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It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.
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Because MWM is a business? Because I live in the United States of America which defends my right to make something out of nothing? Because I want businesses to thrive so that people can thrive?
No I won't be dissappointed by any of that.
Will I be disappointed? Yes. Because the game will not bend to my will of what I want it to be. But that doesn't mean I won't be playing it just because I have to give it money to do what I want to do.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
You're not getting it. And stop misdirecting.
Of course MWM is a business. You never make something out of nothing but out of something else. We all want good businesses to thrive so people can thrive.
Of course CoT will not be exactly like what any one or even a small group of us will want it to be. And we expect to pay into CoT to play CoT.
What we are saying is that to the best of our ability to judge, CoT is starting to depart sufficiently far from the sort of game we would enjoy that we see the likelyhood of it being far more frustration than positive experience. On top of what happened to City of Heroes, that's becoming way too much.
I talk to people who, like me, supported the kickstarter but who long ago gave up on the game. And others who are giving up now.
I still have a little hope. But it's fading.
Just to be clear, the 'Netflix' idea is one of several competing ideas. It's a bit complex for me. I like things simple and straightforward.
Jacke, what, precisely, is upsetting you?
My goal in this is to make this game sustainable, something we can play both tomorrow and for years to come.
To do that, we need an amount of income. It's ugly, but it's true. Can I make spending money fun? Well, yes. I know someone who used to work at Zynga. Lemme tell you, that stuff is _bad stuff_. Don't do what they did.
So, we're tossing ideas around here, trying to find a happy medium. We're going past our comfort levels to see if a good idea shows up.
You are the people paying to play - what do you want to see?
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
@JayBezz, I think we agree on the point that math is a significant reason for trying to make content development pay for itself, at least until CoT grows past a certain box purchase rate per month or subscribed base and can thus support paid studio employees to do such writing on a regular basis. I only mentioned "desire" to affirm that I shared Segev's desire, as he expressed it in an earlier post, to motivate the studio to produce quality content by connecting it directly to more revenue.
--
I should have been clearer, I was referring to CoH's hybrid revenue model as of I23.
That's why I see no problem with (careful) use of signature story arcs and special authors writing for paid content. I also have no problem with major content expansions costing money, at least until it makes sense to merge them into the basic box (as CoH / CoV eventually did). MWM should absolutely not pursue a full-sub-only model; we agree there.
Where we do seem to disagree is on the (lack of?) wisdom in offering unlimited content rental for a monthly fee - unless I've misunderstood you. If content were the only thing CoT offered, then selling content would be the primary goal; a game offers far more, and can thus spread monetization around so as to feel less intrusive on the content side while still generating enough for the studio. Putting too much emphasis on content as revenue stream - such that we charge for most or all new content, or ask new players in year 5 to pay a large catch-up fee, or start asking full-price subscribers to pay piecemeal for anything except special author content - is in my judgement too risky. I'm not saying you'd support these ideas, simply that the ideas are examples of going too far in my book. A shrinking or artificially stunted subscriber base would be a poor trade-off for the additional funds gained from that content up-selling, and that we're safest if we follow CoH's example and only try to push at little further toward paid content at a time (as I think the Netflix model permits), proving at each stage that the revenue is working and the quality content is being delivered, with minimal downsides to the basic game box experience.
I'm advocating for a midpoint that avoids the downsides of an attempt to either pull too much revenue from content or too little, or pull even a reasonable amount of revenue via a messy method that drives players away...and on all of those goals we likely agree.
--
[edit to add]
I should probably further clarify that I sort of assumed that the worst aspects of the team leader metagame could be reduced by ensuring that the only real reason to run the content is for its story. The most annoying and frequent demands would come from people chasing a loot reward advantage, and that's avoidable. Of course, as you accurated noted, it still leaves the problem of whether enough revenue is generated from a design that permits 8 people to get the benefit from 1 person's payment, but then again it's protecting the paying players from all of the "can't find enough team members" and "recruiting hassles / who qualifies" downsides. I honestly don't know the right answer here.
--
On your fourth point, it seemed to me that MWM has aimed for a mixture; that rented content and items would be re-locked if a sub (micro or full) lapses, but that any outright purchase would be permanently unlocked regardless of subscription status. Items earned from rented content / systems while subbed would still function after a lapse. Additionally, while subbed, higher levels of subbing would include a Stars stipend which could be used to make rented content / system access permanent via outright purchase (or spent on consumables or other rentals). In this way it provides options to rent forever, buy, or rent-to-own. Of course I defer to our resident experts for the details of the current plan.
Again, some people like the rented content idea. Some don't. We're trying to explore the idea of new ways to give you guys more while making cash.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Right - a lot of how far MWM needs to go in pursuit of cash depends on the philosophy behind how to operate long-term; full-on business with profit as primary objective? or more of a co-op caretaker of a growing CoT world? Both need focus on being able to pay employees and build a surplus to fund future expansions / new games, but one has the chance to make decisions in favor of the players in ways that few other studios / publishers can. I'm not aware of any MMOs that are asking their players about payment models like MWM is, which does say something.
I, too, would want to hear what sorts of unrecoverable errors are thought to have been made (or in the works) that would cause Kickstarter backers to abandon CoT, and how one might remedy it.
What alarms me is the complexity of some of the schemes. Especially excessive paywalls on content. Others I talk to are even more upset over this. Others still don't even bother now with CoT. Like I said, they've already given up hope.
I understand the rough costs involved in different areas and features. I understand the different ways games earn revenue. It's all some combination of box fees, some free access, purchased staged access, subscriptions, and purchased additional items, mostly cosmetic, with some special items.
Consider the game landscape out there right now. It's really, really bad. Mobile games are a manipulation cash grab (as warcabbit refers to re Zynga). AAA game companies pull all sorts of shenanigans to cover up their flaws while charging premium prices--and leaving out vital parts of the games and wanting even more for them as DLC. And Steam is flooded with crap games by fly-by-night operators.
MMO's have similar issues. SWTOR is so bad it would be dead now except it's Star Wars and BioWare put a lot of good effort into the game before they were corrupted by EA. Now it survives on ignoring any problems and pumping out more shinies and expansions.
And we all know what happened with NCsoft and City of Heroes.
Most of these issues revolve around money and game quality. As in too high a price for too little quality. And players being uncertain what they get for their money.
But many people here understand the money problem is one for the honest game company too. And they put forward ideas to get CoT revenue from subdividing the content of game and charging for each part.
I think all these people proposing and supporting these plans have the best interests of CoT at heart. But I think they discount the 1st, 2nd, and later order effects on the player base from adding such paywalls. Many would be revenue negative just from increasing confusion. Even more so from player irritation.
Despite a lot of problems in the game industry, there are a lot of available games and ongoing MMO games out there. If people are frustrated with CoT, they will spend less time playing it and more playing other games. That will be reflected in game revenue eventually.
The one thing that CoT will have going for it that is weak in most other competitors is community. We saw what happened after NCsoft stuck the knife in. The community rallied. Most of us were there that final day. We've seen the efforts continue afterwards. There are a lot of people out there who still pine for City of Heroes.
I know the design of CoT will allow that strong community to flourish. But it's not immune to the nature of the game and its financial model eroding support from old players and stifling enjoyment in new players.
CoT needs revenues to survive. It needs to keep attracting and retaining players. All games get and retain players and revenues by being good and being worth what they cost. If you make figuring that out and playing the game too complex and frustrating for your players, some will move on and less will arrive.
I don't want that to happen. I want CoT to be successful. But I and others are afraid where CoT is going will cause that to happen. And many are deciding they don't want to invest in a game to see it taken away. That already happened to them once.
I have spoken to a lot of people who didnt know about the CoT Kickstarter but wish they so they could give them their money. In fact they want a 2nd KS done.
They have also decided to become Subscribers when the game is released based on what they have read on these forums from the Devs.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
Jacke, and to anyone else with payment model concerns, may I ask for your opinions on CoH's I23 hybrid payment model, in a standardized format, to help us all get a better sense of how satisfied you might be if CoT were to at least match it in various aspects? It is clear that future CoT players have different expectations, but one thing we generally share is knowledge of how CoH operated.
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being awful, 3 being neutral, and 5 being excellent, please rate and comment - if you wish - on CoH's I23 payment model, as it was prior to the shutdown announcement, in terms of...
Complexity:
(Things to consider...Was it easy to understand how to get what you wanted when paying for CoH features? Was your ability to convince others to try it or to stay affected by the number of options, frequency of sales, or frequent additions and changes to the store items?)
Total cost to the average player:
(Things to consider...Did CoH provide good entertainment value for the money? Could you convince others of this by word-of-mouth? Did it monetize the right things or not, and how did those monetization decisions make you and your friends feel about the game / the studio / the publisher / other players?)
Fairness to all players:
(Things to consider...Were you or others affected by pay-to-win elements? Did players feel tricked or mistreated by a particular aspect of the payment system or certain products that didn't match expectations? Did you feel good about spreading the word about CoH, or did you hesitate out of fear that a new player would feel cheated in some way or made to feel inferior as a result of their newness, gameplay preferences, or willingness to pay for various features?)
Content Development Rate, Quality, and Ratio of Paid Versus Free Content:
(Things to consider...Did you think CoH had the right amount of paid content? How about free content? Was the right amount charged for its level of quality? Did you wish there was more content of a particular type? Wish that more or less emphasis was put on creating content compared to other paid items, or to other free aspects of the game such as bug fixes?)
Lastly, do you strongly disagree(1) - disagree(2) - feel neutral(3) - agree(4) - strongly agree(5) with the following statement:
"CoT plans to charge for a basic game box/download, but I23 CoH did not. Therefore CoT should be more generous in its subscription and microtransaction model than CoH."
Please forgive any presumptuousness on my part in surveying, but I truly want all Kickstarter backers and possible CoT players to love this game. Anything I can do to help MWM be fully informed and make the best possible decision for us all is worth my time.
Scott has a good idea here, but it doesn't go far enough. You're all experienced people. You've tried other MMOs. Analyze them. Tell us what worked/didn't work for you.
I agree that some of our suggestions here have gotten too complex. But that's what pushing the limits is for. We're taking ideas and going 'okay, can we do anything with this basic concept.'
We've got a while before we need a final decision so we're getting a little fancy in hopes that we find something perfect and awesome. So far, haven't found it yet.
As far as the second kickstarter: We've discussed it elsewhere. We want more money to develop the game. Surprisingly, 600k isn't... well, it's not as much as it seems. (We're doing okay, we've got plenty left for now.) But we want to deliver _something_ that says we're not a pipe dream before we go and ask you guys for more money.
Right now, our current thinking is a subscription/Patreon, couple bucks a month, that will unlock our remaining stretch goals all the way to the Pet Class and beyond.
But we're having disagreements about the individual rewards - I'd like to do a magazine for people, some story, some art, a few pages of a comic a month, but it'd involve diverting people away from the project, and we don't quite have the people to do that yet - people are working on the game!
