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Hmmm... would this also apply to Free2Play players that Pay One Time to play a TF?
I cant speak of others but i'd be PISSED if i Paid one time for a TF and i got some lousy doo-hikey of a drop/reward. And if i did this 2 to 3 times and kept getting some lousy drops, my resentment would just build and i might smash the keyboard with my bare hands! >:/
In the back of my mind, i'd be thinking "I PAID real CASH, i want REAL STUFF!"
Who cares about the Content. I PAID, I WANNA WIN! ;D
The example I gave was either to sub or micro-sub, not a per-run access.
There is one other possibility other than sub / micro-sub , which is something like a Premium method, payments purchased in the cash shop are tracked and after thresholds are reached, certain aspects of the sub / micro-sub options become accessible, permanently. SWToR uses this, but I hesitated to bring it up because of the general amount of negativity surrounding their obtrusive cash shop within the game. I would say if a Premium access model can be done unobtrusively, its another possibility to earn a measure of unlocked status.
Another possiblitity is permanent unlocks for one time purchase, so even the possiblity of the any pay-for-content accessible normally under a sub / micro-sub is permanently accessible if someone makes the one-time purchase to "own" the content. TSW does this for their non-sub's to purchase their mission packs. However, they don't offer micro-subs.
I would say the micro-sub model is something that has not been explored in MMO gaming (I've done a lot of searching, and nothing's really come up state-side). I'll be honest, I have not looked into Asian market MMO models, its just not the market we're primarily opening in.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
There's something about micro-subs that I get hung up on when I think about it. There were things in CoX that lent themselves to the model where you pay every month and you get continued access to certain stuff, then if you stop paying, they shut off your access to whatever it is. I was fine with things like Incarnate and auction house/crafting access being like that, and even the alignment system and tip missions.
But there were also other things that felt more like repeated purchases in series. Like for example, the "costumes" microsub might get you more costume slots (which feel like one-time unlocks to me, possibly ones you could get free in the game by collecting trick or treat swag every Halloween, etc) and whatever new costume pieces come out. This feels like buying the costume pieces for the monthly fee, and to me that makes it feel like a repeated purchase of new costume pieces not a subscription to a service, really. The down side is, you, the game company, have to keep putting out new costume pieces every month to make it feel worthwhile. Otherwise it's like charging a monthly fee for a magazine and only putting out the magazine every three months, etc. Attempts to make costuming something you can allow or restrict access to feel forced and kind of greedy. e.g. "you like this cape, well remember you're only RENTING it..." Like having more costume slots if you're paying a sub but losing them if you stop. For whatever reason that feels like something I'm not going to agree to "rent", I'd rather just live with the one costume slot and just change my look every so often to amuse myself, and take a lot of screen shots to preserve the memory of what I used to look like.
So to make the costuming microsub work at that point you're maybe talking about restricting/allowing access to the costume creator itself I think, or maybe making a really basic one that you get for free and a really awesome one that you get with the sub (thousands of shades of colors instead of only 32, more chest symbols, more types of capes, wings, shoulder pads, ability to make your fiery aura whatever colors you want instead of the standard orange and yellow, etc). But even then the only time that matters is when I'm actually creating a costume, which isn't every day I log on, for me. So at best that feels like something I would either subscribe sporadically for once in a while and leave alone for the rest of the time, or else just stick to the basics and buy individual costume piece unlocks as I decide I want them.
So in the specific case of the costuming, the miscro-sub feels non-ideal to the company as a money maker in that it doesn't feel like it would get me to pay a microsub on a regular basis, and also non-ideal to the players because it feels unnecessarily awkward and kind of forced.
I mean, I pay a monthly water bill for water I use every day. I pay a monthly electric bill for electricity I use every day. Cable TV, internet, etc same thing. Things you can get subs or microsubs for, to me, are things that feel like utilities/services you either have or don't have access to and want/need pretty much all the time, every time you log in. Not a series of one-at-a-time, often very optional purchases.
So for me, selling things like unslotters, respecs, costume parts a la carte feels right and trying to wedge that stuff into a micro-sub feels really awkward.
Perhaps the difficulty people are having with my original post's idea (a la carte TF runs for money) is that it's proposing to do that same thing but in the opposite direction, i.e. that it tries to turn something that feels more "subscription-y" to people (in this case Incarnate Trials and the rewards they brought in CoX) and make it a repeated purchase.
For all the resistance this idea has met in this thread, most people who really hate it played CoX, paid a sub, and did Incarnate Trials, as far as I know, and didn't rage against that at the time or afterward. The only real difference there is that you're paying for access to that content once a month as a service as opposed to buying it one Lambda Trial at a time.
From my point of view, it still feels like an added extra GOOD thing to allow the non-subs that want to do the occasional Trial to do one for a one-time fee, but apparently a lot of people who claim they'd never do that don't want it offered to those who would. I still don't understand this attitude, to be honest. It is as if people are saying "I subscribed to this movie theater so that I could watch as many movies as I want, all the time, for one low monthly fee. It offends me that you'd try to gouge people for money by charging them $10 a ticket to watch a movie just once, how dare you!"
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Radiac, I believe there are several reasons why the idea has not been widely met with acceptance. People are are used to seeing game content be made available to them once the game is purchased and / or subbed. Not piece mealed out on a per-attempt-to-play-a-single-piece-of-the=game. Particularly for MMOs.
It also may have to do with the obtrusiveness of pay walls / cash shops in games. As I stated I read through a lot, and I mean a whole lot (multiple hours over several days now) worth of reviews and forums, and it seems that the more the game reminds someone they need to pay to get the "full experience of the game" the more derided the monetization model is. I don't know if this is something common in eastern markets for MMOs, but it is not common in the west and there's a reason for that I believe, and I'm willing to bet it's because it would not be widely accepted to the point where it results in a net gain of a wide audience but ends up falling into the "whaling" category most "freemium" games end up catoring to.
Regarding your statements about micro-subs. Something like a Costume Micro-sub wouldn't make any sense because you're right, new costumes would need be constantly made available most likely for repeated monthly purchasers to feel they are getting their money's worth. Things like new costumes, emotes, animations would most likely in any sane business model show up as one time purchases that unlock account wide from the cash shop or are unlocked with game play. GW2 and TSW both utilize cosmetics purchases with varying degrees of success (comparitively speaking), but both are considered successful (again varying degrees between those two).
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
There is no if. The kickstarter was based on providing a subscription model.
I agree with what you've said would be included in your idea of a sub. If we can get more dev buy-in for that it would be really useful, then we could move on to how to monetize the f2p'ers.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
What economics do you refer to? The game was reported to be profitable at closedown, it didn't close because it wasn't making money.
I'm not 'next' going to say anything. I am mostly totally indifferent to the f2p change except that it meant some friends who were really struggling financially could still play when they couldn't afford the sub.
This game will be funded by a small band of loyal players, I don't think that is in question, is it? Maybe not as it's ONLY source of income but if you piss those guys off, what have you got? Hoping someone like you comes along and buys something for your one character that you play once a month?
I have no idea what you're talking about with apples and Walmart.
I shop at various supermarkets nowadays as we don't have the local stores we had when I was a kid. What I do have is a farmer's market every week and I pick up most of my fresh fruit, veg, eggs, meat etc. from there. I absolutely pay a premium for this, there is no question it's more expensive than Tesco/Asda/Lidl, Aldi, Safeway, Sainsburys and Waitrose, all of which I have in short driving distance.
So I do buy Washington apples somewhere more expensive I guess and then on top of that I buy more expensive mushrooms and more expensive fish and more expensive carrots. I could go on, but I won't. This isn't just me doing this, one person doth not a bustling market make. Hundreds of people come to the market here, the one down the road and the other one along the other road (one's on a Saturday, one a Sunday, one monthly).
As a small section of loyal customers (I see the same faces, we are a small proportion of the total number of people who live and buy food in Oxford) we keep the markets going by buying regularly, if it was just me going once a month to pick up one parsnip, the whole thing would collapse.
There is a handmade chocolate stall on the market, I don't buy from that because of price and I'm not really into chocolate anyway. Stalls have to have what I want at the price I want. Maybe if there was a monthly all-in market sub, I'd try the chocolate for free and want to buy extra for my family, who knows.
I picked up some bath bombs for my youngest because they amused me a couple of weeks ago, they're called "chill pills". They'll be good as a stocking filler as xmas is coming up. I will buy from this stall irregularly as it doesn't have anything I need more regularly than that.
There's an artisan baker stall, I have been trying a different loaf from them each week for a few weeks. All really good so far but extra points for the rye sourdough. So good.
I guess you could see that as some kind of metaphor for the game if you wanted but I'm not an economics type guy, I'm just saying I overpay for my apples because I want to support good quality smaller producers who wont walk away from something like a bigger conglomerate might do for reasons I don't really understand. That may also be a metaphor. Now I must go and eat as all this talk of food has made me hungry.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
i love my
[img]http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110318021617/logopedia/images/4/43/Logo_99cent_400a.jpg[/img]
;D
Actually I'm concerned with the whole movement that is trying to find every single possible little way to charge to do anything. So say you pay to use the creator each time, pay a premium for certain ATs, a premium for costumes, a premium for content.. it's never ending.
You add all that up and go
"wow.. that's really pricey, the sub looks like really good value"
and then someone comes along and says
"yes.. it does.. we'd better make the sub cost more"
More effort should be spent in figuring out how much you need in terms of subs and players to keep the lights on.
Those premium players will probably splash a bit more on boosts/unlocks/content because that's what generally happens, you buy a game, it's good, you buy the DLC.
There's too much focus on how we can nickle and dime people leading to more and more innovative ways that will just end up with unplayable content because nobody can figure out what they need to buy.
Rather than pay to raid, just have a day pass, do what you want whilst it's active. Make it $1. Don't require the pre-purchase of $10s worth of stars in order to get that $1 pass. Keep it simple.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
Surely you would do that on a profit sharing basis.
You wouldn't want to give someone $50k up front to write you some content and then only make $50 back, would make much more sense to see if the content can drive the revenue.
Melinda's arc $5. $2 after 6 months and more DLC has come out. Bundle it for Xmas or Easter (or whenever) as a pack with all the other DLC out so far. Offer the arc with a hat for Halloween.. I'm sure people can come up with ways of charging for premium content and then tweak it until it sells enough.
