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From what I've read on this website in other threads it seems like some version of F2P is going to happen whether any individual(s) among us wants it to or not. With that in mind, I kind of wanted this thread to be about the possibility of the individual raid/TF/trial as an "a la carte" item.
Now, if your ideal situation would be to mandate a subscription fee for everyone (like CoX in the beginning) then I for one am not against that at all. I'm just considering life in a world where F2P (which is ever so popular these days) is a likely thing. I'm not against the "everyone must pay a sub" option because I intend to pay a sub if it's worthwhile and being required would qualify as making it worthwhile. That said, isn't the mandatory sub idea tantamount to putting the whole game behind the dreaded pay wall?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
While nothing has been settled on, the options that are being considered include purchas box and obtain 3 months of what amounts to full subscription access including stipend of Stars. After that no sub could be purchased and continued access to play the game would be available but there would be some form of limits com paired to sub access. Then there may be options of micro subs that grant particular perks so that players can choose to mix and match parts of the full sub that they want and don't want.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Okay, so while we're on the "free to play exists as an option, there are also subs, microsubs, and a la carte items for purchase" plan, one naturally tends to wonder which things CoT will have might fall into which category.
CoX, in its prime, did not roll out a new costume set every month, and even if they did, I would not have paid a monthly fee for just that. I might want to buy several individual items (and I did, in fact, buy those from time to time) but I don't think this would cause me to say "Hey, I know, I'll buy a sub so I always have all the costume pieces." That just wasn't a priority for me. Even if I had to pay PER TOON for the helmet or wings or jetpack I wanted, I feel I would have saved money doing it that way over and above paying a sub to have unlimited access to all the costume pieces I didn't care about.
New power sets are basically the same kind of purchase, to me. You're not going to make a new powerset every month and I can't imagine I would need a new one every month. At least not every month for 8 years, maybe in the beginning when sets are flying out fast and furious at the start, but not "eventually". So there's another thing I'm not going to subscribe for, personally. I might pay to unlock the ones I want, even if I have to pay once for each toon that wants the power set in question. I don't want Time Manipulation on ALL of my toons in the first place, just on the one or two characters I have in mind that would use it. Paying a sub for this every month just to ensure complete unrestricted access to a bunch of powersets I'm not even using seems like a WORSE deal than just buying Time Manipulation once for the one toon that's going to use it. The only way to cause this to be a subscribable option is if your access to that power set lapses when your sub does, which would mean losing access to your Time Manipulation toons as soon as you end your subscription. I'm personally against that idea. I think some rednames on here have mentioned not wanting to give people toys then take them away when the sub runs out, like CoX did with Incarnate.
As I've said, the only thing I feel is a compelling reason to subscribe is content. I'm not saying all content should require a sub, but trials/TFs/raids are what I like to do, and if I have to pay for that stuff via a sub or a one-at-a-time event ticket fee, I'm pretty sure I'm going to do that, if that's what people are doing. I would expect my sub to cover a lot of this right away, but I can imagine a world where even then some stuff requires a fee on top of the sub. For example, maybe the sub entitles one to unlimited amounts of certain TFs, and limited amounts of others. Then if I want more of the "other kind" I have to use Stars, cash shop money, etc to get that. Also, as I've said, the option would then exist for the free to players to just do those TFs that they feel like doing one at a time instead of making them pay a sub or not pay a sub for unlimited access to something they don't know they really want. This creates a revenue stream CoX didn't have: the one-of TF ticket for free-to-players.
In a game where the sub is mandatory, you can make pretty much everything "free" with the sub. In a game where free to play is an option, if you offer a sub you have to find something that makes people WANT to pay for it to make a sub worth it. That is, a compelling reason to subscribe. In CoX, that reason, for me, was so that I could do Incarnate Trials with large groups, which were like the most fun ever for me. Another nice perk of that was that you got Incarnate Powers which were basically tantamount to character levels 51-60 of the game.
I'm not suggesting we gate any character levels in CoT behind the pay wall, but you have to admit that was basically what CoX did with the Incarnate system. If you could have paid for Incarnate trials one at a time with one-of microtransactions, at least then the non-sub people would have been able to participate in the occasional trial instead of being 100% locked out of that since they weren't subscribed. Granted, paying for Incarnate Trials one at a time would have been a lot more expensive to the customers, if they wanted to get their slots all unlocked and so forth, but that's what makes the sub attractive, right? You get more for the money. In the case of costume unlocks and power sets, the subscription gets you less for the money, if it works the way I think it does and you refrain from yanking people's costume pieces and power set unlocks when their sub runs out.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The term you seek when you say "Free to play" is "Pay to Play". There is an initial cost for what is considered the "Basic" access to the game.
The questions being asked are "What is basic access to the game" and "What is premium access to the game".
I feel the use of free to play being used as some kind of derogatory term to garner oppositional support.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
As far as the discussion about free to play or pay to play or whatever we're calling it, I just want this game's monetization framework to be set up in such a way that I personally will want to pay for a monthly sub. To get me to want to pay for a sub, the sub has to bring with it something I want that I don't get simply by purchasing the initial download of the game. I feel I've been quite honest and open with the devs on this forum in terms of what I personally would pay a sub for, what I would expect to come with the initial purchase, and what I would probably just buy piecemeal from the cash shop.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
It is generally accepted that free to play is a game available to download and play for free. Many such games provide a cash shop through which real world dollars may be spent to access digital goods for the game. Digital goods is agnostic with regards to cosmetic, convenience, or gameplay affecting items.
Pay to play has been used for both pay for the game, play for free and pay for the game and pay a subscription fee.
With regards to CoT, and please don't take this as the direction being used as I'm not on the business side of things, here is how I think is a fair way to break things down:
Purchase game, get 3 months with of "full subscription" of the game.
Full sub offers: 15 character slots, advanced crafting, full auction house access, full super group access), full character to character trading, raiding content, full character inventory, access to user generated content, full in-game e-mail, all chat options, larger character "wallet". Access to the launch power sets, costume pieces, animation suites, classifications / specifications. Play to level cap. Full access to PvP.
Non-sub options limit access to 3 character slots (of player's choice), basic crafting (can't access crafted augment and refinement sets, only basic Augs / refs and such), basic auction house access (can't purchase advanced crafted items, limited auction house space for selling / bidding - this is to allow access to bidding on Stars), limited sg access - can join a sg but can't use storage, personal housing can't be linked to a sg base), can join raids but can't obtain anything more than basic game rewards (character xp, basic drops, and such), limited character inventory (say normal aug / ref inventory was 10 for each or 20 total now it would be 5 each or 10 total, and limits to other types of inventory) no access to ugc, e-mail limited to player's global account, character trading limited to basic game items (no aug / ref sets for example), chat limited to broadcast, local, tells, super group, and 1 global for the account, limited character "wallet". Play to level cap. Full access PvP.
Anything the character unlocked during play is kept on the character, this includes costume pieces or special powers, access to their use is not restricted even if the content from which these digital items were gained from are no longer accessible so far as rewarding is considered.
Micro subs could be:
1. All Access Trading: full access to crafting system, character trades, e-mail, auction chat, character inventories and wallet, + 4 character slots, + Stars stipend.
2. All Access Super Group and Raiding: unrestricted access (based on sg base access permissions and ranks) to the sg, ability to connect personal housing to an sg, full access to raid awards. Including base designer / up loading base designs, coalition and raid channel chats, + 4 character slots, + Stars stipend.
3. All Access UCG: able to generate and play UCG with basic UCG slots (think 3 full missions), + 4 character slots, + Stars stipend.
4. Expanded Roster: + 15 character slots accessible on a monthly basis, + Stars stipend.
Each allow full access to the maximum number of possible global channels.
Option 4 would be in addition to any other amount of available character slots. All 4 micro subs combined would equate to a total of 30 character slots.
Each micro-sub and combination thereof would be given a discount based on length of monthly access purchased over a 1 month period (probably 3, 6, and 12).
Each Stars stipend is small on its own, cumulatively results in a nice perk.
Additional account a la carte items could include (and not limited to):
Additional character slots
Additional character inventories
Additional UCG mission slots
Additional classifications
Additional specifications
Additional power sets
Additional animation suites
Additional costume packs
Additional emotes
Additional auras
(There may be deals combining costumes, animations, emotes, and auras by theme).
Additional pay to play content (content over and above sub access) either on a per run / per week / month or unlocked fee.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1. This is only my personal take on how I would like to see this handled.
2. We have not determined if crafting will be available at launch, or if it is with what limits (as in basic item crafting only).
3. Raiding is a term I'm being very liberal with in the above example. It could include any type of special story-arc level missions (think task forces), all the way up to multi-team content. To which, multi-team content probably won't be a thing at launch.
4. User Generated Content won't be available at launch.
5. Nothing becomes free over time. It's either falls under the coverage of a micro sub, or content purchased on a per run / monthly / or permanent unlock basis (for the above the sub paid content).
6. Since basic access provides ability to join raids, no issue of being locked out of missions or zones. If there ends up being additional paid content, a person who doesn't have the paid access can still play if the leader has access. The unpaid player will only receive standard game rewards for their character and not any special rewards tied to the content, this includes gameplay affected items and cosmetic items.
7. Any costumes, animations, power sets, classifications / specifications given out as part of an update or for whatever reason, everyone regardless of payment or not, can access the give-away.
8. I had thought of the possibility of separate PvP access, but its a complicated by the fact that the game purchase needs to provide this access and properly determining how it is restricted without a micro sub depends on too many factors regarding pvp design that I can't bring up at this time.
Question:
If certain portions of the full sub / micro sub options are not available at launch or more importantly, unavailable once the first 3 months of full access is up, is it ok to charge the full price? Say the Sg / raid micro sub was $5.00 / month, if there were not any multi-team raid content available for some time is it ok to have been charging this price the entire time? But once multi-team content does go live if this micro sub is active, the player automatically has full access.
Obviously, if UCG isn't available, then there wouldn't be a charge for it until released. Even them something like UCG would probably come as a mini-expansion, purchase this part of the game and get access for x number of months, pay micro-sub thereafter. Or buy the retail version of the game that includes the UCG update (for new players).
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I'm with Radiac in that I hope subscribing is attractive enough that I will want to subscribe, so I eagerly await official information on what subscriptions will actually provide over non-sub, a la carte purchase play.
P.S. I thought we were calling CoT "Buy to Play" or B2P, because one has to buy the "box" regardless of sub or non-sub. Was that just me?
Spurn all ye kindle.
That's what I thought as well. All basic game functionality (whatever that turns out to be) you buy once, and can then use as long as you and the game are live. Everything else we have to buy separately or lease, and purchasing the box also gets you a few months of full sub.
Hopefully Segev the Business manager will be able to tell us how accurate (for now, at least) [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/75732#comment-75732]Tannim222's post # 97 above[/url] is.
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]
First off, thank you, Tannim, for the breakdown of some of the things you think should be considered as on one side or another of a free/paid-for divide. That's actually quite helpful.
Speaking from a business perspective, my preference would be that micro-subscriptions are actually broken down more finely than the post above suggests. They are not packages of things. A microsubscription is a single, targeted thing that a player wants. A "package" would be any combination of microsubscriptions. So if "advanced crafting" and "full chat access" are two items which subscribers might have that nonsubscribers do not, each would be a separate microsubscription.
We might offer "subscription packages," but these would just be common popular microsubscription features grouped together for convenience. Players can take them as-is or can add or subtract microsubscription features from them to get exactly what they want. A "full subscription" would really just be every single microsubscription.
Now, that's my preference; it may not be practical. We're still working on it. That's why lists like Tannim's are so valuable, though: they give us more ideas on what to even consider as features for microsubscriptions or one-off purchases.
A thought and question, now: If we go with the idea that we're not going to "take your toys away," how do you make character slots part of a subscription at all? They could only be one-off purchases, because if they're part of a (micro)subscription, they'd have to be locked should the subscription lapse.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I guess my concern is, why would anybody choose to subscribe if after purchasing everything from the cash store they have everything permanently? Stars Stipend? Why would they need Stars if everything is already purchased? That's the crux that always gets me when we start talking about the Subscription vs. F2P with Micro-transactions. What's my incentive to keep paying $15 a month if after I purchase everything individually I have the entire game unlocked?