So. We're here, we're listening, tell us what you want from us, what you think works in the greater world and what doesn't.
We've got at LEAST six months or so before we have to make anything like a hard decision here.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Now, by the way, as far as charging for the basic game download, that's something that essentially exists to make things better for the players - it reduces the initial flood of goldfarmers, spammers, and trolls that infest any community, since it creates a barrier to entry. It also gives us a one-time influx of capital we can use to improve the servers/buy infrastructure/deal with various administrative costs/pay off loans we may have had to take to launch the game. i23 CoH didn't need to do that, because the various bits already existed.
I will say that we intend to re-examine the structure of payments frequently. Perhaps in year 2 the box will go down considerably in price, and the subscriptions will as well. Things will probably be a little high at start. If we get five million players, we can lower prices considerably. And so on, and so on.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
It doesn't go wide enough. This forum is imploding under the weight of a few people.
If you have some subscription ideas, coupled with some microtransaction ideas then you need to poll the people who kickstarted your subscription model in the first place with those ideas because this isn't the payment model I thought I was signing up for.
Months after stopping posting on here due to the f2p-heavy bias, I find you're all still swimming around in that toxic mess. We were all cohers, not gamers so to move so far away from what we were used to is wrong.
As for a second kickstarter.. you need to have your pricing model sorted before you sell the game to anyone else. Stop "pushing the limit" and commit to something already, you are just pissing people off (again) at the moment.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
Honestly, I'd go for the CoH Issue 23 Hybrid model of payment all the way. It worked for CoH, they were making money. They were making enough money that they were churning out new product and new issues before the shut down.
I am really not a big fan of this whole "Stars" marketplace Segev keeps mentioning and insisting on going with. I understand it, don't get me wrong, I just don't like it. I've already made my concerns about it clear in the thread that talks about it.
I'm not a fan of the "Netflix" idea at all. This is a game, not a movie channel.
I do not want to have to Pay MWM to publish Mission Architect missions and then turn around and charge the players that want to play them. (Honestly think Radiac needs to stop posting his ideas on how to monetize this game as I feel it's becoming very detrimental and toxic.)
I think MWM should put up a poll for the forum people to vote on all the things they feel are worth paying for and not paying for, this way you guys will have a better feel as to how to "package" your business plan. Not saying that you should absolutely follow what everybody says here on the forums, but it will at least give you a good idea on what the players want.
If you are going to have a Subscription model, there ABSOLUTELY has to be SOME kind of perk over the F2P person. I know this irks the crap out of the F2P people, but that's how it works. If I am going to give you at least a guaranteed amount of money every month, I have to be able to get something in return out of that. I'm not saying make it over the top unfair to those that don't sub, but you have to give me something in return for it. With F2P sure you might make more money from them over the long run, but there will be dry spells in there. Just because I gave you $40.00 this month being F2P doesn't guarantee that I will keep doing that. There may be MONTHS before I pay you another dime. Hell possibly even years. That's the gamble with F2P.
So far, from what I've read from some of Segev's posts, there will be no advantage to being a Subber. You pay MWM $15 dollars, you get $15 dollars worth of Stars, you then use those Stars to purchase your Subscription Model, any Stars left over will then be your Stipend. Uh, NO. I won't be Subbing if that is the way it goes. Giving me only Loyalty perks the longer I supposedly "Subscribe", isn't worth it to me. I saw several of my friends from CoH that Subscribed from the beginning immediately drop their subscription once they realized with all the Loyalty Perks they no longer needed to subscribe. The only thing they were missing out of was the ability to use IO's, run SSA's, and do Incarnate content. Even then, they could purchase a ticket to allow them to use IO's every month if they so desired. I'll just go F2P and purchase everything I want and just leave it at that if that is the case. I will guarantee you if I do that, you won't make as much money from me that way. You give me a sub I'll be happy to pay for every month and you'll get that amount every month PLUS what I purchase from the Stars store.
I hope you find what you are looking for. I hope you are able to find the middle ground that everybody can agree upon. I really do. I was a HUGE supporter of this project and made sure that I tried to keep people in another Forum I'm on updated on the game from time to time. However, I'm very skeptical now. I will spend most of my time now lurking in the shadows and watching to see what develops here. That'll be good news for some people on this forum, as it means I won't be jumping in on their suggestions threads and raining all over their parade anymore.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
As ever, people get very passionate. A reminder, no decisions have been made, and declaring this or that over something which is not decided, nor will be decided, for another year is likely premature.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I find it somewhat ironic that the solution that would seem to answer all the problems (couldn't be simpler, no separation of community, everything developed gets paid for) is the one solution that almost everyone seems to rule out immediately: the subscription-only model. I've accepted that that's not going to happen, but it still makes me scratch my head given that it solves everything except the (to me, inexplicable) desire that some have to not want to give MWM a reliable income stream for the service they will provide.
But ok, I know that's not gonna happen, so how did the hybrid system in CoX work for me? Well, I liked that the subscription seemed worthwhile. Exclusive content and vet rewards were good ways that Paragon showed they valued the loyalty. I think that's something some folks aren't taking into account when they seem to question the idea of subscriber perqs. A subscription provides MWM with more reliable, likely continuing income, which is good for both MWM and players because it encourages more long-term planning. (Even more if it's pre-paid.) So if a full sub costs x, the actual value to MWM is x + y, where y is this admittedly hard-to-define benefit of reliable income. When people who are interested in subbing ask for value, all they want is something back that shows the value of y. Note that I don't want to shortchange non-subbers; I just agree with folks who say that, if MWM wants to encourage subs, there has to be something that makes them seem worthwhile over a la carte purchasing.
The main problem I had with Freedom towards the end was the apparent focus on funny hats to keep the free players buying stuff in the store. I do admit they were still releasing new content, though the focus there got split between normal and Incarnate stuff, which I think made the normal stuff (like new zones) suffer, but I did start to feel uncomfortable with their apparent mad scramble every week to find something to put on sale so that f2p players would make a purchase. I started to wonder how much time spent on funny hats could have been spent making a new mission arc or zone.
Now, I understand some people really like costume parts and other aesthetic items and will happily pay for them. I, on the other hand, value content over everything else. That's why I have no problem with MWM charging for content. I think I said it above: it would make sense to me for MWM to charge at least nominal fees for everything because it's the only way they will really know what the playerbase as a whole truly values.
Speaking of which, we all know a few loud voices from frequent posters (I include myself in this minority) are hardly a fair representation of the whole. If MWM wants reliable data before release, I have to agree with the folks who are recommending a survey of some sort. I am certain the number of people who would respond to an anonymous survey is much greater than the number of people who are comfortable posting here. Maybe still not entirely representative of the entire playerbase, but a darn sight moreso than just looking at this thread.
In the end, I'm not all that picky about the financial model as long as the game is as good as I expect it to be. My overriding hopes are that the model will:
1) Ensure MWM gets paid for everything they work on. And not just remuneration, but profit. Profit is good for all of us, because it means more development, staff retention, maybe even an actual office, etc.
2) (If MWM wants to encourage subscriptions) reward subscribers for that y-factor.
3) Put more emphasis on long-term development (zones, meta-story, new power sets and systems) than on funny hat development.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I'd just like to point out that this request from oOStaticOo for me to please stop coming up with "toxic" ideas (and I can only interpret "toxic ideas" to mean "ideas whereby the player would have to pay money for something in the game, thus making the game money at the expense of the player") is the 283rd response in a thread which _I_ started, and which has generated, I feel, some really necessary discussion about monetization. It might not be ENJOYABLE discussion for everyone, but I think it's better to have it than not to.
Some of the rednames on this thread have asked us to go out and look at some games and name a monetization system that we actually liked. Personally I haven't played that many games, to be honest. Just CoX, Diablo I and II, and some older stuff. oOStaticOo has responded and I will agree that the money system CoX had in year 8 of it's existence was fine by me. It got me to pay a sub, and I was happy to do so. That said, I can see maybe eliminating the "Superpacks" which felt too much like Magic Online and a grab for cash. I personally would rather allow non-subs to be able to pay one-at-a-time to at least participate in Incarnate-like trials even if they don't get the threads, powers, etc out of it. I'm also not against the idea of having maybe one or more TFs/Trials that cost EVERYONE an entry fee to participate in (with us subs spending our month's Stars on that, or whatever), but bring with them greater rates of Influence for defeating mobs, more recipe and salvage drops per guy defeated, and maybe some kind of really good perk at the end for beating the trial successfully, like a HamiO or whatever.
When I played CoX, I generally spent my time on my toons teaming up to do group content because I liked that. Soloing usually felt less enjoyable and less rewarding per minute spent doing it. I also gravitated towards TFs early on, because they had a guaranteed SO drop at the end. Also, the rate at which you got XP seemed faster, to me, because I could gauge the XP I needed to get my next level-up by counting the number of TFs I needed to do one one hand. You had to do the Posi like ONCE to practically outlevel it. Synapse once, maybe twice. Sister Psyche two or three, etc. This seemed faster than having to solo umpteen missions.
With that in mind I think IF there's one TF that can be repeated however many times per day and it is the fastest XP gainer and best swag generator in the game by a long shot, like double the next best alternative, then you may as well charge people each time they do it. I know a lot of people don't like this idea, because they feel like they are somehow being "punished", but I see it as ONLY AN OPTION (not a mandatory thing you must do) and a way to possibly generate repeat business and get money out of players on a daily basis, which is something I think the game needs. To be clear, it doesn't have to give you anything you can't get on the market or by doing a lot more grinding for it, just "good stuff at a faster rate" not "different stuff entirely".
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
@ScottJackson
I think we're coming to much closer of understanding. One thing tho you spoke about is why I'm so focused on story content and the reason is it's the most expensive development (more than character customization options).
Simply said if you don't pay directly for the story content you will need to pay more for the customization options. This is why so many games do this by gamble boxes or subscriptions to cover the cost of story and still give the frills.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
+ 0.5
F2P could join, but not get any P2P swag, bonuses, etc...
Badges are Ok too, just as long as its not part of an Accolade (or the like) that gives Permanent Bonuses, like +5 HP.
Temporary Bonuses that last a few days only (of +5 HP) are fine.
Whole point is to not alienate F2P players, and instead make it so that they WANT To Pay Also... Make F2P feel like "Man, I barely have enough for rent this month, but this game is AWESOME. I dont care if i get Evicted, I wanna be like those Pay2Play players, and pay a fixed monthly subscription." ;)
Ok Ok.. there was Some sarcasm thrown in there. ;D
Its a mistake to try and Evict people, instead... take what they can afford to part with, without making them feel like you are using the game as Ransom. As I suspect... ALLOT of players might fall under the Living from Paycheck to Paycheck lifestyle. So, unless a player has had a cushy job they worked at for 5+ years, they might be wary of a monthly subscription to start with.
