because they haven't released any of those yet) but the other two benefits are for the moment worth it to me. There's no "pay to raid" or any other "pay to win" aspects to the cash store (at least so far).
If CoT can mirror something like this it'll probably be fine. I see no need to limit/restrict anything in-game to sub-only players.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
lol don't get me started...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
While I appreciate the thought into monetization, I am in the hopeful crowd.
The goal is not to hook up every subscriber so they can blast the f2players. The goal is to set the various price points at the optimum level to have a fun, populated and viable game through years of development.
If a f2player quits, that's a bad thing.
Let's give segev, DR tyche and crew the chance to make their proposal on how to pay for the game. They are the builders and owners. At best, we are enthusiastic contributors
+Infinity
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I would say that there are no such things as bad ideas...after all that's all they are, ideas! as such, posting of new ideas on any given item is a good thing. even if the devs opt to go another way at least the idea was put out there for consideration. this is especially true since we know the devs routinely patrol the forums here. :)
regarding the subject at hand regarding the monetization of the game...I think this has been covered pretty well, and while I have my ideas on what I would like to see I have entered a wait an see mode. I know that the dev team is hashing this through on their side and will eventually post up something that they believe is fair for all parties involved. will I like it? I dunno...I could love it or hate it with every fiber of my being...but till then, I choose to believe in our devs and the choices they make. They have yet to do anything that makes me believe that they will steer us wrong in this department. so I wait....patiently... well...not to patiently...cause I wanna play now! ;)
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
And this is an obvious worry for anybody putting together a monetization strategy. I talk with no inside knowledge on this, but I think your concerns are noted and shared by some people on the team.
Personal opinion - the full sub should be all the mini-subs at a cost of say 75% (pulling a figure out of the air) of the cost of buying them individually to reflect the fact that some people won't actually want all of them, but will want enough to think "can't be bothered to pick and choose, just get the full sub".
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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sooo...if I DO want them all can I have it at 50% (another figure pulled form the air). :p
mini-subs? interesting.
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
I think actually Segev called them micro-subs, but they are suggested in other threads.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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What exactly is a "DLC update"? Is that some kind of new content that's going to roll out in the future, like a new zone or TF or raid or something? If the subscriber is getting "full access" to it, and it's content, then the non-sub is being denied that access, are they? Is that denial of access permanent, or only temporary while the new thing is considered new?
The knock on that is that it erects a paywall in front of some content and as such divides the playerbase. Even the subscribers lose something when that happens, because they have fewer people to team up with to do that content, if they are inclined to do so. This is the argument that people leveled against Pay to Raid, and as such it's perhaps not the SAME as Pay to Raid, but is in the same spirit, i.e. you're paying ongoing fees to be allowed access to some content that's there.
If I'm wrong and this "DLC" is not some form of new missions, zones, raids, TFs, etc, then what is it?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
THAT doesn't scare me, but close-up pictures of insects do *shudder*. ;)
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
so I see, just ran across another thread where it was mentioned.
and for the record, that wasn't a "no"..... :)
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
On the question of monthly allotment of Stars (or Crowns, or whatever): If we're NOT charging monthly fees for access to new zones, missions, TFs, etc, I'm still not convinced that there will really be enough things to buy with the monthly allotment of Stars (or Crowns, or whatever) to ensure that they don't just start piling up on you. If that happens you eventually get to the point where you've bought everything you might want and are waiting for them to make more stuff you actually want while watching your Crowns/Stars sit there accumulating and collecting dust. Nobody wants that to happen, and it puts a strain on the devs (of a brand new game, in the case of CoT) to make sure the production of purchasable items (and the desire to buy them) outstrips the outlay of monthly Stars by a decent clip. I worry that producing such items will override the long-term need for more and better content to do like new zones, TFs, etc again, ASSUMING we're not charging for that stuff too, which could happen.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
For what it's worth I still think the best item to sell for Stars (to ensure they retain their value and that they don't go unused and pile up over time) is some sort of item that is consumable, and which you can basically never get too many of. People only need so many unslotters and respecs per month, so there's a limit to how many anyone will buy each month. The upside of the Pay to Raid idea (which I already admitted people hate) was that it provided a thing you could ALWAYS spend extra Stars on. Like going to a movie or something, you pay for the temporary, ephemeral experience of doing that thing, whatever it is, and then afterward you're a few Stars lighter in the wallet but you've had some fun.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I firmly believe you need to let MWM decide what is best for them in concerns to their monetization method. I am not sure why you don't trust MWM to do what is best for them. They will know exactly what it is they need to do to make money to keep MWM going. I strongly believe your fears are uncalled-for as times have changed and MMO's have swung away from the direction of Subscriptions. I'm sure there are plenty of studies that will show that F2Play players spend more money on games than the Subscription people do. I'm also sure there will be new ideas for monetization methods, or more improved ideas upon those that are already being implemented today. In MWM we trust!
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
This is the phase of the game where it can be fruitful to throw in ideas. Nobody of us can tell Missing Worlds Media what to do. I too believe they are very competent and will develop a great, if not excellent game. A game I will enjoy greatly.
But then, nobody is perfect. We might just stumble over something noone has thought about yet. Maybe it is rubbish but it could also be the solution they have searched for days. For that alone it is worth it to contribute.
And I share Radiacs worries. Because I want Missing Worlds Media to last and thrive. Knowing that there are smart people working on this helps, but this is a harsh business with a lot of competition. There will always be a risk.
The way it was presented was that all DLC updates would be offered for sale in the cash shop. Any player (sub or free) can buy permanent access to them for a one-time fee. If you're an ESO+ sub player you get automatic access to all DLCs for no additional cost. The only time it matters is if you choose to cancel your sub - in that case you lose access to any DLC you haven't paid for in the cash shop. So hypothetically let's say you're a sub player and there are 10 DLCs in the game. Let's also say you decided to permanently buy 4 of those DLCs. As long as you stay subbed you have access to all 10 DLCs; as soon as you cancel your sub you only have access to the 4 you directly paid for.
As far as what the ESO DLCs will actually be the most likely possibilities are new optional zones that are planned. Currently the game has only used about half of the total land space of the main world map of the game ([url=http://tamrielfoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/map-background-600x337.jpg]Tamriel[/url]) and adding other zones have been strongly hinted at. To put it into CoH terms it would be like adding Croatoa several years after the game launched - an optional zone that wasn't strictly necessary to play the game but still a welcome addition.
For what it's worth the number of free Crowns you get per month as an ESO+ subbed player equals the cost of the monthly subscription (1500 Crowns for $15) so the subscription is effectively free assuming you're the type of person who would have likely paid for a few things in the cash shop every month anyway. Even if you don't use your Crowns for anything else you can throw them towards permanently unlocking the future DLC updates.