If it doesn't sell then there clearly isn't a market for premium content and / or the price is wrong. Bundle it with a new sub like a season pass and see if that brings more money in. 12 months up front, all the DLC for free. That kind of thing.
Until you have enough money and players to commission content, profit sharing / royalties seem like a good way to go.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
Funny you should mention the dollar a day thing GH. I was actually getting ready to suggest something similar as well. The No Contract Phone companies do this. They have their 50 dollar unlimited everything plan, their 35 dollar unlimited Talk and Text with only 500 MB of data plans, an option to only pay 2 dollars a day to have Unlimited access to everything for that 1 day from the time you make your first call send your first text or access the internet, and a buy a card with X amount of dollars or minutes on it and once you use that up you have to go buy another card.
Now obviously it would make more sense to pay the 50 a month unlimited plan if you plan on being on your phone every single day. If you only plan on talking and texting on your phone the 35 dollar a month one makes more sense. If you sparingly use your phone maybe 1 to 15 times a month then the 2 dollar a day plan would be best for you. For the person that doesn't exactly know just how much they will need to use their phone the X card may be their best bet.
I was going to suggest something modeled after this for CoT as well. This would allow people who are more casual players not feel pressured into subscribing for a game that they may not play all month long, but instead in random bursts. Some may only play on their days off, which would make sense for the pay 2 dollars a day to access everything ticket. Some may only play for 4 hours a day every day, so something like a 7.50 a month plan for X amount of hours per day may make more sense. Some may not have any idea at all how much they are going to get to play so they could load up X amount of hours on their account and have that subtracted each time they log on and play.
I'm not sure if that would make MWM more money or not. I do know it's something that hasn't been tried before in any MMO. Perhaps it's something to look into?
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
The cost to administrate that and provide customer service is rather great.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
So just to clarify, for the sake of my understanding of people's positions on these things, GH and oOStaticOo are both in favor of offering a "day pass" for like $1 that gives the non-subber all the perks of a sub for 24 hours, and those perks may include some missions, TFs, trials, etc that the non-sub would NOT have had access to otherwise (guest-written by Stan Lee, or just premium content because its new, etc). Is that right? Because I'm all for that.
To the question of whether or not people will want to do "guest-written" content, my reaction would be that I'm likely to do it once to see what it is, maybe a second time to run through it and look for Easter Eggs, but beyond that, I doubt I'd repeatedly do it unless I felt it was an efficient option. For that reason, you may as well sell access to that stuff as paid-for-once-and-own-it-forever unlocks rather than anything else.
I gravitated to TFs early in CoX because they were something I viewed as an efficient level-up option that gave better than average gear drops (the guaranteed SO drop at the end was an actual selling point for me, way back when). When I soloed tip missions in year 8 of CoX, I did so to get as many Hero Merits as I could so as to use them to buy rare recipes. Repeat business in missions and TFs etc is tied to reward rates, as far as I'm concerned and always will be for a considerable segment of the population.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
'Day Passes' might be the perfect model for people who can only play irregularly.
Be Well!
Fireheart
How so?
All you would need to do is either check to see if somebody paid for a full sub, partial sup, or just paid for a "Day Pass" when they try to log on.
I'm assuming there is already something in place that will check for Sub status, full or partial depending on what micro-subs are chosen, and f2p. If X=Sub then check for Sub=Y options flagged and run program with Y options flagged. If X=No Sub then check for "Day Pass". If X="Day Pass" then run full program. If X=No Sub and No "Day Pass" then run basic program.
Perhaps I've over simplified it, and if I have then please enlighten us to how you see that it would be such a great cost and headache to run and maintain.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Yes Radiac, I would be all for having a $1.00 day pass to have full access to everything in the game.
I'm a firm believer in if you want to be F2P you should have very limited access to the game. If you Sub then you should have full access to the game. If you partially Sub then you should only have access to the parts of the game you decide to partially Sub for.
If MWM wants to sell a "Day Pass" that will allow people to have full access to the game for the entire day, then I'm all for that too.
I'd also like to see that MWM allows F2P people the ability to purchase TFs and/or certain content for a permanent unlock per character basis. Much like CoH had certain missions and TFs you could only access if you did certain things to unlock them on that character.
These things should not, in my opinion, give any reward that would be considered anywhere near Pay-to-Win.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Most subscriptions to digital products work as a batch program. Running that program every day (perhaps even hourly) is a lot to ask the authentication server. This is why most subs run that program fewer times.
The potential for billing mistakes, even if it remains the same frequency per transaction will be much greater as well.
Even with a 3rd party administrator you'd be hard pressed to get someone to sign onto that at a reasonable cost.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I like the idea of the $1 Day Pass that unlocks all content/features, as long as the "Day" is 24Hrs real-time from purchase (ingame) or next login (external purchase) and not a calendar day.
What I mean is if I buy a Day Pass at 10pm I should get more than 2 hrs of Full Access.
Taking that a step further I think it is acceptable that the Day Pass does expire if not used within X of first usage. So I buy the Day Pass at 10pm and play straight away until 1am. Something in RL happens and at 8am the next morning I have to leave and go do something. I don't get home until 8pm so I only have 2 hrs of Full Access Left.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
While this may be true in your experience, I've experienced the opposite. Where I work, we have servers that run batch jobs daily, hourly, and some every 15 or 5 minutes. Our admin is OK with this, and it doesn't seem to slow the servers down at all, so I can't imagine that one measly cron job would be such a huge burden.
Of course, I say this not knowing how capable MWM's hardware will be or how else they might implement task scheduling.
+1
..or whatever the Equivalent number of Stars is for $1. ;)
MWM might want to avoid < $10 transaction fees from the Merchant(s). Like my local grocery store! :(
Other:
Is 1 star 5 cents, 25 cents, other... ?
I wonder, will F2P or P2P have ways to earn a Star(s) in-game?
Will it be like getting a badge, kill 100 Rularu BOSS Eyes! Sooo, 1 Star earned for 100 Bosses? :D
Wait... its like were Paying people to Play. Thats just Wron... BRILLIANT! ;D
So... a new costume piece costs $2, which is like 40 Stars ($1 = 20 Stars? ).
The idea is to Pay players just Enough, so by end of week 2 (or 3) they only earn 1/4 of the stars needed for the actual new costume piece.
The whole point is to get players thinking More and More about items in the game-store, like that new costume piece. ;) And this is an Incentive. Chat, word of mouth, will repeatedly trickle down to others that there IS a way to get extra Stars from playing the content.
*VENTING* Think of it like those get rich quick schemes. You show the 10 success cases in the infomercial, who like schmucks toiled away for a long time to get where they were with their own efforts outside of the Infomercials program, but that never gets shown to the public. Instead you think it was ALL the infomercials program that made it happen. >:(
Of course not everyone will get the maximum number of Free Bonus Stars, just that 1 or 2%, but the rest will try and give up... and just buy extra Stars to make up the difference. Since they are trying Soooo hard to get the Free Bonus Star(s), they probably REALLY want that in-store Item. ;)
And if you place a restriction on the number of Bonus Stars that can be gotten in a Day (or some form), then you can most definitely have this work in the games favor.
This will also KEEP existing players in the game, logging in more and more, and THATs what you Really WANT!
Because... if they don't log in regularly (maybe incentive driven), for that time they are playing that OTHER game... you Aint selling Squat! :<
If the player has a Made Up amount in the back of their mind of a Budget they cant go over on CoT (or Any other game) purchases for that week (or whenever paycheck time comes), CoT might miss out. Soooo, the LESS time those players are logged in in those other games, means the player has MORE unspent cash in their pocket... and much higher probability they will splurge a little bit more on CoT, buying things in-game. :)
mmhmm and nickle and diming players once a month for each hat, TF, every time their character stops to look at a dog is somehow less intensive and less prone to going "wait.. i didn't want THAT hat" or "my TF fell apart half way through, I want 12.5c back"
Clutching at straws now. By the way, clutching at straws is premium content, that will be $1 for the first 5 straws.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
To address Radiac's comments about microsubscriptions, he's hit a point I've been examining for a while now. That is, there are things which naturally lend themselves to a subscription model, and others which do not. I have, in other threads, sought to identify those things which make sense as one-time purchases, and which make sense as subscription benefits. I'm fairly sure, at this point, that costume elements are one-off purchases. Microsubscriptions for those would lead to characters becoming "locked" if the microsubscription lapsed, which is undesirable and frustrating. Larger inventory/storage could be either; the larger inventory would just not be re-fillable once emptied if the subscription lapsed. Character slots pretty much need to be one-time purchases, for the same reason as costume pieces. Same with any paid-for power sets. Priority access to game masters or other customer service or concierge services would make sense as subscription items. (We obviously don't want to leave non-subscribers in the cold, mind, but the reality is that preferred customers often get priority access to any form of customer service; they're paying for it either directly or by being very, very good customers the proprietor wants to keep spending money.)
As a general rule, I think the easiest dividing line is asking the question, "If the subscription period for this item ends, does it require making a character unavailable until changes to said character are made in order to enforce the end of said subscription?" If the answer is "yes," the item is probably best done as a one-time purchase. If "no," it could be a valid microsubscription perk. This is notably a distinct question from whether or not a given item is "pay to win," "pay to play," or "pay for QoL." We are definitely seeking to avoid, at the least, "pay to win," which tends to be "you spent money, so you have this mechanically superior item/option that people who don't cough up money can't reasonably get."
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I have concerns when it comes to how you view a Subscription should be. Subscriptions are guaranteed money every month. With One-Of purchases you never know just how much money you'll get. It could be $60 bucks or $1. That's the gamble you have to play when you decide to be F2P with a cash store. If someone is going to say, "Okay, I am going to give you $15 a month regardless of how many hours I log in and play." you have to be willing to give that person SOME kind of benefit that makes it worth while for them to do that AND keep doing that. So far, I see a lot of reasons as to why I shouldn't subscribe. If most of the perks I think a subscription should have are just going to be One-Of purchases, then I feel I have no reason to give you $15 a month and instead just pick and choose bits and pieces to purchase while I play for free.