In The Secret World, subscribers have access to the initial 3 zones and all content( which is considerable). They are given "coins" as a part of the subscription. As new content is added like new zones/story arcs, they can be bought by the coins. Coins can also be used to purchase costumes and small add-ons. F2P folks have to buy the coins to get the content.
Everyone must buy the game to play. But only subscribers get the free coins as part of their subscription. At this point a player needs to spend coins to get additional end game content. FunCom must be careful to reward subscribers enough to keep them. I, as a subscriber, have never had to spend any money on additional coins. Now I have had to wait to buy new scenarios because I spend coins on something else but that is a decision.
The Secret World is very unique in its storytelling and game play. There are a huge amount of scenarios that can be repeated but do not have to. The story flow and advancement within it are top notch.
Please, please, please, do not go the route of NeverWinter where any bonus must be purchased ( as a key to open the chest). Unless you think you will have the following of Dungeons&Dragons to support you.
I really liked the CoH I23 model, my only regret was that they didn't give the people who wanted to resub for the last 3 months a week to do so at the time of the announcement. It dovetailed well with the vet rewards. I spent significant cash on inventory increases as I was a major crafter. I opened packs with my vet reward stipend but didn't buy any with real money.
Neverwinter does NOT require every bonus to be purchased with RM, I dropped some RM at the beginning, but now generate maybe 800K ADs a week from crafting which is enough for my needs. To explain their system:
With real money, you buy Zen which can be transferred to any of the perfect world games, but once allocated to a game it's stuck in that game.
Zen can be traded to astral diamonds and vice versa via player to player trades, there is an artificial maximum exchange rate.
There is a Zen market where you can buy things, lockbox keys being one of them, storage being another.
The Auction house works off astral diamonds, wihich can be generated by doing dailies or crafting in a raw state, but there is a daily refining limit which prevents you generating too many (24K/character/day).
Monsters drop gold which is mainly used for buying potions, but most long time players have way more than they ever use.
No content is Zen purchased, although some races are.
They sold packs at the beginning and different ones later that gave a pet and mount to all past/future characters on the account.
Subjectively critiquing NW's system:
Almost everybody perceives the system as being ever more desperate attempts to rake in real money.
Stuff is very expensive and not value for money
I feel they were manipulating the Zen->AD exchange rate to keep it high, meaning you get more value for your Zen and less for your earned ADs. They haven't needed to do this recently as there were a couple of silly bugs that generated a lot of dodgy ADs which proceeded to buy up all available Zen and hold the exchange rate at its maximum.
Lockboxes - they introduce a new type frequently, meaning you need lots of inventory slots which are very expensive.
Stuff - many things have 2 variants, one you can trade, one that's BoA, more inventory slots used.
What should we learn:
Get the feel right, make the system feel like it's not a horrendous money grab, price stuff reasonably.
So many people hate lockboxes.
IMO the biggest thing to learn from NW is not monetization related though it certainly discourages me from spending more mony. It feels like every time they release any sort of non trivial patch, they have to take the server down shortly after to fix the bugs it introduced, many of which are so glaringly obvious that ANY internal testing should have picked them up, let alone the period on the test server. Rewarding people who find bugs on the test server or in live should be a priority.
Example: a glowie in the open world, you needed to click 8 for a quest, only the people who clicked it at the same time got credit. The change was to cut from 8 to 5, and anybody in the vicinity got credit, not just people who clicked it. What actually happened, you click the glowie, but the counter doesn't increment, the quest is impossible to complete, D'oh.
Whistleblowers who bring exploits to the attention of the devs should also be rewarded, there have been two absolute doozies that generated infinite astral diamonds in NW that were around for ages, one involving negative bids on the AH, and the other involving a one use item, that when you activated it, stayed active for a period. If you activated it, used it, then traded it to a friend within the active period, they could then activate and use it with a reset timer and pass it back, rinse repeat.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I'll be using CoH terms of reference in my following post.
I was a subscriber from pre and post Freedom. As CoT will NOT be a sub-only game pre-Freedom (sub-only) has little impact here.
I paid my sub and every month got access to all content - all AT, all zones, all missions, all Enhancements, the AH, AE, etc. I had paid for the GR so could swap sides too.
My sub also gave me credits (400 Paragon Points [550 if Tier 8 Vet]) to buy things from the game store. I usually used these to purchase new Powersets (ie: Street Justice), character slots, Account Wide bonuses (ie: Storage Increases [Enh, AH, REcipe, etc]), Enhancements (AT specific), new Emotes and Costumes and even the Super Packs from time to time.
What would I consider being a good way to approach this (note: I have no knowledge of marketing/finance)?
Sub
Give's me access to all of the core game.
New Classes will be included as they are released.
New Powersets will be included as they are released - however IF (big IF) a new set was deemed to be worth it I can see an occasional need to purchase a Powerset.
Access to all zones/area's.
Access to all missions/quests/raids/etc.
Y Character Slots
Y Costume Slots
Access to 80% of costumes/colours.
Y Stars per month.
No Sub:
Access to all Classes/Powersets available at launch.
X Character Slots (X has less than Y)
X Costume Slots (X has less than Y)
Access to 50% of costumes/colours
Access to most zones/areas.
Access all missions/quests/raids
Level Limit of 3/4 Max - 3/4 allows you to start to really get into the game and your character. You can do character builds and of the most content.
Basic Enh (no IO's).
No Stars per month.
Options for Non-Subs.
Pay to unlock whatever is limited.
Want IO's but I don't care about colour options then pay for Full Enh access. Also want max level then pay for Full Level.
At some point work out when is paying for everything on its own more expensive then paying for it as a package - or even should you do this?
You wont make everyone happy.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
i found the City of Heroes I23 hybrid model to be acceptable. Myself and a lot of people felt most of the real-money store items were overpriced, somewhere around at least twice as high, to the point where the price killed sales.
Just because a company expends costs to provide something doesn't mean the best way to get revenue from it is to stick up a paywall right in front of it. If that's your level of understanding and running a business, you're well on the road to irritating your customers and going out of business.
Business doesn't work that way. Free-to-play doesn't work that way. You have to provide products, items and services, that your customers will value those products as well worth the costs to them in time, convenience, and money. How much your charge is important. How you charge is even more important.
A free-to-play limited game is first and foremost a recruitment tool. It replaces the various 2-week and other free offers City of Heroes and other games have had for years.
Limited free-to-play keeps server populations up. This is vital to games that are PvP like World of Tanks where they want a good server population all the time, but matters for all games. Games are always losing players so they always have to be recruiting players. And nothing makes that easier than having a very low bar to trying out a game.
But like many things in life, and all businesses, you don't pursue your primary goal, revenues, directly. A game to make money doesn't pursue cost charges as a direct measure. For a service like a game, you pursue the experience. You always want your customers thinking they're getting value for their money at every increment of both experience and cost. So you give them a simple range of escalating experience for simple cost increases. Ones they can understand. Ones they don't stumble over in such a way that it kills future sales.
You don't worry about having all this content and putting a paywall before every bit of it. The customer can only take in so much experience so fast and is always limited in some way. P. T. Barnum put 3 rings in his circus all with ongoing performances all the time to make his customers see there was a lot to his circus. So they came back to continue the experience and see more of it. And he got a ticket revenue every time. Because his customers would accept paying that ticket cost to see another performance.
Game players can only play so much. And the game introduces reasonable charges that cover having them explore more of the experience. Thus the subscription. Also charging for more character slots or unlock more on subscription. Or exceptional new powers. But you have to craft those charges so you don't negatively impact the experience, especially the social experience in such a social game as we want CoT to be.
There's charges for tools to have that limited time mean more to the player. Like World of Tanks and Warthunder going premium increasing experience and ingame currency earned (by 50% and 100% respectively). By selling experience and other boosters. By selling respecs. By selling cosmetic items. Other players see those cool items and think maybe they'd like to get them.
You can soften the impact of having to pay for something by having an alternate "free" source of the item. E.g. sell respec recipes, but also have them fall as rare loot. Consider letting players sell the items in the ingame market for ingame currency.
As I mentioned about, a lot of us thought the costs of various items in the I23 City of Heroes store was about twice what it should be. That was us judging the cost of the experience as too high. But City of Heroes had so much sunk good will with us that we put up with them. But even then we didn't buy as much, just because we thought the cost was too high.
To be blunt, most of the f2p+charging-for-something ideas on these CoT forums are the same way. Players will judge their impact on their experience as negative and the costs as too high and too blatant.
You always have to have an eye to a cost or a mechanism's impact on the player experience. Because you make money off of players by giving them an experience they enjoy for a cost in a way they think is worth it. You have to think and watch out for 1st, 2nd, and later order effects on that player experience.
Or the players will spend less time and less money on the game. And that will kill the game.
Hey, dont Copy Me! :/
There was Allot of stuff I would have loved to have had, but i felt it was 1/3 more than what i deemed it should have been. So, I passed on those things. :/ Many Powersets werent overpriced though, maybe 1/8 more than my deemed value. ;)
NW has a short varying list of stuff that they cut the prices of for a week at a time, I rarely pay full price for anything, but do occasionally buy at 25-75% off when something I want has its price slashed. I did much the same for the account bound IOs in CoH as I went through prodigious numbers of LotG 7.5s and kinetic combat sets and would stock up when they had a sale.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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I'm sensing a lot of love for the sub model.
Do we have to wait for thay one day a month that the f2p'ers come on to see what they have to say?
"I did much the same for the account bound IOs in CoH as I went through prodigious numbers of LotG 7.5s and kinetic combat sets and would stock up when they had a sale."
It was my understanding (and I'm still baffled by this) that mwm will not be offering those things in its shop. I bet we all bought IOs, I certainly bought bunches of them, sets, purples, missing pieces from sets. If you want my cash, give me a sub and a shop with stuff I want in it.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-11-21-free-to-play-has-reached-its-limits-analyst
I have gone back over this thread from page 1 and I have counted at least 25 people who are in favor of a Subscription based model with that being similar to Issue 23 CoH's method. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the impression I got from reading through several of the posts.
Way more than the amount of people that are for the F2P model with pay walling just about everything in the game.
I find that pretty interesting. Perhaps the current method being implied needs to be re-evaluated.
The thing to remember is that the people that are interested in this game for the most part have come from CoH. They are looking for something to replace their lost home. In my opinion the best thing is to try to keep those people interested and satisfied. Yes you want to bring new people in to play the game, but if the people that come to this game from the old game are happy they will in turn tell all their friends who will tell all their friends etc.