Bottomline there's really very little difference between the ESO sub and free players in terms of their overall access to the game. As a free player if you've permanently unlocked all the DLCs you've got the exact same access to everything the sub player has.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
What does dlc mean?
Pretty sure it stands for "[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downloadable_content]downloadable content[/url]".
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I can get behind MWM doing DLC's.
We buy the box, have access to everything in the basic game.
MWM designs new zones with new missions, new TF's, new costumes, etc.
We pay MWM either $9.99 to purchase new DLC or sub and have access to DLC immediately upon creation. Unsub and lose access to DLC unless paid for through C-Store.
THAT is the only acceptable Paywall for content I can get behind.
I really think we also need to get away from calling people Free to Players when in actuality they are Buy to Players. They have to purchase the game first in order to play. I don't know about you, but if I went to a store and bought a game for $50.00 and took it home played it then realized in order for me to finish playing the game I'd have to send the company an extra $15.00 a month........I'd be pretty pissed. I know CoH started out that way in the beginning, but let's face it that was a different time. That was when MMO's were new and we didn't know any better. Now we are in a new age for MMO's. The models have changed. Subscriptions are a thing of the past (Not that I'm all too happy with that mind you). We have to adapt and change with it. Let go of your old ways and learn to embrace the new.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
If this were a game like Wing Commander or Zork that you just buy, load onto your hard drive, then play forever, I would agree that the up-front purchase means what you're saying it means. But those games didn't need an army of developers, servers to give people access to each other, etc. MMORPGs are a different animal, because they require a community. They require an infrastructure to keep them going. I bought City of Heroes in 2004 and I can't play it AT ALL now because NCSoft shut it down forever. Clearly I never really bought that game to the point where I owned it and could play it again 11 years later because here we are and I cannot do that.
The up-front purchase is a rental price on the first 3 months of subscribed access to the game in my book, nothing more. If it were any form of ownership, I could reload CoH on my computer right now and play it, which I can't.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Can you still play your Play Station 2 games on your PS3? How about your PS4?
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
It's funny you mention this point. For the last several months during ESO's transition to its new B2P model there seemed to be countless forum threads debating what the difference between "F2P" and "B2P" strictly meant and people constantly bickering about it. People kept mindlessly saying that "ESO is finally free to play" when strictly speaking it isn't. It is the Internet afterall so we know people will fight about anything. ;)
I read something recently comparing the movie industry payment model to computer games. The idea was that the movie industry long ago figured out how to transition movies from "first run" to "second run" to "cable TV movie channels" to "VHS/DVD" to get the most out of a title during each stage of its overall commercial lifespan. The key is that they get as much money as they can during each stage but then move on to the next lower tier.
Only in the last 5 or 10 years have computer based MMOs started figuring out the advantages of that transitional model. Many games first start out as subscription based because it generates the most money possible for the game company. Once they transition to F2P/B2P it often makes less money per person but it potentially attracts more players willing to pay the lower costs. So I don't really see the MMO subscription model as a dinosaur of the past as much as a viable transitional period in the lifespan of any game. Games like ESO seem to be making the most of that kind of transitional plan.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
In the beginning of the MMO days, it was easier for companies to sell their games on Disks for people to install on their computers and run. They didn't have as much storage for use back then as they do now. Back then Servers weren't as big or fast as they are now. There was a lot more involved in running a MMO than there is now. Servers are much faster, can store much more information, are more self sufficient, are smaller in regards to size and room needed for them. Programs can be downloaded now due to the fact that most people now have Broadband internet vs. Dial-Up, there is more storage on HD's than there was back then, programs have evolved to make programming much easier. It's now possible for MMO's to make more money from people buying things through the Cash Store than it is to make people pay for a subscription. These are facts. Times change, evolve or get left behind.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I certainly don't deny any of that. I've been in professional software engineering for decades so I'm very familar with how things have changed technology-wise.
I'm not going to assume that the "traditional MMO subscription model" will always have a place in every game and it's certainly possible that it may go away completely at some point. I'm just making the point that in certain cases there may be situational advantages to having subscriptions be a transitional part of an overall long term plan for MMO monetization. Many current games (like ESO) still offer a version of the subscription model even if it's more of a hybrid version than the monolithic no-choice mindset of the past.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I agree with you Lothic and I wasn't aiming that last post at you. I just think the subscription model itself has to change with the times as well. It can't be what it once was back in the day. Some people can't seem to wrap their brains around this, and it's kind of driving me nuts!
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
The good thing about all of this is that we have a plethora of MMO subscription plans that are live right now that we can watch and cherry pick any good working ideas. Saying that, I want to reiterate that the main goal of CoT is that it is for the community. The sticky bits of how the game supports itself will have to synergize (ha! the first time I've actually used a corporate buzz word and meant it!) with that goal. Our task is to make any payment to the game worthwhile for the customer, not overpower other player's experiences and something that may attract other player's to contribute. I think we've already stated that one of the types of item will be cosmetic stuff (costume pieces, base items, vanity pets, etc.) that do not affect gameplay, but enhance player's enjoyment.
[color=#ff0000]Sound Lead, Bullpen Writer[/color]
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Ultimately I don't believe subscriptions for games are bad in and of themselves. I think what makes them bad is when they are forced on players in mandatory and/or non-optional ways. It looks like the newest games (again like ESO) have come up with newer "optional subscription" schemes that give players the choice to pay as much (or as little) as they want and still get an enjoyable gaming experience.
As Revolution said hopefully CoT will learn/adapt to these latest examples.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Another function of the up-front price which is strictly NOT "buying the game to own it" is the fact that trolls and spammers will get their accounts discontinued per the EULA. IN a world where there is no up-front cost of making a user account, those trolls and spammers can just make a new account every time that happens and they lose nothing. In a game where there IS a tangible cost to create a new account, the trolls and spammers stand to lose money if they get caught. This is a reason to have a "buy price" for a MMO game that has nothing whatsoever to do with giving people ownership of the game to the point where they can play it forever after that. At some point the company may well fold up its tent and kill the game, like NCSoft did to CoX, and when that happens, that game you "bought" ceases to exist in any meaningful sense. You are at best buying a right to access an online resource for as long as the company deigns to provide it to you.
All of that said, I agree that making people pay $50 up-front to make a new user account is strictly speaking NOT "Free to Play" in my book, but I can't control the way companies word their advertizing. Technically it's $50 to open an account and free to actually log on and play after that. It's "No Ongoing Subscription Required To Play", but it's not totally "Free" by any stretch.
