The thought has occurred to me that people, when the subject of monetization comes up, tend to talk about three basic things:
1. Pay to Win (however they personally define that)
2. Paywalled content (and again, how that is really defined is another thing)
3. Pay for improved "quality of life" features.
and that these three categories might just be different places to put the same total amount of "suckiness" you have to throw at the non-subbers to get them to want to pay a sub.
CoX attacked on all three fronts after it went hybrid. You could buy IOs in the store, there was content you had to either subscribe to access or buy outright (Incarnate and Signature Story Arcs), and the non-subs had limited-or-zero access to things like the market, crafting, certain chat channels, etc.
I don't know whether or not this was going too far on the part of NCSoft, but I don't think it was suffering from the problem of not going far enough. Non-subs felt the sting of being non-subs in that game, as far as I know.
Assuming your preferred monetization scheme makes people pay for one or more of these things, it's probably going to attract its share of haters. On these forums, it appears that the preferred thing is (3.).
So to what point does the quality of life of the non-subscriber have to be lowered relative to the subscriber who pays $15 per month in order to make the $15/month worthwhile? If you took CoX and gave the non-sub people the Incarnate system, the tips and alignment system, and then took away the IOs that were for sale in the cash shop and the super packs, what MORE QoL stuff do you need to take away from the non-sub to make them $15/month worse off than the subscribers were? And can you even go that far in that category without making them just stop playing out of sheer annoyance at that point?
Because as a company, you'd NEED to make the one set of parameters $15/month better than the other, or else the subscribers feel like total suckers, or else maybe you have to lower the monthly cost to something less sever to make the sub/non-sub divide narrower. I don't know. I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved CoX and wanted to support the game, but that only goes so far with people. You can't offer basically the same product for two vastly different prices and expect people to just pay more, willingly, while they get laughed at by the shoppers who got it way cheaper (or free), can you? You're making a fool of your best customers if you do that.
Frankly my biggest reason for wanting to pay a sub in CoX was the Incarnate system. Not just the added powers and stuff but mostly just the right to participate in the trials themselves. They were fun and people ran them on a semi-regular basis on my server and it was what the fun crowd was doing mostly, when not soloing.
I already tend to waft in and out of different games, Magic: The Gathering, CoX and Warhammer 40,000 being the three big ones since I was in college, also some boardgames. While wafting away from a given game, I generally ignore it for like 6 months to a year; when playing it, I generally play it a lot for like a year or two. I feel pretty confident that if CoX had made the Incarnate stuff available to the non-sub people, I would have gone non-sub after it went hybrid and that would have been $180 they never got from me.
I feel like the QoL drawbacks you introduce to the non-sub will either be one of two things: A) no big deal, they just learn to live with it, or B) quit the game because it too much of a drag without paying a sub. Either way, you're not getting them to pay a sub.
I feel like they will either "like" the non-sub experience enough to keep playing like that forever, or "hate" it enough to just stop playing entirely. After you factor in the existence of people who don't have the money to give you in the first place (teenagers who need to clear it with the parents, etc) and people who as so cheap they take all monetization schemes as a personal challenge to find a way to optimize without paying, what are you left with?
This makes me think the game might be best served as being subscription-only, but maybe make the monthly sub cost lower, like $10 or even $5 or whatever get's you the most money per month. That way people either like the game and all pay the same amount to play it, or don;t like it that much and just don't play, period. Either way, there's no unfairness, division of players, annoying QoL suckiness, pay to win, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I have thought about this a lot lately.
As long as you have a subscription based game with the fixed rule that everyone who wants to play it has to pay the subscription, it seems to be fine with most people. However that is a model that might not attract many new players very fast. I do not know if Missing Worlds Media can survive without expanding quickly. There has to be enough money for every one of them to make a living and to invest in expanding City of Titans. And maybe invest in further projects as well.
The problem with the 'buy the box and play for free'- model with a real money shop and various varietys of subscrition/ microsubscription deals on top of that is that in some way or another that will offend the principles of players.
With a full subscription model what you get for your money ist something that almost everyone surely can agree on is worth their money: the game.