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
How about this:
At any given time, your "pick a toon to play or make a new one" screen shows you the toons you have and the slots that are there. You might be looking at a list of say 30 slots, some of which are empty and inaccessable because you aren't paying a sub for them, and some are empty and accessable because you are paying a sub and haven't made a toon for all your slots yet, and some are occupied and available., and when your sub lapses you might be left with some that are occupied and unavailable.
If you currently have at least one unoccupied character slot that is considered "unlocked", you have the ability to make a new toon (which will go into one of your unused unlocked slots). If you do not, then you can't make a new toon. You can fiddle with the avatar creator all you want, but you can't actually make that new avatar a new toon because you don't have space for it. If and when your total unlocked slots goes from say 15 back to 3 when your sub lapses, those other 12 slots go from "unlocked" to "locked" and you can't play those toons anymore unless you pay the sub again. Also, you could pay a fee to move the locked guy you want into one of your remaining unlocked slots, which would require you to move a guy out of that slot first. You may swap characters around such that the three you like the most are in the "playable slots" and the rest are locked such that you can't play them until you re-up your sub.
I think you need to number the slots in this case and have visual cues to remind people that the three slots that came with the game purchase, slots 1, 2, and 3, are forever yours for buying the game, then other slots may be opened by paying a sub, and if the sub lapses, you lose access to the toons in those other slots but you'll always have access to whomever is in slots 1, 2, and 3, and you can even rearrange the toons in the slots for a fee while not subbed, or for free while subbed so as to be able to prepare your slots for the de-subbing when it happens.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This also folds into itself the question of how far a respec can go towards changing an old toon into a new one. If I can save money on slots (and save time by not having to level up a new toon) by simply respeccing "Fire Guy" into "Ice Guy" then you're shooting yourself in the foot a little bit.
I'm not against any of this stuff, because all of it points to "That full sub is looking like the easiest path of least resistance, so I'll just do that." as being the number one "lazy man's" solution.
If the people who don't pay a full sub end up feeling like a guy who bought a car with no radio, no air conditioning, and no automatic door locks, that's fine by me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
You're welcome Seg. I only wanted to express my opinion on what I'd see as value. To me, breaking things down further could result in more of a frustration depending on how things are set up. I'll give an example.
A player purchases the advanced crafting micro-sub, but not anything dealing with larger inventory / wallet space, or greater auction house access. The standard access should be enough for standard crafting, but advanced crafting could result be too restricted so far as trying to manage all the pieces and getting them / selling things in the ah are concerned. Sure a few pieces may be crafted at a time, and it could be cause for incentive to micro-sub for the other parts. My concern is that it would be viewed the wrong way, that we purposefully made the restrictions apparent so that if one type of micro-sub was purchased the other associated micro-subs need be purchased too. Hence why I went with larger packages that provided things associated with one another instead of a piece here or there. I'm not saying my view is right, it's only an opinion.
When it comes to character slots and not taking away the toys, to me, anything that was earned by the character in the game remains. So if. Player had advanced crafting and made then slotted Augment sets, then the player dropped the advanced crafting associated micro-sub, the characters with advanced crafting stuff would still use those pieces but could not get more. Character slots that are in a sense rented space with a micro-sub would fall under a category of restriction should any character slots available with a sub no longer purchased. Any character slots purchased individually would always be unlocked. But there would always be a certain amount of slots only available with a sub.
Basically a sub rents access, if the rent isn't paid access is restricted but anything earned by the character during that time is still useable. If you sub for raids and unlock CoolPower#4 on a character, that power is still usable on that character even if the associated micro-sub lapses / ends. But the player can't earn CoolPowers 1-3 on the related raids anymore.
Maybe things such as additional character slots and more UCG story slots can't be permanently unlocked and are only available as a sub-per-slot with discounts for bundling slots.
Now there is another possibility where cumulative micro/macro subbing can lead to bonus free time. For the first 12 months of a sub earn a month free. 24 months gets 3 months. That sort of thing. Vet rewards can offer free unlocked character slots, unlocked features like inventory spaces, but there should always remain some reason to want to sub.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Although I am still not too keen on pay walled content, if the content can be run by the team as long as the leader has access it does cut the sting out of it a bit for me.
As far as character slots would go, I think the best bet would be to include a small amount (say 3-6) with the box. These slots would belong to the player no matter their level of subscription. Any more slots would have to be purchased, either with stipend stars, stars traded on the market, or purchased stars from the cash store.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
I always thought Champions online did well offering 2 free slots to begin with. :) But 3 would have been ideal. :P
I dont mind pay walls for things that dont interfere with Teaming. Costumes, Extra forms of Transportation, etc...
as long as there's an alternate way... fine by me, even if its not the Coolest/Fastest/etc... ;)
One of the beauties of the most fine-grained microsubscription model we can design is that we are not restrained from creating "packages" that are recommended bundles. In fact, I would strongly encourage so doing. "The crafting bundle" might include, indeed, a larger inventory space and the advanced crafting access. But you could increase or decrease the inventory space by fiddling with the subscription value, or decide yours is large enough, and only buy the advanced crafting.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
No matter what it is, always stick to the KISS philosophy.
I only say this because if you have a WIDE range of options to choose from, with *MULTIPLE* options, I would be more inclined to not do it.
So why not make the "subscription" cost Stars, with the stars being the currency cost. This means that the "free" player, could earn stars to buy their monthly subscription, and those who want a "package" does the monthly side after they bought their stars. You can make it easier by doing as a "single step" purchase (recurring), but that is more of a convenience factor.
If I have to wade through 20 different varying options (some of which might be very similar to others up there), I could well be tempted to just go "nope" and not even carry on playing the game. I might even be HIGHLY tempted to ask for a refund due to it being highly confusing.
The thing is though, is that if I can get in the game, I have a load of this *currency* that I can choose to spend each month, and I reccur that *make believe coin* cost each month, i wouldn't be as bothered.
And hell, if I run out of stars, if the purchasing method/system is quick and painless it could make it the norm.
And this is for the "micro subscriptions" more than anything else. It all depends as to how many options there are, and how "restrictive" the game is without them.
I agree with Gangrel on the point of simplicty in menu selection. Just like ordering from a restaurant too large a menu can be off putting.
This also may come down UI design of the microsub / bundled options selection but with possibility exisrs that the "dollar menu" exceeding the "value meal menu".
And that isnt a wise way to go when you want someone to buy something particuarlly if portions selected can lead to frustration in use because one option provides more but ends up bottle necked because tha base provision is more restrictive now that the do more in this area option was selected (if that makes sense).
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
So, only Monthly Subscribers get those BONUS stars? :o
I would absolutely NEVER take part in a group event I had to pay to join. I am not going to have my money rely on other people not being atypical MMORPG baddies expecting to get carried. Let alone people with ISP issues, bad computers, or afkers.
If something like this happened I would NEVER partake.
Re: keeping sub options simple, I see what you folks are saying.
Would it help if the sub options were presented in an expandable list format?
For example, the sub screen could start with just one entry: Full Sub. If you want everything, you can pay the stated price.
If you're not sure you want everything, you could click a plus sign to the left and it would reveal a short list of categories, such as Crafting, Costumes, Power Sets, PvP etc. These would all be turned on by default, reflecting the Full Sub level we just came from, but you could uncheck any categories that didn't interest you and it would reduce the price accordingly.
Perhaps you are interested in some aspects of crafting but not others. Just click the plus sign next to that category and it would show you everything included in Crafting, allowing you to turn off any of those things you didn't want.
Would this help by allowing players to decide how deep they want to delve in the details while still containing all the options in one place?
P.S. I think I remember a thread a long time ago where Segev asked for specifics of what we'd like to see in a sub, a question that Tannim has answered here in detail. Do you guys (MWM) have the ability to create a survey on this forum, using Tannim's list as a starting point? It might help focus people's responses more than a blank sheet.
Spurn all ye kindle.
My plan, and note that this is subject to change, would be to have a "full subscription" option, which is literally every microsubscription possible; a number of pre-sorted packages (each a bundle of microsubscriptions), kept small enough to be an easy-to-read menu; and for each package to be customizable if somebody wants to open them up to see what's in it.
There is also the "full customization" option which just throws open the whole list to begin with.
The net result is the same if you start with a package (including the "full subscription" package) and then tweak it or if you start from scratch and build it from the full list of options. But the goal is to present it in an easy-to-use way and avoid overwhelming customers who are not interested in getting up to their elbows in customization options. While still letting that latter group do just that.
And I actually do want Stars to be the microsubscription currency for the most part. Everything you buy a microsubscription for should be paid for in Stars; the monetary subscription will be buying a stipend of Stars that are awarded periodically (probably monthly), and microsubscriptions will cost Stars.
So if you want a subscription with a stipend, you'd get the subscription package you wanted and then pay enough dollars to get a monthly stipend of Stars that pays for the full package plus however many Stars you want to accumulate with time.
Again, the goal will be to make this interface easily with the customer: he'll be able to select stipend amount and packages and see how much that will cost per month in dollars (or whatever other currency we're working with, if dealing with foreign customers).
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I have a few thoughts on this:
1. I think you can give people a fairly long list of options and then also give them a short list of "best bet" packages that the devs believe will be popular. Things that make sense like the chat functionality and the group content raids/TFs bundle together so you can chat with your raid buddies, or having the "large wallet" and "crafting" stuff bundled together, etc. This way people can either go "bargain hunting" through a myriad of specific, scalable options that they might want, or they can push the "buy it now" button on a full sub or some kind of partial sub package without too much thought. I don't think it should be too hard to figure out what those partial sub packages ought to be, and you can even try out new promotional offers over time as you try to explore that market.
2. At Magic tournaments there are usually vendors there selling cards. I've noticed that people have a tendency to flip through binder after binder or box after box of not really great cards looking for a bargain. Sometimes you'll find different copies of the same card in different states of "minty-ness" for different prices and feel like you found a deal. Bargain hunting is something that some people will do for amusement. Letting people look through the various items and micro-transactionable things they could buy a la carte or put into a monthly sub package is something I think we ought to let people do if they want to, you just have to make sure that they can't get the equivalent of a full sub or by making some collection of partial subs for cheaper than the full sub sticker price just by rearranging the items in the cart until the price magically arrives at a smaller number due to bad coding of the purchasing front end or whatever. On the other hand, if a person wants to take what would amount to a full sub then knock off a few minor thing they fee they don't need, they can maybe save some money in the process.
3. I can't stress enough how bad an idea I think it would be to let people grind for Stars via unsubscribed play then use them to buy a sub. This is the opposite of making money. You're essentially letting people play a game for no monthly fee and use that "free" game play to pay for the stuff that the monthly fee payers get for their monthly fee. This is like letting people use their frequent flyer miles to fly, then awarding them MORE frequent flyer miles than they had to spend in the first place, thus bypassing any need for them to pay for their travel ever. This idea, if I'm interpreting it correctly, is the ultimate example of letting the customer wield the price gun. It can't happen, in my opinion. You're trying to give away the store for free here, and that's not surprising, because all of us non-MWM folk on these forums are future customers of this game, not future owners of it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
As I've said above, people who play Magic Online can play for free as much as they want, but many of them STILL pay the equivalent of $12 to play in booster draft tournaments all the time. You might not be the kind of person who would do that, but I was one of those people on Magic Online for a long time and I would pay for the occasional Statesman TF or whatever if it were really fun and had good rewards at the end (as it did in CoX). And like I said, offering it as an OPTION isn't forcing anyone to do anything. If you don't want to pay $1 for fun 90min ride through a TF followed by a synthetic Hamio, then that's okay. Don't buy a ticket to it, nobody's holding a gun to your head.. You could probably go on the auction house and get the Synthetic HamiO a guy like me will be selling for 100 million Inf if you prefer play free content and grind for it that way. Fine by me. But don't tell me "all content should be free", because I think there's such a thing as content SO good people would pay extra for it above and beyond the "buy the box" cost. They pay for it to the tune of $12 a pop on Magic Online 24/7/365. That revenue stream exists.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
One thing I'd like to add here is that I hope there will be something where I can just enter in my credit card, debit card, or pre-paid card number and just have the money taken out of my account every month on a certain day to keep renewing my subscription. I would hate to have to go in every month and do this manually just to purchase the correct amount of Stars then use those Stars to purchase my subscription. This is one of the things that has kind of been on my mind ever since the announcement that Stars will be used as the currency to purchase things from MWM. I liked that in CoH all I had to do was set it up so that once a month my account was automatically deducted for my subscription. I never had to worry about it, just open the game every day and start playing.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I think you're misunderstanding.