But to me, hypothetically, the attitude of "I paid my $50, now gimmie gimmie gimmie EVERYTHING that there is to have." is very unrealistic. The company obviously has overhead costs. It has to pay designers, programmers, janitors, pay rent on office space, pay for utilities, pay to keep servers up and running, pay people to troubleshoot customer technical problems, etc etc. This all amounts to some amount of money the game company needs to earn each and every month it remains up and running and if the game itself doesn't generate that money in some way, there is no reason for the company to keep operating the game at a loss, so the company shuts the game down, and rightly so.
However they actually end up monetizing the game, whether the subscription is a thing or its pay once to create an account and then strictly cash shop after that, I still believe in the power of the repeat business. If you can find a product that people can buy, use or experience fully, then it's gone (i.e. consumables), and if there's no "point of diminishing returns" on that, or it's so high you'll not likely care, then you've got something.
If they monetize like Lothic describes ESO+, then you've got non-subs who don't have to pay for anything ever as long as they set up an account for the up-front cost, then subscribers get access to some more content, like new zones, new TFs, etc. If you took that system and simply added in the ADDITIONAL OPTION of letting people do one TF run for $1 worth of Stars, while there may well STILL be many people who can't afford that or are not allowed to buy anything in the game (parent's said "I'm buying you this game, but you're not allowed to buy anything in the cash shop, ever.") those people can still maybe do a run of a TF now and then if the subscribers need them to tank or heal or whatever for them.
Maybe I'm a full-on subscriber and I have a bunch of Stars laying around collecting dust because there hasn't been any new content to buy for a while now. So I get my SG together to do a TF or raid or something. One guy in the SG, who we need to get the badge we want because he's our best debuffer, isn't a subscriber and can't buy the expansion because of his parents. So I take some of my extra Stars I have and donate those so that my SG mate can do the TF with us one time. I'd do that in a heartbeat. Or maybe the whole SG each kicks in a Star, ONE Star each to make this happen. I can totally see that. Why would anyone want to DENY those people the ability to do that for their friends? I don't believe for a SECOND that adding that feature is going to annoy people to the point of making anyone rage quit. If they don't want to buy that, they just don't buy it, like anything else.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Again this is why I think people are still semi-confused about the strict difference between the relatively new terms "F2P" and "B2P". I think as time goes on more and more people will know/understand the accepted definitions of these terms.
The only quibble for why I think games might be hesitant to allow players to "share" Stars (or more generally cash store currency) with other players is the fact that you could effectively get players having permanent access to everything they want without ever paying for it. As long as you have spare Stars you don't WANT and give them to someone else who would otherwise have to PAY for them the game is losing out on the tiny bit of money they were hoping the player would have been willing to pay.
A game can be willing to let a player play without a subscription as long as there's a reasonable chance that player will pony up some dough in the cash shop. But if that same player can get everything they want without ever paying for optional cash store items then I can see where a game might not have to be expected to encourage/accept that. Sure you might see it as "helping out a friend" but unfortunately you're skirting way too close to "depriving" the game of getting what little bit of money they might have otherwise gotten from the non-sub player.
In a nutshell there's no net benefit to the game company for letting free players get to do things they otherwise would have had to pay for. There's no law that says free players must be able to get access to absolutely everything a game offers for free.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Is there any way we can get an "Ignore Forum User" button??
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
The biggest thing about the "buy to play" model is, as has been noted, the barrier to entry of spammers et al. I would also like to find ways to allow those who already are players to give free trials to their friends; the idea of the sidekick option I've proposed in the past is an effort in that directly. Ideally, there would be ways to get in totally free...to you...but which still had a barrier to entry which meant that accounts are not disposable/easily replaceable. We will likely experiment with the model as the game runs; we are using buy to play initially because that's the best way to cover our up-front costs and get people a big package of things to play with right off the bat. (It also works well with our KS promises, to which - it hopefully need not be said - we are very committed.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Yay
in response to Lothics issues: As I understand the Stars, they will be generated by people paying for them, either buying them one at a time or paying a sub and getting an allotment of them each month, etc. THEN, the player can do what he or she wants with the Stars. For example, I could sell 1 Star for 1,000,000 INF on the auction house if I wanted to, and if anyone was willing to pay that. I get INF which I need for stuff I want to craft, the other person gets the Star(s). As such, non-subscribers COULD acquire Stars via the market, or even via player-to-player trades with other players (like in CoX when you could right-click on a person's avatar and send them a trade request). This isn't necessarily always gifting anything to anyone, I could trade the Stars for other stuff, or just hand them to the guy for nothing and hit "agree to trade" on my side.
I doubt this will cause anyone to buy less Stars or to spend less money, because the per-run cost of the TF, in Stars (which convert to dollars somehow) should be set at a price point high enough that it would cost like more money do a months worth of TFs that way than by simply paying a sub, micro-sub, or buying the expansion pack, all of which might be better long-term solutions over the next year or ten. In other words, the per-run price would be the MOST expensive way to do TFs as a long-term solution, but the cheapest individual TF-enabler available in the short term of just wanting to do ONE run of the TF right now.
And again, I expect there must exist some segment of the population that is not allowed to use the credit card at all, period. Those people might WANT to buy more stuff, but are not allowed to, so they never will. I'm not going to buy some kid I don't even know in RL an expansion out of the goodness of my heart, but I would throw them some Stars once in a while to allow them to tank for me or be the healer in the raid or whatever.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Or maybe the evolving is people have gotten to the point that they believe they deserve everything free. Makes sense, seeing as we have plenty of people who still get their music free (so not paying the artists who made it) and plenty of people who still pirate movies. I work with quite a few people who won't go to movies (and our local theater is pretty cheap for the ticket...not so much the food and drinks :p) because they can watch the movie free online, early if not when it comes out.
These are people who buy 5 dollar coffees daily, but look at the idea of paying 15 dollars a month as expensive.
1 Coffee 5 dollars. Enjoy it for an hour (that's being generous). Let's say it's just one coffee...that works out to 150 dollars a in a 30 day month. 120 dollars if we say it's a 4 dollar coffee.
MMO, play as much as you want when ever you want for 15 dollars a month. That's 50 cents a day.
Now, one can say B2P, but then they're okay with that pay for DLC which tries to surpass the 15 dollar a month profit they had before. But it feeds the mentality of "I bought it once and I never have to pay again" that people THINK B2P is for a MMO.