I think you are trying to be "Fair" to everybody. I think you don't want to give the feeling of superiority to Subscribers vs. F2Pers. And that is a problem. You can't be fair. You have to give both people an incentive to give you that money. If you have a Subscriber, they need to feel the need to keep giving you their money. Otherwise they'll just quit doing it and either go F2P, or find a different game to give their money to instead. If you have a F2Per, then you need to provide things in the store that they feel are necessary to them at a reasonable price for them to spend the money. Otherwise they will just play the game for free as much as they can.
Think of a Subscriber as a "Repeat Customer". This person is constantly coming in to your store and spending .50 cents a day on gum. Now you have an opportunity to gain additional sales from this person. Why? Because they are coming in more frequently than anybody else. So if you offer them a little something extra for free (say a store gift card for $5) they will in turn feel better about spending more money buying other things. Sounding familiar yet?
The flip side to that is that you don't want the Subscriber to stop subscribing. How do you do that? Well, you have to take away something from them that makes it difficult for them. It sucks, but that is the price one has to pay. Do I keep giving you my $15 dollars a month so I can keep playing with everything I have, or do I stop doing that and lose half of my characters, powers, and inventory?
I applaud your trying to think outside the box and introduce a different monetization model other than what is out there. I just don't think some of the things you think shouldn't be included in a Subscription and should be One-Of purchases only should be that way. Yes, people should be able to purchase character slots, inventory slots, powers, etc. Once those are purchased they are permanent. However, for example, a Subscriber should have MORE character slots that are less permanent than a F2Per. I know you say you don't want to put a limit on how many characters a person can have in the game, but honestly how many does a person really need? There should be a limit. I seriously doubt somebody is going to want to make 500 characters and play them all, all the time. Same goes with inventory slots.
There is a saying I use quite a bit in my life. "You can please most of the people some of the time, you can please some of the people most of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time." I think, sir, that you are trying to please all of the people. That's not going to work.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
"you spent money, so you have this mechanically superior item/option that people who don't cough up money can't reasonably get."
so just make them reasonably possible to get but also let me buy them if I want to
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
In response to Izzy's comments regarding playing the game and earning free Stars, I want to re-iterate my earlier position that I think all Stars should be created ONLY by someone somewhere paying real money for them in some way. If this means that you can't do missions or badges for Stars, so be it. On the other hand, a person who pays a sub could maybe grind for a few Stars somehow, I don't know. Again here, my argument is that in Magic Online, every Event Ticket that gets traded around for cards or whatever was originally payed for by someone somewhere by that person spending a dollar. That dollar is safely in the Magic Online coffers as soon as the Event Ticket is created and at that point the company has made its money no matter whether that Event Ticket ever get's used for a tournament or not.
It's easy to assume that the SPENDING of Stars causes the game to make money, in fact it is the CREATION of them that has to do that, as I see it. And grinding for Stars without having to pay money ruins that.
Another thing I could imagine happening is giving people a Pay-per-Run TF or Trial and at the end, when you succeed it, you get like a rare recipe drop and SOME of your money back in the form of Stars. So for example, let's say you can always buy Stars for 5 cents each, if you pay $1 to do a TF, and you succeed in the TF, at the end you get a rare recipe drop (or some other in-game thing like salvage, or a respec, or Reward Merits, or something) AND you get like 10 Stars which is half your money back, in the form of Stars, but in reality, the real money is still in MWM's coffers to stay. This would be a little like winning the "replay" on a pinball machine. No money back, but you get to play again (or in this case you get a discount towards future play, similar idea).
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I disagree with this, I would have left NW a long time ago if I couldn't acquire some shinies by earning a few astral diamonds a day crafting. I do this on 10 characters netting a total of 800K ADs a week (technically $16 worth).
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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I don't think Segev's ideas regarding monetization are being formed out of a sense of being nice to everyone, I think it's more out of a desire to sell people things in a way that feels natural and not forced or awkward to the player. I mean, imagine if you went to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread and they told you "we don't sell those piecemeal, you have to either pay a bakery subscription or not. The bakery sub gets you more bread per month at a cheaper rate than you might imagine, but if you don't eat that much bread, maybe it's not a great deal. Either way, the no-sub option leaves you out in the cold, no bread at all. So what's your move, then? Pay a bread subscription or go no-carb-diet?"
This, as you can imagine, is crazy. We want to avoid making crazy business propositions like that to the players and instead sell them things in a way that feels natural for what the thing is on a case by case basis.
For what its worth, I think CoX had a pretty good handle on this with the way they did their hybrid model, actually. Some premium content was sub-only, auction house, crafting, broadcasting on public chat channels, joining private chat channels, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I've never played Neverwinter, so please forgive my ignorance, but assuming you're paying a $15/month subscription, why don't you just sell those Astral Diamonds and get your money back? It sounds like you could make more real life money on this game than you're spending. And if you're NOT paying as sub on NW, you ought to just sell the Astral Diamonds at a discount to undercut the going rate and make money for yourself. In either case, if MWM allows people to do this in CoT, they're shooting themselves in the foot, I feel. Sure, it's a better deal for YOU, but I don't see how the game company makes any money there at all. In theory they should WANT you to stop playing so as to not have you around undercutting them in the Astral Diamond market. They're basically paying you to play their game at this rate, aren't they?
Again, I don't understand that game's pay system, so I can't really make sense of what you're saying fully, but if what you're telling me is true, it sounds like you're making a profit off of that game and the game company is not. That does not sound like a deal I want MWM to get involved in with its players, because they lose money in that deal, as you've described it.
I feel like your statement of the value of the Astral Diamonds is not accurate in some sense. Either they cannot be traded and are bound on creation/pickup, in which case they're not comparable to Stars, which are meant to be a trade-able currency (player to player), or their nominal value you stated is not what they're really going to sell for on the open market, because of all the grinders like you grinding them out on the cheap and undercutting the market, thus devaluing them below the buy price that that game's cash shop prices them at. In the case of them not being trade-able then it's an apples to oranges comparison to talk about that market versus the Starmart, and if they are trade-able then your assigned value of the Astral Diamonds in NW seems like an overestimate of their real-money value on the open market, despite what the Neverwinter people are charging for them in their cash shop.
I still think it erodes the value of Stars to let them be created out of nothing. I feel they ought to have to be paid for in real money. I know that's not the deal alot of players want to have, because the players want to MAKE money on the game, who wouldn't? But I feel the game company needs to be the entity making that money, not the players, by and large.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Astral Diamonds aren't equivalent to Stars, Zen are.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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You can buy Zen with ADs, that's what I do.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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No subs, F2P and money grabbing RM shop.
I did explain it elsewhere but broadly RM buys Zen which you can use in the cash shop or convert either way to/from ADs which are the AH currency and are also used in some of the in-game shops.
You can earn ADs (limited per character per day) and buy Zen with them from other players.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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But the Zen you buy from other players. Eventually, each Zen was bought for cash from Perfect World.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
That should be the case, but there are some strong suspicions that a little may be filtering into the system out of thin air after there's been no Zen for sale for a bit. Orders that were taking weeks to fill are now taking a couple of days at most after the bad publicity they got when there was a backlog of astral diamonds trying to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Zen (this was due to an exploit that could generate a lot of dodgy ADs).
Usually they just do a "more Zen for your buck" promotion and some Zen comes onto the market.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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Our current intention is for Stars to be the equivalent of NW's Zen, as discussed by Minotaur and Radiac in the above posts. I actually like the concept behind the Astral Diamonds (and STO's dilithium, etc.), but think that they're a needless middle step. I'd be interested in hearing what purpose they serve as a middle-man type currency; as I understand it, they're the ONLY in-game-produced item that can be traded directly for real-world-money-purchased currency (Zen, in ADs' case).
The model I'm hoping we can implement will not use an AD-like middle-man currency, but will instead simply allow players to trade Stars (again, our equivalent of Zen) on the player-to-player market for any goods (including in-game currency) the players want. Those who want to "pay to win" thus [i]can[/i], but they do so by subsidizing players who've earned the in-game items through standard gameplay. Moreover, there is no distortion of the NUMBER of high-end items in the game; they are all created through normal gameplay, and those who want to spend real money for them are not creating new ones ex nihlio (at least, no faster than those who want to sell such items can earn them through play).
All of this is a long way around to saying that I believe we can accommodate both Minotaur and Radiac's concerns, here: we have no intention of having Stars exist that were not paid for with real money by SOMEBODY. However, like Minotaur does with ADs for Zen, players can sell in-game-earned items (and currency) on the player-to-player market for Stars. Thus, players who wish to gain Stars for their activities in-game can do so, while MWM still gets paid for every Star that ever comes into being.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Purchasing a pass for one time entry is a token system and does not require batch programming in the way a subscription for 24 hours does. Online programming (grabbing specific information) and batch programming (going through a full process of information updating) are two different systems.
Please feel free to argue your point without being dismissive to logic.
The middleman currency is built mainly to control the amount of "cash currency" can be earned at a time. The refining system of dilithium allows only for a certain amount per day keeping any one character (but not account weirdly enough). Without it you'll have to keep a much more watchful eye on people leveraging the game economy for "cash currency" without paying.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Speaking not as any sort of "set-in-stone" concept here, but just as a "here's the numbers as I think of them" window into my own head, I'm very, very roughly picturing a Star being equal to a cent, at least at a "standard" conversion rate. (Might be actually the first discount tier up, rather than the base tier, or something.) But for very rough conversions, I have generally been thinking of $1 == *100.
(Obviously, this is subject to change as we develop our monetization system further, should we have reasons better than "Segev's back-of-the-envelope thinking.")
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Star = cent would be the same rate as Zen.
The intermediate currency means that simply grinding enormous numbers of mobs in NW (which mainly drop gold and stuff sold for gold) does not do a huge amount for you. Something that was different between NW and CoH was that in NW purples only drop off certain bosses and dungeon chests and with a few exceptions, non purples are worth peanuts.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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It sounds like directly allowing people to spend Stars on what they want from other players who will sell them cuts out a needless grind, then. Good.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Will this prevent some people from playing the game within the game? ;)
Hmm... i tried Farmville once. Laborious to make things just to sell and get in-game cash.