But as long as there is the option to play without a submission, there is need for incentives to pay that submission. And each and every incentive can offend players. Some do not want to support pay to win and might view things as pay to win, that others will not. Some feel offended by paywalled contend. Some hate Lockboxes with passion. And you have to use lots of bait to get lots of subscribers. Which in turn could mean that they annoy and affront a lot of potential players too, who then might leave entirely.
And sometimes I ask myself 'Are we overthinking this?' A lot of other games do have paywalls, lockboxes, pay to win and other nasty things. Missing Worlds Media have statet that there will be no pay to win, which was the worst of the lot, as far as the comments on this forum indicate. Should we not have enough trust in the target audience to assume that they can handle some limitations, if in turn they get to enjoy the game without having to pay a submission? After all, this is done for a open, friendly and solidly united community. And those kind of people we should try to attract in order to expand that community.
The QoL items I can see that would be beneficial to the Subscriber and might possibly make the Non-Subscriber want to Subscribe would be this:
More character slots.
Increased storage capacity. This would include enhancements, inventory, bank account, auction slots, and inspirations. (Or whatever equivalent CoT calls them)
Early access to new things.
Subscriber rewards due to length of time subscribed.
Vanity items that don't affect game play.
Larger selection of costumes.
Larger selection of animations.
Larger selection of emotes.
Personal apartment or small base.
Mission teleport power, or assemble the team power.
Minor bonus powers like Sands of Mu, Black Wand, or Nemesis Staff.
Monthly stipend.
Access to all communication channels.
Send and receive E-mails.
Player-to-player trades.
Priority for support in the game.
Create chat channels.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Radic you really, really, REALLY need to drop this attitude. CoT is going to be a B2P game with an OPTIONAL subscription. The goal of the game should be to entice players to spend stars. Whether they buy the stars as needed or get them as a stipend from subbing it does not matter. Making the non-subbed players' experience sub-par is more likely to make them leave the game rather than subscribe. And guess what, that will hurt the bottom line. You really underestimate how much money can be made through the micro transactions, don't throw away these customers just because they don't want to play a monthly fee. A lot of these people can easily spend the same amount in a year as a subscriber.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Personally - not speaking right now in any official capacity - I like the gist of your list, oOStaticOo. The one I have issue with is "player-to-player trades." I worry that restricting that to only subscribers will inhibit the socialization aspect and actually get in the way of encouraging players to shift from free-to-play to paying players. Did you have something more in depth than an all-or-nothing model in mind? If so, I would be interested to hear more about the specifics of what you can see as the break-down of player-to-player trading as something one might pay for.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I thought that Player-to-Player trading could be handled something like this:
Free would be limited to a small amount of money trades and item trades. Something like 99,999 per trade for money, and perhaps a 1 item trade. While still possible to do a Player-to-Player trade, it could take a lot of time and be a minor annoyance to do so. Upgrading to a Subscription format would unlock the ability to trade the maximum amount of money and several items between players, therefore making it more convenient to have for trading.
There is still a work-around for Free players in the Auction House. People have used that to set up trades and transfers as well. The drawback to doing that would be the cut MWM would take from the Auction House if they chose to do so, much like CoH did with their 5% fees.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm really glad I'm not the only one that thinks this.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I would add that communications channels mix is important to get right for the f2p crowd. They should not have the ability to communicate out on any channel that can spam but should be able to listen. They should have the ability to PM and respond.
I can't imagine a world where some people would pay an optional subscription to the tune of $5-$15 per month without getting something that the non-subs don't get. Can you?
Even if you subdivide this into micro-transactions with Stars, a subscription is a subscription, and if it exists, you need to justify why those people are regularly and repeatedly paying that money every month, which means giving them something the non-sub doesn't get. Thus the non-sub is somehow subject to some amount of lowered quality of life, which is lower ON PURPOSE because they're not paying a sub. If the fact that I'm calling that "intentionally baked-in suckyness" offends anyone I'm truly sorry, but that seems like a reasonable term for describing it, to me.