Now I have made mention several times in several different threads, let's try to keep this game as close to CoH as we possibly could. I know there are certain legal issues that will prevent some of that stuff from happening. I also know that there are some things that can definitely be improved upon and made better from the old game. Monetization, however, is one of those things that can be kept VERY similar to CoH. It is definitely one of the things that I think most players from CoH can relate to right off the bat and feel comfortable in dealing with.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I agree with oOStaticOo that sub-only seems to be the clear winner among people on the forums, and I would re-state that the casual gamers who might be interested in F2P might also be off-put by the initial purchase cost of the game anyway, but that's still a good thing, on balance, due to the way it (hopefully) hedges out trolls and spammers. That said, I think even the casual gamer that tries this game might just do what a lot of us did on CoX, which is to pay a sub while they're interested in the game and let it lapse when not, only to pick it up again later after they start jonesing for it again. I did this in more than one game. I had Mechwarrior4: Mercenaries for like a decade and uninstalled/reinstalled it like 5 times before finally getting a new computer and deciding to throw it away.
Whether or not the subscription monies alone can sustain the game for the long haul, I do not know.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Good luck thinking that it will "filter out" the spammers.
Wildstar had them in the opening weeks of launch. Unfortunately, I also know of a few people who quit the game due to those "spammers" as well, because Carbine/NCsoft were unable to ban them fast enough... and yes they were banning them almost as rapidly as they sprung up. I rarely kept any spammer on my "ignore" list for more than a day as a result
Botting was a similar problem. And they take longer to act on, because you pretty much have to be certain that any "automated" system that you have in play for flagging won't flag someone who is using a mechanic in the game... or possibly be due to a bug/quirk in the game/zone/area[1]. Hell CoX had "dodgy" physics where you could end up getting shot off a railing because you hit it just wrong...
[1] as an example, in Half Life 2[2] it has a "quirk" where the fastest method to move around the map actually involves you moving *backwards*. Automating "cheat detection" as a result of how fast a player moves and only that is NOT a good method. You can and you WILL get innocent people banned. This is why you need a human there to work through the logs to get to the bottom of it.
[2] [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmD6Hy0eVj0]Half Life 2 completed in 2 hours 15 minutes.[/url] It isn't even the fastest recording out there. There is a run that is 45 minutes faster.
I'll bring up the obvious question: what happens if content does not sell sufficiently well?[color=red]*[/color]
We've seen that here are any number of reasons that people might not by willing to purchase content, ranging from philosophical objections to it costing too much. Does MWM stop creating content? Do they decide to provide new content free of charge, after all? To the best of my knowledge this is an untested model, so it will certainly require a Plan B.
[br]
[color=red]*[/color] Is recouping the cost of creating the content the only metric, or would a measure of what percentage of the player base has purchased this content also weigh in on the measure of success?
- - - - -
[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Going Rouge (Gold Side) DIED after a few brief months it seems. and Soooooooo much time and Efforts was put into it. :(
What if this happened: Full sub is the only option, but eventually when there are like A LOT of trials and TFs to do, the equivalent of CoX's Weekly Strike Target ends up being one of the available TFs that exists, but when it's the WST you have to pay to do it (a Star, or two, or money) and you get enhanced swag and XP from it that week for that reason?
Edit: Not a new idea, really, I know. Other people have suggested something like this.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This is going to be a big problem for a lot of people who will view it as Pay 2 Win.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
You can call it that if you want to, that doesn't bother me. People are still actually doing a TF or trial for the rewards they're getting, they're not just straight-up buying the swag they want which, I might add, was something you COULD do in CoX to a limited degree. The Paragon Market did sell rare recipes, etc, as I recall. I just think that in a game that's not primarily driven by PVP this isn't a big problem.
In CoX, they had Incarnate Trials, which were a lot of fun, often required some modest amount of planning, coordination, and team work, etc, and you could only access them if you paid a sub (which was not mandatory, you could go free to play and just not do the Incarnate stuff) and for doing them you got to have special powers that non-subs and non-incarnates didn't get. Was that Pay to Win? If it was, sign me up, because I liked it a lot. Sprinting through Lambda Trial warehouses and science labs for acids and `nades was fun even when you got killed a lot, doing the Underground trial and praying that Desdemona picked YOU to be her escort, stopping the prisoners from escaping the BAF, trying to stay alive in the tempest in a teapot that was the Mother Mayhem trial, etc etc. Those things were just fun to DO, that and getting cool powers was like 90% of why I played CoX near the end and 100% of why I paid the sub when it went free.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
what if add donate to CoT i.e like Star Vault did with mortalonline how set it up donate is give out gifts who donate to it if u pay 5$ u get in game money or if u pay 15$ u get 1 mo sub and in game money
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]
I think gold side died partly because of the forced solo missions, we tried to run a weekly SG nite set team through it and it was not good.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
No. This is not what I was talking about. I said to go with the Issue 23 model of monetization. That means using the Hybrid formula of Subscription and F2P with a cash store. The only thing that was completely locked away from the F2P people were the Incarnate Trials. Everything else was purchasable through the store. Sub came with an actual Stipend every month that could be used for purchases in the store. Also Sub had more things unlocked for free vs. F2P, and if a Sub let their sub go they would lose access to some of those things unless they went and purchased them from the store, or were Vetted enough to have them unlocked.
The only thing I would change out of that would be to not lock out the F2P from the Incarnate content. It has been from my experience that leaving people out of being able to play all the content in the game will lead to a lot of people being resentful towards the game. This will cause them to not play the game anymore, or only stick to just the free content that is available.
I have played CoH, CO, DCUO, WoW, GW, Scarlet Blade, NW, Second Life, Fiesta Online, and LoL. I've seen many examples of what people DO NOT like from a game. I've experienced my own dislikes of many different monetization models as well. Out of ALL of those games, CoH was THE only game I ever spent any money on for an extended period of time, I subbed from Issue 3 until close and also made cash purchases from their store. I had to buy all of the WoW games and pay a sub in order to play it, so that was the only other exception to the rule. Other than that, I never spent a single dime on any of the other games, other than Box Purchases to play the game.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
In case I haven't explicitly stated it and need to, I'm all in favour of a hybrid model where the sub is the optimal method of payment.
On top of the sub I'd expect to pick stuff up from the cash store (and would rather not have to do it via stars, diamonds or the whatevers) and was more than happy with CoHs method of keeping the game as friendly as possible regardless of how you're paying.
"I will say that we intend to re-examine the structure of payments frequently. Perhaps in year 2 the box will go down considerably in price, and the subscriptions will as well. Things will probably be a little high at start. If we get five million players, we can lower prices considerably. And so on, and so on."
This has me a little concerned, subs don't usually go down, you improve their value instead with free in-game stuff but you'd want your cash coming in regularly at a given or higher level. Balancing around 5 million players may be a bit hopeful, is that how many f2p players you need to sustain the game based on some kind of probability algorithm?
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
*snip-a-roo*
I think that the CoX i23 model is superb. Titan City should be to be open, available and accessible to all those with pure, fun and cooperative intentions.
I had 3 premium accounts in CoX, so I'll sub and spend stars like crazy. I'll also gladly buy a few "low/no market supply augments/boosts" if I really want them nao. I recognize that I'm an extreme outlier, and likewise recognize that the game needs many more customers that are unlike me to survive.
Paywalls linked to content will lead to unnecessary frustration and division.
Static, Jacke and Phoulmouth have made excellent points; especially highlighting that there are many other more profitable content/items to offer players. Character slots, costume sets/pieces, respecs, emotes, character inventory slots, auction inventory slots and emotes for sure will be wildly popular. That should not be in doubt. Definitely trust us long time CoX veterans on this one.
Weekly deals/discounts, and special holiday sales (whether on their own, or in-step with in-game holiday events) could provide nice micro-boosts to revenue. As could "daily specials". Announce them via Tw, FB, etc.; thus giving folks a reason stay in-tune, sharing/talking about about the game--contributing to revenue gain.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
To Catherine America:
The model Cox used in its last year (hybrid) DID put Incarnate content behind a pay wall, didn't it? Are you saying you prefer that to having that plus the option of letting non-subbers pay-per-run to do those trials? If so, how is offering the non-subber that as an option making the game worse for anybody? I see it as adding options, whereas the old CoX model simply had Incarnate behind a hard paywall, along with the Alignment system, I believe, which also had missions (the tip missions and alignment missions, also the mission arc with Flambeau and Proton and Dillo, etc) and the Gold side content, I believe.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
City's Incarnate content is a odd duck. Since the game was designed with a 1-50 leveling system instead of something more open-ended like a skill system, you could "finish" toons for the longest time (and with limited respecs at the time, you'd need to be certain about it too). As stuff was introduced into the game (e.g. IO's), what "finished" was changed. But get that perfectly polished toon at 50 was a goal.
Then what? You make a game with an "end" and now that "end" becomes a problem. How do you challenge players when the content is spread over levels 1-50, most of it very much limited to a small range of levels. Get them to make another alt? Yes, but how do you give them something for all the time invested in that level 50 toon?
So eventually we got the Incarnate system. A total new, mostly character-bound, system of making our toons more powerful. With more powerful challenges. And some new content, but mostly focuses on bigger and larger battles with some new complex mechanisms to both give something new and different and challenging.
And a bit of a radical change from where the 1-50 game was. Makes it difficult to do sufficient balancing and unification of the game to keep it at the point where the game doesn't overwhelm a lot of the players.
And expensive, as something so different with so fancy new content would be. So NCsoft/Paragon Studios said we have to use this as a subscription perk to both encourage subscription and hopefully give us a revenue stream to cover its expense and more.
So yes, a paywall. But not a little paywall for a small area, often stumbled across. A major division of the game with an added cost. But it's an obvious and fairly simple paywall. And it only affects those players with level 50 characters and only those level 50 characters. Which is most of the hardcore City players (likely already subscribed), but how many of the whole City populations, of players and especially of characters?
Other games have similar large, easy to understand divisions, like DCUO and the Secret War, that either require a subscription or have an extra cost to non-sub players. I'd prefer a game system not to have such a radical shift at some point (like most pen-and-paper RPG's) as well as not need such a paywall, but it's more understandable and is likely not to poorly impact the player base.
To Jacke,
So just to understand what you're saying, are you agreeing with me that if CoX had added in a way for non-subs to pay-per-run to do Incarnate Trials a la carte that it would have been an improvement (and by improvement, I mean something that would make at least some the players' experiences more enjoyable without reducing the enjoyment of anyone else)?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
That's not what he's saying at all. He's just explaining to you why NCSoft and CoH did what they did with the Incarnate System. You sure do reach for things.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
As far as I know, oOStaticOo is not Jacke. I will thus let Jacke (and no one else) answer the question that I posed to Jacke.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
You're just not getting it, Radiac.
Incarnate is a whole system. If the player wasn't subbed, the whole system didn't work. That made it simple.
You have a pay-per-run "turning on Incarnate", ie. the boosts work and the Incarnate salvage drops. But it takes a while to grind out enough salvage for the boosts. How does turning it on for one mission contribute that much? Except for the character who's player was subbed and Incarnated, but dropped the sub for whatever reason.