Not my kinda thing. :/ But... maybe ther's a few people out there that like that sorta Laborious thing?!? :P
This sounds good to me, for the record.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I will also add that I like the 1 Star := 1 cent (U.S.) idea. In Magic Online, they have a real problem with the fungibility of the Event Tickets, in that they're quantized to $1 per Event Ticket. This means that if you want to sell someone a Magic Card that's only 25 cents, you need to figure out a way to sell them more crap to make up the one ticket they're giving you or else track how much you owe them in terms of fractional tickets. There are bots on Magic Online that do this, and they're annoying because they try like hell to end up owing you like 0.99 tickets so that you'll come back and buy from them again so as to use up your saved credit, but that ends up being a never-ending quest to make things even out to the point that they no longer owe you anything, which is something they're programmed to avoid, in various ways.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Agreed, I like the idea of things being worth a portion of a dollar.
A cent seems like a nice decimal point to start for those of us who don't like math / use other currencies.
"Purchasing a pass for one time entry is a token system and does not require batch programming in the way a subscription for 24 hours does. Online programming (grabbing specific information) and batch programming (going through a full process of information updating) are two different systems."
So to sum up.. different things are different? Glad we resolved that.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
Perhaps you don't understand the difference. One program that goes through ALL of the accounts for ALL of the different variables and cannot be stopped midway through but must complete the program is a lot more burdensome than a program that simply adds a quantity to one variable that requires no batch run.
Not just different.. completely differently resource intensive. You obviously have a view point but defending it in this way comes off as rude.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'm not sure what "game within the game" to which you're referring.
While I am sure there will be those who actively farm missions for drops that sell well on the player-to-player market for Stars, whether this is "necessary" or not to support one's desires within the game will depend largely on supply and demand of Stars vs. in-game items.
Minotaur would be better able to give some perspective on how much grind is "required" with Astral Diamonds; it does sound like he can get enough "money" to buy what would amount to a subscription, if they let Zen buy subscriptions. (Our current intent is to allow (micro)subscriptions to be bought with Stars, thus making it irrelevant whether you originated the Stars with cash from your own pocket or somebody else did and you got them to pay you the Stars in the P2P market when it comes to determining if you're a subscriber or not.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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Having read through the thread I wanted to add my 2 cents.
For me I like my options simple.
We were asked to give some games as examples so for me that would be DCUO and TSW
Subscribe to get full acces to the game + a monthly amount of stars.
Don't subscribe and buy acces to parts of the game with stars.
In my opinion it shouldn't be anymore complicated.
In NW one of the crafting professions (leadership) generates ADs. If you make an effort and AD commitment acquiring crafting resources, each character can have 9 crafting slots at level 60.
Each task will gain 0-1600 ADs and take 2-18 hours.
If you've opened lockboxes or bought from people who have, you can get hold of crafters that do the job 10-50% faster (50% being 50% more progress per hour so reducing the time by 1/3). The ADs generated are unrefined and there is a 24K/char/day limit on refining. You will rarely hit this just from leadership, but can gain unrefined ADs from other sources (dungeon, PvP or foundry dailies for example).
Some of the AD earning tasks require resources you make from non AD earning ones. You can only run the same task 3 times simultaneously and some tasks are rare, meaning there's a subset available that changes hourly, so it's not guaranteed you can do the one you want.
Levelling leadership to max level takes quite a while, but once you've done that, it's just a case of changing the tasks over, which can be done from your browser and does not require logging in.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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Hehe.. I'm sneaky.. Sooooooo....
...I would try and have players have to LogIn the game... and come up with a excuse to use a in-Game store mechanic of a sort, where they have to pick an shop item as part of the recipe crafting (or whatever its called)... and state somewhere clearly that the item they Choose (not bought yet from the store) as part of the Crafting of Other things, could be gotten FREE in a sort of lottery if they choose the same Costume Piece 75%+ times.
- Now you have some stats to see what costume pieces (or whatever in the game store) people REALLY want, but have not yet purchased, and promote.. or have ways to incentivise the player using them.
How do you get them to look at the in-game store and choose an item that they havent purchased yet and not make the player Feel like this is an Advertisement? ;D
Come up with an excuse! ;)
- It has to be a fresh item because the Subatomic Micrometer Craftier device cant be repaired by the deceased genius scientist and needs unique atomic sequences or else a bug makes it fail. :(
HEHEHE. ;D
And in case your a Smarty Pants and say that picking the same in-game store item more that ONCE while crafting wont make it unique enough... I say... Its another device Bug! ;D
Actually, when you pick an in-game store item, the Craftier device guestimates its molecular structure... so its sorta Unique to the Craftier device and Crafting Succeeds. But once you purchase (get it free in the lottery maybe) the REAL Item, the Craftier device now reads the atomic sequence and KNOWS exactly its makeup now... so, it cant be used again. :(
Darn that deceased genius scientist! and his buggy device. :/
Too bad its the Only one in existence... and no one is as smart to fix it. :<
;D
A few recent thoughts:
1. You would have to carefully price the "one day pass" so as to make it less efficient for a hardcore, regular CoT player than a sub would be. Imagine a person plays the game pretty religiously, but only has time on the weekends to devote to it, that person is on like 8 days month in that case, (4 weekends a month, Saturday and Sunday, is eight days, maybe more some months, etc). I don't know how many days a week you expect full sub people to be one, but I doubt we want to assume it's 7 days a week. 2-3 seems far more likely to me, so the "weekender" is probably close enough to the "full subber" that you need to make the prices right in that sense. If the "weekender" player only pays $1 per day pass, they end up buying 8-10 day passes per month for a total of $8-$10 per month then to them it is as if they're getting a full sub for significantly less than the $15 going rate. Therefore I think the day pass should either A) cost more like $2 per day and/or B) give you less than a full sub worth of access to stuff during the 24 hours time period.
2. I still feel like it would be beneficial to the game economy, and to at least some segment of the player population, to be able to make repeat purchases with Stars (however they might have been acquired). There are only so many new costume pieces you can make per month, people only need so many costume slots, character slots, respecs, etc so you're never going to drive a continuous demand for Stars with that stuff, or if you do, you're required to churn out a lot of new costume pieces every month to make it happen, which is awfully labor intensive. Thus I still think the game needs something you can buy and enjoy and then buy again when you want to enjoy it again, like ice cream cones or movies etc. I mean, apart from player-to-player trading, the only things to buy with Stars are sub time and one-of purchases to unlock stuff. I think some kind of "repeatable Star sink" would be nice to have because it would mean you ALWAYS have something you could buy with Stars, and thus Stars would not tend to pile up so much over time while people wait for the next costume piece to roll out. Otherwise I'm afraid the Stars might just start to pile up over time until their value erodes from lack of use.
Edit: I forgot this one, sorry...
3. The whole "the game is begging for money, this is so obtrusive and immersion breaking as to make me want to quit" problem could be helped by making it very clear to players in the virtual world where all the paid-for content is to be accessed from in the first place. For example, let's say that all of the "premium" content that you have to pay extra to do (and which gives increased reward rates compared to the "non-premium" content) is done on other planets. So you go to one of the Space Ports located in different areas of the open world and you click on the ticket agent and they pop up a menu of planets to visit where each one has a price (in Stars if you like). So you buy a ticket to Mars and you do the "Mars TF" for that price. When you're done, you land back here on Earth with your swag or with a sad look on your face if you failed the TF.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
You make a good point about eroding value but how do you see that working with a sub?
Stars would only devalue if people kept purchasing them with no intent to use them other than to sell on the in-game marke and there weren't a regular influx of new players not buying them with in-game currency to purchase items, unlocks, and sub time from the cash shop.
I cannot strongly emphasize enough that the more obtrusive cash shops appear in the game the less they are liked by the player base and causes a spread of negative remarks.
Also, day passes may not be necessary with the inclusion of micro-subs, or at the very least the inclusion of premium access where if particular thresholds of cash shop spending occurs a level of access between free play and sub play is unlocked. It's also a good way to handle people paying a sub who lapse out where they don't automatically lose everything their sub granted them,
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
To answer your question we need to know more about the relationship between Stars and subscriptions:
One possible approach would be that when you pay a monthly fee, you are actually buying Stars, which you can then spend on individual items for sale (like costume pieces, buy it once and own it, essentially) and also for unlocking different sub-systems of the game for the month. These sub-systems (micro-subs) would all have their own listed prices, and maybe you can save some money by bundling, I don't know. Things like crafting access, Auction House access, chat channel access, etc. Some things lend themselves more to one-time purchases, like new costume pieces, and others lend themselves to paid monthly utilities like the ones I mentioned. With your monthly Stars, you'd subscribe to whatever sub-systems you want then use the rest of your Stars (if you have any extra) to buy stuff off the shelf, like costume pieces, respecs, etc.
If there is to be a "premium content microsub" one assumes that anyone who pays for that on a monthly basis get's unlimited access to all such content (and by content I mean missions, TFs, trials, etc). If no premium content microsub exists, or if it does and some players seem to feel that it's not a good deal for them (e.g. if you only play infrequently and can never seem to wedge a whole TF into your schedule, maybe you don't buy the premium content microsub for that reason, etc) then one assumes you'd buy the TFs and trials one at a time, as you play them, with Stars (and again here, you either got those Stars from your monthly allotment when you paid your monthly monies to the company, or you got them by trading for them on the market). And by "pay for them one at a time" I don't mean "pay once and unlock access to that TF forever" I mean "buy one ticket and you get to start the TF one time, the next time you want to do it you gotta buy another".
An important thing is that you should get more Stars for your money or more stuff for your Stars as a subscriber than as a non-subscriber. So maybe the "premium content microsub" costs 500 Stars a month and get's you unlimited premium TFs but people who DON'T buy that micro-sub have to pay 25-100 Stars per TF run, something like that.
To answer the question of "Why the heck would anyone PAY for a SPECIAL TF when they can just do some OTHER TF for free, no sub, no Stars, no mess no fuss?" my response would be to give the premium TFs a greater rate of Influence and XP rewards, plus better prizes at the end for successful completion, like a random HamiO or one-use temp power, a SMALL chance at a Purple drop at the end wouldn't be out of the question, etc. Something along those lines.