Otherwise, paying a sub is pointless. It serves no purpose. I mean, an optional sub that get's you LITERALLY nothing that a non-sub doesn't get for free is not a purchase of any kid, it's just CHARITY paid to the game devs by the subscribers. Nobody is going to do that so you may as well not have the subscription option at that point.
Now, if you are telling me that you know FOR SURE that this game will not have subscriptions AT ALL, and that everything will be microtransactions with Stars (which is an IDEA that has been mentioned by some people, including devs, but by no means the one and only thing they're DEFINITELY going to do, at this point), that's a different ball of wax altogether.
Since that idea HAS NOT been definitely finalized, as far as we know, and since the Kickstarter mentions Subscriptions in the support level perks, the subscription, optional or not, sounds like it's going to be a thing. Logically, the mere existence of the optional sub implies that it pays for something that the non-subber doesn't get. Or put another way, the devs are withholding certain things from the non-sub that they're giving to the subscriber to justify the subscription cost.
Even if all it amounts to is more inventory and character slots and better chat channel access, etc, that TO ME, is "intentionally baked-in suckyness" being foisted upon the non-sub to justify making the subscription a viable option, whether you like that term or not, I feel it is apt.
Of course, on another thread, certain people have already posted their strategies to circumvent that particular monetization tactic, namely, you just buy like 3 separate accounts, which we assume costs $150 total, and then you have three accounts worth of free slots for stuff forever, no rent, no subscription, just shuttle stuff back and forth between the various mule toons on those accounts as needed.
In order to eliminate that particular strategy, you might need to reduce the non-sub people (or the people not paying Stars for rental on additional character slots, if you prefer) to only ONE character slot per account. That sounds a little drastic to me, but then a person can still alt a lot by deleting one toon to start over on the next one, and then just mail yourself the INF, swag, etc to transfgerr it from on to the other, or have a friend help you do the transfer, etc.
I'll just trying to point out that when people take a hard line stance on Pay to Win and paywalled content, they often cite QoL as the better thing to monetize, but I think we're seeing that even that argument assumes that the QoL differences between subscriber and non-subscriber might get too severe and cause the non-sub to just stop playing. The QoL as a monetization scheme argument then has devolved into "just charge people for stuff everyone can live without, don't make us pay for anything we feel we really need". That, to me is a great way to ensure that nobody has to pay any money to the game company ever, after buying the game.
And the argument that the $50 cost of the game should pay for everything forever is just as really weak, I feel. I mean I'
m sure the cheapskates that hate paying for stuff and the parents that don;t want to pay a sub for their kids love it, but the fact remains that you can't expect MWM to subsist for 10 years on just the $50 purchase price of the game. There has to be SOMETHING else besides that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I will input my feelings toward this whole idea here:
There's a fine balance that needs to be taken into account with F2P and monthly subscriptions. We always have to keep in mind gold farmers, unfortunately.
In my case, I paid monthly for the COX sub since launch, even during the few periods I was unable to play simply because I wanted to support a game I believed in. Though nowadays, I hardly ever sub to a game because even if you bought the game and paid a monthly sub... There are still things that are locked away. Without naming any names, there's one comic-themed super-powered MMO that does this and it bothers me so much that I no longer will pay a sub for that game.
My question to all of you is whether or not Monthly subs should have anything locked away (content-wise, costume-wise, etc) EXCEPT for QoL upgrades which were previously mentioned?
M. Hill
Beezlebub - Freedom
Hillmm09@gmail.com
I would say a stipend of stars greater than the cost of subscription, beta access, and early access to new content/powers/costumes are in and of them selves worth a subscription. The subscription to CoT is really more for us as players to say we are supporting the game, rather than for the game as a revenue generator. Sure the guaranteed constant influx of subscription is great , but it is not as if The B2P with cash store model is a crazy idea, after all Arena net has used it with both Guild Wars games. I am all for rewarding a subscription, but I am against punishing players for not opting for a subscription. It has already been mentioned how the stipend would be used by the subscriber to create their own package of rewards. You choose what micro-subs work for you, and can even adjust it from month to month, or just buy one time purchases if that's what you want. The thing is, a non subscriber would still have the ability to spend their stars on the same things. If the non sub sees the subscription as more value added and decide to sub, then hey, awesome. If they are just completely opposed to paying a sub, but purchase stars regularly that's fine too.