Of course, then there's those who don't want to pay for any game period, think they should all be free. :p Or the B2P willing to keep themself out of content because it's good enough for them, which makes the game look bigger but doesn't help those trying to do the new content if there are less people on who can play it :p
I don't know...50cents a day for what could easily be 30minutes of play time (an ITF) to 60 minutes play time (if not more) which is not that hard to find in a night, to feel like you got something out of that 50cents you just spent on the day. :p
That all said, I don't care anymore what system they use (I prefer sub) just as long as the game comes out and I enjoy it. If they have a sub option though, I don't want to feel like I'm getting robbed (TOR often made me feel that way).
Seriously.
Devs?
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
What, is there some person on this forum whose posts you simply don't want to see? I'd suggest you simply don't read the offending posts. Or do you want to block PMs from someone (you can do that already.)
I don't believe the Devs are in control of the forum software, although we've been told to expect New Forums Soon(tm).
Be Well!
Fireheart
I'm guessing I'm going to be booed for this idea, but what the hell. How about this: The player buys the game and can either get a subscription and thus access to anything and everything the game has to offer or will offer including everything in the cash shop for no additional cost for the duration of the subscription, or just buy the game, install it, and play it without access to any features of the game that would require a server to make use of. No subscription means no other players, not chatting with other players, no trading, no raids, only the most essential bug fixes, must buy any expansions, cash shop items, and DLC separately if they want them, etc. That way the players can still play the game they bought forever including when the servers are busted and after the servers eventually go down like they should be able to with the property they own and players that don't care much for the social content of the MMO only have to pay for it when they want to make use of that content.
Not that I expect most MMO developers to actually use such an idea, but this would be the best of both worlds.
"I never cared about justice, and I don't recall ever calling myself a hero..."
Radiac has the right idea wrt Stars and how they might wind up in the hands of players who didn't spend real-world money on them.
In an effort to capitalize on human behavior - a desire to trade money for in-game items - without causing as bad a "haves" and "have-nots" disparity as can arise in a "buy your cool gear in the cash shop" situation, our current plan is to allow Stars to be used as currency or as a commodity on the market. We do not intend to create Stars from nothing; every Star in the game will have been paid for in some way, in the material form of real-world money winding up in MWM's coffers. (Exact exchange rates may vary, but MWM will have been paid for every single Star.)
However, if Billy T Najer can't get his parents to let him use the credit card, he still has the potential to access anything in the game, no matter the paywall. He accomplishes this by playing the game hard enough to gather items that sell well on the market, and selling them for Stars. (Or for in-game currency, which he then uses to buy Stars on the market.)
Meanwhile, Sandra N O'Frieteim, who has a day job and a family to take care of but likes to unwind for an hour or three each weekend, can't afford the time it takes to get a good chance at certain rare drops. But her disposable income is high, and so she is quite happy to spend real money on Stars, and spend those Stars to get the items she wants. She'll either be able to directly offer Stars for those items, or at least be able to buy in-game currency, which she can then use to buy those items. She does this on the open market.
So now, Billy's managed to get the super-rare item 2-3 times, and he's selling it on the market. Sandra sees it there, and spends real money to get Stars with which to buy it. Sandra has the super-rare item she wanted, while Billy now has Stars with which to access the c-store, paywalled content, or maybe even pay for a subscription for a month. MWM got paid for the Stars by Sandra, so MWM isn't out anything. The item Sandra bought with those Stars isn't created at her request, but rather by the same mechanism all other such items are created in the game. Therefore, there's no inflation of the rare item count based on how much real-world money people spend on the game. (At least, not directly; if it motivates more people to farm the item, that's just the market at work as it would if the item hit astronomical in-game currency prices.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I like the Stars as fungible currency idea just fine. So there's Stars and there's INF (or whatever it get's named). I feel like all transactions in the market/auction house ought to involve INF paid for commodities purchased. That is, no bartering on the auction house (not even sure that would be possible to code up, really). Player-to-player "I right click on the guy and open a trade window" type trades could be the only real barter interface you have. So the auction house or market or whatever would be a place where you can pay INF for Stars or visa versa, but you cannot pay Stars for other stuff there. That house only used INF as currency and treats Stars as a commodity, like salvage parts, IOs, recipes, etc.
On a different note, a RL friend of mine (in my DnD group) brought up the following problem with the "buy a ticket to do a run of a TF" idea. His thought was that internet jerks can form TFs, and if they're subscribers, that's free for them, then after they get some kids to pay Stars to join the TF, they just dump out after like 5 minutes and leave the paying customers in the lurch.
My solution to that would be to define a point near the end of the TF, like the part where you click on the door to the end boss's map, and have that be the "point of no return". If you quit out of the TF any time before that, you get your ticket to the TF back (obviously, this works even if the rest of the team still goes on to defeat the end boss later, and in that case, the person who left early to recoup their ticket doesn't get the rewards at the end at all). No Stars, mind you, those are still gone forever, but you DO get to keep the ticket that gives you the right to try again on this particular TF, or maybe all tickets are the same and you can go do any of the other premium TFs with it, I don't know. I feel like that would work.
You could even make the TF tickets a commodity traded on the auction house, etc. The only thing being that all tickets that come into existence were originally bought for a set fee, in Stars, from the game company's cash shop. So they never drop at random and the only ones that ever show up on the market are there because some player has one and wants to sell it instead of use it to do the TF. If at some point in the future a given premium TF converts to "free for all" status, the generic tickets can still be used on a different one. If tickets are specific to the TFs that they go to, like movie tickets, you could allow people to exchange old unused tickets to obsolete TFs for different tickets to some other premium TF instead. You could have an NPC box office in a movie theater someplace that does this, or a shady scalper hanging around outside of the sports arena for the villains.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
If MWM has made the fundamental decision to let Stars (the cash store currency) be directly tradable in-game and/or buyable with the in-game currency then so be it. I don't really have an objection to this as long as MWM accepts the position that every Star in the game is initially bought from MWM via real world money regardless of who paid for it or how many times it gets exchanged from player to player.
The specific point I was making was that if Player A (with a horde of Stars) consistently grants Player B (with no Stars) a supply of Stars it may tend to motivate Player B to never buy any Stars of their own from MWM even when they could afford to. Sure there might be a legitimate situational case where Player B is a poor student with no access to a credit card or some such. But as long as Player B can continue getting the "milk for free" there's no reason for him/her to find a way to directly pay for their own Stars even for things that don't involve Player A at all. There should be some incentive for BOTH Players A and B to be paying real money to MWM but I just don't see how that could happen with the "open sharing" system Segev is promoting. To take it to a logical extreme it doesn't seem fair for a few "whales" to be subsidizing everyone else's flow of Stars - ideally everyone should be paying for their own Stars.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Thing is, if Player A is buying Stars and giving them to Player B, then MWM still gets paid for all the Stars spent by both Players A and B. If Player B were buying Stars, would Player A still be buying as many? If he's regularly giving Stars to Player B, then he must not have a personal use for those Stars. (Unless, of course, Player B is providing him some service in exchange for them.) If Player B no longer were draining Player A's Star coffers, wouldn't Player A's purchase rate of Stars decline as he no longer is emptying his own coffers as fast?