This is something like how I originally envisioned this to work in my first post, and on its face the basic premise of paying for runs of TFs met with some hard push-back from some people. I still maintain that all I'm really doing is taking the CoX Incarnate System and doling it out piecemeal to those people who would only want a little of it, not "all-or-nothing" like CoX did it.
Frankly, I can't find anything else you might be able to charge people money for repeatedly in the "movies or ice cream style, pay for each one you use" monetization scheme I'm looking to utilize.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The excuse neverwinter uses is invoking.
Every hour, you can go to one of many campfires (places in open world or dungeons that heal you out of combat) and hit ctrl-i. This gives you a few astral diamonds, a minor buff, maybe a potion and some XP the first 3 times you do it in a day, just the buff and potion after the first 3. It also awards 2 types of coin on the first occasion you do it that day (to be exact it's on a 20 hour timer), one that accumulates over time, can't be lost and has its own store, the other only stacks to 7 and disappears if you don't invoke for 30 hours with a different store.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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Another thought that occurred to me regarding paid-for TFs.
In CoX at one point they realized that not all TFs were the same. People were doing many many "Quickie" Katie Hannon TFs because it took the least amount of time to do on averabge and gave the same reward drop at the end as all the other TFs gave. So they implemented a system of Reward MErits where different TFs gave out different amounts of Reward Merits based on data mining the various stats of the various TFs (average fail rate, avg time to successful completion, etc).
Imagine there are three different paid-for TFs you can do: The Short One, the Medium One and the Long One. One thing you COULD do is charge different amounts of Stars for them based on demand. So the Short One gives out the same random HamiO reward at the end as the other two, but it costs more Stars to start it, whereas the Long one also gives the same rewards at the end but is therefore the cheapest.
I feel like this might actually even out the TFs a little in terms of how popular they individually are to the player base without having to resort to having separate Incarnate XP types and separate unlocks from the TFs, etc. Not that I didn't enjoy the Incarnate System, but once you had all the stuff you needed from the Lambda Trial, you generally didn't need to do a lot more of them as compared to the other ones that came out later. New comers tot he Incarnate System in year 8 of CoX sometimes had a hard time finding interest in the older TFs, I felt.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'm going to come right out and state [b]my personal opinion[/b] that this is not a good business model. It would necessitate the requirement of an intrusive in-game cash shop presence to avoid players from having to log out of the game to set up access and then log back in. As I've noted, games that do this tend to result in negativity toward the game and the company publishing the game.
Piece-mealing portions of the game can result in difficulty when one sub-system hinges upon another sub-system and a player who accessed one ends up with difficulty because they don't have access to the other. It also makes it difficult to track where the break down occurs when players decide to not pay for access due to frustrations unless they post about it and truth is, most won't post or bother with a "why aren't you paying for this service survey". And if players who are even "f2p" feel like they're are being nickled and dimed at every turn to play a game they paid to play for in the first place, they aren't going want to spend money, and worse yet, discourage others from joining up because of the constant need to pay for this piece or that piece.
Make 1 standard subscription. Set up several micro-sub packages. Utilize a premium level of access. Implement a cash shop thats completey inobtrusive to game play and if you have even a half-way decent game, people will play and pay. TSW has done a pretty remarkable job of turning around. GW2 has been more succcessful thatn GW1 (within the same time frame quater over quarter) and GW2 has yet to charge for an expansion or new content in 2 years (though suppossedly an expansion is in the works).
There would be no need to piece meal a raid if the raid system avoids the funnel effect of the player base - do raid 1 to get gear A to do raid 2 to get gear B. All of our internal discussions of any kind of raid system has been in the vein of avoiding that.
Here is just a short list of things that could appear in the cash shop (there's more I just can't list everything):
Costume Pieces
Costume Sets
Animations
Animation Suites
Weapon skins
Weapon Sets (grouping of weapon skins by theme)
Emotes
Emote Suites
Auras
Vanity Pets
Pet Skins (for Summons Sets)
Costume Suites (bundled costume sets, weapon sets, animations suites, auras, and emotes all connected by theme).
Additional in-game bank space (including over the sub level)
Additional in-game wallet size (including over the sub level)
Additional character inventory space for augs / refs (including over the sub level)
Additional character inventory for crafting (including over the sub level)
Additional auction house inventory (including over the sub level)
Character Rebuilds
Character Slots (including over the sub level)
XP Boosters
UCG maps
UCG Story Slots
UCG Story Elements (unique game encounter mechanics, unique pawns, etc...)
Power Sets (for those who want a power set but not the expansion it came with if one was bundled with an expansion)
Cosmetic Personal Housing Items
Personal Housing Plot sizes
Full Subscription access
Micro-sub packages
Costume Slots
Expansion packs
Guest-Author Stories
Then there are non-game items:
Unique Mouse Pad Art
Unique Poster Art
Unique Desk Top Wall Paper Art
Signed Art
T-Shirts
Coffee mugs
Costumes (personal wish item anyway - I wan't to see someone as Anthem at a Con - that would be sweet!)
Various forms of digital and physical media.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
There is ZERO expectation across the CoX former-sub/player base that TFs will be P2P; and there is no reason for them to be so.
WRT to lore pertaining to factions, NPCs, alliances, history and even zone backgrounds, TF were core. They were also core to providing sustained periods of uninterrupted enjoyment among SGmates, strangers alike. They were tests. They provided benchmarks on fun, team efficiency and toon effectiveness.
Implementing p2p TFs in CoT would make it the detached and decoupled successor to CoX.
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([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
It seems to me that any inclusion of any type of cash shop is problematic in the sense you describe. If it's accessible from within the game itself, it's "obtrusive" and it's going to annoy the gamers and repel them, if it's NOT accessible from within the game itself then it requires you to log off and go on your web browser to access it and it's a pain to have to switch back and forth. Any way you look it it, you lose. Personally, I think the only chance you have at "unobtrusive" is to go sub-only and be done with it. For the record I would pay that sub at $15-$20 per month for the whole game with all the goodies. If that ends up being the route this game goes with, I'm fine with that and I see no pressing reason to have Pay-per-Run TFs at all in that system (this is not to say that it would be impossible to do, just that there's no great reason for it, except maybe in the case of missions written by Stan Lee or whatever) . In the meantime I'm willing to consider the other issues that revolve around the possibility of non-subscribers having continued access to the game in some limited fashion.
Also, going back to the Space Port idea, I think if you let people know that the Space Port charges money (or Stars) to access it's TFs, people who would be annoyed by that will simply avoid going to the Space Port, right? You're not hiding hidden fees under every rock and then hitting potential customers with a gotcha that demands money from out of nowhere, you're blatantly advertizing the purchasable content ticket for what it is and telling people where it can be purchased. If you don't want to spend the money, you wouldn't even go there in the first place, right? You could make the Space Port a map like Pocket D where it's actually in orbit above the Earth someplace and you get there by going to some portal on the open world map that's conveniently located (a teleporter in your SG base, another in City Hall, space ship launch on the roof of the one skyscraper, etc).
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
A person who played CoX in year 8 under the non-sub option had ZERO access to Lambda Trials, BAF Trials, Underground Trials, etc etc. So there WERE in fact TFs/trials that you had to pay to experience as compared to the non-sub player. I'm not talking about charging money for ALL of the TFs, just a few that would be considered "premium" like the Incarnate ones in CoX were. You can't tell me people didn't pay money for that in CoX when I personally paid a sub in year 8 MOSTLY to be able to do that stuff. I loved Incarnate trials, so I paid a sub for them. That's paying money for TFs in my book. Trial, TF, same thing, tomato/tomAHto...
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
There is also the issue of what happens to continued development of a game that relies heavily on intrusive cash shop to play through the game. The focus of development tends to shift toward heavily supporting the monetization model. This may sound like "good business" but what happens is the smaller subset of paying players sees development in very specific directions of the game, where as the larger player base - those who aren't paying for play access regularly does not.
If the subscription, micro-substricption, premium access, and free-play can all engage in content together as easily as possible, then development can focus on game design that benefits nearly everyone.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
OMG!!! He just will not give up on this idea at all! I can't tell you how many times I have facepalmed and headdesked! lol
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Year 8? You're referring to a mature, stable game with a stable customer base. Moreover, no one paid on a per TF and trial basis. To ask folks to do that at release would be suicide. On top of that, iTrials didn't exist before year 7, so what are you actually comparing here? You called out Katie and categorized the TFs, so yeah you were indeed referring to ALL the TFs. Own your ideas.
And TFs, trials and iTrials were not the same thing. Different purposes all together
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
This all looks very reasonable, and I agree with your sentiments above. Speaking as a potential customer - nothing infuriates me more about a game than being "nickel and dimed" at every turn. I do not see any merit to Radiac's original suggestion.
Tannim's latest round of posts regarding design philosophy for a CoT business model (and the examples given) are sounding good to me. That approach is likely to please the overwhelming majority of previous CoH players who will be our playerbase and word-of-mouth advertisers. It also has appeal to a wider audience that likes superheroes but never experienced CoH; those who are wary of the tricks played in other MMOs or who simply want a pleasant first step into this type of gaming (as CoH provided for some family members).
I'm having trouble making sense of your take on this, Interdictor. Tannim222 provided a long and not exhaustive list of individual things one could put up for sale in the cash shop, which would presumably be things a player might pay a nickel here and a dime there for, and then you respond to this by saying "I like this and I'm glad you're not going to try to nickel and dime us." Doesn't this list really just represent WHICH things we/you will be getting nickel and dimed over?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
As far as the semantics argument goes, I continue to contend that trials and TFs are similar enough to use the terms interchangeably. As I see it, they are group content you do either as one big mission together or a set of smaller ones leading to an end point where the team get's a reward at the end of some kind. They may or may not include one or more archvilains and giant monsters, usually require more than one person on the team to start, etc etc.
As far as the timing concern (year 8 versus year 1 of the game) can I take your comments here to mean that you'd be okay with it if they chose to roll out a few additional trials in say year 8 of CoT which were totally optional, post-level-cap, Pay-to-Run trials that the subscriber get's access to with the paid sub but which the non-sub would be expected to pay per run for? It sounds like your main objection now is that you don't want this in year 1 of CoT, but later on it would be acceptable, is that the deal? Because you might be right about that, I don't know when the optimal roll-out for something like this would be, nor do I have any idea how long it would take the developers to develop it in the first place.