One of the primary tenets of the philosophy behind Stars is that no Star will ever be generated unless somebody pays for it in real money. How much they pay might be subject to discounts based on various factors (like bulk purchases), but real money will be given to MWM before any Star is created.
Anybody who "grinds for Stars" is doing so either by engaging in content paid for by sponsors who want Stars rewarded to those who are being willingly exposed to their product placement and other advertising methods, or by getting in-game items and selling them on the market to other players who are willing to spend Stars to acquire them. Whether those players paid for the Stars, themselves, or got them from somebody else who paid for them, somewhere along the line, SOMEBODY paid for those Stars to exist.
While I would like microsubscriptions to be purchased with Stars, the "subscribe to get a stipend of Stars" option will only be in cash. (Or credit, technically, but you know what I mean.)
At no point does spending Stars create more Stars.
If you want a stipend of Stars, you spend real money to get it. This would be the subscription that costs actual real-world money.
The rest of the microsubscriptions cost Stars, but in effect cost real money to those who pay a monthly subscription fee through the medium of that money buying a stipend of Stars that is immediately turned over to pay for the microsubscription package.
And, of course, any Stars left over from the stipend after the microsubscriptions are paid for are added to your account's total for use in further microtransactions.
If you stop paying real money for a stipend, your microsubscriptions can still be funded via Stars already in your account, whether from in-game trading or just having saved from your stipend from before.
Does that make sense?
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
This is absolutely intended as an option.
A microsubscription may cost Stars per month, but that will be an automatic debit from your account.
At the same time, your monthly stipend fee would be set up to automatically debit from your credit card (assuming you set it up to do so), and generate a fixed number of Stars.
When setting up your microsubscription package, it will show you how many Stars/month you will net from your stipend based on how much money you set up to regularly pay.
So, if you want to set it up just like CoH had it, you more or less can: $X will be debited from your credit card each month, immediately buy N Stars, and M of those Stars will go to pay your microsubsription fees while the rest become your "stipend" of Stars for microtransactions.
If you're a free player who doesn't want to spend real money, you can still set up microsubscriptions to automatically debit your Stars from your account each month; you just have to make sure to fill up on enough Stars each month to cover it by whatever in-game means you choose to earn them (e.g. "grinding for Stars" by selling things on the market, or doing a lot of paid sponsor content that gives them, or what-have-you).
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
The other thing I'd like to mention is that I hope the Stars to Dollars ratio is not overly inflated. I would hate to see something like 5 dollars buys you 2000 Stars and you feel like, "Hey! I got a great deal with a crap ton of Stars for so little money!". Then you turn around and try to buy something only to find out that it costs you 10,000 Stars. Please no Bait and Switching.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Yes, this (what Segev said here quoted) makes a lot of sense to me. But what Gangrel wrote above sounded something like ".....thus the free players can earn Stars...". Now, I can understand acquiring Stars which were originally generated by being purchased (then sold on the market or whatever), but "earning Stars" sounded a lot like letting people do missions or something and then awarding Stars as a reward, like Merits in CoX, which I do not think is a good idea. I think Gangrel's plan, if I understood HIM correctly was something like this: players (some of us) pay for a sub which allows us to lead certain Trials. Those trials award Stars at the end for like EVERYONE in the team doing the trial. The non-subbed players thus get Stars this way by "earning" them and can use them to pay for a sub of their own, at no monetary cost to the guy who "earned" the Stars. That I'm against.
Edit: If Stars are to be this game's version of the Magic Online Event Tickets, then all Stars which exist have to be generated by someone paying a price in real money for them. In Magic Online it's $1 per Event Ticket. In CoT it could be $1 per Star, fine. Buy you CANNOT then turn around and generate Stars in any other way that bypasses the need for there to be money going to MWM for them. If you do that, you erode their value and the company loses money because they become worth less than the price you're selling them for, and thus demand for "new" Stars drops like a rock because the "used" one floating around force them out by being cheaper.
Each and every Star that exists must represent the same dollar amount of real world money spent by someone for the Star economy to work in such a way that MWM will make money. The Star has to be backed by "hard currency" so to speak. So Stars are not the analog of Reward Merits, they're the analog of Magic Online's Event Tickets, and there's a big difference there. You can let those of us who have Stars sell them for other stuff on the open market in-game. That's fine too. But every Star that exists must represent the same amount of real world money spent by someone to create it. After that, they float around in the economy for a while until they ultimately get destroyed by people spending them on stuff, one expects.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Hey, I've been lurking anonymously around the site for a while, but I feel strongly about this topic so I decided to finally step out of the shadows and give my two cents.
I'm at the happy medium where I'm all for free stuff, but not against opening my wallet for the pay-walled things. But I feel that paying for things like raid content isn't the best course of action. Coming from a WoW background, where everyone paid a subscription and raids were otherwise free, I remember it took an arm and a leg to get into a serious raid party if you weren't a hardcore gamer and weren't part of a major guild. As a self-proclaimed "casual raider", I shudder to think how bad it would have been if there were a dollar amount tacked onto it - even if one person were paying.
By pay-walling a raid, it becomes a matter of choosing experienced and good players over those who aren't as experienced or good. Not to mention those parties whose members MUST have certain addons and a certain gearscore. People with lower-end computers are likely to get shunned from raid parties, too, because lag could cause a problem. Forget inviting your friends - you can't afford the possibility of wiping (perhaps in a very literal sense). RP groups who want to RP through an instance may as well get the boot, too.
Personally, I'd rather have things like personal housing pay-walled - this coming from an RPer who (if she has been paying attention correctly) is getting this awesome feature for free, just by buying the box. If you must pay-to-raid certain instances, I believe that they should offer an intriguing story, in-game currency, xp, and cosmetic or generic loot only - otherwise, it would be better categorized as pay-to-win.
That's all I have to say. Thank you for any consideration.
~Sol
In response to Sol's comments, (which were very appreciated):
1. Choosing to avoid having any pay-to-play raids is leaving money on the table, in my opinion. If you can charge money for other stuff, then charge for other stuff. If people will pay to do a raid, as an option, then charge them for that raid. The one fee or price tag has nothing to do with the other. I think it should also be assumed that people paying a full sub will probably get to do these raids included with that sub in some way (Star stipend, or just unlimited access, or limited number of raids a month, etc).
2. The problems associated with this vis a vis people taking their team composition seriously and shouting at you to "do your job" or "Healer HEAL!" are a thing, I admit, but as I've pointed out the opposite side of that coin is also a problem, vis a vis people trying to goldbrick during the TF, going AFK a lot, quitting on you halfway through the raid to go play with their SG, outright griefing, etc. Also, as long as there's ANY real emotional investment in the raid by the person forming it (they want the badges, the Synthetic HamiO at the end, the respec you get at the end, etc) there will be the concern among leaders that their teams are in it to win it too. Money is another element that contributes to that, but eliminating paid raids won't eliminate the other problems by a longshot, so you may as wll have the paid raids and collect that money anyway.
3. People who have tenuous internet connections are going to have bigger problems than getting into raids anyway. Frankly, if I knew who those people were going in, I would try not to have them on my TF team anyway, money or no. That said if I know thew guy, he's in my SG, or whatever maybe I'm cool with it. In any event, them getting DCed during a raid, though not their fault, is still something I'd rather not have to deal with as a raid leader, money or no money. So to me it's not an advantage to make their touchy internet connection less of a problem for them. Sounds cruel, but it's the truth.
4. The person who is having trouble getting into raids can always pony up the money to lead one him or herself. In a world where only the leader has to pay, and even the non-subbed player can pay a few Stars to start a raid, this allows ANYONE to start a raid of their own, RP the heck out of it, and to heck with the would-be micromanagers.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
While you do have a point in that if you can charge for something people want, then you have every right to, I still think it's rather punishing to those who can't afford something like this. Paying for this kind of content puts limits on everyone but the best gamers and those with money to burn - that's a rather small percentage of players. In the end, you'd be driving just as much, if not more, people away than there would be those willing paying for it. Your 'limited number of raids a month' may actually be a better idea than paying for an instance. Give people a taste of the content once in a while and it might make it more enticing to subscribe - better than paying per raid, in my opinion.
Don't know what goldbricking is - unfortunately, I never got around to playing CoH/CoV (or else this is just a term I've never heard). But who is to say that these things won't happen in a paid raid? Someone can easily go AFK or suddenly drop out or start griefing. They have nothing to lose from it, but the person paying for the raid does! Again, paying for the instance is likely to force people to work with those they don't know. When that happens, it's even more difficult to tell who's taking the raid seriously and who isn't. At the same time, team composition elitism and shouting matches are found often enough in free raids. Paid or not, there is going to be problems. The only difference is that one is a high stakes risk while the other is a low stakes risk. If there is an emotional investment into something, I think most would prefer the low stakes.
Tenuous connection or not, they would still be a paying player. Making it even more difficult for them to do something they want, will likely drive away that paying player. Kind of defeats the purpose, right?
In the end, it's all a big catch 22: To get revenue, you need buyers to invest in a product. To get buyers, you need revenue to make a product more enticing to invest in. Isn't business fun?
~Sol
I will make this simple statement Radiac. If I can not own a raid or it is not directly tied to the monthly sub and you want me to be your healer on said rad. Guess who is paying my way into that raid. Here is the tip, it's not me. I've had people in DDO buy me guest passes and raid bypasses because my skills are good enough they need(sometimes just want) me in the new content but the price on the new content was so high to own I needed a few more weeks to grind to unlock it free because I was past my yearly budget for video games. For MMOs I have a very clearly defined budget for them, once that budget is spent 'm done. When I slapped down over $400+ on the kick starter I dropped a monthly sub for 2 MMOs and fell back to ones I owned the content in.
Do not in arrogance think "I can always find a good healer your nothing special." Replace me and my circumstance with any healer that has a house hold budget that makes subbing hard for them much less buying more content. College students for example. I differ in that I limit myself willingly, they are limited by circumstance. In both your healer can't go in without paying. You can replace healer with any other roll you want on your pay to win raid. Yes, if your raid can't be owned or rented via monthly subscription and has anything of mechanical value it is pay to win.
To the Devs my stance is this. I want to be able to Play to Own or Pay to Own. I have no intentions of renting for years. If I want to sub in 3 years to a new MMO and log into this one twice a week I want it to be no different then with my console games, I can do everything. If you place the price tag to high you'll lose me, if the price it harsh but worth it you'll make a killing. DDO has kept me loyal despite how buggy, glitchy, and ugly it is. It even deleted my whole guild randomly one day and that cost real money to create. Never restored it. The game play is fun (when working as intended), I love the community, and everything is priced perfectly by perfectly I mean during 25% off sales thy are a price I feel is fair.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
The player who can't afford to pay for a raid can opt not to do that raid and thereby save money by simply doing whatever OTHER content is in the game this isn't pay walled (and I have always maintained that not ALL content should be pay walled, only SOME content). And in any event that person wasn't buying any raids in the first place so whether or not they're still playing the game has no bearing on the amount of money you're getting out of them specifically from raids. Assuming you were getting a subscription fee from them (which costs money), that sub ought to have gotten that person some raids included, unless it was a "No raids" microsub package, which was their choice of how to spend their money. If you buy the box you'll invariably have some amount of content to do, and if you flatly refuse to pay a sub after that or pay for any a la carte raids etc, then MWM isn't getting any more money out of you from raids whether you're playing CoT or not, so why should they then cater to you desires as a player? I mean, video games like this one are a recreational luxury item in the first place, you can't possibly argue that broke people ought to get access to all the perks for free just because they're broke. I work for a living too and even I can't afford to buy a bottle of champagne to drink with every meal, but I don't expect Korbel to provide it to me for free just because I feel punished for having to pay for it. People who don't buy raids, or champagne don't get to enjoy those particular raids or beverages. You get what you pay for.