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Who's to say how many Stars Player A or B might purchase for their own use when you factor out any player giving Stars to any other player. Just saying it might be better in the long run to be motivating people towards buying their OWN Stars for their OWN use. As I implied with my talk of ESO there are examples of games where they don't even allow players to trade away their own cash store currency to other players and those systems seem to be working well enough. Just something to consider...
Again I'd rather MWM get cash flow from as many people as possible rather than relying on a few "whales" paying for everyone else.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Part of the motive really is to also short-circuit gold-sellers' ability to do so. Sure, they'll still exist, but now there's less incentive to have the professional gold-seller who sells it for real money, since players who want in-game currency can literally buy it for real money through the middle-man of buying Stars which then can be sold on the in-game market.
There still might be professional gold-sellers, but they'll have a LOT more competition, and it might just make it not worthwhile. (Plus, we have a way to encourage players who want to buy in-game currency away from them on top of warnings about EULA violations and cautions that many gold-sellers are actually phishing for your credit card. Adding a, "And you can go here and do it safely and legitimately at true market prices that are NOT 'too good to be true'" clause can only help, I think.)
In addition, it does allow us to have those who can't spend real money still play the whole game.
In the end, I don't see this biting into the sales of Stars simply because those who buy Stars to trade to other players probably wouldn't buy as many Stars if they couldn't spend them on the in-game items in the market. (Even if it's done via the two-step process of selling Stars for currency and then buying items with that currency.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I don't see any advantage to doing what Lothic is talking about with the Stars, personally. I think Lothic and I have to respectfully agree to disagree on this one. No offense intended.
Examples to illustrate my position:
Player A is player B's father. A doesn't want B, who is like 14 years old, to have control of the credit card, so A buys ALL of the family's Stars then parcels them out to B in the game as he sees fit from time to time. A never really get's anything tangible back for "his" Stars, but then that's all part of parenting. B may eventually get old enough to start buying Stars on his own, and if he does, great, or if he keeps letting dad buy the Stars, fine. If dad tells him to buy his own Stars with HIS money when he gets older, that's fine too, but that's between the two of them in any case, not MWM's business at all.
I think the Star-mart can and should be totally agnostic about who is paying for the Stars and who's ultimately using them up. If a guy wants to buy his girlfriend some Stars to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of making their characters "AwsomeMan" and "AdoraGirl" together, then he can do that. The game shouldn't care who's paying the bills, just that the Stars are being bought, have a tangible value in the game, and then ultimately can be exchanged for something the players value in return.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
People who can't afford to buy Stars directly from MWM likely couldn't afford to buy them from professional gold-sellers either. Also if the only way any player could get Stars would be directly from MWM then there's no way for professional gold-sellers to sell them to players.
Just trying to make sure you haven't "let the cat out of the bag" for professional gold-sellers by trying to devise an overly-friendly system for players who can't afford Stars to still gain the benefit of having them.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I've never denied that what you're proposing could be useful for certain players in certain cases.
I'm just not sure that the "openness" your scheme provides is worth the downsides of encouraging people who COULD pay to not pay and the posibilities of gold spammers from finding new ways to buy/sell both the cash store currency and the in-game currency.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think I was unclear.
"Gold-sellers" as I am referring to them go into the game and grind it to gain large amounts of in-game currency. They then offer to transfer large sums of this currency to other players via various means (arranged auction-house purchases, player-to-player direct trades, whatever works) in return for being given that player's real-world credit card information with which to charge an agreed-upon amount of real-world money. (That's the honest ones; the dishonest ones will then try to steal the credit card information for nefarious purposes.)
By allowing people to buy Stars and use those Stars to buy in-game currency from any player willing to sell it, we cut out the gold-seller. There's no need to give your credit card information to a third party. There's no need to log onto a third-party site. Just go to the AH and put your Stars up for sale, and you have bought in-game currency for real money. (Since you probably bought the Stars with real money.)
Does that make more sense?
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Okay, but the Player B's of the world can still go buy more Stars if they need them and have the ability to do so. The fact that Player A was willing to gift some Stars to Player B does not diminish or take away the ability of Player B to buy Stars for themself.
The worst thing I can see happening is the kind of "Brother can you spare a Star?" type panhandling that might occur and be annoying. But CoX had that with INF, so I don't see any reason to make Stars purchased account-bound for that reason either. If anything, just don't let non-subs chat in broadcast channels or send unsolicited private messages. That and the fact that goldfarm spammers can and will be subject to having their $50 account terminated ought to be enough, I feel, though it will require policing by the devs to some extent.
On the subject of the Stars themselves, I would caution the devs not to make the same mistake Magic Online made. They sort of went the Stones of Jordan route and as such they have Event Tickets as their fungible currency, because the players made it that way. Each of their Event Tickets costs $1, so that makes all transactions have to be in "integer dollars" which led to crazy stuff. Lik for instance, if you want to buy a magic card off of a bot, they'll set the price at 0.90 tickets, the when you check out, they take 1 whole ticket and note that you'vew got remaining "store credit" with them, which is just a ploy to get you to come back and buy more stuff later.
I would make the Stars cost like 10 cents or 1 cent instead, that makes them less "grandular" and more "fluid" as a currency.
Another thing Magic Online has is zillions of bots in the chat room advertizing that they will buy or sell cards/tickets. That game has no organized common marketplace or auction house though. Also, what's nice is, you can't see the bots advertizements unless you're in the chat room that allows it, which is a specific place people go to buy and sell stuff. In all other areas you might inhabit, that noise is not there.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
My personal target is approximately one cent per Star. This will vary based on bulk discounts and a few other factors, but that's the rough approximation I'm personally aiming for.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
[sarcasm]Thanks for the history lesson. I've only been playing online games for decades so I obviously didn't know any of that.[/sarcasm]
I've highlighted in red the key problem with your scheme. Your "any player" could easily be the gold spammers themselves who have managed to trade for their Stars via multiple sneaky short-sell trades that'll let them get away with offering any combination of either Stars and/or in-game currency WITHOUT paying MWM a dime.