And what about when the player's potentially Incarnated-but-not-switched-on in Dark Astoria? Or any zone, as Incarnate boosts (excepting the 2nd and 3rd level increases) worked unless exemplared below level 45. Can the player pay to have Incarnate turned on then? For how long?
There's definitely more game design decisions with direct impact on the player's experience.
I don't like the way the Incarnate system is set apart from the rest of the game. But if it's there and if it's going to incur an additional cost to the player, make that cost and the boundary simple. People want simple financial decisions they can clearly understand. And not ones they have to think about every time they start a new mission.
I think Static stood up for me and my position admirably, even though our positions aren't the same.
There is a fine line here. First you need to make your money, because if you can't pay the bills then there can not be a game. I understand this. However on the same hand you are going to have some players that are not going to be able to throw money at the same rate as others, and you are going to loose the people that might spend a little here and there. Especially if there are entire parts of the game that are only going to be available to people paying. The free-to-plays that seem (from the outside observer) to do well have all abilities and gear available to all, those paying can get the gear faster, and have packs that cost money that give new appearance items.
Personally I had to stop playing CoH because I had a massive computer crash, this happened right as it went free to play, and when I finally got to come back my favorite characters were locked because I could not access my controller (LemonSnow) and could not get an answer as to if I used one of my free slots if I still had to pay to use a controller. Now I would drop the dosh now, because I have a more secure income, on unlocking that, but I can guess I was not the only one that was having issues at the time.
Basically you are going to have 2 types, those that have money but not time and those that have time but not money. Those with time are going to increase your stats as far as X number of people logged on. Personally I would suggest that if you do have pay to raid it should only be a very few raids, or event raids, and they have higher drop rates but do not give something that you can only get from that raid. Such as a guaranteed purple recipe for the pay raid, instead of a small chance for a recipe for a free raid. Or say a carried enhancement, that you buy off of the market, that upon completing the raid becomes a purple (thus you can team with people that have not paid). Or a cash for specific enhancement.
+1
My thinking on Incarnate Trials was, let Free2Play participate running the mission, but not granting them any Crafting/Selling/Trading/etc... of the Drops received.
So those F2P players will always stay at 50 +0, while Pay2Play can move Up. ;)
After some time, And Allot more Deaths for F2P players, because at 50 +0, the difficulty of +3 levels or more is working Against the F2P, it might Dawn on them, its really important i not DIE as much because This Run might fail because of me and others might look down on me, and I cant get any of those 50 +1 or higher powers.
Of course, there is a concern that Pay2Play will stop inviting Free2Play players to the Incarnate Trials, especially if trying for a Masters Of... but as I recall, that sort of discrimination even existed by 50 +3 or higher, against 50 +0, 50 +1. Sooo... Paragon Studios failed! ;)
All the while, the F2P player can take a look at all the drops and just guess to all the powers they COULD have if they were to use those drops to Craft something.
In summary, Incarnate Trials should have:
- allow the F2P to join in, but make the F2P player feel Not Quite Good Enough (+3 or higher level difference). :P
- allow the F2P to get Drops, but Lock em (from Using/Trading/Selling/etc..) and Tease them of what might be if they paid. ;D
Based on the desire to not restrict unsubbed players from accessing content with subbed players, I would echo the sentiment about differentiation of reward. Incarnate trials are a rather atypical example to use, but if that's the "go to" analogy then I wouldn't go the route of free players not gaining the rewards. The more I thought about I came to the realization that:
1. If there is an incentive to play a particular piece of content, in this case a raid, other than the "fun of the run" then everyone invoked should have an incentive.
2. If f2p and p2p players can both experience the same content and the reward is quantifiable than both should have access to a quantifiable reward.
3. If like incarnate trials the quantifiable gain results in the capability to perform or continue to perform in a progressive basis then everyone involved needs to have access to that quantifiable gain.
Then if the desire is for everyone to access the content, and the above points are taken into consideration, what is the differentiation between a sub / unsub or someone who purchased the expansion vs those who haven't? Both are valid questions because if the desire is to not divide the player base between those who can access and those who can't, the even content within a purchased expansion is applicable.
This is why I brought up my highway analogy earlier in the thread. Those who play may have a faster track of any quantifiable rewards compared to those that don't pay. If we use the Incarnate Trials example, subs have a larger incarnate salvage inventory and better drop rate where unsubbed players have a smaller inventory and reduced drop rate. Numbers not withstanding obviously it shouldn't be ridiculous on either end of the spectrum of get it every time and never get it unless all the planets align when I'm facing north on a third Tuesday of the ninth month on a leap year and a shooting star flies through a rainbow.
With regards to expansions, there may be other perks that come with an expansion that can be purchased individually, like a costume set or emotes, or are unique to the expansion. Keep in mind again that with Stars being traded on the AH unsubbed players can actually get access to Stars and purchase those items or save ip Stars to purchase the expansion. I also,like the idea of bundled "micro-subs" where players can pay for certain parts of the game that comes with having a "full sub".
And also again, I'm not invoked with business decisions and am only expressing my opinion.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I agree with this (again speaking as somebody not involved with the decision), a possible method (numbers for illustrative purposes only).
Say the trial has common/uncommon/rare/very rare rewards :
It gives out as a basic:
C: 45%
U: 30%
R: 17%
VR: 8%
now if you're subbed, you get a bonus common drop and adjust the chances of the better ones up by 4%
Giving a common plus
C: 33%
U: 34%
R: 21%
VR:12%
Which gives a substantial advantage to people who are subbed (they get 50% more VR), but doesn't make it impossible if you're not. Easy to adjust the amount of edge you give to subbed people according to taste.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I didnt consider Incarnate Trials part of the Main Game though. To me it felt like it was a Game AFTER the Main Game. ;)
So those rules dont apply. ;)
The mentioned approach seems fine for TF's/Arcs/and what have you thats part of the Main Level Up Game. ;D
My answers: "No", and therefore, "N/A"
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
I like this idea, in case I haven't said that yet. I wonder what kind of revenue it will generate, but I like it. Some people may argue that this smacks of the ominous Pay to Win, but I disagree and that's not a problem for me.
I just think it would be beneficial to the game as a whole if there were some way to have some kind of feature in the game where the players who want to pay for something aren't caged into "pay a sub" or "don't pay a sub" even beyond the microsubs. In any case there, you're setting a monthly fee for services and getting only that, plus whatever odds and ends people feel like buying in the Starmart (a costume part here, a respec there, etc). There's limited demand for that other stuff and I would like to see some kind of thing, whatever it is, that people will want to buy without being made to feel like they MUST buy it, that they can and would have a reason to buy repeatedly, thus giving the company a revenue stream that is limited only by how much people want to use it, whatever "it" is.
What I'm not talking about here are things that are "buy once, then you own it forever" or "permanent unlocks". I'm also not talking about things people only need very rarely, like respecs, global/character name changes, etc. I'm not talking about buying the occasional Enhancement or recipe.
I'm looking for a thing, like the Booster Drafts of Magic Online, which are totally optional, but really fun, and can be done on a pay-for-each-one-you-do basis by everyone, with the subscriber getting some number of them per month or even unlimited access all the time, while the non-subber would have to pay as they go, to the tune of like $1 per run or something (maybe less, I don't know) which might ultimately SAVE them money (compared to paying a sub) if they're only online a few hours a month on the game, then if they decide they have more time they want to devote to it, they maybe pay a sub to save money buy buying "wholesale" so to speak. Whatever the thing in question is, you'd at least have the option of playing it once for a small fee to see what it's like then making an informed decision. With the sub or microsub models we've been talking about, you're basically telling the customer "Look, we can't show you the inside of the clubhouse, you don't get to see that until you pay your dues, you're either in or your out, decide now, blind to whatever it is you're paying for."
Now, if Tannim222's "fast lane/slow lane" model works well, the great, problem solved I guess. I think that system still requires you to monetize new content by selling expansion boxes, or whatever and I'm not against paying for something like that every couple of years or so, I guess, but it does present a taller barrier to entry to the new comers down the road, and it probably creates some ghost town zones that USED to be new and are no longer used by anyone. Maybe the solution to that is to not so much make new zones every time, but revamp the old ones like they did in CoX with Faultline and Dark Astoria, etc.
In any event, I fundamentally believe that new content will either not get made fast enough or suffer in quality (or both) if it is not monetized somehow, in and of itself. While it may be true that Home Depot sells concrete at a loss, they don't manufacture the concrete, and the company that manufactures it sells it at a profit, as I understand it. And even home Depot doesn't give away said concrete for free, they still charge actual money for it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
How many players does GW2 have total? Millions? Several millions? The rule of large numbers tells us that in any sufficiently large group there will always be SOMEONE who will buy something. Our subscriber list will be wonderful if we break 100k and stellar if we achieve 250k. How many people, out of a subber list that small, will pay for things? Hard to tell. The KS list proves that we have a relatively small but highly dedicated core of players. One bad apple upsets that cart and we're done. Piss off even 10% of the player base and the game may not survive.
I don't think that comparing a niche superhero game to a popular shooter gets us anywhere.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I agree that X>0 the problem is by how MUCH? If you spend 10 grand making new content (and THAT number is completely pulled from thin air), then you want to recoup the investment asap. Ok...so if the problem is the team lead being the only paying player you might have (in a perfect world) only 1/8 of your players paying. If you have 10k players that's 1250 paying players. At a dollar a pop you're losing money.
Yes, all of these numbers are completely fictitious...but also entirely possible (except maybe for the ten grand price tag for the content...it might cost way more or less than that).
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
How many people play it? FPS right? How many people will play a niche superhero-genre MMO? 100k tops? Keep it in perspective when thinking of numbers please.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
So once the player has finished all the regular free content they now have to wait for something to come around to a 'free rotation?' During this time they may choose not to play at all, waiting for the rotation to come around. I can see, at some point in the future, a wasteland of empty servers as large groups of players wait for that next mission to come up.
Not good. Anything that makes players wait more than a day or two is not going to keep players playing. Nobody wants to play on an empty server all the time
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Show me a player that LIKES to wait and I'll show you a player that will never spend a dime on your game.
If a player is waiting, they're not playing. Not playing means empty servers, which makes other players not want to play. Not playing means they're playing something ELSE, paying THEM money.
We don't want to earn money from the player who logs on twice a month for three hours to play the free flavor of the week. We want to earn money from the players who play 5+ hours every week, keep the servers lively and are willing to say 'Here, take my sub.'
CoH worked just fine on the subscription model for years DESPITE all the problems the game and developers had. I see no reason to fix what isn't broken.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Lots of folks bring up GW2. Nice...let's take a popular (millions sold) FPS and use it next to a niche (possibly 250k sold?) superhero MMO. Apples and ball bearings...not even in the same genus. Please stop using such comparisons.
CO had a Lifetime sub. I bought it and liked it for a time. I can STILL return to CO from time to time and still do. It's good for an initial influx of cash. Be warned that those people will not expect to spend anything on a sub item EVER though so that's a one-time infusion.