As for paid raids and goldbricking: goldbricking is my term for when a person joins a team, then proceeds to not lift a finger to actually try to help the team succeed the mission/TF. Instead they just sit at their computer and loaf, read websites in another window, etc while trying to look busy once in a while. They're just trying to get the rest of the team to drag them through the TF so they can get the rewards at the end. Sometimes people in CoX used to go AFK or disconnect themselves then magically reappear during the last mission, etc. While making raids pay to play won't fix that, it would give the leader who paid every right to kick someone if they're doing that (not that they didn't have that right already, as leader). However, if everyone had to pay, those that did would probably be more emotionally invested in the first place, and in the "leader pays" system, as you pointed out the leader will be more selective to try to minimize stuff like this. All I'm saying is paid raiding probably helps suppress as many of these social interaction problems as it exacerbates, so it's not strictly worse than "free" raiding in the social sense, only different. Different in the social sense, more expensive in the monetary sense, and still optional in the first place.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I could see a pay raid system where you get:
A) Pay the full sub or the "raids" microsub and you get unlimited access to the premium raids while that sub is paid for.
B) Pay the sub in question and you get a monthly allotment of raids, to be split up by you among the premium raids that exist over the course of the month.
C) You get a stipend of Stars which you can use as you see fit, including but not limited to paying for premium raids as you want to do them.
In all three cases I would prefer that the non-subscriber be able to buy a ticket to a raid once in a while without having to bother to subscribe, thus the option of paying once to do one raid if that's all you care to partake in. Again, like selling a single bottle of sodapop instead of forcing people to buy a case of it at a time.
In the question of "only leader pays" vs "everyone pays", I think "everyone pays" is probably more fair and less fraught with arguments among players on teams, but I'm okay with either system if MWM feels one is preferable over the other for their bottom line.
I feel that in this world, there exist people who don't necessarily want to sign up in advance and pay a sub but do want to play the game to some extent and might like to do a premium raid once in a while just to try it out. I think those people would pay for that one raid. Why lock them out entirely by making it a sub-only thing? Why give it to them for free when it's a totally optional "extra" and they're willing to pay for it?
As far as Cute Kitsune's budget and people on DDO subsidizing raids, that only proves that people will pay for raids, doesn't it? I mean you're telling me that there were people paying YOUR entry fee for raids just because they wanted you in there. Whether you paid for that or someone else paid it for you, I think the take-away message there is that someone paid for it, so it was worthwhile for those people, they got what they wanted and the game company got the money. Works for me.
If there are egomaniacs out there who think the other, lesser players whose kung fu is inferior should pay for their raiding, they're welcome to hit people up for that money to subsidize their raiding somehow. I'm all for it. More power to them, as long as the money spent goes to the game company.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I am still very much anti-pay-to-raid. There are some things that you can nickel and dime a player to death on, but content should not be one of those things. As I've said, it is the bread and butter of your game. The more you restrict people from playing your game, the more people you will lose. Everybody wants to be able to play everything in the game, not everybody wants every costume in the game. Not everybody wants every power in the game. Not everybody wants every emote in the game. Not everybody wants to be able to craft in the game. Those are the things I feel worthy of paying for. Content should not be, unless you do something much like CoH did with Villains and Rogue. A flat box fee for an "Expansion" is fine, but not a charge every time you want to go Raid with your friends.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
What you lose by "pay to raid" is the people who WILL NOT PLAY any game with P2W in it, and pay to raid will fall into that category for some people. You don't know how many of those there are as they don't play your game. I would find it a turnoff, but it wouldn't stop me playing. However the game would have to be good enough to hold my interest and make me want to pay real money, or I'd drift away to another game that wasn't pay to raid.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
A separate issue I want to raise is that of paywalls acting as roadblocks to normal content.
For instance, imagine if something like the [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ernesto_Hess_Task_Force]Ernesto Hess Task Force[/url] in CoH was behind a paywall. You'd have played through a series of engaging story arcs, then when you finally unlocked the contact that gives you the zone's final missions, you only get a message saying, "You need 100 stars to play this special task force. Buy now!"
I would puke. This kind of thing would not only shatter a player's sense of progress and immersion, but players who couldn't afford the fee would be left stranded without a conclusion to the story they've already worked so hard to resolve. It would be a real sucker punch. If that player were me, I would suddenly feel like I couldn't trust the game's content anymore for fear of being ambushed by more paywalls.
If paywalls for content will exist, please don't use them for extortion by taxing cliffhangers or major plot resolutions.
EDIT: Grammar.
The whole idea of a subscription, to me, is pay once and play. ANY hist of a microtransaction system where I pay a full sub and THEN have to pay for extra content is likely to make players a bit salty.
A full sub is a full sub...period
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
What about Netflix DvD Rentals...
You pay a little more to get More DVDs sent out at the same time. :)
This is why I personally recommend that in general, no content be specifically pay gated. Anyone can join up into raid content, but the rewards would fall under the standard schema. Those who pay to play any pay-for content earn rewards on the advanced schema. The standard schema is sufficient to play the game but the advanced schema provides more rewards, or a better than normal reward rate over the standard schema. Or for example if we made a version of the incarnate trials, those that pay the raid micro sub could play and get all the nifty rewards for creating and using incarnate powers, those that didn't pay the raid micro-sub could play but not earn the extra nifty stuff.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I can see that we're both set in our ways, so I see no point in debating. Trust me when I say that I know from experience how it ends (I've gotten into trouble with my deviantart group more than once because of it). I've said what I wwanted to say, so I'll just agree to disagree and bow out gracefully while I still can, if that's alright by you.
~Sol
I'd be careful with the whole Pay to receive better rewards too. That sounds a little too much like Pay to Win. You might make more than a few people upset if the rewards for someone that pays is too much greater than those that don't.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
From my view, story content is the single most expensive cost of game development. More than costumes, FX, and powers.
Why would you not monetize the things that cost you the most to make?
That is like buying up all the source mineral ingredients, hiring scientists, paying lawyers and lobbyists for a new FDA product to go through then giving it away for free hoping that you make that money back by selling the orange bottle that pills come in.. it's just not feasible.
Sell what you make. Don't devalue it or else the consumer will devalue it.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I agree. The suggestion isn't intended to advocate ptw, rather to provide an alternative to designing say a expanded portions of the game which may get sold in addition to the game proper or create content like the signaure story arcs from coh where normally thise who haven't paid can't access the content.
The original suggestion was to allow unpaid access as long as the owner is the leader, this may have yielded lesser rewards as well. This alternative removesthe restriction of requiring access via a paid player.
Providing the base game without requiring further payment via subscription while also offering a subscription model requires there be distinctions between those who don't purchase or sub and those that do.
As long as the base game doesnt require the opportunities provisioned by payment or subs then I feel that the additional rewards are warranted because the player that pays has to still play to yieldthat reward compard to forking over cash to have a maxed out build with all the best the game has to offer without having played.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
As long as all models allows teaming on every TF/Trial/Arc/etc... that should be Rule #1
If its not, discrimination creeps in, resentment to other players builds, a sense of elitism matriculates.
Gradually, the community doesnt share/help one another as much anymore.
This Should be in the back of Every Developers mind. :/
Instead, Paying models could have other pay walls such as:
- Alternate power animations
- alternate travel powers
- alternate animation Themes/Stances
- alternate this/that/ etc....
I disagree with the statement "everybody want to be able to play everything in the game" and I would submit to you that CoX had instances of gated content that worked just fine. For one, Task Forces, which some people didn't have time for or didn't do because you couldn't solo them. For another, the Incarnate System, which you HAD to be a paid sub to access and which you lost access to if your sub lapsed. Letting non-subs pay as they go for the occasional raid adds more options than that system ever had. Also, I personally didn't do all of the missions from NPC contcts on any of my toons in CoX given 8 years to do it. ALL of my 10-12 toons had missions and whole arcs I never bothered with. Many of my toons never even got introduced to a lot of the NPCs even. I tried to get the "Rescue the Fortune Teller" mission for the badge early on and the Portal Praetorian arc later for the badges and the Accolades they went to, but that was about it. There were SSA's in CoX that you had to pay for. I didn't do them, for the most part. The one or two I ever did were always someone else's idea at the time and I went along thinking "Why are we doing this?" at the time.
The whole point of being able to tailor the subscription to the customer with micro subs and so forth is charging money for stuff people will pay for and not charging people money for stuff they simply don't want.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
"The whole point of being able to tailor the subscription to the customer with micro subs and so forth is charging money for stuff people will pay for and not charging people money for stuff they simply don't want."
Which is why I say all content should be free. Then you don't have to worry about your money paying for something you don't want. If it's free, you aren't paying for it. You are only spending money on things like costumes, animations, emotes, vehicles, bases, auctions, crafting, storage, character slots, respecs, enhancements, boosts, powers, ATs, etc. I'd rather have full access to all content in the game then to have to pick and choose what I want to play. Just because I didn't play it today doesn't mean I won't play it tomorrow. How crappy would that be if you are going along playing your game and then all of a sudden you can't play something that everybody else is playing because you didn't buy that? How were you to know everybody else loved playing that? As I've already stated, I was not a big fan of CoH gating Incarnate Trials and SSA's behind VIP subscribers only. I had several friends drop their sub and go freemium once they could, that SEVERELY limited my playability even though I DID subscribe.
That's the other side of the coin that I was missing. The fact that you will divide the player base by pay walling content. You'd have more success in finding people to join you in a TF if you have access to ALL of the players than you would with a shorter list of only those that have paid for it. That would be a waste of money for the developers. They spend thousands of dollars and hours of resources designing a really cool TF only to have a small percentage of the players play it because the others chose not to spend money to have access to play it. That is what you are missing seeing. You don't help the devs make more money in doing this, instead you cut their money out from under their legs.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
If all content (missions, TFs Trials, raids, etc) were free, then why is a guy like me paying a sub? All of the other stuff you mention, optional as it is, can be purchased off the shelf for a one-time purchase price and then I own it forever, no sub required. Or are you arguing that people should subscribe and when their sub lapses,. their costume pieces that they USED to have immediately disappear? Because that is something I think nobody wants.
I agree with you that "all content is free after you buy the box" is a much better better deal for the customers than I'm talking about, it clearly is, but it's also making new product on an ongoing basis and not charging money for it on an ongoing basis, which is losing money for the company. I agree with JayBezz, new content is the stuff devs work on, so why should they feel obligated to hand it over for free? Those programmers need money every month to keep this game rolling, and subsisting on new people coming into the game on a regular basis isn't going to make ends meet (it never does). As you said, it costs money to maintain a game, and for this reason the game has to make money somehow every month. If that money comes from subs, then subs must either be mandatory, which as far as I know is a deal breaker for enough people that it's not being thought of as the front-runner among monetization schemes, or there's a "free to play after you buy the box" option. IF there is such a "non-sub" option, then the "full sub" option has to contain things that people would pay on an ongoing basis for, and the stuff you mention above (new power sets, costumes, etc) is all stuff I feel I should be able to pay a one-time unlock fee to get and then have forever, or pay once, then use the item (respec) and have to buy another if I want another, etc. None of that is causing me to feel like paying on an ongoing monthly basis. As I've said only content (missions, TFs, Raids, Trials, etc) will do that, for me. The Incarnate System in CoX was what compelled me to pay a sub in the last year of CoX, and I think this game will need something like that to get me to pay a sub again, and I want it to do that because I want the game to be awesome and I want to feel like paying a full sub is totally worth it.
In a world where the full sub just gets you all the content, I'm fine with charging the "non-sub" people who are probably less dedicated, more casual gamers the option of one-at-a-time fees to join a raid now and then just for kicks. If they can do that on the fly, then they can team up just fine and everyone's able to participate, and there's no schizm in the player base that you're worried about, except in the case of non-subbers who are SO dead set against paying for anything that they simply refuse to do the few raids, TFs, or whatever that actually are gated, and those people aren't being shunned by anyone, they're excluding themselves at that point.
It's not a valid argument to exclaim "but what about those poor people who can't afford premium trials, they still want to do them but they can't afford them, they're getting punished by the existence of things they're not allowed to experience because they can't pay the fee for it" . My response to that is look, restaurants charge money for food and beverages. If you want that for free, you go to a charity soup kitchen or something. Video games are a luxury item to begin with, so there's no need for charity video game arcades.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I would argue that non sub gets 5 character slots upgradeable to 15 through one time purchases. A sub gets 15 slots from the get go that is upgradeable to 25 through one time purchases. This way if you stop subbing you still have 15 slots through purchasing. I say that a sub gets you a stipend of stars every month to spend on the cash store, where a non sub does not. I say that a sub gets you access to all costumes as long as you sub, if you stop subbing then you have to buy each costume from the store. I say that a sub gets you access to all powers, if you don't sub you have access to the basic powers with the option to buy additional powers. I would say that a sub gets you access to the Auction House, a non sub has to purchase access to it every month. I say that a sub gets 100 inventory slots with one time purchases extending it to 150, a non sub gets you 50 with one time purchases getting you 100.