One way or another you're going to have to limit these currencies in terms of what can be bought/sold in your open market. If you don't put adequate limitations in place the gold spammers will figure out methods to undercut you and make it worth their while. Unfortunately you have not convinced me you've "thought of everything" yet. Please understand I'm only trying to help you bullet-proof this system as much as possible before you get into trouble you might not have foreseen.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The supposed undercutting you're talking about, in terms of Stars, doesn't work like you're saying it does though. In the proposed system, people have the ability to try to buy and sell Stars in the auction house, that's one thing, but for there to actually _BE_ any Stars there to buy, someone has to have payed MWM real money to create that Star in the first place. Stars don't drop at random, they don't get given out as prizes for defeating end bosses, they are ONLY EVER created by people buying them in the cash shop in some way (subscription fees being one thing, one-off purchases being another) and then they are eventually destroyed when people use them to pay for things like costume pieces, etc in the cash shop later on. In the meantime, they float around being exchanged for things like INF, etc but their only genesis comes from real world money and their ultimate fate is destruction to pay for something MWM is selling.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I understand that any Stars that exist in the system has to be first bought from MWM with real money. My point is that once Stars and in-game currency are both "floating free" in the market the gold spammers could (and likely would) eventually figure out ways to manipulate trades so that they can still ultimately make real world money from leeching off the system selling both Stars and in-game currency without having to directly pay MWM for anything.
My point is don't assume this system as proposed would stop gold spammers. The only certain way to stop gold spammers is to make sure Stars can only be bought/earned directly from MWM and CANNOT be gained/traded via the open market. At that point MWM could sell in-game currency for Stars directly: If MWM is already leaning towards having players using Stars to buy in-game currency from other players they might as well "cut out the middleman" by selling it directly. This would give players the ability to "buy" in-game currency safely as desired. The only trick then is for MWM to sell it in their cash store at a price point that would make it too hard for the gold spammers to make a profit and that should be easy enough to determine.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Were going to be able to buy influence/ingenuity or whatever with real money? I don't think I like that idea very much honestly. Sounds like pay to win.
Puny Heroes.
And this thread starts sounding exactly like another thread........
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
To be perfectly honest I don't like the idea either. But again if the idea that "players can trade Stars to other players for in-game currency on the open market" is being seriously proposed then it's only a tiny leap of logic to go ahead and suggest the idea that "MWM should directly sell in-game currency to players via the in-game store". That's the slippery pay-to-win slope people like Segev and Radiac have already hopped onto here - I'm just trying to get them to hop off of it before it's too late.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
If it truly is that simple then I hope something is done. The last thing I want is for people to have the option to get IO'd up without playing the game just by pulling out the debit card. Earning money once at max level for my gear was essentially endgame for me after all.
Puny Heroes.
Star Trek Online has the Dilithium to Zen exchange market ... and it works.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I understand the concerns that everyone wants CoT to stay profitable because that means it will stay, but why are people trying so hard to invent things to pay for. My 2 cents is leaning towards let the Devs make a game that is shaping up nicely to fill its goal of successor to CoX. If they hit their mark they will be able to follow the path that CoX did. The path of dedicated players who feel just fine with not only paying a sub but also buying from the market. With threads like this, I get the feeling that it will turn into a cash grab like some other mmo's are turning into. CoT has at current a following that wants it to succeed (miss COH and the others out there aren't cutting it) and devs who played COH for years and want to make an improved upon model of it. To me, that is a pretty good pair of legs to stand on if not run on.
People need to come to grips with the idea that the "cash store" and the "cash store currency" are systems designed to generate real world money for MWM. While it might be nice to figure out a way to allow everyone to have everything the cash store provides without necessarily forcing everyone to pay for it I submit that there might not actually be a workable way to do that while also keeping the scourge of gold spammers to an absolute minimum.
One of the key points Radiac has used to defend his "tradable Stars" concept is that it could potentially allow one player to help another player access some instance of game content (specifically something like a TF). I'd actually suggest that CoT not include any kind of "temporary content access" like this at all in the cash store. Things like TFs should either be permanently accessible or not. If the game avoids this idea of needing Stars to gain access to TFs/missions then the motivation to grant Stars to other players is greatly reduced or eliminated. Cash store DLCs for a game like CoT should be limited to things like permanent access to entire optional zones or purely cosmetic items. Frankly the idea of having to spend Stars to jump into something as transitory as a TF instance struck me as fairly contrary to the basic idea of what a cash store should be dealing with anyway.
Again I acknowledge the noble idea of being able to "help a friend experience everything in the game". But if you really want to help them out at the cash store level you could always PayPal them some money or otherwise make other arrangements. I simply believe allowing cash store Stars to become a tradable commodity on the open market just opens up entirely new arenas of nefarious possibilities for gold spammers not to mention forcing MWM to miss out on additional revenues they might have otherwise received. Too many Cons... not enough Pros.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Champions Online also has Questionite to Zen and I ended up getting most of my "endgame" gear through the market eventually. I'm not trying to start an argument I just want gear to have more value than just how much real life money you sank into it.
Puny Heroes.
I personally have no real issue with the "pay to win" aspects of the Star economy this presents, but that's just my feelings. As long as all the Stars being traded for that other stuff are originally created by MWM, they're getting their money whether they're selling that stuff directly in the cash shop or not, and that's all I personally care about ultimately.
I don't care if the guy I'm teamed up with in a TF bought all his Augments or grinded for them, frankly, and I don't do PVP or even believe in the possibility of "fair" PVP anyway, so that doesn't matter to me. PVP players can sort themselves into weight classes of "has all the goodies" and "has no goodies" and "somewhere in between" on their own, or if they don't, that's their business. I don't want to do that in the first place, so I don't care how they deal with it.
As for the idea that people could grind for INF then use that to buy Stars in the auction house, then use those to pay for stuff like Sub time or costume pieces, I'm not against that either, as long as the only way to create new Stars is by buying them from MWM. The fact that Stars don't drop at random ensures that ultimately that grinder who got their Stars by grinding is merely trading INF for money to some other player then using that money to play more CoT. Ultimately the money goes ends up in MWM's pocket anyway, so it doesn't bother me one bit.
The fact is, people who know each other in real life can still cut shady deals with each other in terms of Stars, INF, or real dollars anyway, so unless you want to remove all aspects of player-to-player commerce from the game you have to live with this. I don't want a game where I can't trade stuff with other players, so I'm ok with the Stars as described herein, even if it does allow some paying to do some winning or some people to buy stuff they personally never paid the money for. If I want to buy $15 worth of Stars and then trade it on the auction house to some kid to get some Augments, then he turns around and uses them to pay a month's sub, I'm fine with that.