You seem to have this giant fear that if you do not force players to cough up the cash they will just play forever without ever visiting the Star-Mart. I'm not going to say that is imposable, but really, if you like a game, enough to play it for hours on end, enough that you are invested in the game, you will most likely spend money on it. And let's take the hypothetical "buy the game and never kick in any extra cash" guy. He/she is providing something to the game, another warm body at the keyboard. Another player filling teams, trading with players, chatting in the channels, making the game that much less empty.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
In discussing with the NWO team over their pre-PW store model, something they said on subscriptions struck me:
Players who would not buy in a cash store would not buy a subscription either, so you've lost nothing but a small bit of server resources. But their presence makes those who would buy a cash store play more, because they have more people to play with.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Beta access is not something I would pay a monthly sub for. For one thing, the game itself only get's beta tested before it rolls out, whereas the subscription has to be paid willingly by people years after that happens. If you're talking about beta testing new content as it rolls out, why would _I_ pay the devs money to find bugs in _THEIR_ game for them? They ought to find those bugs themselves, or else THEY should pay ME to do the troubleshooting.
Giving the subscribers early access to power sets that the non-subs don't get is a form of Pay to Win, because the paying customers can use those new powers and the non-subs cannot, so the people who paid "win" by having better powers, or even just different powers.
Early access to costumes implies that the costumes will go free at some point and unless I personally need any of that stuff for one of my toons, I'd just let it pass me by. I'm not paying a sub NOW with the expectation that there will be new costume pieces IN THE FUTURE (TM) that I want just to ultimately get a lot of stuff I don't want thrown at me instead. You're charging me for something and I don't even know exactly what I'm buying, THEN you're turning around and giving that same stuff away for free later. No thanks.
As for giving subscribers early access to content, that's paywalling content, isn't it? The people who paid can access the new awesomeness Task Force for the first 6 months, but the non-subbers cannot, that divides the player base each and every time there is new content. If your replay to this is "they can wait, it's not that bad" then my response to that is "so why should I pay a sub?". I"m pretty sure what we're circling around to here is the idea of the game essentially saying to the players "Yeah, people aren't going to pay for subs, basically." and even if your right, in that world the devs should NOT be waving an inferior sub product in front of people saying "You could, like, subscribe, maybe. People do it. It TOTALLY happened once or twice, really.... no? Yeah, nobody subscribes, it's a joke." You're only abusing people when you do that.
In my opinion, none of the things you listed there are worth a continued ongoing $15 monthly subscription in and of themselves, or even taken collectively in total.
syntaxerror37 wrote: " The subscription to CoT is really more for us as players to say we are supporting the game, rather than for the game as a revenue generator."
All I can say is, that's your view of it, I disagree. I do not want the subscription to be essentially meaningless, and I don't think it is.
syntaxerror37 wrote: "I am all for rewarding a subscription, but I am against punishing players for not opting for a subscription."
This statement contradicts itself. If you hand out ice cream to everyone who payed a sub, the non-subs would complain that they were getting "punished" for not subscribing by being denied ice cream. ANYTHING you give to the subscription player that you do not give to the non-subber can be looked at as a punishment of the non-sub, and fromt he point of view of the non-subber, I gotta believe they'll look at it that way.
The system of selling Stars and then selling stuff for Stars assumes there will be a fast enough influx of desirable, purchasable items for Stars that the customers will likely never run out of things to buy with Stars. I ran out of stuff to buy in CoX's cash shop very quickly. They can't seem to produce stuff like that fast enough, and what's worse, in the attempt to do so, the content development may well take the back burner while the stuff they're actually getting PAID to produce (i.e. the new funny hat of the month) get's priority. So now we're letting the development of new Task Forces and stuff drag behind on its timeline while we devote more internal resources toward making more useless kitchy crap to sell to people because that's all we can charge for before getting accused of Pay to Win or Paywalling content.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It has the hidden advantage in meaning gold sellers' lives are made more expensive or awkward.