There are ways to make a sub package more desirable than a non-sub without gating content behind a pay wall. You are just refusing to see it.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm fine with making the full sub something like $20/month and giving people unlimited access to everything with it, for as long as they're sub is paid up. That said, I can see the wisdom in doing some other stuff in addition to that option:
1) Let the non-sub people buy stuff a la carte, including some premium content like Incarnate Trials, one a ta time, pay as you go, no monthly commitment.
2) Let the subscriber discount their monthly fees by weeding out things they'd rather just skip if it saves them money. This would be like letting cable TV subscribers knock off individual channels they know they never watch to make their monthly cable bill cheaper.
3) Offer some items as one-time purchases that the non-sub and sub player alike can buy in the cash shop if they want them. Things like a global name change for your account, moving a toon from one account to another, a respec, Inspirations, etc. You need a respec, maybe the full sub get's you some amount of monthly respecs (or Stars you can buy respecs with) but you weeded that out to save money, or you spent them on something else already, etc. Here you are, you want ONE respec, right now. So okay, you can buy one respec right now, as can all the complete non-subscribers.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I see it, I just don't find it to be a good reason that I personally would pay for a sub, and I think there are a lot of people that would behave similarly.
For one thing giving the non-sub's 5 toon slots upgradeable to 15 via one time purchases just means that as I make new toons and level them up, I just need to spend those one time fees, starting with toon #6, as I need them. After I've filled my 10th new slot, I just pull al of the IOs and stuff out of an old toon, then delete it and make room for a new one. Why pay a sub in that case? It get's me exactly nothing.
The unlimited access to powers thing is basically no good for me either, first because I think the game will have a reasonably good array of powers included with the box price of the game, and second because no toon is ever going to use all the powers all by itself anyway. As a CoX player I leaned heavily towards defenders and controllers for years before I ever made my first tanker, and I NEVER liked playing scrappers.
Costumes are totally a thing I feel I can usually save money by NOT subscribing for. There are apt to be many, many costume pieces I don't care about, and in cases where I do it might just be for one toon, and even then I doubt they'll be able to make enough new costume stuff every month to make a sub feel worth it. You're expecting me to pay some number of dollars a month for access to stuff I feel I'm never going to chose to use.
The auction house is something I would sub for, that I admit, and CoX did it that way too. But if that's all I get for my subscription, I might think about doing all my buying and selling on the AH during like one month out of every four or something and go "off the grid" for the rest, just to save money. It takes time to rack up swag to sell and to level up toons to the point that they need and can afford to buy stuff anyway. I can do the business I need to do by only using the auction house, say, one month out of every three or four probably, maybe even less.
The monthly Star stipend for a sub fee is essentially a forced purchase of fake game-company controlled "gift certificates" or something like it. You're converting real money to virtual game currency, which is a one-way street that I'm never sure I wont to go down. I certainly don't want to sign up for more Stars every month when I don't know what I would even spend them on, how many I would need, etc. I'm not going to make the leap of faith that they're able to find something to sell me that I trulyt want to the point of spending $15 a month on Stars. If I can buy fewer of those every month a la carte as the need arises and save money, which I probably can, because surviving on zero Stars will probably be possible, then there's no reason to sub for them either.
If the full sub ONLY get's me the auction house access and the other stuff you listed, I'm not shelling out $20 a month for it when the "non-sub" option exists at no monthly fee and includes all the TFs, Trials, etc in the game. I'm just not. $5 a month for that stuff, maybe, if it's a better deal on average than buying what little of that stuff I actually would use a la carte when I need it, but not $20.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I would say that non-subs must be able to access the game market in some manner. At the very least due to Stars intended to be traded on the game's market for those who don't want or can't afford to purchse them.
To provide an analogy for my view, I see it as everyone is on the same road going toward the same destination. Everyone paid to get access to this road intitially so everyone gets to drive on it. But some continue to pay and therefore get fast track lanes which are wider. Don't take this to mean that those who pay "level" faster, though that could be an incentive as part of what I called advanced reward schema - like greater mission complete bonuses for finishing a raid over the "standard" complete bonus.
If things like costume pieces are an award for completing special content, let's use Cimerora from CoH as an example. Completing the tf there evenually unlocked the roman costume pieces for that character. What may happen with CoT is that there is a cash shop purchase of those pieces that unlock account wide. And anyone can end up purchasing this with Stars which are traded in the game's market. This can result in less of an incentive to play the content other than the experience of playing it. There should be continued incentive to play this content for rewards that are not available from the cash shop. Those that do pay have a faster track into earning that reward, those that don't pay may have a slower track to earning that reward. No one under my suggestion is locked out of the content for not paying a sub.
I would prefer the basic access of the game not feel restrictive like some other 'f2p" mmos have done where content is gated behind a pay wall, or that interaction with a sub system like loot and storage be so restrictive that its frustrating to deal with on a regular basis. To me that's 'virutal' bullying on the devs / business managers' part for designing the basic access that way. If the non-sub version doesn't feel restrtictive it still must provide a means to signify that there is 'more'. Any version of micro-to-macro-sub covers the various areas of 'more'.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
++++1111
like in CoH, SO's could be Free, but IO Sets could be behind a pay wall.
Its not pay to win... its Pay to Win FASTER! ;D Which is Fine! ;)
New TF's/Arcs/etc... can be treated a little like new Movie Blockbesters, have Pre Screenings and the sort.
Everyone gets access, but paying members get to see it 1st. ;)
New Costume Pieces wont be a made freely available right away, and could be part of a Costume Set that paying players get access to 1st. Then after some time, the costume sat can be broken down and only a few costume pieces can be made free for all. So those few free costume pieces act as bait for players to buy the Costume Set. etc... Of course, Statistics would allow the GM to see which costume piece is the Most Popular and 2nd best, 3rd.. etc... Then the GM would see if ther is a matching costume piece thats not as popular but could make a matching set, and make that FREE. ;)
I think this is related to how much of the content in the game is really necessary to get a toon leveled to the cap. In CoX you could easily get a new toon to the cap without doing any paid content, then do the paid content if you wanted to pay for it (Incarnate). I liked that. Incarnate stuff was optional, and I was willing to pay a sub for it because I love big teams/leagues type content, so I did. I want to do an Underground Trial as I type this now, who's in? But seriously, the only thing I'm suggesting we add to that scheme is a way for the non-subber to do a trial once in a while for a "pay at the door" fee to be paid in the cash shop, with real money or (Stars backed by real money). This gives the casual gamers who aren't devoting every waking moment to their builds and alts etc some way to play with the devoted fans. I feel like something like that would allow my real life friends to do trials with me more, because I feel like many of them are unlikely to ever pay a sub, as they have wives and jobs and play Magic and don't have the time for a full-on MMO, or the desire to really commit to something that's mostly non-competitive.
I think if you make the decision to not monetize any content beyond the box price of the game, then before too long there will be lost opportunity and content of some kind that could have been made will never get made, because there's no money coming in to support it or drive that process forward.
I think the up-front price of the game ought to entitle me to the open world (or at least whatever parts of it exist at launch) and enough missions, streets to sweep, sewers (abandoned and otherwise), and "basic set" TFs/trials/raids I need to get me to level cap reasonably without having to repeat a lot of stuff. I would pay for additional "better" level-cap-appropriate content beyond that like the Incarnate System or something where you get some attractive rewards (new power unlocks like Incarnate had, Hit point and endurance increases, perhaps single-use powers like the Warburg Nukes, high end IOs, high end Insps, Reward Merit type stuff that lets me buy a recipe I want when I save up enough, etc).
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I absolutely agree with this. I was only using some of those examples purely as examples. I want the non sub to play the game just as much as the person who does sub and not feel like they are being gated simply because they didn't pay 15 dollars a month to play. Which is why I lean more to the aspect of giving them something to begin with and an option to buy more, then be able to even have more than that if they sub. 5 character slots upgradeable to 15 through purchasing additional slots in the Star Market which would be further enhanced if you were to upgrade to a sub account to 25.
Just because you Radiac would not want to have all of the costumes doesn't mean that completionists or other people who love to make lots of characters would do the same. Yes there will be people out there that will take the minimalistic approach and only purchase the necessities, but there are lots of others out there that want to have everything they can possibly get their hands on. I know a lot of my friends are altaholics and the more character slots they can have the better! I know some that love just creating characters simply for the aesthetic of it and would LOVE to have access to ALL costumes, auras, capes, weapons, and emotes in the game and would gladly pay for it.
To say that how you would play the game is how everybody should view the game is wrong. Not everybody is going to be like you. I for one would love to have access to all the costumes, auras, capes, wings, jump boots, swords, etc. I would love to have 100 character slots so I can create one of every AT from every power set and not have to delete one once I maxed it out so I can make another. I would pay 15 bucks a month for that.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Agreed, kinda.. to an extent. It all needs to make sense though one way or another, and be able to cover a wide range of stuff. However, that doesn't mean that something *truely* outrageous couldn't cost a metric ton of Stars though. But it should be the exception and not the norm though.
Buying stars in the 100's range, with items costing anything from 5-25 Stars all the way up to 2400/2500 sounds about right. Course, this is going with a similar price structure to CoX where it was 400 points for $5.
I have to agree with a couple of other people where it is possibly better to give people a *sniff* of the system for free, and then tempt the person in further with upgrades to it.
If I know what *one* type of crafting is like, and the game offers multiple crafting trades, then I might be inclined to get more. If I know what running *one* dungeon is like, I might want to do more.
However, if I don't know what it is like... I might not be tempted to do it.
Ironically, iTrials were unlike normal Raids (fast, and quick generally speaking), but I don't think any sane person would spend $15 to try it out.
So whilst people might complain about the SWTOR model of *limiting* the number of dungeons/PvP matches a week a player can do for Free; at least they got *some* experience of it (hell, you could just limit it to completions[1] per week... or "rewards per week"... pay to get unlimited completions/rewards) and if they liked it they could spend money on it.
*shrugs*
[1] At least putting it to completions means that if you wipe several times over several days, and never actually get to complete it you don't use up your attempts. So you are not being prevented from actually completing it just because you ran out of money and your group quit on you several times.
Cooldown Timers.
If you're a subscriber, there is no Cooldown Timer on repeating content.
If you're not a subscriber, there IS a Cooldown Timer on repeating content.
The timer could be as little as 1 minute or as long as 20 hours (ie. once per day) depending on the content. Thus, people who have subscribed (or micro subscribed) "don't have to wait" to do things again ... while people who haven't paid have to wait to do things AGAIN. First time you ride the ride, everyone can get on though.
Again, getting back to that whole notion of Subscribers Get Preferential Treatment.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Did we just agree in two threads?! What is this forum coming to?!
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Oh don't worry, I'm sure I can find any number of things that virtually EVERYone disagrees with ME on, thus causing the two of you to agree that I'm wrong. :)
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I have a friend who recently got hired at a job and as such now has money for games (he's in his mid-late 20s and a WoW player). So he got back into WoW preety heavily recently (I guess there was a major thing rolled out for that game or something). I asked him point blank
Me: "So you're subscribing to WoW now?"
Him: "Yup, $15.month."
Me: "Hypothetically, if you could play your guy upto the level cap in WoW for free, but had to pay for raids that were strictly optional but had good swag drops or whatever..."
Him: "WOULD NOT PAY!"
Me: "okay, but you're paying $15 a month now, you're telling me you wouldn't even spend THAT $15 on premium raids every month, you'd just close the wallet entirely?"
Him: "One hundred percent sure I'd close the wallet."
Now based on this guys history of playing weird quirky builds (in Magic and WoW) he's the type that looks for a challenge or a left-handed way to succeed in anything he does, just to prove that it's possible, so I can see where he'd say that, but it still got me thinking, most people are only going to pay for one sub a month because most people can only devote their attention to one game at a time, really. In that sense, I think the need for Free to Play, Freemium, and other "no ongoing money commitments to the player" schemes is really just a way to try to draw people away from WoW specifically. I mean, that game is like the 900lb gorilla in the market of MMOs, undeniably. I don't think the problem is that people hate paying a sub, I think it's that they can't pay TWO and WoW is by default the first one to get priority for many MMO gamers.