CoX had the standard monthly sub program. What if the game had not experienced all the problems it had over the years? What if the producers had not slashed the Dev team to the bone? Would many of the early players have stayed? Would it have been easier to add new subs? We shall never know but I like to think yes.
The news that professional comic writers will be contributing content pleases me no end. Yes, I'll pay extra for a good story arc...but it will have to be a GOOD story arc. I'm also going to want a free taste. Let me play part of the first mission for free. Maybe 5-10 minutes or so. Let me SEE what I'm getting. If I like it here's my money. If not, I won't feel bitter over being cheated. Maybe I don't like the first one but love the second one. That's fair...everyone has different tastes.
As I mentioned before, I expect quite a bit for my sub. I'm paying you money, in advance if possible, so I DON'T have to worry about whether or not I unlocked something this month. Some people might not mind such things but I have better things to do with my time. Ever sit down to a project only to find you have to run to the store for stuff before you start? Remember that frustration? Did you chuck it in and do something else instead? Yeah...me too. We want to avoid that at all costs IMHO. That feeling you get when your team of friends can't move forward because ONE of them isn't high enough level or hasn't unlocked the Magic Dingus? That's a game-killer right there.
I keep hearing 'spiritual successor' for CoT. Ok then...why do we have to change the things that WORKED? The casual feel for CoH was one of the things players cite when they list what they enjoyed about the game. If it's complicated or frustrating to play, players will go somewhere else...period.
This works for me...almost like an Accolade or something you get without meaning to. A little reward now and then for just playing the game is a nice surprise.
Take my money. Seriously, if I firmly believe that being a subscriber gets me THIS kind of service I'll buy a year at a time. Customer service keeps 'em coming back.
Anything that falls outside the game (especially if it costs money to make) SHOULD cost me more and I'm ok with that. Again, I want a preview though. Let me read the first page, see the costume sets in context or whatever. If I like it, I'll buy it.
I understand that you HAVE to make money. We WANT you to make money. We gave you 600k in the hopes that you WOULD make money. We get that. However please don't drift too far from where we started. CoH players want things (the ones that worked anyway) as close to CoH as possible. A casual community, a good story and fun. If it's not casual, complex or not fun then all of us just wasted our time.
Thanks for listening.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Again, I've read Asimov. Some of it stunk. If you write it, and it's good, they will come. If it stinks I don't care who puts the Nike Swoosh on it I won't buy it. Give me a free preview and let me decide for myself.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
The best way for a company to make money is to have repeat customers. Customers who will continue to come in and buy product from them. So selling the things like Respecs, Character slots, costumes, enhancements, boosts, etc. may seem trivial to you and something you will not purchase, does not make it so. Those are the things that will be the bread and butter of sales. There will always be people who will want more character slots because they've run out of slots and want more alts, which also by the way is the end game planned by MWM. There will always be people who want to respec their character because they figured out something new to change on their character or they came out with new enhancements that do something better. There will always be people buying recipes for enhancements because it's faster than trying to grind for them. There will always be people who will buy more inventory slots because they get tired of constantly running back to a vendor to sell off their stuff. Etc.
Those are the things you want to sell to your customers. Those are the things what will be cheap to make and easy to reproduce and sell for a profit. All you have to do is create one digital funny hat and then sell a million copies of it for a huge profit. Does this push developers to then focus on creating more funny hats? Maybe. Maybe not. I would suppose that that would depend more on the development, management, and business team to decide that. If management says do it, then they will. If management says only do enough to get us a certain amount of money, then we can focus on a different project, then that is what will happen. That's the thing about digital items, once one is made you don't have to make another, only copy it as many times as you need to. I'm sure it's easier to copy a digital item and make small changes to it to make it look different than it is to write an entire program containing a new map, story line, villains, and powers. So you sell millions of these copied digitally created one time items for tons of money and then use that money to fund your new content program.
It makes sense to me.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Butttt Butttt.. my Nike Clubs!!!! :(
[img]http://i.imgur.com/u7LuY6m.png[/img]
I bought GW2 and gave my sub away to a friend before launch.. anyone here able to tell me more about the specifics of what their in-game store offers? Feel free to send a PM
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Okay, look, I never said "Don't sell people costume parts and respecs" I'm totally in favor of selling that stuff, I simply wish there were something that was more of a repeat business enabler. I mean, every funny hat you make might sell like hotcakes... for like 3 months. And by then everyone that want's a funny hat HAS a funny hat already. You've saturated the market. There's a funny hat on every head now. The only way you continue to make money in the funny hat sector is by making a NEW, DIFFERENT funny hat every so often, which absolutely requires development resources to do, and absolutely is limited to one per customer, because nobody has any reason to pay for the same unlock twice, right? If, on the other hand, you could charge players a SMALL fee, even $0.25 per person (that's twenty five CENTS) per run of a TF or trial, then you'll continue to get revenue from that content over and over and over from the SAME people again and again for as long as people want to do that content. THAT can subsidize new content, maybe to the point where you don't HAVE TO charge for the expansions (maybe), not to mention help the company pay the other bills, MAYBE buy some good advertising, etc.
And I love the idea of having "name" comic book people make some content. I think that's a fantastic idea. What a draw.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
transmutation charges, black lion chest keys (which have a small chance of dropping), Mystic Forge Stones (for some crafting I believe), "unlimited" gathering tools (per character purchase), more bag slots (per character), appearance changes, costumes, weapon skins, more characters, dyes, and a few other "QOL" limited use items, name changes, mini pets, and various other things.
However the only thing that I could say was "game breaking" would have been the mystic forge stones, but even those can drop in game. It is pretty much QOL/Cosmetic stuff... nothing that directly gives a performance increase (although there are XP/Crafting/Gathering/Karma/Magic Find etc boosters, you can get these from other sources as well ingame without spending any money (even if they are in limited numbers).
Even .25 cents a run can add up to a ridiculously large amount for somebody that is a heavy gamer. I know what you are going to say, If they sub then they don't have to worry about it. That may be true. But what if they don't go all in for a full sub? What if they are a hard core gamer, but don't have the funds to sub and are strictly F2P? They have no job, or perhaps only a part-time job, or are kids, and can afford to spend 8 to 12 hours a day playing online. They are then punished from being able to play content with their other friends because they can't afford to spend .25 cents a run multiple times during the day to play with their friends. As I've said, this idea to pay to raid works fine for a very casual player that doesn't get many opportunities to hop online and play with their friends. If they can only get on maybe for 1 hour a day for 2 to 3 days a week. That makes sense.
Locking content behind a pay wall is just not a good idea, in my opinion (I'll fix that for you, since you have an issue with that). It will just lead to way too much resentment, again in my opinion, which will lead to people quitting the game and losing MWM money. I still feel like money can be made from other sources that would be more beneficial to MWM.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
If I may, oOStaticOo, I would like to ask you what you WOULD do if microsubscriptions were available to anybody who had the Stars, and paying $15/month "merely" gave you a monthly stipend of Stars with which to buy microsubscriptions (or anything else from the Starmart)?
Would you refuse to spend money at all? Would you buy a bulk purchase of Stars and use that over time rather than paying regularly, possibly renewing when you were running low? Would you just buy Stars as you needed them? Would you refrain from buying microsubscriptions because they're bought with Stars rather than directly with cash, or would you seek to obtain Stars via the market to pay for those microsubscriptions you wanted?
I'm not quite clear on what your response to having microsubscriptions cost Stars rather than direct dollar amounts would be.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
A few thoughts:
1. At a rate of 25 cents per TF, you'd have to do over 60 TFs a month to get to the point where a $15/month sub is even good deal, so that price is probably encouraging people NOT to subscribe but rather to just pay as they go. I was a hardcore TF junkie and at my peak I never did 60 TFs per month (avg 2 per day?, not even close). It's priced to move at 25 cents. It's UNDERpriced at that rate, IMO.
2. Anyone who can't afford to pay the 25 cents per TF is under no obligation to do the paid TF, there are still LOADS of things to do besides that ONE thing that costs money. There's no punishment there, you can just go do other content.
3. Anyone who is so poor AND so much of a CoT junkie that they can't afford to support their TF habit at the rate of 25 cents per TF should probably not be wasting SO much time on video games in the first place. If they're an adult, they should probably be looking for a job, if they're a kid, there are things like school work, exercise, etc. In this sense, it could be argued that the paid TF is actually MORE socially responsible than the free ones, because of the barrier to entry it poses, however small, to people who probably shouldn't be wasting their time on it in the first place.
4. I disagree on a basic, fundamental level with your apparent belief that one specific piece of video game content (in this case the ONE optional paid TF in a game that boasts many others that are free) should be given out for free to everyone simply because there might be someone somewhere who can't afford it. As I've said before this is a business, not a charity.
5. Your argument of "but some people want that and can't afford it" applies to everything that costs money on Earth, and yet people still charge money for all of those things. Nobody's punishing people for liking ice cream when they charge money for ice cream. It's just that ice cream costs money to make so they have to charge money to people when they give it out.
6. Some hard numbers: Let's say that MWM manages to get 100,000 people online playing CoT per day, on average (not 100,000 new customers per day, just 100,000 people logged in every day, average). If 1% of those people pay $0.25 for a paid TF every day, that equates to $91,250 per year that the company makes. That's enough to pay at least one person's salary. If it's more like 10% of people paying for TFs, it's $912,500. That's almost a million dollars a year. If it ends up being more like 200,000 people per day and 20% of them pay for paid TFs, and the paid TF costs $1, you're looking at $14.6 million a year. So there's a significant amount of money to be made there, probably somewhere between a hundred thousand and ten million a year, without having to keep making new different funny hats, and it's all coming from 100% voluntary, optional, game play.
7. If they can get a big name comic book or movie person to produce a TF (I don't know, say Frank Miller of 300 and Sin City fame), some people have already stated their support for paying for content with THAT name recognition attached to it,, and yet all of the objections you've given above still apply in that case too. Why is it somehow okay for Frank Miller to charge the poor souls who don't have enough money for a TF but MWM can't do that on their own? That's a double standard. In reality, charging anyone money for anything is a double standard given your argument above. Your own acquiescence to the idea of charging for funny hats violates that "but some people will want that but can't afford it" principle, so your own argument is self-conflicting, really.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
1. That is YOU! I on the other hand, have done more than an average of 2 TF's a day. There were some days where I ran 3 or 4 on average.
2. Yes, you can do other content. Just not the content your friends are doing because they paid for a sub and have full access to all the content you don't.
3. You are an ass. Some people have disabilities that keep them at home 24/7. Some people are applying for jobs and waiting to hear back. Some people can't find anything more than a part time job that gives them 4 hours a day for 5 days a week. Some people may be restricted on their type of job they can have and how many hours they work because they have restrictions placed upon them. Kids have more access to computer time than adults. What people do with their free time is their business, not for you to determine what they should or shouldn't be doing.