I mean, maybe you're right that I can't really compare year 1 of CoT to year 8 of CoX, but we ought to be able to compare year 8 of CoX with year 8 of CoT right?
I don't think the argument of "the timing is all wrong" totally rules out the viability of the Pay-per-Run TF (or trial) in itself, and I don't think it helps other people's arguments against the idea in general for you to say "bad timing, come back with this later and we'll see". I mean if you're against the idea in its entirety and you wouldn't want to see it happen EVER then say THAT and stick to it. Make that argument and back it up, but please don't tell me "bad timing" and then hope I go away, never to return, because that's a blatant delay tactic, which won't work because we still have years before this game rolls out anyway, so we have plenty of time to talk about this stuff in the meantime.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Here ar emy views on monetization, for whatever they might be worth to MWM.
As far as what the going rate or the predominant business model is in the next few years, I don't know and I hope you guys can get a sense of which way the wind is blowing when you do have to make a decision. I think a subscription, if it's the only option, is fine at $15-$20 per month, for me personally. If there is to be a non-sub play option, I hope the dedicated fan of the game will have a clear incentive to pay that optional sub and see it as the most efficient option for experiencing the most fun version of the game on a regular basis. The last thing I would want is for the company to cave to pressure from fans to give away too much for free and price their own subscription out of the market. As far as advertizing revenues vis a vis people paying for in-game ad space, I'm all for it and I hope you can make a lot of money in that vein. If you want to know the truth about my personal spending habits vis a vis CoX, I paid a sub mostly to get access to the Incarnate system, because it was the most fun (and seemed to be the most popular) group content in the game. It attracted people because it had cool rewards you could only get with it, and it attracted me with that and because it was what all the people interested in large group content were doing. It was where the action was, for me, the Task Force/Trial junkie. I liked being able to trade on the auction house and craft IOs too, and that functionality was important to me, so there's sub-potential in that for me too, as well as chat channel access, but the vast majority of things on the list you provided are things I think I would remain a non-sub and buy a la carte when I wanted them and I don't see myself buying $15 worth of that stuff per month, even if you think you can make $15 worth of that stuff a month to try to sell me. I think CoX came up with the Superpacks because people weren't buying enough stuff like unslotters, costume parts, etc in the first place and people bought them despite the fact that many claimed they were illegal gambling and hated them. I don't have a strong like or dislike of the Superpacks, but I can see wanting to avoid the gambling issues if that becomes a legal problem in some countries. It think it's already known that I would pay for a trial or TF once in a while if I had to and if it had better rewards than the alternatives TFs and Trials that exist along side of it.
That's my personal take on monetization, for whatever it's worth. Other people may have other ideas.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
advertising the game using players:
1. Star(s) for most Liked Instagram/Facebook/Twitter in-game Screenshot. ;)
2. ...
3. ...
I believe Interdictor is referring to several positive traits of the business model which can be discerned from that list. To begin, here's a definition which I think several of us have been using...
"Nickel and Dimed / Diming" (N&D) - an expression, typically used by a customer who feels that a larger amount of money is being slowly and/or tediously extracted through a series of small, unnecessary transactions. They expected the items to be included in a basic plan or available in a bulk / discount package. The item(s) or service(s) do not need to actually cost $0.05 or $0.10 to fit the definition; it is the feeling which counts.
1. Many of those items are one-time account-level purchases (as promised elsewhere), and as such do not trigger the "tedious" part of the definition. Even better, many are listed as "sets / suites" to reduce the number of cash shop interactions required. Examples - costume / animation options, inventory upgrades, certain expansion powersets, non-game items.
2. Of the remaining listed items, all but two (# 3 & 4 below) are fully optional from the perspective of the general MMO-gaming-customer mindset. That is, all players with or without the paid items can play with or against each other in an unhindered manner at an equal level of designed power, without artificial limits (player ability and small powerset imbalances are natural limits). Since the customers are willingly initiating every transaction, they are unlikely to complain. Examples - sub packages, paid character rebuilds, XP boosters...assuming that XP and rebuilds are available for reasonable effort in-game.
3. Expansion Packs. Although these are one-time purchases and thus don't fit the N&D definition anyway, it's worth mentioning that these are one of the least intrusive ways to charge for content, assuming that money is needed to fund its development. Such packs are easily understood; the line can be easily drawn as to which missions can and cannot be accessed, by whom, and when. It's a simple system - minimal confusion in-game, a one-time-fee, and clear financial benefit to the content creators.
4. Guest-Author Stories. Although the list didn't specify whether these are pay-to-unlock, pay-per-run, or both, Tannim has elsewhere supported one-time purchases (using CoH's model) and their selling point being custom story flavoring rather than unique balance-shifting rewards or higher drop rates. Either way, N&D is avoided.
I hope that clarifies the difference; I'm hoping we and our friends (especially those who are buy-to-play customers) are offered sensible small transactions versus feeling nickel and dimed. I want to be able to give a "strong buy" recommendation on CoT to every gamer I know.
to Scott Jackson:
It sounds like what you're telling me is that nickel and dime practices are fine as long as the stuff being sold in that fashion is basically unnecessary. To me this sounds like a recipe for financial ruin in that the stuff you're charging people money for is still not profitable, by intentional design. You're defining stuff which is non-threatening for nickel and dime-ing over as stuff most people feel like they don't really need and can live without. If that's true, I think they'll largely live without it rather than buy a lot of it. This leads to far fewer complaints about nickel and dime practices, I'll admit, but I don't think it leads to reasonable profits for the company. So you're not actually accused of nickel and dime-ing people mostly because they're not actually giving you any nickels or dimes because they simply ignore those items altogether. To me that system sounds like as if a hot dog vendor gave away hot dogs and only charged money for napkins, ketchup packets, mustard, etc. This again sounds like the customers demanding control of the price tag gun so they can make the stuff they actually want free and the stuff they don't care about cost money, saying "Let the OTHER poor idiots who actually care about that useless optional crap pay money like morons while I get all my stuff which is actually important for free, that's the best deal for me."
I don't have the numbers in front of me to be able to tell anybody what will and won't work, so this is all just my personal opinions, but I bristle at the comments people make when they say "You want to charge money for WHAT?!?! You can't make me pay for THAT, I actually want to use THAT!" No kidding, really? Who'd have thought we might want to charge people money for things people actually want? I understand that there are people out there who want things and can't afford them. Those people basically have no money to spend on games in the first place, so no matter what your pricing scheme is, they ain't giving you any money, period, because they don't have it to begin with. Giving stuff away for free to those people is not the solution to that problem which causes the game company to make money as far as I can tell.
Again, I liked the way CoX did Freemium when they did it, it caused me to pay a sub even when I didn't absolutely have to, and I would want CoT to do something close to that, including some kind of sub-only Incarnate-like system of post-level-cap Trials/TFs/signature story arcs/repeatable daily missions etc. All I'd personally add to that is the ability for a non-sub to throw the company like a buck to do one TF or Trial run, if and when they want to, on the fly. I refuse to capitulate to the opinion that that would be some kind of base insult to the non-subber to the point where they'll all rage quit and then burn down the MWM building in a series of protest riots. Non-sub players are generally fickle and tend to waft in and out of different games a lot anyway, so trying to capture their attention by focusing on not annoying them is going to be a like herding cats to try to do and is probably a fool's errand in the first place. That said, I think people will will either like or not like this game, if they like it, they should be about 99% likely to pay a sub and if they didn't, they're not going to stay with it for long anyway. The sub-only option is fine by me and I wouldn't rule it out for that reason. After you buy the game and have played it for like 3 months, you ought to have a pretty good idea of whether or not you like it by the end of the three months, and at that point you probably either pay a sub or drop out entirely. And opf course peole like me are going to pay a sub while they are playing and then take a break once in a while after getting burned out and maybe let the sub lapse for a few months while we recharge and give it time to get fresh again.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
First of all - that list, while it looks impressive, comes down to only a few different things: Cosmetic items (which are unlocked once), account management stuff (again, unlocked once), expansions (you buy it, you have it), and real world swag.
Second, they have said in the past that much of the cosmetic stuff (as well as some of the account stuff) will still be unlockable in-game for free - the cash store is just a shortcut.
These things I can understand and get behind - as long as the value is there. You buy it - you have it. But paying a toll for mission content in-game - even after people have paid for the "box" - will do more damage than good - it will only generate negative buzz and will fracture the player base to an unnecessary degree.
It was not always a simple matter to get people interested in TFs/Trials in CoH - I can't imagine how difficult it would be - not to mention how ANNOYING it would be - to have to shell out cash/points/stars every time you wanted to do so. "Okay - we have a team - now- everyone have their credit cards handy?" (or something to that effect) is NOT what I want to see in chat.
Unfortunately, that's almost the polar opposite of what I intended to convey. I'm saying that people don't feel N&D (and therefore the company is not N&D them) when the item only requires a one-time purchase -OR- can be repeated but is a good candidate item for a microtransaction. In that second case, the customers are willingly starting the transactions because it is in their best interests to buy the item or service in that small amount, such as getting the convenience of a single paid respec. The items, despite being optional, should be chosen from those which are desirable to many people. They are then packaged into the right size (or may be made available in several package sizes to please most customers).
Hot dog vending and MMO services are not very comparable, because physical and digital goods/services are not marketed, packaged, or priced in the same manner due their different cost structure for development and distribution. However, just for fun, allow me to demonstrate N&D by correctly hyperbolizing your hot dog vendor example, based on the definition I previously provided. I should also note that we've been told that the game box must be purchased to play. No one will be playing for free.
[b]N&D Hot Dog Vendor[/b]
Charges us to approach the cart, then charges us for speaking (per word) as we order. We must pay for the length of the bun by the millimeter, and the hot dog by cubic inch. All condiments cost extra and are weighed precisely to ensure that the vendor makes a profit on each thing individually, since this vendor doubts his ability to make money if even one drop of mustard is given away. It takes unusually long to place and fill even a simple order. Even the vendor has trouble remembering his own pricing structure, so he gets a full-body tattoo which lists all of the details.
Total price for an average meal: $5.15
Profit: $1.15 per meal, but not for long... The expensive tattoo and greater labor cost limit the vendor's profit despite the higher revenue, and the lack of repeat customers demonstrate the true cost of the vendor's foolish policies. His tattoo is featured on YouTube in the March 2015 Fails of the Month.