If they have to transfer 10BN 100K at a time, this will cramp their style. If they have to pay a sub, it gets more expensive to be banned.
There are ways of getting round this for long term F2P players, example - you can freely trade with anybody where you've both been in the same SG for at least a month.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
This wall of text confuses me, both in intent and in substance
Makes sense to me
Your point would be more valid if the gaming world didn't already have these features now
All these things you're complaining about have been part of the MMO paradigm for years now. It's not some mad scientist experimenting, it's a proven revenue generating system that's been proven over several MMOs. It's a successful business model and MWM has already said they've discussed the details with other MMO developers. For whatever reason, you seem to believe that MWM is trying to reinvent the wheel when they clearly are not
Lay your hands on me
While I'm bleeding dry
Break on through blue skies
And take it high
It makes sense to me too. But this statement is one that says to me, "the non-subbers are a good thing to have around even if they aren't paying a sub" which is true, but that is 100% __NOT__ the same thing as saying "we should give the non-sub everything that the subscriber gets in all cases all the time". In fact, that statement leaves open the question of what to give the subscriber for their money and what to withhold from the non-subber because they're not paying every month. If there are subs and non-subs (which is an assumption), I see no great advantage in making the sub itself basically useless because you gave away everything people actually want to the non-subs for free already.
Dr. Tyche's statement allows for the welcoming of non-sub players in a world where there is either an optional subscription or some kind of micro-transaction model in place. However the game decides to monetize is up to the devs, and however they do it the non-subs (or "people who never buy anything in the cash shop) play a role in making the game fun for everyone, as long as they're they're not gold farming or trolling.
I'm talking about the sub or non-sub account dilemma and how to tweak the rules in a game where those two options exist. Where do you draw the line at what the subs get that the non-subs don't get? In a world where there are sub and non-sub options (and that might not be this game's model, ultimately) you still need to define what the sub gets that the non-sub doesn't get.
So far nothing anyone has mentioned on here as "This is what the monthly sub should get you" has added up to anything that would convince me to personally pay a $15/month sub. $5 maybe.
Costume pieces, to me, are the stuff of one-time microtransactions because you only buy what you want to buy. Character slots are basically not something you can rent out to people over time, they end up being a "pay once to unlock it" type thing too, mostly.
Soloists don't care about chat channels, or talking to anyone else most of the time really, heck a lot of players ignore chat while zooming through missions, even I do that.
I can see crafting and market access being a thing, but then the more you deny that stuff to the non-subs, the more of their swag never get's sold on the market to other players, so that makes the game economy suffer needlessly and then we all lose, subs included.
There's a whole thread about what an inventory slot is really worth, but long story short, you can probably save money by just buying a second account and NOT paying a sub on that one either.
No amount of veteran rewards stuff will work because you have to wait YEARS to get that stuff. That's a nice thing to do as a "thank you" to show appreciation of the veterans that did subscribe, but most people aren't going to pay a sub just for that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
You assume much.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I think you are right, Radiac. We all want this game. And we want to have it for a long time. And we are worried it might not last, so logically the way Missing Worlds Media makes money from City of Titans is crucial.
The dilemma is the box prize that everyone has to pay to get, has to count for something. You are entitled to expect something out of 50$.
But someone that reguarly pays a subscription for years is pumping a lot more money in Missing Worlds Medias pockets. 180$ per year, if we go by the example of 15$ per month. I for one am willing to submit for quite some time, as long as the game turns out to be as good as it looks it is going to be right now.
But surely 50$ plus 180$ a year is worth more than 50$ once. A lot more, I believe. I will feel cheated if all I get is a little quality of life stuff, some badges and a costume peace with "I have subbed for 5 years and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" written onto it!
I personally will sub anyway, because I see that as my chance to make up for the fact that I missed the kickstarter and support this project at least a little. But that is an attitude that is probably not too common. Not common enough to make a living from, I would assume. I am by far no business expert but to pay just one person a halfway decent wage you would need at least 200 subscribers (please correct me if I am wrong here). And so I would be a lot less worried if we had something worthwile for a subscriber to offer.
Only be able to Respond to a PM initiated by an already subscribed player?