4. I never said MWM was running a charity. I am simply arguing that I believe they can make more money from something else, and that it would attract more customers to their product if all content were not locked behind a pay wall.
5. The point I was trying to make here, was for people with a fixed income that have plenty of time to play the game. I argue that a person will be more apt to buy a one time unlock fee for doing TF's than a pay-per-raid option. That they would rather spend their money on a one time purchase of a funny hat than a pay-per-raid option. Again, you are not seeing this from a different perspective other than your own goal to get this idea implemented because it is your idea and your idea is a SPECTATULARLY, WONDERFULLYOSO, GREATEST idea EVER!!!
6. I have no idea how many people will be playing CoT. I'm glad you do. However, last I checked there were around maybe close to 7000 people signed up for the CoT forums. So if we go with your 1% rule, well that would only make MWM about $6400.00 in a year for paid content. Not an employee salary. Probably not even enough to recuperate the cost of designing the content.
7. I never said I was all for paying for any content that came from some famous writer. Hell you could get Stephen King, R.A. Salvatore, or resurrect William Shakespeare to write some fantastic content. I still wouldn't want to pay for it. Would I think it's cool? Absolutely. Do they deserve to be paid by MWM to write the content? You bet. Why couldn't they pay a writer from the profits they made from selling 2 million funny hats? Will the writer demand royalties from running their content? Or will they accept a flat check of X amount of dollars to write it?
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I firmly agree with you Radiac.
Static, your point is in there but you are not defending it by using anecdotal information.
The reason this game should directly charge for content is because it's model isn't like other games. In a fantasy game, customization is not a key component of gameplay. Custom avatars and play styles (powers) worst more in development and more to balance than the average MMO and players DO expect more constant releases of customization in this genre of superhero MMORPG.
The cost of story content is then expanded as well. Many are arguing for an indirect model of paying for that story content and the metrics of other games seeking "indirect payment models" say it doesn't work. And the methods they use (Lockboxes, forced subscription, freemium cash cowing, etc) are all methods most find unthinkable.
Content, story and otherwise, costs development. If we cannot come to the basic understanding that access to that content, story and otherwise, will cost money for access to it, then we will continue to disagree.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'm actually looking forward to the content in CoT way more than I ever did in CoX (issue by issue).
Yet all of the CoX TFs strung together were a nice bridge across the levels...10 to 50.
Some portions were a PITA (Hess, Numina), but overall, they were interesting, fun and rewarding.
Putting them behind a pay-wall distorts the spiritual successor message that's been in the public domain for over a year now.
So, if TFs are only being used an examples here then they are bad ones.
Anything beyond that is destructive against sustainability.
P2P "special guest" arcs and "signature" arcs. I'm okay there.
Ultimately, I'm bakc to this...there's so much more bang for the buck on costumes, power sets, toon slots, inventory slots, emotes, respecs, base goodies, etc. Toss in temp powers, especially if they are worthy and more than marginally effective.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
This keeps being thrown out there about the fiscal model. Of all the systems I wish to be updated from the Cox model I would think profitability would be the first system to upgrade.
What makes the content from guest writers more valuable than that of the devs? Devs are more apt to release a consistent narrative and if no writers sign on to that deal (whatever that may be) where does that leave the games pockets?
Crowd Control Enthusiast
To respond to Catherine America's concerns about TFs:
I loved TFs in CoX, I did a lot of them. They were my preferred content. All I'm talking about is like ONE or maybe a FEW (2-3) TFs that would be pay-per-run and would give greater influence, salvage, and recipe drop rates, and maybe a better shiny at the end, like a Synthetic HamiO or a one-use temp power (like the warburg nukes, etc).
I think the best implementation might be to treat it like the Weekly Strike Target. Let's say you have like 10 TFs. At any given time, ONE of them is the "pay-to-play" TF of the week. That TF gives better rewards this week, but you have to pay the entry fee to do it. It'll go back to being free next week, because then something else will go "pay to play" for the week. This moves players around to different content over time and uses more of the game than just having one paid TF that's always the same. Also, it allows people who refuse to pay for anything to simply wait a week to do that TF when it goes back to "free" again. This way the people who are willing to pay money to get added rewards out of it can do so, and the people who absolutely refuse to pay to run the TF can just wait a week and do it for free (or do it the week before, it was free then too).
The only thing I don't like about that system is that I'm struggling to figure out a way to directly monetize brand new content with it. I guess one thing you could do is have TWO Weekly Strike Targets, one that's always the newest TF and one that rotates like I described above. You could keep the new TF on pay-per-run status for a set period of time, or just until something else comes out and it's not the newest thing anymore. At that point it goes into the rotation. I don't know, something like that might work.
Edit: Just to add one thing: if, as oOStaticOo mentioned, only 7000 people play CoT, I personally think it makes no difference at that point how you try to monetize it, you're just out of business at that point due to lack of interest, period.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I really don't get this.
In a previous argument, we were discussing if CoT should be Buy to Play, Pay to Play, or Free to Play.
Buy to Play = Buy the game, play the game.
Pay to Play = Buy the game and pay a monthly fee to play the game.
Free to Play = Download the game for free and pay nothing to play, but instead buy everything from the store as you saw fit.
Eventually it was settled to be somewhat of a variant of CoH's Hybrid model. We will still have to buy the box to play the game, there will be an option to set up a monthly "subscription", and there will still be a cash store to make purchases from. From what I remember being told, everything that is in the cash store will be something that can also be UNLOCKED by playing the game. Also once you bought something from the cash store, it was yours. Forever. Everything that was supposed to be in the cash store were Quality of Life things. Enhancements, boosts, character slots, costumes, emotes, auras, extra inventory slots, extra storage containers, etc. So if content is going to be included in the cash store, then there should be a way for a player to unlock that content as well. If I'm remembering correctly from a certain Business minded Dev.
So my compromise to all of this is this.
You make a ONE TIME transaction fee to unlock either specific content or a specific TF if you want to play it immediately instead of unlocking it by playing through the game. Or, as has already been mentioned, it is something that is added into your micro-subscription package to allow you to be able to immediately play any and all content.
Also Radiac, if 7000 people all paid a 15 dollar a month subscription fee to play the game MWM would make over 1 million dollars in a year. Don't under estimate how valuable only 7000 people can really be.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
So that we're clear despite your snip, I specifically mentioned TFs. In that context, I don't think profitability will be constrained much at all...particularly, if CoT has just as much, if not more personalization and customization than CoX, which is expected. Also, CoX was indeed profitable; just not profitable enough. Any corporation has its own targets and since we don't and shouldn't know MWM's, saying it needs or doesn't need upgrading matters little.
JayBezz wrote:
What makes the content from guest writers more valuable than that of the devs? Devs are more apt to release a consistent narrative and if no writers sign on to that deal (whatever that may be) where does that leave the games pockets?
MWM has fantastic writers onboard. I'm sure of it. I can only presume that guest writers who are widely recognized and respected by fans (not to say that some currently onboard aren't already) may develop arcs that folks would not mind paying for. I realize that MWM would not be able to walk that back, but I also can't foresee a scenario in which it would be necessary to do so. As for consistent narratives, that can be accomplished by a team of good writers no matter how recognized they may be, and no matter how they are compensated. Additionally, as always, value is in the eye of the beholder, so your first question is much better suited for a survey.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
That comment was more about people's expectation of a subscription, but I think it applies for story content as well.
I'm not meaning to be snippy or snide when I say City of Heroes monetization model sucked and didn't adapt. Things I hope City of Titans learns from. Value all your content: story, costumes, frameworks, fx, housing.. all of it.
Edit: I should be clear. Value your content to be adaptable. It's easier to remove the price tag on a consumer than to add one. Lesson.. be adaptable
Crowd Control Enthusiast
It was fine. You don't want it to adapt per se, you just want it to be what you want.
It's fairly binary this conversation, someone in the dev team needs to make a decision about the financial model.
I found the model absolutely fine.
==
Pay to run a mission. Lol what a stupid idea.
"wanna team?"
"let me check my ability to pay for this run, oh noes I'm out of stars, I'll have to go buy some. That will mean using my bank account and it's the day before pay day. Sure it's only 25 cents but I'd need to buy $10 worth and I don't have that right now."
"dude I can just gift you some stars"
"nah, i'm gonna go play something else where I'm less depressed I can't even afford to run a mission."
financial model:
buy the box
have a sub that includes everything and has a stipend
sell stuff in the shop
paywall content if it justifies doing so
encourage people to sub
I talk to my brother fairly regularly about what is going on over here and his main comment is "why are people who supposedly love the game trying so hard not to pay for it?"
Well that's his main printable comment.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
You may have thought it fine, but economics did not agree with you. You're next going to say that the game should have never gone f2p? What works for a small section of loyal players is not the same as what works in a global marketplace that is the Internet.
If I were selling Washington apples at 1.5 times the cost of what you found on another site who would you order from? You could say you'd buy from me, but more and more of the market will choose Wal-Mart
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Again, I [i]think[/i] most of the discussions about any sort of "pay to access this mission" model would only require the team leader to have that access. So the scenario here:
Would actually go more like:
...or even...
I don't mind pushback and am not wedded to any of these ideas, but I do want to make sure that we don't have counterfactual arguments for or against being used; it muddies an already murky water. (I'm not accusing anybody of deliberate deception, but am hoping to clear up a misconception I see inherent to a particular argument.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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While we're on the subject of "only the leader has to pay", I think this raises the question of leadership in missions in general. For example, in CoX the team leader had a star next to their name and could voluntarily pass it to someone else if they wanted to. Also, I think there was a way that the rest of the team could vote the leader out of office if they wanted to. I think if the leader is the only person paying for a mission or TF or whatever, that leader ought to have a lock on leadership status on that team, otherwise people could recruit a leader to get them started, then overthrow said leader, then the new leader kicks the old one off the team entirely, and there you have a team of people (minus the one guy who actually paid for the content) doing the paid content without having to pay for it.
Something has to be done about that. It's not an unsolvable problem, but there needs to be a policy/mechanic in place that prevents it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Paying for a TF with greater or unique rewards will cause accusations of P2W (and we've said on many occasions we wouldn't have P2W) and many many people will simply not play the game on principle, plus those that think we've blown our credibility completely after saying we wouldn't have it. We need to be VERY careful with this sort of thing.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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Isn't selling Enhancements in the cash shop also "pay to win" though? People have stated their approval of that idea here in this thread. CoX did that and I don't recall any great objection to it there.
Also, if a mission or TF is pay to play, what you're paying for is the right to do that TF one time. You have to SUCCEED in that mission or TF to get the reward(s) at the end, and you have to defeat mobs etc during it to get the rewards in the meantime. This is how swag get's generated normally, so I don't see the problem there. I disagree that Pay to Play TFs/Trials/etc is Pay to Win. Technically it is "Pay to Play, Play to Win" and the intermediate step of "play" requires time and skill, not JUST money. Frankly, all play is Play to Win, and you can't have fun if you don't play at all, and when you play, and win, you expect swag rewards. So this is not really the same thing as just dropping a bunch of money to get the best gear, which is what the spirit of Pay to Win is, to me.