I just wish WoW would die already, but not until CoT comes out to fill the void.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
For the people who are not top level (or close to it) they'll never get to see the "new content" without being able to insta level. CoT will likely have a leaner content base that will make "skipping content" pointless. This not only lets people play but allows them to play with some of their friends they otherwise would have to wait a long time for.
Bypassing the "basic content" of a game is not my cup of tea. But having 100 levels to go through seems hella daunting. I am of the (unpopular I'm sure) camp that hates level cap increases and would rather just take my level capped character in new stories and I don't require the incentive of more levels to do so.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'm with you on this. In fact, it's one thing that turned me off to WoW. I spent so much time grinding to chase the carrot, then the stick kept getting longer. It was depressing.
The idea of a growing level cap probably deserves a thread of its own if it hasn't been brought up already.
I'd like to have something like what coX had, a level cap at a decent level, maybe higher than 50, I don't know, then a bunch of stuff you can do after that which isn't leveling up but is improving your toon in different ways. If you had an Incarnate system that was more horizontal than vertical (that is, make the new content not require the old content be finished with, etc) then you could just keep adding more stuff to use in your Alpha Slot or whatever instead of having more slots (which were like levels 51-60 in CoX). In that sense the Incarnate missions etc would give you a lot more OPTIONS to draw from when determining what "post cap power(s)" you want to have available to you, but only a few actually new usable POWERS to click when playing, if you follow me. So instead of having ten new Incarnate slots to open then fill with powers, you have say three and just make people choose between the different powers available more.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Ok, I just started reading this thread, and I honestly came in with no preconceptions about the idea of pay-gating content. Reading through the arguments, I'm coming out on the side of oOStaticOo and Sol.
Putting aside any ethical arguments in favor of the consequential ones, I cannot see the idea of Pay-walling content as anything but an overall destructive force on the game. Sol is 100% correct that Content is what people will come to play. If they're blocked from content, they just simply wont play, which is bad for everyone involved.
The cost of creating the content is inconsequential when deciding what you charge people for. The goal is to have a large customer base in order to market accessories to that wont leave people bitter and toxic.
Take existing F2P games that are largely considered successful. The main one I am familiar with is League of Legends. I have 0 doubt that creating new champions, maps, and game modes costs them significantly more money than skins, but skins are still the only thing in the game that you MUST use real money to purchase. New champions can be earned or bought. New game modes are free for the entire community. No-one is bothered by this. People still pay for extra champions and skins. With League, the content is the bait, and the accessories are the money-hook. With games, and especially MMOs, you need good quality bait, and the hook will take care of itself.
I seriously doubt that pay-gating content will result in increased revenues. In my thinking, its more likely that revenue will be generated better from accessories as the hook and the content as really damn tasty bait.
All that said, I personally prefer the straight subscription model from a customer standpoint. This may be due to the fact that I like exploring every nook and cranny of a game, so it would probably be cheaper for my subscription to cover everything, though.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
i agree but add a Badass Rank to CoT here link if u read http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Badass_Rank
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Paying to raid and paying to play in a 1v1 tournament are not even remotely comparable to even the most minor of degrees.
Paying to raid is you paying to play with and rely on other people not messing up in order to get your monies worth out of the experience.
Paying to enter a 1v1 tournament is you paying to play against other people relying solely on yourself to get your monies worth out of it.
If you can't see the ridiculously huge difference in those twos situation I don't know what to tell you. Paying to raid would be a terrible terrible terrible thing to implement and would not last long.
As to the rest of your snarky reply though, who exactly is saying all content should be free? There are TONS of things that can be "sold" in order to keep this game running and expanding for years.
The number one biggest thing to sell in a game like this is cosmetics because people are nutjobs and want to look special. Especially in a game like this that will likely have an insane character generator.
The next biggest is implement player housing in a way where friends can enter your "home" and expand on that for super group bases. Sell furniture skins. They would be rolling in the dollar bills.
After that, sell exp boosts and boosts to increase the earning rate of in game currency, as well as boosts for w/e reputation element may be in the game.
Charge for the basic game itself and "MAJOR" expansions.
Assuming the game doesn't suck when it is released this is all they will ever need to do to keep running and to turn a profit. But putting things like raid content behind a cash wall would be a game killer. Actually, even the idea of this being a thing is so laughable I don't know why I wasted my time even replying to it.
Perhaps I should clarify my position. My last comment was brief and can be taken out of context.
What I expect for a full sub:
Base number of character slots plus some additional sub-only slots.
Access to ALL costumes normally available at the CC (i.e. Items you do not have to unlock via TFs or accolades).
Access to ALL ATs. If we start with fewer (likely) and more are added, those are free as well. This is for ATs rolled out through normal updates, not special items that make broad sweeping changes to the game (i.e. Going Rogue). I expect to pay for such special items.
Access to ALL normal mission content including TFs and story arcs. If there are special, seasonal TFs or arcs that only happen occasionally that cost stars or whatever that's fine.
Basically I expect my sub to enable me to do MORE than an equivalent amount of F2P because I'm likely to buy months in advance. If I give you 6 month's worth of money up front, I expect a little something extra because you already know how much I'm going to spend. That means the Devs can budget time and resources easier.
I am NOT fond of any idea that someone paying for an event getting better rewards than a subber doing the same event. That's the definition of P2W for me.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
To Phoulmouth:
I understand that Magic Online is not an MMO, and I think many MMOs are trying to apply that type of monetization to their games unsuccessfully, but it is a video game where people will pay $12 for MAYBE 2 hours worth of entertainment a lot more than once a month. And though games are 1v1, the tournies are 8-man pods, so 7 of those people aren't the winner at the end. You're right in that there's a huge difference: I'm not talking about charging people $12 per raid, I'm suggesting something WAY cheaper, and even then only REALLY as a way for non-subs to do stuff that was reserved for subs only in CoX, like Incarnate Trials. I too prefer a system where you basically have to pay a sub (the WoW model, which has been demonstrated to work for WoW), and I think many people do. Unfortunately those people all play WoW, and as far as I can tell they have neither the time nor the money to play two or more MMOs on an ongoing basis. Heck, even CoX had a mass exodus when WoW first came out, so this is nothing new.
And what constitutes a "MAJOR" expansion, exactly? Was the Incarnate System a "MAJOR" expansion for CoX? If so, you have to remember that what it basically amounted to was a bunch of trails and TFs with some better swag involved (Incarnate powers) and they charged for it in that you had to subscribe or you were locked out completely. I don't expect the one-time box purchase of the game to come with every map, trial, TF, mission, and raid that comes out during the entire life of the game. If they add a new "alien mothership raid zone" complete with a TF and a new zone to street sweep, missions, and whatnot, I can see the need to monetize it.
Many games charge a new "buy the expansion box" fee for that stuff, and as people have said this presents a larger barrier to entry for new players because they now have to buy TWO boxes. After a while the number of boxes goes up and that gets expensive. I'm not going to buy into a game that's been around for like 4 years if it costs over $100 for all the expansions etc. I doubt many people would. Keeping it newbie-friendly is important, and in that sense the "pay per raid" scheme has its merits in so far as it is fair to everyone. Instead of charging your hardcore player base a new box fee every year or two, and thereby locking out new players due to the high buy-in, you charge everyone, old and new, the same price for the same stuff. Subscribers maybe get unlimited amounts of that stuff with the sub etc, but the non-subs have to pay as they go, old and new alike.
CoX charged money for the Signature Story Arcs, and I don't remember people rage quitting over that. Personally I just never did them because there was no compelling reason to. You didn't get any cool temp powers or swag or anything, it was just more soloable missions for the soloists to do. I didn't do all of the regular missions on any of my toons in the first place, so I didn't do the SSAs either. Maybe adding a new SSA Accolade with an accolade power associated with it would have gotten me to do them, but they didn't do that. That was content I would have had to pay for, I didn't want to do it in the first place, so I didn't. No anger, no "They want money for that, WTF?!?!??!" I just didn't do it and focused on stuff I did like.
Many people on these forums are all for charging money for totally optional stuff they then admit they mostly intend to never really buy in any great quantities, then they state "but other idiots will buy it, so let them subsidize my fun, heh heh..." then they rage against the idea of being charged for a totally optional trial or TF that they know they will likely want to do a few times. The only possible reason for this that I can see is people who consider themselves future customers saying "If I get to set the price, let's charge money for the stuff I'm mostly not going to buy and make the stuff I truly intend to buy free, because that's the best monetization scheme for me, personally." If I were MWM I would consider the source before taking that advice. I can't tell you how much this reminds me of the people who used to play Warhammer 40k and/or Magic at my local game stores then bought pre-painted armies off of eBay and got photocopies of codex books etc to avoid having to buy stuff. Those game stores are out of business now for that reason. That behavior kills the exact thing you claim to like by starving it of money.
A lot of people who have chimed in on this subject claim they're going to pay a sub, and to that I say "Great. But why?" Because absent any compelling reason that makes a sub worthwhile, that is probably not going to be the popular choice among the general customer base at large. As I've said, I think most other stuff (crafting and auction house being exceptions that I think will sell some kind of sub or microsub) like costume pieces, etc will be more the kind of stuff of "buy once and own it forever" purchases to unlock the costume piece you want, etc. I don't think they can make enough of that stuff every month to make a sub for that worthwhile.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I would also say that there are plenty of people that will not pay to raid, because they don't like to raid. So your argument doesn't work. This is why I do not like Micro-transactioning everything. If you nickel and dime everything to death, people will nickel and dime you right back. Charge me to do Raids? Fine, I won't do Raids. Charge me for new Powers? Fine, I'll just play with the free ones I get. Charge me for Costumes? Fine, I'll just live with making the best of what is available to me. Charge me for Crafting? Fine, I'll just play the game and never craft anything. There will always be somebody that will take advantage of paying as little as possible to play a game. This is why I tried to fight so hard for the pay method to be like CoX was in the beginning. Buy the box and pay 15 bucks a month, otherwise you can't play. This guarantees that MWM will always be making money. All you need is 5560 people paying $14.99 a month to make $1,000,000 gross in a year.
According to the User amount on this forum there are 6734 people interested in playing CoT. That would put MWM at over $1.2M gross a year if everybody paid a $14.99 sub fee every month. That doesn't sound too shabby to me. I was never opposed to having a monthly fee. I was always opposed to F2P with Micro-transactions. There are a lot of people that will argue that going sub doesn't make as much money, and they may be right, but the sub is guaranteed money. If I pay a sub, I expect to have full access to everything in the game. If I am F2P, I expect to have next to nothing in the game. If I have to buy everything individually to play a game I more than likely will not do that. This makes me more conscious of the amount of money I am spending to do stuff. Charging me something like .99 cents a raid will DRASTICALLY cut down on my raiding. If I do 15 raids that's 15 dollars, might as well have bought a subscription!
What you suggest may work fine and dandy for a person who doesn't spend much time playing the game and doesn't do but only a few raids per month, but for the avid gamer that plays 8 hours a day and does 4 raids per day.....you're asking too much. I absolutely can not support this idea at all.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
@radiac: It doesn't matter what you are suggesting. Doing something as dumb as paywalling raid content in the manner of which you are speaking would put a nail in the coffin of this game before it even has a chance to live. There is NO ARGUMENT that can be made that makes this sound intelligent. It won't happen. Sorry, but I did not bother reading your wall of text as I know there is nothing of interest in there after having read your previous posts.
@oOStaticOo: 100% agreed with you. There are 2 very successful pay models that can be used. 1 is a monthly sub, which IMO is the worse of the 2. The other way is as I suggested above, you charge for the base game and the MAJOR expansions and back up that money with selling cosmetics/boosts. Basically the GW2 model which has proven to be massively successful.
Personally though, and this is a simple fact for me, if they do a monthly sub and still expect me to drop any cash on the base game itself I won't play. If they sell in game powers or anything that leads to payers having more power than non payers I won't play. Those 2 things are game killers for me personally. Exactly the reason I don't play Champions Online.