Now, this system really does require a good Star sink for eventually consuming Stars too though, I'm not saying it doesn't. Unless you have some good reliable way of exiting Stars from the system, they'll eventually go unused and start to pile up, and then people stop buying them for money because they can get them cheaper for INF they''ve accumulated over the last few years, and that loses moiney for MWM and that I don't like, for obvious reasons.
I define a "good reliable Star sink" to be whatever will cause people to want to spend those Stars on a repeat purchase basis. Not just new costumes and sub time, which can only be produced/needed in limited amounts and quickly hit a saturation point, but rather some highly desirable consumable product that can pretty much always be used up and then re-acquired and used again, like buying soda-pop bottles or candy bars one at a time from a vending machine.
If you had a vending machine that sold a specific model of blue hat, you'd eventually sell everyone a copy of that blue hat that wants one and before long that machine would collect nothing but dust -- you've saturated the market for those blue hats in the area that machine serves. If it sells something people eat or use up in some way, like candybars, or movie tickets, then it will constantly be getting business over time as people want another candy bar or want to see another movie, or even watch the same movie again. That's the kind of thing we ought to be selling players for their Stars to keep the value of the Star reasonable and to maintain sales of fresh Stars.
To me the most easily convertible thing in CoX that could fill the role of the candybar in this analogy is the Task Force/Trial/Raid. If anyone else can think of anything else that might work well that way, I'd like to hear it. From what I've heard, nobody's terribly enthusiastic about the prospect of having to pay rent on things like costumes, inventory space, character slots, etc. They all say the same thing, "I should be able to pay once and own that forever." and I agree with them. The fact that they feel the same way about repeating runs through TFs etc doesn't surprise me, but ultimately, that product is the closest thing to "repeat purchasable" that you have, as far as I can tell. And those desires to play through those TFs probably ARE driven by a desire for better gear. I don't have a problem with that either. Let people pay a sub for unlimited access to the premium TFs and then let those premium TFs reward them with better gear. Then let the non-subs pay for tickets to individual runs of TFs so they can join a TF once in a while without having to buy a whole sub. I'm all for that. Pay to Win? It sure is. Pay for Content? Yup, it's sorta that too. Sign me up, I'm in.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The method PWE uses in-game money to real money is more designed to keep the F2P crowd spending money then anything else. The exchange benefits the grinder more IMO because they are able to set the exchange rate and grind. Does this method bring money in, yes, but then to make it worthwhile the devs would have to focus on the market more to make the F2P or B2P people want to use the exchange. CoH had 8 years worth of content to spend time on the market. Does CoT have that kind of set up. Most likely not for a while.
Question for you Radiac. Are you floating this idea as a Day 1 implement or a year 2 thing or what?
Quite specifically, the proposed system is designed to accommodate the "pay to win" players (or, as I prefer to think of them, the "more money than time" players) [i]without[/i] creating the usual problems associated with pay-to-win games.
MWM does not, will not, and has no plans to sell "game winning" items in the c-store. I can't promise nothing will ever edge into that territory, but we have a strong aversion to it, so anything that does would be incidental. You won't be able to buy special power sets, for example, let alone buy ones that are just plain better than what you can get "for free."
If you want a "game-winning" item, there are two ways to get it: play the game and earn it through whatever means the game provides it (drops from missions, crafting, etc.); or buy it from another player on the open market.
This is little different from how any game with an "AH" type market works: if you want the item but haven't gotten it from your own playing, you can buy it on the market...if you can afford it.
I'm not trying to condescend nor lecture, but I feel the need to mention this for contextual reasons: The solution many "more money than time" players pursue to the problem of not having enough currency to buy the items they want on the AH is to go to the third-party gold-seller.
If, instead, they can buy the c-store currency - Stars - and sell those directly on the market for in-game currency, they have no need to go to a third-party gold-seller.
Because the items they wish to exchange (ultimately) real money to acquire are not generated by their purchase of them, this avoids the problem that most commonly plagues "pay to win" games: there is no inflation of game-winning items. The number of them stays the same as if it were impossible to buy them at all.
I won't pretend that gold-sellers - particularlly scammers - won't undercut the going rate on the market. If people can typically buy 100 currency for 1 Star on the market, and 1 Star for 1 cent in real life, there will be gold-sellers who will sell 100,000 currency for $5 (twice the going rate). They will do this because they don't value Stars.
I do NOT anticipate people selling Stars as third-party dealers, though I suppose it's possible. It's no more a risk than those who would do so with in-game currency, however.
The reason I believe this system will still be helpful in combatting the problem is that convenience trumps a LOT. Sure, you can buy twice as much currency if you go to that third-party site...but then you have to jump through all the hoops to set up the trade, you have to trust that they really will trade you the currency in-game, and you're running the risk of credit card fraud. Meanwhile, if you just go on the market and sell Stars, you get the currency you want.
Moreover, the usual anti-gold-seller mantras are stronger because we can honestly point out that anybody selling currency for less than it goes for on the market is probably up to something. MWM will not set the price of currency in Stars, or Stars in currency; that will be done by the players. Like any market, it will find its proper going rate. As with anything that seems too good to be true (for instance, if I offered to sell you 100,000 shares of Apple stock at $1 per share, you would rightfully be suspicious of my honesty).
But my real motivation for wanting to see this implemented is related to a desire for everybody to have access to the whole game: I envision a game experience where players with more time than money trade their surplus "drops" for Stars, allowing those with more money than time to get the "cool stuff" they want. And, in the process, those who have more time than money now have Stars with which to buy all the C-store stuff they want and gain full access to the game as well as anybody spending money on it could.
I'm looking, effectively, to take the idea behind freemium games - that the free players provide something to the paying players in the form of an enhanced experience with more people to play with - and expanding it. There is a literal shared experience as free players gain access to the whole of the game by virtue of being valuable to the paying players.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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It does ? the equivalent is a disastrous failure in NW.
There are several problems with it, a particular issue being that when an exploit surfaces, all zen on the exchange is bought up and next to none appears on the market for weeks as the spammers have maximum rate bids for the maximum amount of zen permanently there and are buying items from the zen store to sell and convert to even more ADs.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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Then by doing the stars like that Segev, why not cut out the AH all together and offer an in game currency sell? MWM sets the rate but you eliminate the gold scammer aspect and still provide for the I want now crowd.
I really don't want to start an argument. The way gears worth though is sounding painfully familiar to me.
Puny Heroes.
Because selling currency directly violates the idea of having the in-game items be generated strictly through the playing of the game.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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This idea makes sense to me, and I advocate that it be given a chance to work. It's not like it couldn't be modified later if there is a problem.