I mean, if you had double XP weekends, and they were only available to subscribers, is that Pay to Win? In that context again you're giving paying customers better rewards than the free-to-players.
Also, Pay to Win is mostly a complaint of PVP-driven games. I mean, in PVE you're not actively competing against the othewr players in the first place, so in that sense, everybody wins. Or there is no winner at all, because it wasn't a contest to begin with. In PVE if the guy standing next to me has better gear and more of it, more power to him, we could team up and do TFs together. Works for me. But PVPers want to believe there is a level playing field (ironically, on an INDIVIDUAL level, they secretly don't actually WANT a level playing field, each PVPer wants to be the first person to find an unfair advantage hidden in the rules that only HE or SHE has managed to find, but they want EVERYONE ELSE to believe there's a level playing field nonetheless, so they can continually assert their dominance over the rest of the poor schmucks who haven't figured out their angle yet). PVPers want to believe that those who win do so via superior strategy, execution, skill, etc. They mostly just don't want to lose because the other guy, who is clearly not as skilled as they are, simply has more money. There are ways to do that. For one thing, you COULD put different PVP combatants in some kind of "weight class" system like boxing, where every enhancement is rated with a "weight number" and you then match opponents with similarly powerful builds instead of letting the guy with all SO enhancements fight the guy with all purples (unless of course they want to waive their right to fair weight class matches for the time being, just to have fun).
I personally disagree with the statement that Pay to Run TFs/trials etc are Pay to Win per se. Some people may complain that this comes too close for comfort, but I don't have a problem with it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Agree again with Radiac, for now. Loot has not been defined. If by defeating Meltdown hog have a chance for "Meltdowns Fist Training" there is an argument to be made (assuming the Meltdown gear is better somehow than other gear) for that being Pay2Win.
I'd rather see a loot table in endgame based on my character. Call it "Kontrol's overpower training" and link it to my primary, secondary or mastery.
Marvel Heroes has this "unique" gear that can drop from almost any enemy. Naming it is a simple database algorithm and it's way more desirable than anything I train of Meltdowns power s. More thematically appropriate.
Just 1 example of loot tables that have a pay-wall to content without p2w
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Pay to Win means you pay a little extra money to receive a faster track to getting something someone else doesn't. So if you were to pay to play a TF and your reward for doing so was a guaranteed purple drop, that is unfair to the person that doesn't pay and has to rely on the RNG to determine their reward. Getting that guaranteed purple drop will allow you to do two things faster. One, gain an unfair advantage with your character being completely enhanced exactly the way you want it to be. And two, allowing you to accumulate money at a faster rate than the other person because you can turn a huge profit off of selling it in the auction house.
Now look at it this way. Pay 25 cents, get a guaranteed purple drop at the end of a TF. Or, pay 1.00 to purchase a purple from the cash store. Which one do you think will be done the most? Furthermore if you equate the same amount of monetary value to both the TF and the Enhancement in the cash store, why would you run the TF? If it's just as costly to just buy the Enhancement outright without having to work for it, wouldn't that be the premium option to go? This is another reason why I am so dead set against this idea.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I've been reading up on tons of reviews of MMO and their payment models, along with going into game forums and searching out posts and threads, and have noticed a couple of consistant patterns.
At one point early last year a standard sub was considered on the dying trend. While subs haven't gone away yet, it seems that the negativity toward a sub fee isn't as bad as it was, but that doesn't equate to the market coming back around to it as a standard.
The most positively talked about payment models seem to be GW2 that is buy to play, cash shop for cosmetics and stuff, and TSW with buy to play, sub fee for lots of perks and content access or purchase of content access for non-sub players.
Another pattern seems consistant: unobtrusive cash shops are favored, the more obtrusive the cash shop in the game is, the less it is liked.
Constant requests for pay X to do Y or pay X to do Z and so on are bemoaned by many.
People positively espousing to pay a sub fee and pay additional fees to access content on top of that sub fee are an extreme minority.
Pay to Win or P2W at its most basic definition is using real currency to purchase performance increasing game items (I just bout the uber rare +15 Sword of Kill All for $100 its only seen on less than 1% of the player population woohoo!), or the use of real cash to purchase bypassing the game experience (I just purchased a max level character full of max raid gear).
Paying to access content for rewards is paying to play, not paying to win. However, their are those who have negative sentiments that paying to play content for greater rewards is like paying to win. It isn't but it tends to sour some people's opinions of the game and the business model in general. Probably not a smart way to handle this.
For these reasons I would say that if we charge a subscription fee we should not charge more for content. Instead the sub fee gives a fast track on rewards, the rewards are the same for those who pay and don't pay. If the sub fee content is set up like TSW, those who don't pay never even know there is a mission they can't access from within the game (unobtrusive to game play!). In this model, buy the game to play, base content is available to all, additional content comes with a price tag either via the sub fee or one time purchase.
So far the proposed model for this game is buy to play the game, pay a total sub fee for the additional stuff, or pay a micro sub fee for the parts of additional stuff you want to use.
The concern over content in this model: everyone who purchases the game has access to all the base content, can level up their character to max, etc...base content may include special long story arcs or task forces etc... as well. Paid for content is in addition to the base content.
Paid for content may rotate out to be free at times introducing new content. The counter to this is that then most people will most likely wait for it to go free instead of paying.
To allieviate the issue of those who paid to access new content and those who didn't is to allow those who don't to play under the access of those who do.
Some have stated concerns about even this part of the model and how it can cause problems. Its a bit early to tell if this would be the case, but to entertain these concerns the alternative is to do this:
No special paid for content. Everyone has access to everything. Those who pay the sub have a fast track on rewards and additional options (larget inventory, more character slots, etc...). Those who don't pay should be able to play without constant [b]$[/b] popping up to remind them they are experience a suboptimal version of the game (this should happen in any case IMOP).
The exception I could see is in the example Warcabbit made about special guest authors creating a story arc and Missing World's Media wanting to compensate the guest author in which case, additional revenue for that content might need to be required. The special guest authors I would assume would be noteworthy people who are used to being compensated for their work - internet celebrities - including web comic writers, comic book writers, novelists and authors and so on. I would also assume these guest authors would be working with the development team to create these specific instances which means time set aside specifically to create them being taken away from time to work on other pieces of content for the game.
I don't know how things will shake out, but we have a couple of years before we get there to settle how and what. I only hope that however it is done it is done in a way that makes the game feel unrestrictive to play while at the same time offering incentive for those who desire to pay in addition to game price.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
+ infinity and beyond
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I would like to see this as the core from which the model is enhanced or expanded.
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([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
I'll chime in with my support for something like this. If I have the right impression, this is similar in spirit to how Team Fortress 2 rewards F2P vs. P2P players: [i]all[/i] players have access to [i]all[/i] standard items, but F2P players get more basic drops and have to rely on luck and tedious crafting to get what they want. At any time, you can instead pay real money to get the exact items you want.
In any case, you have the same opportunities as other players to play the game successfully. You may need to wait to access some things, but paying real money doesn't translate into being an elite player, and you'll always have the basic tools to do well enough.
Thus, I disagree with oOStaticOo's recent stance on pay-to-win:
It's my opinion that as long as [i]all[/i] players have access to [i]all[/i] of the potential rewards, then paying for quicker or more convenient access to those rewards is not pay-to-win. I might concede to some extent if the grind for F2P players was orders of magnitude beyond any practical effort, but this is subjective. I think it's fair as long as no player has access to objectively more superior items than other players.
Also consider that players will be able to trade Stars to one another, so if a player [i]really[/i] wanted a fast track, they could buy a ton of Stars with real money and use them to buy whatever they wanted on demand. They wouldn't be entitled to [i]better[/i] items, but they could certainly buy anything they wanted when they wanted it. It's a classic "time is money" scenario, and in my opinion, that's A-OK.
Pay-To-Win
Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.
As defined by Urban Dictionary.
I'd like to point out that it says able to get or make better items AT A FASTER RATE. This is what I was referring to. The ability to unbalance a game because you pay more money to do so. If you pay 25 cents to do a specific mission or TF and are rewarded with a guaranteed item or money amount then you are paying to win. This allows you to manipulate and inflate the economy making it more difficult for the average Joe. I am not okay with this.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
First, having a different drop rate for different types of content does not necessarily lead to an inflated economy. Don't conflate the issues they may be inter-related, but there is most likely heck of slot more going on leading to inflated game economies than drop rates on certain missions. We've discussed much about how we intend to handle this game's economy and having a track providing different reward rates should still mesh with our intentions.
Second I never said anything about a guaranteed item, specifcally I mentioned higher reward rates. Even so, if there were special merit like systems in place through which players could eventually save up to earn their item of choice thus "guaranteeing" an item eventually this does not automatically preclude game imbalance or economy inflation. Game wold currency issue not withstanding, again there are other things at play when it comes to the economy.
It should also be noted that the part about making items at a faster rate, the emphasis should be on the word [b]MAKE[/b]. The games that allow real cash to make items I. A game are typically those that have heavily crafting systems in which a measurable amount of resource (play time) is required to gather the necessary components to craft items. Paying to win to make an item in games like this is along the lines of paying real cash to buy bundles of crafting components. Thus bypassing the play time requirement to earn everything in the game.
In my example, if a task force guaranteed a drop of X then everyone who plays the TF, sub or unsubbed, gets the drop upon completion. If a TF gave a chance at certain drops occurring, then those who paid get a better chance of the item to drop compared to those that don't. If the game economy is designed with these increased rewards being possible from the outset, and the economy is designed well, then this does not again automatically preclude economy inflation.
The main difference between the two is the first doesn't have a measurable way to prevent people from spending tons of cash to get items / power within the game. While the other does have a measurable way - the paid increased rewards is still through play - its part of the subscription / micro sub access that still requires play time to generate and thus the reward amounts that are earned are measurable, tunable and adjustments can be made to one or more systems to account foe these earnings.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I didn't consider the economic impact of flooding the market with rare goods. I was more focused on the capabilities of individual players and how quickly they could acquire the things they want. That's not to dismiss your concerns, but I don't have an immediate opinion about the potential market impact of this sort of thing. However, making purchased items bound to the customer's account could possibly counteract this, such as the [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Store-Bought_Enhancements]store-bought enhancements[/url] from CoX.
But consider that such enhancements were in fact available in CoX. If I spent $20 to immediately receive enhancements that would otherwise take time, luck, and/or "market PvP" to acquire, would that be pay-to-win? Consider that every player had the same opportunity to acquire these items, but you could choose to pay cash to get them immediately or choose to play normally and gear up over time. In my opinion, this is a fair tradeoff.
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