For what it's worth, I personally have no problem with the "everybody pays a full sub, period" model, as it would work just fine for me. oOStaticOo pointed out the existence of the more casual gamer though, and I think those people might like being able to play a game without the yoke of a monthly sub, because they know they don't have enough time to make it worthwhile, like thin people on diets not wanting to eat at all-you-can-eat buffets. If one of those people on old CoX would have wanted to join the occasional BAF run, they would have not been allowed to unless they paid a month's sub for it. I would have liked to offer them the option of doing a BAF run by paying a buck or two right then and there for it, pay as you go, no commitments. Maybe without the Incarnate threads and so forth, but allow them to participate in just one trial if that's all they have time for. People talk about how angry the non-sub gamers will get if that is offered to the them, and I personally just don't see it. I think MANY of these people will USUALLY opt not to do paid content, that's true, but I don't think making it an option is hurting anything. Also, the people paying for a family of four sub on WoW might waft back and forth into this game (the guy who ran my CoX SG did this) and want to go no-sub on CoT to save money but still do the occasional Lambda Trial, etc.
The real issue at hand, I think, is whether or not ABSOLUTELY ALL missions, TFs, Trials, Raids, new zones, etc should come with the initial purchase of the game, and I don't agree that they should. I don't expect my purchase of the game in 2015 (2016?) to cover every new thing they roll out by 2025 (if it lasts that long). As such the question is not whether or not they ought to monetize that somehow, but HOW to monetize it. If you have an "everybody must pay the sub" game, then that's that, everyone is then either a hardcore CoT player or not a CoT player at all. If you have the "buy the box then play non-sub for no monthly fee" option, which I think is an option that some people on here loathe at it's basic core, then you need to monetize new content that rolls out somehow, and people loathe any attempt at doing that just as much as they loathe the non-sub option that spawned it.
I refuse to believe that a bunch of high-rollers paying for the next Funny Hat or Dance Emote of the month is going to get us there in terms of revenue. I consider myself a high-roller and I wouldn't waste my money on that stuff. I would buy only that stuff I felt like I wanted and save money by not buying the rest. In order to make the full sub (which I fully intend to pay) a good deal for me, I want my sub to come with some kind of access to content (missions/TFs/raids/etc which have better rewards for completion, like the Incarnate System or something) that the non-sub doesn't get with the original game purchase, but I would allow those people to participate in that content for a small price if they want to on a pay-per-raid basis.
I know there are people who disagree with me on this, needless to say I think those people are wrong and they think I'm wrong.
I've spoken my piece, and FYI I'm not reading this thread anymore.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Wait wait wait..... paying a sub for a game means you are hardcore? Since when exactly? You seem to be under the impression that this world is either black or white. Sorry man, but there are a billion shades of gray between black and white that you're obviously incapable of understanding.
You don't need to monetize new content at all. You just monetize non character power items like costumes and effects and such. You can sit there yammering about people "loathing" this but as an avid GW2 player, I have NEVER seen someone have anything negative to say about it after experiencing it.
You can refuse to believe it all you want. Go look at GW2, that exact pay model is working and making a massive profit for them. They are also releasing new content and such faster than WoW without a sub fee. You can refuse to believe it, but at that point its like leaning up against a tree and arguing that the tree doesn't exist.
One thing I'm not quite understanding, and hopefully someone can explain: it seems a majority of people are willing to pay a la carte for just about anything except mission content. What is it about content that makes it an exception? I've seen some references above to content being the core of the game, but I think some could make the argument that power sets are the core, because they don't care about the story and wouldn't mind repeating content as long as the powers were enjoyable. Some hardcore RPers might even say costume parts and cool zones are more important. And as long as MWM avoids making specific missions required for progress (I'm looking askance at you, FFXIV), one could argue that all content is optional, just like power sets or costume pieces.
I'm not arguing for or against monetising content, but I would like to better understand the objections to it.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Several objections coming from others, or my own experiences:
1.
Pay-for-Content negatively affects the play experience, especially when teaming.
Paid content by its nature limits the number of players who can do that content. For PuGs and queued events, it becomes tougher to get teams together, due to the reduced number of players eligible and general confusion over who can/cannot join. For close-knit player groups, it forces friends/families to all pay for the content at the same time, or split apart instead of teaming, or may convince group members to avoid it since they can't play with their entire group despite being able to afford the content personally.
Charging for new powersets, auction house access, card packs, or cosmetic items doesn't affect teaming freedom, though of course these alternatives may have their own downsides. In the case of powersets, for example, I can pay for and play a Nature controller alongside (or against) my friend's free Illusion controller, with essentially no issues. This assumes the paid powerset is not intentionally or accidentally overpowered to attract customers...or worse, nerfed later once a new powerset is for sale.
If pay-for-content is limited to a few huge expansions, the problem is reduced (e.g. CoV) since most everyone buys it or is given free access after some period of exclusivity. Another way of reducing the problem is to only charge for very optional "side missions". The problem can be mostly eliminated by "team leader's access counts for all" coding, though of course this potentially reduces the number of players who pay...which was the whole point of charging for it in the first place. The problem is increased if content is broken into many small confusing pieces for monetization, or if core content is paywalled (e.g. an endgame zone or the only TF serving a certain level range). The confusion problem is further magnified if players can buy temporary access ("Wait up, charging Visa to refill stars, didn't know this was a pay TF"). There's a whole range from tolerable to obnoxiously fragmented play experience.
2.
Pay-for-Content can degenerate into a form of Pay-to-Win.
If that paid content is more rewarding (faster rewards and/or better rewards) then part of the playerbase advances in power faster or further than the rest, no longer based on their in-game time, use of intelligent strategies, or risk-taking. Some call this Pay-to-Win or at least Pay-to-Win-Faster, and consider it to be a negative.
Cosmetic item shops and reasonably-priced subscriptions that grant access to the whole game avoid this potential problem entirely or are as fair as most players have come to expect from life. Pay-for-New-Powerset and Pay-for-System (AH, IOs) models still face this objection unless carefully designed and balanced.
3.
Pay-for-Content is not necessarily in the best financial interests of the studio.
Clearly, content development is one of the major costs for MMO studios, so charging for it does at least make some sense, if there's no better option available to fund that development. MMO and game DLC history shows that players are willing to pay for good content, so the precedent and dependable income source is likely there. I think most of us can agree that more content is desirable and must be funded somehow. It was traditionally the go-to money source for games that had no "desired but optional stuff". Certain newer funding models have emerged and been successful, which indicates that it's not the only way...but is it still the best or most reliable?
In a game so dependent on community and teaming experience, the game and studio might suffer long-term due to the effect of objection #1, thus making less money than if they'd fully considered and implemented monetization methods with less impact on the play experience. The financial forecast, and thus a studio's pros/cons for a specific game - of the paid content strategy versus subscription models versus cosmetic cash shop models versus hybrids - can only be seen in the gritty details of pricing and demand, so I am definitely not suggesting that pay-for-content is always financially worse for every game studio (even MMO studios) than some other method.
*** Please note, these objections are phrased generally and are not my assessment of CoT's current plans as Tannim has described, nor are they directly addressed at Radiac's original or clarified ideas. I have tried to put forth the main "cons" I'd consider and try to nullify before making paid content a basis of funding any future game, especially MMOs reaching out to players who want casual teaming.
I'm going to try to address two things, which I will break apart for clarity as best as I can. This post is not a guaranteed way we'll go about it, but it does represent my current thinking on how to approach content, access, and paying for it.
1) [b]There is the very legitimate concern that pay-gating content will limit the players who can do it and keep friends and families from being able to play together, thus making teaming harder.[/b] My proposed solution to this is one of two approaches: a) give those who have access to paid-for content "tickets" they can distribute to others; these tickets give those others one-time access to start a mission and a certain amount of tme to finish it; b) only require the team leader to have access to a given mission, or even just require one person on the team to do so. (I'd probably stick with "team leader" if only to prevent griefers who grab somebody for their team to get into a mission, then kick that player out for whatever reason and deny that player the teaming experience he wanted.) Option (b) would make those with paid access much more attractive team leaders, while ensuring they still got to play whatever they had paid to play, and do so with their friends and family.
2) [b]The actual model I am currently picturing for how to pay-gate content is to adopt a TV/Netflix approach.[/b] Again, this is not set in stone; it's just my favorite of ideas on how to achieve this. Each week, fortnight, or month (to be determined), there would be a certain number of missions that are available to all players for free. What missions these are would change with the above-mentioned time period. The newest missions would not be in this list; they'd become available some number of cycles later.
In addition to this, microsubscriptions to various "content channels" would be available. Subscribers to a channel would have access to an expanded list of rotating content based on the channel's themes. Examples include:
[list][*]New Releases Channel: The newest missions that have just come out would be here. When they stop being "new," they'll become part of the list of free missions for one cycle and then rotate out to be part of the general population.
[*]Full Story Channel: Any mission which is currently free is likely part of a longer chain for a story arc. This channel makes all missions in the arcs represented by the current list of free missions available to its subscribers.
[*]Nemesis Channel: This channel will feature rotating missions themed based on certain enemies being behind them, whether factions or individual named NPCs.
[*]Allies channel: Similar to Nemesis, this channel features rotating missions based on factions who want your help.[/list]
I'm sure we can come up with more, but I hope that gives you the idea: there will always be free mission content, but it will rotate periodically. Ideally, this will help keep things fresh, as well. Even farmers will have reason to play other missions, because "the best farming mission" might not be available right now.
In addition, the option to "buy the mission" will exist. Instead of a microsubscription, this one-time purchase will buy a single specific mission. (Bundle deals might buy whole story arcs.) Owning a mission means you can play it any time you like, rather than having to wait for it to be in the free rotation or part of a channel to which you're subscribed. But buying every single mission will be far more expensive overall than maintaining a microsubscription or few.
(Personaly, I expect the "new releases" microsubscription to be one of the most popular, as it will get you all content as it is released. The reason new releases go free for a cycle after they're no longer "new" is so that non-subscribers remain caught up on current goings-on. New releases is early access, though.)
Anyway, this is my current idea for how things could work, if we go with any sort of paid content. But we'd obviously need to be able to maintain a development cycle that kept the New Releases interesting. This is something that will work better as we develop more missions and our archive of content available for rotation increases.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
As much as I'd hate to sound like a broken record here, I really can not stress enough how much I would rather you did not gate content behind a pay wall. I understand your desire to monetize as much as possible to make as much money as possible, but this is one thing I really feel would hurt rather than help. If anything, as I've said before, make something like CoX did with an expansion bundle to purchase like CoV and Going Rogue. I just really do not think people will be happy with a rotating schedule of missions available to play. I feel if you leave it up to the "Leader" to have paid for the content you will find people who will try to pool together and just make sure one person in their group is a subscriber or has paid for the content so that they can all play the content, therefore potentially reducing the amount of money you'll make for the content to the point that it may not be worth it. I just feel this is a bad thing all the way around.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I'm again not following how that reduces the money made for the content.
What I think you're advocating is not having any pay-gated content at all. Thus, there are $0 gained for every player who plays that content.
If, as you suggest (and I'm sure could happen), groups of friends pool resources to make sure that one of their number has the content they want to play, that's $X per player, where X is Y/N, and Y is the cost of the content and N is the number of players in the team. X>0.
Now, this is not an argument for or against pay gating, here. It is an attempt to understand your claim that 0>X. At least, that's what it looks to me like your claim is. Can you clarify?
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I dont like missions behind a pay wall, or a lottery. By lottery i mean a restriction has been placed, in this case the Mission Holder (not Leader) has to have access to the content. Even though F2P players will be glad to have this, over time a sort of resentment will grow, and slowly but surely.. people will Withdraw from those Missions/TFs/Arcs/etc...
Such content restrictions make me think back to CoH and the Eden Trial.
I LOVED the Eden Trial, but it was restricted also behind a 2 level range, when the mission holder could run it. As years passed, less and less of the Eden Trial were run by players. Eventually, everyone sorta just gave up on running it. I dont want to see something like that happen again, cause it was maybe one of my favorite trials.
I know that Business demands there be a way to pay for the new content (new Terrains, new Textures, new Animations, newly added Code, newly done Testing, new this, new that), but I rather think of such content as a box... in this case an XBox. XBox costs close to $500* with everything bundled in the console (OS and all), but its sold for $350? Why?