Experience: horrible, tedious; the small mercy is that there are no repeat customers. After some soul searching, bankruptcy, and a costume change, he re-emerges as...
[b]Good Hot Dog Vendor[/b]
Offers several easily-understood and popular menu options, each having a single price. To add the most unusual or expensive condiments, a reasonable extra fee is charged. The vendor offers "subscription" discount packages for regular customers if we buy multiple meals in advance, since this helps with inventory planning and guarantees income.
Total price for an average meal: $5.00, or $4.50 for subscribers.
Profit: $1.00 per meal, rising quickly to $2 and then $3 per meal, because customer satisfaction and the resulting higher sales volume allow large fixed costs such as the cart and concession fees to be spread across many meals.
Experience: pleasant, simple; repeat customers are rewarded but new and infrequent customers are also treated fairly.
****
Perhaps this better clarifies what counts as N&D tactics... or is at least mildly amusing?
Since you said you like CoH's Freemium model, merge it with the box-purchase requirement, and you'd basically have what Tannim described. Since all CoT customers would pay more up front than in the CoH Freemium model, we could consider that they've already paid for access to all core CoT content; extra payments would only need to cover major expansions and guest authors' work. Would endgame raiding & progression count as "core content" or an expansion? I don't know, but I could see either as reasonable.
yay... Analogies to the MAX! ;D
Me next. Me Next. ;)
CoH as Schools
- level 1 to 22, is Elementary schooling
- level 23 to 32, is Junior High
- level 33 to 50, is High School
- level 50+0 to 50+4, is College
Weeee. ;D
Okay, but CoX had an Incarnate system that you had to pay a sub to be included into on an ongoing basis. And, as I said, that got me to subscribe in year 8 when the game went to the Freemium model. I personally am not against putting misson/TF/trial content like Incarnate trials and Signature Story arcs behind the subscription paywall, but some people on this thread have articulated the position of "ABSOLUTELY NO CHARGING THE NON-SUB MONEY FOR ANY MISSONS/TFs/TRIALS, EVER!" on that subject in previous posts, and needless to say, I disagree.
If we go with the CoX style system and have some kind of post-level-cap missions/TFs/trials/raids that are subscriber-only gated, like Incarnate was in CoX, is that okay? I think so. I bought all three boxes that CoX sold (and they were actually boxes in actual stores back then) and still paid the sub years later in order to do Incarnate content, mostly, when it went to Freemium. And if that IS the thing we do, how is it not an IMPROVEMENT in the lives of the non-subs that they might be allowed to do ONE run of such a trial for like a buck when they get the occasional urge to join one? Isn't that better than denying them access entirely, like CoX did? Because if the alternative s to just give everyone who buys the game box access to that content, even when they're not paying a sub, then I think you're giving away the store, personally. The box purchase amounts to 3 months of game sub time, in terms of money. I don't think it ought to buy anyone the entire gamut of things you could do in the game in perpetuity, and I'm FOR the idea of making some stuff subscriber-only gated to encourage subscriptions among the dedicated fans of the game.
And again, as Catherine America pointed out, this might not be the best thing in like year 1 of CoT, maybe they need to wait until they have a lot of playable content before they can roll out the sub-only trials/TFs/raids thing, that I don't know. But in a system where you have the sub and non-sub play options, and you have some kind of Incarnate-like system that puts SOME premium TFs/trials/etc behind that paywall, isn't it BETTER to allow the pay-per-run option to the non-subs so they can do the occasional trial run without having to sign up for a month's worth of access to them or have none at all? Even at a dollar a run, which is not the cheapest price you could go to, that's still WAY, WAY cheaper than going to a movie, or buying a smoothie at Orange Julius, or getting a 20oz bottle of Coke out of a vending machine.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
:( Buttt buttt.... College* isnt part of the CoH Main Game. So its Ok you charge for it. ;D
You dont have to go to College* if you dont want to. ;)
Umm.. instead of making it free for the 1st year, add extra stars. ;) Then later, remove the bonus stipend stars. Just enough to cover 2 to 3 TF's?
Unfortunately for me, Izzy, I TEACH at a college, so I definitely have to go there, even when I don't want to. On the plus side, that's how I can afford to pay a monthly CoT sub on top of the $180/month my internet provider charges me for cable TV and cablemodem service. :D
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Did ya look at post 431? ;)
$180/mo :O
All i have is Netflix $8ish/mo and shitty AT&T internet at $40/mo, and Im in LA. :(
In post 431, you didn't leave any levels to represent graduate school. Maybe the masters degree and PhD were the Incarnate trials we never got.... :(
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
(not exclusively a reply to Radiac, but continuing discussion based on # 432)
CoT is caught in debate between two major foundational approaches, which I'll call "For Rent" (FR) and "For Sale" (FS). CoH as free-to-play had a mixture of these, and even at the time there was a decent amount of debate over which game features NCSoft should place in each category. That debate resumed here, but it's not always clear what foundation each poster is standing upon. That's why a post or proposal mounted on a FR foundation for endgame and other systems (and thus sees pay-per-run as a positive new option) gets more resistance than expected... to anyone standing on a FS foundation, pay-to-run is counter to their underlying philosophy on ownership of access and any hint of the FR approach puts at risk what they feel (right or wrong) are the positive aspects of a game based on FS.
The CoH situation, put in FR / FS terms: [sourced from Paragon Wiki]
- FS: Costumes, powerset packs, boosts, and card packs were treated as items for sale. On a sheer quantity meter, >90% of all cash shop stuff fit into this category.
- FR but with FS option: Several systems were treated like rented services (Auction House, IOs) but could, with enough money and time, be perma-unlocked through buying one's way up the VIP reward tree.
- FR only: A few were treated purely as a service...Incarnate access, Supergroup-leading functions, and chat channel creation. There was no way to perma-unlock them for any amount of money. Sub or micro-sub were the only options to use these.
Some posters are interested in seeing all game features treated more like ownable items rather than rental services which require repeated payments to keep using. Under their preferred model (FS), MWM would decide whether permanent access to the endgame "Incarnate" system/content is considered core (and thus part of the game box purchase, like the tutorial, email system, & basic costume suite), or a special expansion pack. Some have then agreed that a paid day pass would be a reasonable middle ground way to let people try content or systems that would otherwise be only available with a larger one-time purchase. While I haven't seen it as a proposal, MWM could do a "free for all day" or emailed "free day pass" to give players a taste of these things. Think Steam's free trial weekends. Actually, the sales model found throughout most of Steam is heavily based on a FS foundation...buyers are offered permanent access to software, DLC content, and digital items...rather than monthly or yearly licenses.
I'm not completely sold on FS as the way for CoT to treat every game feature, but I do prefer a FS approach for most things that MMOs offer, and can see the benefits of shifting the balance from CoH's FR/FS mixture more toward FS, especially given that we'll all be paying for a box. Others have already given examples of MMOs and other games which have shifted that direction, to varying degrees of success on financial and customer-satisfaction measures.
After 400+ posts, new ground is hard to find. This quote from Tannim expresses a sentiment with which I strongly agree:
"If the subscription, micro-subscription, premium access, and free-play can all engage in content together as easily as possible, then development can focus on game design that benefits nearly everyone." Which foundation, FS or FR, better supports this vision while still producing enough money to operate? I say FS, but I doubt anyone can be fully convinced of this through words alone. It can be felt through experience with games which fit at various points along the FS<->FR spectrum, when paid & played from multiple perspectives (MMO veteran, high $ low time, family with kids who want to play alongside parents, college student, first time MMO player, etc).
To me, the dividing line between what should be "for rent" vs. "for sale" is this: If you took away the item/service in question, would this render a character built with access to this item or service unplayable until the player changed the character around to not include this item or service? By "unplayable," here, I mean that literally: would you have to LOCK the character until it was removed to prevent the player from using the item or service?
If so, that item or service is probably best suited as a one-time purchase. Character slots, costume pieces, power sets, and the like are all such items.
If not, especially if that item is something you could conceivably buy and "use up" under any reasonable model, it's probably a better candidate for a subscription perk. i.e. something "for rent." Extra AH slots, "premuium" mission access, chat client conveniences, extra inventory space, possibly even emotes (though for various reasons I lean towards those being one-off purchases anyway)...these things work "for rent" because, if they're taken away through lapse of subscription, they don't render a character unplayable. (The other thing that "for rent" really lends itself to is anything that has an ongoing maintenance costs. Things which, if sold once and then nobody bought more of it later, would wind up costing money in the long run to maintain for those who bought it.)
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
IF this was strictly a F2P system, one where I did not have to purchase the box from the beginning to be able to play the game, THEN I would be okay with charging for some content. Since it's NOT a strictly F2P design, then I do not feel that it's a good idea to charge for content. When I purchase the game from the beginning I am spending money that SHOULD be able to make up for ALL of MWM's efforts to design the game. I don't go out and buy a car for 20,000 dollars just to get it home then find out I have to rent an alternator, a water pump, and a carburetor. ALL of the costs that it takes for MWM to make this game should be covered in the purchase of the game. If they design more stuff later, then they need to figure out a way to make up for all of those costs as well. They can do that by rolling it out as an expansion like CoH did with CoV and Going Rogue, where again we have to purchase a box game to play it.
You keep getting caught up on the F2P side of this argument. That is not what this is. This is B2P with F2P or Micro-subscriptions and a cash store added in. Once you have bought the game, you SHOULD have full access to ALL of the content available in the game. Period. You should have ALL access to everything from the get go. Now once they decide to start adding new stuff in, THAT is when the decision is to be made on how they will charge for it. If they introduce 1 new power set then instead of letting everybody have access to it immediately they should give the option of making a one time purchase for it, or including an option in the Micro-subscription to have access to all new powers until the subscription is terminated. When they design new costume pieces or sets, they will need to charge for purchasing those new pieces or sets. Or, again, have an option in the Micro-subscription that allows you to have access to all new costume pieces or sets once they come out until you terminate your subscription.
If new content is made, then a decision has to be made on how that will be introduced to the players. Will it be rolled out as an expansion with new powers, animations, costumes, etc.? If so, they can charge a fee for a complete expansion. That fee should be able to recover all of the money and time spent designing it and produce a profit. Will it be rolled out with strictly the content only? If so, then they can include a package in the Micro-subscription model that will allow those that are subscribing the ability to play all content as it comes out until they stop subscribing. They can also put it up in the cash stop for a one time purchase DLC package for the F2P people to be able to buy and play.
You are making this argument based of either Subscription only or F2P only and you are leaving out the fact that people are also owners of the game regardless if they subscribe or not. If you own something you do not expect that parts of whatever you own are locked away from you to be able to use. Now when something new is made that can enhance that something you own, then yes you will be expected to find some way to pay for that new thing to make it even better. As I have already stated, I do not like that CoH introduced the Incarnate System the way they did. I would rather they had rolled it out as either an expansion with a box price, or as a DLC content that had to be purchased from their cash store.
I gave you a compromise earlier called the "Day Pass". I understand there will be very casual players that do not get the option to get on the game as much as other people will. Those people will not see the value in making a purchase of a Subscription to give them full access to everything, or for possibly buying an expansion that they will very rarely ever get to play. This will give those kind of players a full days access to everything in the game. I feel $1.00 a day is plenty for that. This way if it is $15.00 to sub for a full 30 days, it would cost a person $30.00 a month if they paid for it daily. If someone decided to only play for 15 days for $1.00 a day that would be the equivalent of a full sub, which is kind of what they are doing anyways. $1.00 a day works perfectly fine, imo. Now stop trying to nickel and dime everybody to death for this game. Seriously.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
And I am going to have to completely disagree with you again Segev. The Subscription model NEEDS to include some kind of incentive to keep Subscribing. That incentive is keeping all of your characters available to you to be able to play. If you decide to stop subscribing then you will have to go into the store and buy all the things that were available to you while you were subscribing. THAT is how you will make money.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I suppose my question is... are you not interested in any of the items that are "for rent" in the first place? Shouldn't the things you rent be their own incentive?
If you have to go in and buy those things if you stop subscribing, how is that different from having had to buy them before you could play the character with them in the first place?
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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If you are going to ask that, then what is the point in having a subscription at all? Shouldn't you just go out and buy all the things to play with period? Just get rid of the subscription and make it strictly F2P at this point. Why should I give you a guaranteed 15 bucks a month to have full access to everything on a rented basis when I should just instead go out and buy piece by piece only the exact items I want to play with only? I may not be interested in playing Nunchakus, but if I had access to it without having to buy it I might just play one to see what it's like. If I really liked it then I would either A.) keep my subscription up so I can keep playing it, or B.) let my subscription lapse and go free to play, but then purchase the Nunchaku set so I can keep playing it.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I personally am not delusional enough to believe that paying an up-front $50 "buy the box" price which includes 3 months of sub time is really buying me anything more than 3 months of sub time for a game like this.
This isn't Wing Commander I or Zork, where you buy it and play it by yourself on your computer and that's that. In the case of a game like Zork or Wing Commander I, you could write the game, package it, ship it and by the time the game was on the shelf you barely even needed a company to support it anymore. You basically needed a phone number and a P.O. Box to deal with complaints and that was it. That said, a lot of those companies developed NEW games with the profits from the last game they just made, etc, so they DID stay in business, they just didn't have to keep supporting old games as much as MMOs do today.
For an MMO game like CoT, MWM needs a continuous stream of incoming money to keep the servers up and running, keep the electricity on, pay the janitor, pay the person who's job it is to listen to user complaints that the game makes their video card crash every other Friday, pay the people who FIX said video card problem somehow, pay the people who moderate the forums, pay the people who are designing new missions and TFs, etc etc etc. In short, as I have explained already, there are considerable ongoing, daily costs to maintain an MMO game like this. If you feel that the up-front cost of the box should cover all of that for the next 8 years that the game is offered to the public, then you're looking at paying upwards of a THOUSAND dollars to buy that box, not the $50 going rate. Consider that in the 8 years of its existence, CoX got something like $1500 out of its subscribers (and that assumes a person who never, ever let their sub lapse). A $15/month subscription times 12 months in a year times 8 years is $1440, add to that the cost of the three boxes CoX sold (the blue one, the red one and the blue-and-red one) and you're at like $1600. I already paid more than twice this amount into the Kickstarter and even I don't believe they're going to get any considerable segment of the market to buy CoT at all at that price. So this idea of "I bought the $50 box, what more do you want? I demand all content for that one-time $50 price" is absurd. It will not work. The company loses money and goes out of business very quickly if that's the deal.
That established, I think it has been demonstrated that some form of ongoing money paid to MWM for CoT is needed. If the sub-only option is the only thing that doesn't offend you, I want you to know that I'm personally okay with making CoT a sub-only game, at least in the beginning. New missions, arcs, TFs, trials, etc take time to make and so forth, so you might not have a lot to offer the subscribers over and above what you feel the non-subs ought to get anyway, and besides, since everyone gets 3 months of sub with the box purchase, there are no non-subs until month 4 at the earliest anyway. I personally do not believe that optional cosmetic stuff that you can sell in the cash shop will keep everything running, no matter how you try to monetize it, and even if it does, you have to contend with the attitude among the business-minded that the stuff which is making you money ought to be your focus in development of future product releases and thus the things you're NOT monetizing will be very back-burner before long. So kiss your new content goodby, because it's mostly going to be low quality rehashes of stuff that isn't terribly new or interesting.
Since I want new, FUN, high-quality content when I get new content, I would like it to be a major focus of the company to make the new content a priority and to make it of generally high quality, thus I think they ought to be able to monetize it in whatever way the company feels will get it the most money for its product overall. (number of purchases)x(number of dollars per purchase) = revenue. You want to max the revenue by making a high quality game where a lot of purchases are made at an optimal price. Maxing the number of people logging on or the amount if time the are logged on for is only making you money if you can advertize to them while logged on, and that's a whole other market and a whole other discussion entirely.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Great point (bolded). It warrants a deep internal conversation, and I think a survey could provide valuable supporting information.
I'm firmly in the camp that makes MWM the most successful...which doesn't necessarily mean the camp that will generate the greatest profit. WRT to my idea of success*, I happen to think that camp is FS.
* An idea/opinion for another thread
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([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
Both TSW and DC Online provide content packs post release of the game. DC being f2p but it also has a subscription, anyone who pays a subscription gets all the content packs . TSW does the same thing but is buy to pay as well. Both offer the content packs as individual purchases. DC even has bundles of content packs for sales.
I'm curious is the follwowing scenario ok?
Purchase of the game: grants access to standard content from 1-50 (assuming 50 is level cap), all the missions, task forces, etc... which are labelled "standard" are available. Comes with free sub time.
Mission Packs are created. These could be a series of missions, task forces, even multi-team-raid content. Subscribers get access to the mission packs, no additional purchase necessary.
Mission Packs are avaiable in the StarMart for individual purchase by non subscribers.
Mission Pack content is designed in a way to be inobtrusive to the game world. No, you can't entere here without $$ stuff.
Anyone who has access to the paid for content can invite whomever they want granting team members access to the content under the owner's pass.
Then there is a Premium level of access to the game which tracks all money spent on Stars in the StarMart (this includes sub fees). The Premium access grants a level of access between non-sub and subcription levels of access. Perhaps customizable by a point system of some sort which can be designated by the player can choose what they specifically unlock once they reach certain point thresholds.
Finally there is Guest-Authored content to which everyone would pay a fee to purchase in order to cover the costs of hiring on a guest author which would be someone of public repute (as earlier described, comic book writers, artists, internet-fame, authors, etc...). Those who purchase can still grant team members access under their pass.
Would this be acceptable?
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Well, you are delusional but there is nothing we can say to convince you otherwise. How do you think F2P games keep their lights on? You can go and play NW absolutely free, have access to all the content in the game from beginning to end, so how are they making money to stay in business? How are they generating new content for their players to play? Must be pulling something from their posterior region I guess.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
Yes!
Hehe, to me that would be the perfect solution.
So that we're clear, what do the Mission Packs buy us, do they:
A) Unlock that TF/Trial forever with a single purchase of the Mission Pack or...
B) One pack bought equals one run of the TF/trial you get to do, and you can invite others to join the TF team at no cost to them.
With option A you're probably never going to sell a Mission Pack to everyone that wants to do the TF, because people who know each other will form groups and do the old "I'll buy this round, you pay next time" thing instead of making each one of them buy the pack, which I'm not against, I just wanted to point out that it reduces sales in the mechanics of how it works. You might make more money if you make the packs cheaper but mandate that every non-sub who wants to do the TF has to buy one to unlock it forever for themselves. With option B riding on someone else's ticket doesn't bother me as much, due to the repeat business potential it has.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think it should be done similar to how dcuo works. Subscription gets you everything you want minus certain items like costumes,legends,bases and base items that you may wish to purchase. No content should be locked to subscribers unless they want something additional such as a premium costume etc. Let the subscription fee be the primary source of income for the development and continued support of the game, costumes and additional premium items should be made desirable enough to function as a revenue booster.
If CoT gets as many users as Neverwinter (over 2 million people have played Neverwinter, according to what I've read) then we're talking about a whole different ball of wax than I'm envisioning. In THAT scenario, you probably COULD survive on the cash shop cosmetic stuff and subscribers to keep the game running, but I personally still think one thing that will pull in subscribers in the first place is access to stuff like premium content missions/TFs/trials. Even if it is just post level cap stuff to do that's totally optional like Incarnate was.
Edit: Sticking with the theme of "What if we DO get 2 million people to play?" for a minute, going back to my old calculation regarding the Pay-per-Run TFs, if 10% of the registered users that bought the game are online at any given day, and 1% of THEM actually would buy a ticket for a single run of a TF (because they're not subscribers and thus don't just get unlimited access to that already) that's 2 million times 10% times 1% which would be 2000 people per day doing paid TFs. That equates to $730,000 a year, at $1 per TF run. Compared to what they might be making on subs etc this might be a drop in the bucket at that point, and thus not really worth pursuing probably, except as a service to the non-subs who want it. So depending on cost to implement, it could probably still pay for itself while responding to the need among non-sub people for Incarnate-like stuff to do once in a while.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
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