But that's a lie. I've known plenty who would pay the sub and not buy in a cash store. :p
No. Full PMing power. My only concern with F2P communication is that they not be able to spam efficiently. I want them to be able to get quickly onto teams
For that matter, I personally paid a sub AND paid for stuff in the cash shop in CoX after it went hybrid. I paid that sub and bought that stuff in a game where they were *GHASP* selling enhancements like Positron's Blast set pieces in the cash shop (OH NOES! IT'S PAY TO WIN! CALL THE POLICE! SOUND THE ALARM!), and randomized Super Packs, which were basically lockboxes, AND putting the last 10 levels worth of content behind a paywall (Incarnate System).
I'm actually VERY flexible when it comes to monetization because for me it's not a matter of what I'm paying for as long as I feel like the value in what I'm buying is worth the cost, to me. Was Incarnate System plus Alignment System plus Cimerora plus unlimited chat channel access plus that other stuff they had in CoX for the full sub price of $15/month worth it to me, yes it was. If you make the Incarnate Content, Alignment System, and Cimerora available to everyone for no monthly cost, my price point for a monthly sub just dropped. You ain't getting $15 out of me for what remains in that sub package, maybe $5, but not $15.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
What is this $50 for the box price i keep seeing?
I hope thats not the price. Cause when i think of a game costing around $50, i think of console games that you Buy Once and nothing more paid.
Maybe a DLC here and there.. but thats all.
This might infuriate parents, as well as a casual gamer, to pay a Full Blown "Call of Duty" multi-million production, $50+ dollars,
and not really have all the things in the game, unless you pay AGAIN, Monthly No Less.
This is the Miss-Perceptions that has to be dealt with.
If it was me, a lower box price, would be recommended.
Please Dont Build a Tall wall and try to scale that Tall wall right out of the gate. :/
I'm not sure which analogy to use here, but I fear in some players mad craze to keep out gold farmers, they might keep out potential casual players too.
Sorry, i keep thinking you were trying to prevent Gold Farmers from using the Chat System with this mechanic. ;)
I think that $50 is the ks contributed level to get a copy of the game. I think the price of the game should be high enough to deter gold farming spam and support the health of the game.
Figuring that out is the trick.
Radiac's most recent post about level of service inherent in sub being related to the price point for the sub is absolutely relevant and on point as well.
I've read that the "box price" will include 3 months worth of subscription ([I]assuming[/I] a sub of $15 per month and [I]assuming[/I] the "box" price of $50 - you are paying $5 for the game proper) So it's not just the game you are getting - but a lot of other goodies as well.
Oh - and console games cost upwards of 60 to 70 dollars nowadays. PC gaming is a bit cheaper.
Now that's what I recall a TOR Dev saying...those who pay for a sub are more likely to spend even more on the cash shop.
Which in my first TOR guild, I can believe it. Had a few members who not only paid the sub, but then spent at least an additional 100 every week or two. O.O
At the risk of repeating myself (which to be fair is what most of this thread is anyway, so I'm in good company :-) ) I agree that if MWM wants people to subscribe, the sub needs to appear to be 'worth it.' What will make it so will vary from player to player (personally, I found the various perqs of subbing in CoX to be just what I needed), but it won't help increase sub numbers if there is so little difference between non-sub and sub that subscribers feel like suckers. I want to [i]want[/i] to subscribe, if you get what I mean; not feel that I'm just doing charity work.
However, we may be proceeding from a false premise. While it seems likely from the KS rewards that there will be subscriptions, we don't know that MWM necessarily wants to promote them. They may decide that the real money is to be made in store purchases and that subs are merely a side income stream designed to placate CoX dinosaurs like me who are used to paying for one. That would make me sad, but I can't deny it's within MWM's rights to design their business the way they see fit.