Are they going to stop making the XBox One? It seems like they Should! :P No, they probably wont?! How come?! :P Games Made for the Console. :o
What if Game Made for the Console, for MWM could be Really Handy Inspirations for that new Content (mission/tf/arc/etc...). I think back to Hamidon and how only Certain types of Inspirations really helped fighting it. Or the Eden Trial, the final AV, you really should have those special one time use Inspirations. You might use up 6 or so of those inspirations in a full fight, if everything goes according to your plan. So sell 10 for a Single Star, but ALTERNATIVELY (Key Word) have a way to get them by defeating very formidable foes, but drops are random enough, making it a pain for time crunched individuals that have limited time to play because of Work. Since everyone Knows you can Farm for those inspirations, but takes allot of time to get enough, no one will mind seeing them in the In-Game Store. Those with limited time will say "Darn. I only have One (or Two) of those special inspirations. I rather Not have the Team Wipe this time. I Work and have money. Let me get 10 of those for 1 Star, just to be Safe! If I dont use them this time, Good! Always next time!"
What about F2P players farming/selling those inspirations. Allowed, but... Auction House commission fees will be sorta high, in the end making it not worth it. Because F2P farmers will try to offset the price by tacking that fee onto those Very Rare Inspirations. Eventually it gets so High that its ridiculous. When a player that has time crunch (a preset / limited time to play) sees those prices, he grabs his head in disbelief. Thinks it over and decides.. "1 Star isnt so bad for a whole lot of 10 of those".
So... how do you get money out of those F2P players then?
You have to ask 1st, are they F2P because they Choose to be?
Or do they really Not have a steady source of income? :P
And, if they cant pay, can we use them somehow to make Others (with money) pay!? ;D
Somehow making them an intermediary? And think about the amount of time/effort required to be an intermediary and the limited time free swag they receive, or very small bump in a stipend.
What do i mean by an intermediary? Hmmm... i guess its like a Super Star that going to a Premier, and all these Fashion Design houses or Jewelry Chains want that Super Star to show off their wares for that Premier. They dont get to Keep it, they have to return it, but it gets exposure faster, and those with Moola will want to purchase some of those wares. So in a sense, those with Allot of free Time might try to be a Super Star to stand out by grinding to get that Achievement, wearing wares (an Intermediary for those corporations). Plus the very small stipend will eventually lead to those F2P players saving and saving it to get a New Powerset or the like, and most... even though 3/4 of the way to purchasing that new Powerset or the like, might see others playing with that powerset and saying how sweet it is.. and that F2P player will succumb to the temptation and buy just enough stars to get that New Powerset or the like. Of course, the less stars you buy, the more expensive it is. ;)
Allot of this is under the presumption that F2P players have Allot of time because they dont work (or dont have a steady source of income). But if they cant pay, why dont you stop them from hogging Bandwidth / Disk space / CPU resources from the busy Servers?
You need them to make the World seem Attractive to future and Existing Paying players. When one Servers population dwindles too low, what Happens? Either they switch to a different server or they get BORED and dont return as often to the game. So you need to consider F2P players hogging resources as part of the Marketing/Advertising Budget! ;D If things are very Bad and you cant Support so many F2P players, then some form of gating/limit/restriction/lottery is OK and allow so many as the servers can handle.
Like a Web Hosting service?! ;) Actually They LIE! Never Mind! Unlimited Space My A$$! >:(
Make em wait on a line to get In, or make a Reservation when they can Log-In for X number of hours, if things get THAT bad! :P
I know there will be people trying to equate newly created content as Goods, but i see it as a Service. if its a Service then you can be flexible in the way you charge for stuff, as long as the customer FEELS good about the money they spent. What Keeps and Attracts new players is the Good FEELings gotten from the experiences gotten while playing the game. So its not so straight forward to think "I Drew that Picture, now pay me X amount for it." You wont get very far with that type of thinking. It should be more about what that Picture made you feel and how grateful you are and decide that you want to feel that way again so you pay X amount (maybe more) for it. And if CoT cant bring out that Good FEELing in players, players wont stick around for too long... and new assets wont make enough money from the remaining players anyways. :P Like going to a Carnival, or a Casino... people loose money most Assuredly, but they get compensated from the Good FEELings they get while being there. So they keep returning again and again. ;)
@segev: Apparently the dev team is planning on pay gating playable content and power sets. That's is a game killer for me as it is nothing but pay 2 win. It sickens me that you would condone such a thing. I officially won't be playing this game. Too bad.
This is what I'm saying. Without paying for content the game is basically FORCED to have a minimum subscription to pay for it.
Forcing a minimum subscription on all players is even MORE restrictive than simply offering content at a fair price.
Subscription only games ARE pay walled.
That's like expecting a free burger and hoping to pay for it in pickles, relish, tomatoes, and mustard. If you sell a burger then put a price on it. Story content is the center of the meal. The SINGLE MOST EXPENSIVE content for the devs to create.. why are we debating whether it has monetary value or not?
What that value is and how it comes is debatable.. but it certainly is not free in my mind.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Go look at GW2. No sub, no paywalled content, and they are making a bunch of profit. There are other ways to make $$ besides forcing a game to be pay to win. There is an absolutely AMAZING amount of things a game like this can sell that won't create a pay to win environment.
Pay2Win needs much definition.
If your character is stronger, more efficient, or more capable in a fundamental way that other players who did not pay as much as you are, that is Pay2Win. Being able to do Mission X instead of Mission Y is not pay to win. Being able to have orange powers instead of blue is not Pay2Win. Using Kicks instead of Punches is not Pay to Win. Using Gravity powerset instead of Electric powerset is not pay to win.
This is where we will disagree. I do not know what the Guild Wars store offers but it sounds very similar to CoT. Pay for the game and you get access to the game and there's a game store inside. Also NCSoft is a large company with many products that help it take care of overhead that MWM simply does not have the luxury of expecting.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Pay 2 win is simply defined.
A game is pay 2 win when character power can be increased through items only available for $$.
exp boosts, costumes, cosmetic crap, and the likes are not pay 2 win items.
Paywalled content that gives you drop unavailable outside of that content is pay 2 win. Powersets can also be pay to win if it offers differing functionality and increased POWER over free sets. A movement ability you have to pay for that makes movement faster than any of the free powers is pay 2 win.
The distinction between the 2 is as simple as day and night.
NCSoft doesn't look at their other products as items with the ability to cover overahead on other products. If a product is not self sustaining and profitable it gets shut down. It doesn't matter how many hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars other products are profiting. If this wasn't true CoH would still be running.
We do not know the drop system. It could be randomized like Marvel Heroes where only the percentage chance of drop rarity changes. Your issue with drops (a very cheap and easily changed system) taking away from potential revenue of content (a very expensive and not easily changed system) is flawed if this is truly your reason for not wanting paywalled content.
Parity will exist in ALL the sets, or it will exist in none of the sets. Just because you may not have the set you would have designed yourself does not mean that one has greater advantage than another.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
If you re-read the post I made on how "paywalled content" might work, there is nothing preventing players from eventually doing every mission. Without paying for microsubscriptions or buying missions in particular, a player simply waits for the missions he wants to do to come into the free rotation. There are no drops that are going to be exclusive to "paying players" based on paywalled content, with the possible exception that you could argue free players will have to wait a bit for new releases to stop being new releases before they hit the free rotation for the first time.
Whether there will be powers that are paid-for or not is still in discussion, but doing so would be more about "cool thing" factor (or, more importantly, costs to our hardware to run them) than about "pay for the power that makes you act like you're twice as good as people without it!"
It is acknowledged that, if there are mechanics which are bought at the Starmart, it is possible that we could unintentionally create an imbalance if we have one or more in the Starmart that are stronger than expected. However, one of the earliest things I've been pushing for will help mitigate even such errors (above and beyond the fact that we'd revisit the balance of such things as needed): Stars are planned to be tradeable on the player-to-player market. So if you ultimately don't want to spend cash on Stars, you can still acquire them by selling stuff on the market for Stars (or trading currency on the market for Stars) to other players who ARE of a more "pay to win" mindset. They get what they want out of the game in terms of a power boost they just had to pay real money to get, but they don't diminish the accomplishments of other players because SOMEBODY (possibly you) earned the items they bought through gameplay. It's no different than buying them for currency.
Except now you have Stars with which to buy pay-gated content or items.
We've given a lot of thought to this. Our goal is to empower players to play the game however they like, and to allow those who have more money than time to subsidize those with more time than money so all can access what they want even with a c-store.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
@Segev
What I was trying to say was that if you charge X amount of Dollars and stipulate that Y person is needed for N number of people to be able to do said content then the cost you spent designing said content will not make a profit needed for said content. It will then be a waste of time and money to develop said content because limited people will pay for the content as long as just having 1 person that paid for it is all that is needed to access it.
Now granted not charging any money for content will not make you any money at all for the content. However, you will make up for that loss in profits from more people playing the game and either subscribing or buying other items from the cash store instead. If people feel that they not only have to buy cosmetic things, but content as well, you will lose players. Those lost players will lose you potentially more revenue than what you might have made from charging for the content.
The key is to make the players enjoy playing your game and want to spend money on it. Content is what draws people to play a game. The more content, the more people will play it. Offering QoL items in the cash shop will allow people to spend money and not feel like they are being forced to pay to play. There is already a box fee just to be able to play the game, now you want to charge me more money for content that should have been included in the box? Or charge me money every time I want to run a certain mission? That's not fun. Sorry, but I'm out. If you want to charge for content, then make it an expansion with a one time fee to be able to play it. Otherwise you will have a lot of people with a lot of resentment that will eventually leave the game and go somewhere else instead.
Also if you choose to rotate content, then people will just wait for the content to be free. There would really be no point in charging for the content unless the person was a "I WANT IT NAO!!!" type player that just couldn't wait a couple of weeks for it to rotate into being free. You want to bring people to the game to be played. Content is the best way to do that. Don't charge people for content and people will spend money on other things in the game to make it more fun and enjoyable to them. At the most, as I suggested before, charge another "Box" fee for expansions that include new powers, new ATs, new content, enhancements, etc. like CoH did with CoV and Going Rogue.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I agree with this regarding rotation.
Going Rogue came out when the game was still on a subscription only model. What is MWM to do in between their box sale and the expansion for revenue without a subscription only model? This kind of expansion model you seek just isn't feasible. The company needs to have streams of revenue to fund any post launch development (and in our case for PRE launch development too!)
This statement is just not corrent. CoH was making money, just not enough money for the studio to keep it.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Uh. You're right, we don't know the drop system. Maybe you should reread what I said. Here is the sentence you obviously missed. "Paywalled content that gives you drops unavailable outside of that content is pay 2 win." Not sure what you thought to gain in the convo be trying to imply I said I know the drop model or whatever when anyone who actually reads what I posted should understand I never implied that.
As to "like marvel heroes" you obviously don't play a lot of marvel heroes. If they paywalled red and cosmic terminals that game would die because then it would be pay 2 win as those are the ONLY avenues to get a lot of the most powerful items in the game besides trading. Right now a GoK goes for 9 blessings, if that content were paywalled the people who pay could charge 50+ blessings and get it.
And again, you say something to pretend like you are disagreeing with me when you are actually agreeing. Let me quote myself yet again.
"Powersets can also be pay to win if it offers differing functionality and increased POWER over free sets."
I never implied even slightly that selling "ANY" powersets is pay2win. If you actually read I implied selling powersets that ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN or FUNCTIONAL IN SOME WAY THAN free power sets would be pay2win.
Uh, what. My statement wasn't correct so you paraphrase what I said to prove me wrong? Are you being serious?
It is absolutely feasible because they wouldn't ONLY be selling expansions. They would have an in game store selling cosmetics, boosts, and character services. Did you not read his whole post?
Please, before replying again actually read everything you are replying to.
So you are going to go with the the worse possible paywall method ever created in gaming. A method where only the absolute most hardcore nutjob players are going to pay you.
Why would any but the most hardcore nutjob players pay for content when they can just wait a few months and get it for free? And while they are waiting they are just getting more and more pissed off by it thus likely quitting and making you lose out on future revenue.
You are MASSIVELY under estimating the things a game like this can sell to make a profit.
Lets say you use the CoH character generator. That gives you costume skins such as head, pants, shoes, gloves, shirts, capes. Then you can also sell various textures as well. You can sell specialty cosmetic items like wings and such as well. Lets not forget other cosmetic possibilities like glows, auras, and halos..
Lets go beyond cosmetics.
Character respecializations
Character costume change
Character slots
EXP boosts
Currency boosts
Bag slots
Bank slots
Pets
Mounts
The list can go on but I think you get the idea.
Do not underestimate this income. GW2 runs and profits off this income.
But if the joke of a paymodel is what you people have really decided on I have serious doubts as to the viability of this game actually running longer than 2 years.
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