I out and out like that this provides an in game de facto currency sink that coh never had. Currency sales in coh went out of the game. With this two transaction system, that in game cash to stars to real world money ends up with MWM which helps CoT survive and thrive.
I simply don't share your optimistic notion here. Any time you give third-party dealers a new vector to squeek out a profit margin from a game like this and it'll happen quicker than it takes someone like me to say "I told you so".
Let's just say I'd rather be proven wrong here than to see you proven wrong - you have far more to lose than I do.
I have a desire for everybody to have access to the whole game as well. I just don't see the harm in making everyone PAY a few bucks for that access regardless of how much they play.
There really is no such thing as a "free lunch" as they say - if this game fails because not enough people are paying for it how is that fair to me, a person who's more than willing to pay regardless of how much time I get to play? It's not "evil" for MWM to get paid for access even if a given player doesn't spend that much time with it. It's not going to be up to you to make sure a player get's "their money's worth" from the game - that's going to be their concern.
Your "vision" leaves too much to hand-waving and pure chance that the market will serve as a proper leveler for this playing field.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Just because the market would "set the price" doesn't not make it effectively equivalent to "MWM selling in-game currency for Stars". Given enough time the market could offer as much in-game currency for sale as any player would want to buy - how is that different from MWM selling it directly?
Frankly I think you're being either naive or disingenuous with all this. Waving your hands and avoiding the overt term "play-to-win" doesn't make what you’re talking about here end up being anything else.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I still don't see how this costs MWM money. Note that the free players still have to spend Stars to get access to cash-shop items, content, etc. Those Stars had to be bought and paid for in real-world money. Money paid to MWM.
What it does is make it so that, even if Sandra N O'Frieteim has bought all the c-store items she wants, she has reason to spend more of her discretionary real-world money. She can use the Stars purchased to buy in-game currency from Billy T Nager. Billy would not have bought Stars even if he couldn't get them from Sandra, because he doesn't have the money to do so. But his desire for them has caused him to look to buy them on the market with in-game currency. His offering currency for Stars has given Sandra a reason to buy more Stars than she otherwise would have. MWM has made more money than they otherwise would have., because Sandra is subsidizing Billy's playing of the game in return for Billy handing her in-game currency with which she can buy items she wants but lacks the time to go get through gameplay.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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MWM is losing money because instead of Billy being forced to find a way to PAY for what he wants for himself he's having to rely on Sandra who does NOT NECCESSARILY have to buy extra Stars for Billy every time he wants something he can't afford. It's a house of cards to think that "whales" helping out "non-whales" will be a net positive for MWM's cash flow. I simply don't buy it. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
[url=http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/18388262?utm_content=external-sso&utm_medium=other&utm_source=App]Latest patch for World of Warcrack[/url] is supposed to be laying the groundwork for this sort of exchange
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
I think you're discussing a separate problem, now: inflation of in-game currency.
Yes, in-game currency has a tendency to increase without bound over time in MMOs. One thing I hope we can manage is to create enough currency sinks that are attractive enough that this problem is more easily solved.
And the distinction between MWM creating currency ex nihilio when somebody pays a certain amount of money, and players having to earn currency through whatever means the game normally allows and then being able to sell it to each other for Stars...
Is that not obvious? It seems obvious to me. Forgive me if I sound lecturing here; I am going to try to explain why it's different.
If MWM sold currency at, say, 100,000 currency for $5, every time somebody paid $5, 100,000 currency would be created.
If MWM a player goes out and earns 100,000 currency in playing the game, however, he is presumably doing it at a pace that is possible in-game. It would be no more a problem for him to do this with the intent to use it on the market to buy an item from another player than it is for him to do this with the intent to buy Stars on the market from another player. The inflationary pressure of somebody being willing to spend real money to obtain the in-game currency (which I will now abreviate as "IGC" from here on out) is significantly less than the inflationary pressure of a player being willing and able to create hundreds of thousands of IGC with a single 15 to 60-second transaction.
In fact, the IGC-to-Stars exchange rate will be based largely on how much IGC exists at a given point in time. Spending Stars to buy IGC from other players has no direct inflationary effect. The IGC you bought already existed in the system. You did not increase its amount.
The natural inflation of IGC that happens in an MMORPG is a separate problem. It impacts this issue, but it is not, itself, caused by this choice being made one way or another. That problem is one I hope to tackle separately, because its solution lies in balancing the ratio of IGC sinks to sources. This is not easy, as evidenced by how little and poorly it has been done in other games.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Except Billy, in this example, [i]can't[/i] buy Stars. So MWM wouldn't get money from him, anyway. And even if Sandra doesn't want to buy his IGC on the market, somebody else probably will.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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+1. This also gives a viable way to control hyperinflation. The question is whether you think that you get more money from every player or if you cut out the gold spammers. My guess is that's a wash. The stars method offers more overall game users and a viable influence sink that could hold back hyperinflation.
It may not work but then it's certainly possible to move to a more conventional funding method
Actually that post had nothing to do with "inflation" or concerns about inflation. Please read it again. You are trying to impose a semi-veiled "play-to-win" system without realizing what you're getting yourself into.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
By making it too easy for Billy to get by without having to buy his own Stars Billy will never be motivated to figure out how to do it for himself. *sigh*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Unfortunately, it isn't actually an IGC sink. Until the IGC are spent on things which are provided by the game in return for IGC (e.g. rent on larger bases, or items vendors have a truly inifinite supply of, or the vendors get ahold of it for their finite supply and MWM quietly cuts a certain amount out of their account entirely), the IGC remains in play. It's just changed hands.
That's part of why hyperinflation hit CoH so hard: the biggest place to spend INF was the AH, not various vendors and other game-controlled sinks. So the INF just flowed from one person to another without disappearing, while more INF was created by normal gameplay activities (largely defeating enemies in combat).
The proposed system would not sink the IGC out until the player who bought it with Stars (or sold in-game items to get it) bought something, not from the market, but from a vendor or expended it on something provided directly by the game (e.g. rent on a living space or "power" for base components).
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Somebody is buying the Stars he's using.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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You still don't get it - If Billy is forced to buy just the number of Stars he needs AND Sandra ALSO buys more Stars than she can use then MWM ends up with more money than if Sandra alone buys Stars. It shouldn't matter to you if Sandra chooses to horde Stars or not - that's her deal. Maybe she bought those extra Stars just to give you guys more money without the expectation of using them anytime soon if ever.
Frankly if someone like Sandra is willing to over-pay for Stars she's probably also the type of player who'll keep playing for a long enough time to earn whatever in-game currency she needs no matter how long it takes her to earn it. Your ideal notion about "more time than money" versus "more money than time" players is fansiful at best.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
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