When MWM is ready to unveil their payment scheme there may be very little focus on subscriptions. We should be prepared for that.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I'm really trying hard to not pay too much attention to this thread. I'm afraid it will end up like the other thread. I do have to say though that things don't work the same way as they did when CoH was alive and well. When CoH went into the sunset phase, there was a beginning in the shift of how things were being done with MMO's. Over the years it has evolved. I see that evolution still changing today. By the time MWM is ready to put this game out, I can see it changed further. So all these outdated ideas of trying to hold on to a Subscription model that punishes the person who doesn't subscribe needs to be left in the past. The idea isn't to punish people for not subscribing, but to make the game MORE enjoyable for those that do. And yes, there is a difference. The game will still be playable and fun if you don't subscribe, but it will be even MORE fun if you do.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I agree that the subscription may very well never be a thing, and that MWM has the right to monetize that way if they want to. If that's the case, I personally would prefer that they just do "Up front purchase plus cash shop" in an open and honest manner and not jerk people around by having a largely useless, token subscription for idiots who like that sort of thing "just `cuz".
If the devs feel the subscription isn't going to make money, then just don't have them. Where that leaves them in terms of the Kickstarter perks I don't know, but I can tell you this: if the three month subscription time your $50 up front purchase get's you is mostly useless, people aren't going to feel real happy about paying $50 for the game just like they aren't going to like paying $15 per month. A junk subscription product is junk whether it's bought one month at a time or as a three-pack with the purchase of the game. At that point you'd have to include some kind of collection of one-off purchases or some number of Stars with the $50 purchase of the game.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I believe that, in all cases, the actual people who choose not to pay the sub cost, if there is one, will complain that there are things that the subs get that they don't get, DESPITE the fact that they KNOW they chose not to pay for that stuff and knew they weren't entitled to it for that reason. If you give ONE little kid a piece of candy as a reward for getting an A on a test, then the rest of them will immediately start crying, not because they got Bs, but because the DIDN'T get candy, and there was obviously candy given out to other kids, right in front of them.
Rewarding one person is not the same as punishing someone else, but the people who DIDN'T get the reward still feel excluded. Human emotions being what they are that is unavoidable.
Some people say things like "No paywalling content! EVAR!" and "No PAY To Win, EVAR!" and then ignore the fact that that still leaves you with a system where the subscriber (if there are any subscriptions) has to get $15 worth of quality of life stuff over and above the non-sub, because that's all there is left to monetize after you take away the pay to win and the content paywalls.
So how do you make the subscription $15/month better than a non-sub using ONLY Quality of Life differences? You have to do things like SEVERELY limit carrying capacity, market access, character slots, chat access etc. Not just "you get one less slot here and can't chat in this one channel" but REALLY dramatically different sets of rules and controls. I mean, noboidy needs 20,000 inventory slots, or 5000 character slots, so just giving the subscribers MORE for their $15 doesn't work. You can only give the subscribers meaningful amounts of QoL stuff upto a point, and anything over and above what you can actually use is totally superfluous. So the upper limit that exists on meaningful amounts of QoL stuff forces you to LOWER the amount you give out for free, to make the subscriber QoL actually fell $15 better than that. And then non-sub people feel like the game hates them because the subbers are getting all this wonderful stuff that they don't get, just like the kids who got Bs and didn't get candy.
My original point was, and still is, that no matter what types of things you do to make the non-sub and sub $15 per month apart in terms of game play (including pay to win, paywalled content, and QoL), the non-subs will always be jealous of what the subs get, despite the fact that they know they were offered that stuff for a price and didn't buy it. The root causes of that jealousy (the perks the sub gets) are the only thing causing anyone to actually pay $15 per month when they could just play for free. Limiting yourself to JUST QoL only makes you have to cut WAY deeper in the the QoL of the non-sub n order to get $15 worth of difference between then and the subscriber.
Will the game have subscriptions? I don't know. But I don't think it's productive to yell "ABSOLUTELY NO PAY TO WIN OF ANY KIND, OR I QUIT!!!!!!" or "NO PAYWALLING CONTENT OF ANY KIND IN ANY WAY, EVER!" if it does.
I'd rather have somewhat mild content gating and pay to get SLIGHTLY more win out of my toon than absolutely zero of that stuff and a LOT more QoL pains to make up for it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I didn't subscribe to NWO. I was never jealous of those that did. I quit NWO because it just didn't hold my attention. Not because I couldn't have all the shinies and QoL stuff the people who subbed had. Again, you are basing your opinion off of outdated information.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I've played Neverwinter since beta, there has never been a sub option. It's always been if not P2W, pay for huge time advantage and there's been a perception which I think that has been very damaging to them that every nerf they do is to push people more into the cash shop.
Example: They made some items bind to account so they were not available on the auction house at a price where they undercut the way over the top "real money" price in the cash store.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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I'm sorry. I was unaware of that. Had friends who paid for the game in the beginning several hundred dollars. Assumed it was for a lifetime sub with perks. I didn't play NWO for more than a few months.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I do not want to punish non- subscribers. I have not forgotten that they will have paid money for the box. And that entitles them for a game that feels complete in itself. Yes, they should have more than enough content to reach max level without ever having to resort to farming street mobs, because there is nothing else for them to do. That includes enough variety that alting will not get boring. And be able to use any core function, including most of the chat system, supergroup membership, teams and so on.
But a subscriber is supposed to get more.
We probably will be able to choose our characters story in what was called a paths-system. What if the non- subscriber only has access to the more basic ones, reserving the exotic ones to the subscriber? Keep in mind, the update mentiones 13 different paths which can even branch out and meet, so you can start out in one and change to another later on. And those are only examples, there will most certainly be more. So there will be more than enough story to explore for everyone.
No. It's not a lie because you're each talking about the opposite situation. Dr Tyche is talking about non-subbers where you are talking about people who are paying for a subscription. Bizzaro World
Lay your hands on me
While I'm bleeding dry
Break on through blue skies
And take it high
Not quite.
Dr Tyche is saying that the NWO team said 'People who will not do A will also not do B'. Brand X is saying that they know people who will not do A that will, in fact, do B.
I'd be a borderline case of X's statement. In CoH, I subscribed but rarely ever bought anything in the cash store.
I've also met some who would buy from a cash shop and not sub. I've also known quite a few who would pay the sub and buy from the cash shop. TOR Devs even said most of the lucrative cash shop is from subs paying more for the cash shop.
I can believe the later. People want their cosmetic fixes. :p
What they paid for was a "founders pack" an epic pet and mount for every character you ever create, early access to a race, a good starting weapon and a small bucketload of astral diamonds (the AH currency).
There were 2 levels of that, I bought the $60 version, but there were three figure versions with more goodies and ADs, and they updated what you got with the packs as time went by.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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Dungeons & Dragons Online is available as free to pay, but I pay for a subscription, even though I'm pretty freeking poor.
Here's why I pay:
1) More Character slots (This is at the top of my list for a reason, and it will matter even more in a game like this with more options for character building)
2) access to certain classes (powers or ATs)
3) access to certain missions (I could play those missions without subscribing as a guest to a subscriber but I can't solo it or play with a team of just FTPers)
4) Expanded access to the Auction house (I can have more items in the auction house at once)
5) Expanded bank space
6) 500 online store points/month
7) Free daily die rolls for prizes and weekly die rolls for slightly better prizes
I'm in a guild started by another player but if I wanted to I could start my own guild. That doesn't matter to me but it has to matter to some people or there wouldn't be any guilds, also in COT I expect the base builder to be way cooler that the DDO guild ships.
I'm also seriously looking forward to the mission creator, you could allow FTPers to make just one mission so they can get a taste and allow more to subs and even more for additional pay.
I have spent cash on store items before including costumes, crafting ingredients, and access to a new game zone, and classes.
I kind of resented having to pay for access to the new zone, but man, forgotten realms is pretty. It's kind of like subscribing to COX but still having to pay to get to Praetoria except that forgotten realms is way more worth it that Praetoria (Didn't like anything in Praetoria and forgotten realms is bigger)
another thing I think most people would like is forget about the daily die rolls for prizes and just make drops more common for subs.
you could even have some rare drops that FTPers never get, though they could still buy them in the auction house.
A lot of these features can be purchased individually, without a subscription, and PERMANENTLY added to a FTP account.
But buying all of them would cost as much as buying several years of subscriptions.
I did buy some of these features before I decided to start subscribing.
So that's what I'll pay for.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber