Subs have always been a losing proposition? Are you kidding me, MikeB? MMOs survived just fine on subs for over a decade
And compared to the revenue of F2P games, they failed.
If a BAD F2P game can make more money that most P2P games, its a fail model which is why it is finally dieing in the west and it only took so long because companies just couldnt let go of the massive greed they had.
Too bad for them they lost so much of the market to South Korean companies I doubt they will ever get it back...even Blizzard is targetting the eastern market more now...pandas...lol.
I predict BtP for it, with some sort of cash shop. They are probably having to work on that, as I am pretty sure that a cash shop wasn't designed in originally. If they go subscription, I'd bet that they'll have a pretty serious drop in subs fairly quickly, and that sort of thing can increase the negative feedback into a death spiral.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Originally posted by duggyfr3sh123 both TESO and WildStar are P2P.
Source? I haven't seen an announcement for either and it's quite a heated debate for Wildstar at least.
Also, I didn't know TESO was releasing this year... seems like it was just announced. I thought it'd be '14 or '15. Then again, I haven't followed that closely.
I really do like the Guild wars 2 model and would like to see it become the norm in the MMO industry. (Buy to play with cash shop, cash shop currency buyable with in game gold).
They can sugarcoat the whole F2P is best BS all they want...reality is that the very people that will find a tri realm in depth mmorpg will be will to pay a sub. Those same people will be turned off by the ever abusive CASH SHOP TO WIN BONUS XP PACK blah blah crap that permeates and is a literal cancer to the creative side of the industry.
I can't believe any rational person believes they'll pass up the opportunity to try and sell a million+ $60 boxes. There may be a slim chance they'll go with gw2 style over subscriptions, but I've got to think that is very very slim.
The more likely question is will they still be selling subscriptions two years from now, and that will depend largely on the quality of their product.
And... SWTOR's f2p is bad even by f2p standards. I'm also having a hard time believing anyone would even sugest that any other company would emulate that model... I mean... Gpot, Nexon, and PWE have to look at SWTOR's f2p model and snicker.
if its just an 'ok' game then i dont mind what payment method they will implement. but if its a great game that it will be my main mmo (i hope), then imo p2p is the only way. i hate cash shops, i really hate them.
in most mmo's i have played, the only stable community, either to my guild or to the entire server, is when there is a sub in the game.
I just see the P2P model as a way to get more people to pay for what they don't need. I've had more fun in GW1, GW2, Maplestory, and a F2P im under NDA for than i ever had in WoW, Aion when it was P2P, or the myriad others ive tried. I felt like i got ripped off on my subs more often than I was like "yeah, this 15 dollars a month is a great use of my money"
I hope Elders Scrolls Online will be a P2P, in my experiences with mmorpg's the F2P ones was just suck, I played PW, LOTRO, GW2, WoW, TERA, L2, AoC, 2Moon, AION and some others, all I could see was that F2P is a bot game and Payed to Win. GW2 was the best between the F2P(B2P), but after sometime the bot's begun. I don't know which is better for the business, but for the players the best probly is the P2P, some people may don't like it, but it's better for the game lifetime...
The reason SWTOR failed has nothing to do with the fact it was a sub. A lot of people will happily pay if the game is actually worth it. They started "hemorrhaging" subs when they decided RP fluff was more important then game content, including substantial PvP improvements. Personally I'd much rather pay the monthly sub. The "F2P" crowd isn't exactly a stable backbone to build an MMO on.
If you make a bad game and you are sub based, you will fail.
If you make a bad game and you are F2P, people will still play it because it is free and you can still make money on vanity crap. Not to say there aren't any good F2P games, because there are plenty. It's simply F2P let's the developer be lazy if they want to, and still make money.
Personally I prefer sub games, because they are provide value and quality or go home. I play some F2P games too, but what they offer is limited, I grow tired of all the store advertisements in game, and the fact that 90% of new content are store items. For me F2P is something to kill some time, sub games are for games I want to really sink my teeth into.
Free to play with a in game Cash shop like GW2, will not touch it if it is pay to play. Subscribtion based games yesterdays news. Not only will you keep the numbers up with F2P you will also have more of those free to play accounts willing to spend a bit more in the cash shop. With so many free to play mmo's on the market and in development it would be a tatical error for The Elder Scrolls Online to go to a subscription based payment method.
Problem with subs in this day and age. Is there are so many MMOs out there that if you play more than one a sub makes you feel like you're wasting that sub time by not playing every single day. Like WoW for instance, sometimes I just like to pop back in and check out a new patch or play whatever for a couple days. I have to pay $15 for a whole month of game time every time I do that.
F2P or B2P makes it so much easier to play multiple games and not worry about if I've wasted half a months sub because I was playing something else or busy at work/out of town etc.
Best model (though I doubt they'd ever do it) would be some type of game time purchase that only ran down as you used it. Pay for X amount of hours like a prepaid cell phone and every time you log in you star to use up your time. That would be really nice, but P2P kinda bank on people paying for more than they use so they wouldn't want to do it.
Subscritions work like Kickstarter except you often don't get to know what content you are paying for. I prefer b2p and f2p, and I have seen all models done terrible and great. I don't think it is reasonable to dislike a game solely based on its business model.
tbh after the horrers of cash shop , i will delightfully pay sub to ensure pleasant gaming experience , so P2P for ESO is all the way in my opinion , i mean its big franchise...why start as low f2p cash shop doped p2w items ?!
Ah the good old days when everything you had in-game came through honest work.
I don't have respect for item shop games. I don't care if it makes you the most profit, in my opinion it is unethical business practice. If your monetisation methods start affecting the design of your game, then I aint playing it. You make your game insanely grindy, and basically bait people to play with the aid of the item shop. A game is a game, why should one person have any kind of edge (and yes, reducing the time it takes to reach max level is an edge) on someone else just because he has more money irl. Any xp potions and such are pay to win. You don't have to put in the same effort as everyone who did it normally, thus devaluing their honest work.
Age of wushu for example. There is a gathering book in the item shop that doubles the amount of resources you get for 30 days. Otherwise a solid game, but any kind of motivation I had to be a crafter went straight down the toilet when I found out about their monetization schemes. You can stick your book up your ***. I'm not choosing between either paying, or gimping my character. Extortion is the word for it. They advertise free, but then you have extreme disadvantages, and end up paying more than a sub model, just to play the freaking game.
My sincere middle finger to all item shop games. Hope you burn.
Ah the good old days when everything you had in-game came through honest work.
I don't have respect for item shop games. I don't care if it makes you the most profit, in my opinion it is unethical business practice. If your monetisation methods start affecting the design of your game, then I aint playing it. You make your game insanely grindy, and basically bait people to play with the aid of the item shop. A game is a game, why should one person have any kind of edge (and yes, reducing the time it takes to reach max level is an edge) on someone else just because he has more money irl. Any xp potions and such are pay to win. You don't have to put in the same effort as everyone who did it normally, thus devaluing their honest work.
Age of wushu for example. There is a gathering book in the item shop that doubles the amount of resources you get for 30 days. Otherwise a solid game, but any kind of motivation I had to be a crafter went straight down the toilet when I found out about their monetization schemes. You can stick your book up your ***. I'm not choosing between either paying, or gimping my character. Extortion is the word for it. They advertise free, but then you have extreme disadvantages, and end up paying more than a sub model, just to play the freaking game.
My sincere middle finger to all item shop games. Hope you burn.
You obviously have no clue how good item stores work..
Anyway, enjoy the heaps of sustainable p2p mmos/games that are gonna be released.
"If my only option for playing your game is to shell out $15/month, what are the odds I’ll continue playing when there are so many quality F2P titles on the market, with more coming?"
I'm sorry, but this is an outright stupid argument. Games that start F2P don't have nearly the budget that TES:O has backing it. Because there is a large amount of money backing the project, there is a strong expectation for the project to attract a ton of subscribers. P2P far exceeds the profits of F2P, but only when you have a large subscriber base. So if their expectation is to have a large subscriber pool and make a massive amount of money from this game and not simply to command a respectful profit, then Zenimax would have to be crazy to even consider the F2P model. SWTOR didn't make a mistake. They made the correct decision given the perceived demand they expected for the game. The problem was that the demand for the game waned after people realized that this is another WoW-Clone with some CoH dynamics thrown in. And no, TES:O having a large budget doesn't therefore become a problem. It was obvious that an IP like Elder Scrolls was going to have a ton of money backing it. Anyone who didn't realize that from the beginning must have been surprised that the budget for Iron Man 3 was over 100 million.
Also, let's just get this out of the way: F2P MMO's suck. They're unpolished, grindy, and restricted to hell in the free versions. Not to mention that they cost a ton to be proficient at and generally aren't quality products.
I won't play the game if it's F2P. I'm tired of this crap. Make it P2P at $15 so that we don't have to spend years getting new content and bug fixes and getting nickel and dimed on virtually every feature that the game provides in order to scrape out a living for the company. And that the content continues to be AAA and not weaksauce content.
if the numbers are correct - 100 million dollar for development and another 25 million dollar as marketing budget - it doesn't matter which payment model zenimax will choose, cause i don't see that TESO have the potential to refinance the investment cost.
How many of you study examples of business strategies? Your opinion on why devs should charge to have more money is ignoring an important strategy of differentiating a product that is customized to the different customers.
They need money but they also need subs. There is a trade off of p2p and losing subs and content being seasonal.
However, they should have p2p only with the right content that is repeatable end game that is of high quality.
Otherwise when they bleed subs and can't release content fast enough due to a weak foundation then the alternative is a cash shop.
Yet the first option ignores differentiating by only having a p2p model. Single rpg'ers don't pay subs. So can they make a product that fits them and still make an mmo with high quality features?
Can box sales and stream lined development cover costs for future expansions? If they are efficient and developing content then b2p and a cash shop is better to keep populations healthy at all times of the game and not just at release of expansions.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Originally posted by Lanfea if the numbers are correct - 100 million dollar for development and another 25 million dollar as marketing budget - it doesn't matter which payment model zenimax will choose, cause i don't see that TESO have the potential to refinance the investment cost.
To break even they will need ~2 million box sales. It's not inconcievable that could be achieved given the attraction most new MMOs face in their opening month. If using a cash shop or subscription model (B2P or P2P) the game could afford to sell fewer copies and break even a month or two later. It's not as daunting a figure as you'd imagine...however their projected profit numbers will likely be insanely overestimated.
I didn't agree with the article though. While P2P does form a barrier to entry albeit a small one by todays entertainment standards, games live or die by how entertaining they are. SWToR didn't lose subscribers because it was P2P (it may have attracted more if it was free, but then it may also have failed to break even in that case), it lost subscriptions because of a lack of endgame and a niaviety of how long their content would keep people entertained. Simply put..while fun for a bit it didn't have anything to sustain that entertainment beyond a month, 2 at most. Most games that have switched to Freemium have not done so because they chose P2P but because they simply weren't entertaining enough for the price.
Unless companies stop spending enormous amounts of money on games (which also would lead to people having to experience lower graphical fidelity) the F2P model for a budget this size is insanely risky. B2P carries less risk though also has problems with sustainable income after the inital rush which in turn potentially hurts future development (moreso if initial profits were not high enough to sustain the next content's development).
Given the budget for this game I really cannot see anything other than P2P. F2P is a dream for those wanting to play it for nothing, B2P is possible though I believe their projected profits will rule it out due to it's long term sustainable profits. Despite the silence the business model would have been selected some time ago, short of something disasterous happening they won't change that so late in the development cycle.
It would be interesting to see the information from freemium games as to their profitability in comparison to P2P per capita. I would be suprised if their profit is higher, even with the larger potential playerbase.
Comments
And compared to the revenue of F2P games, they failed.
If a BAD F2P game can make more money that most P2P games, its a fail model which is why it is finally dieing in the west and it only took so long because companies just couldnt let go of the massive greed they had.
Too bad for them they lost so much of the market to South Korean companies I doubt they will ever get it back...even Blizzard is targetting the eastern market more now...pandas...lol.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I really do like the Guild wars 2 model and would like to see it become the norm in the MMO industry. (Buy to play with cash shop, cash shop currency buyable with in game gold).
They can sugarcoat the whole F2P is best BS all they want...reality is that the very people that will find a tri realm in depth mmorpg will be will to pay a sub. Those same people will be turned off by the ever abusive CASH SHOP TO WIN BONUS XP PACK blah blah crap that permeates and is a literal cancer to the creative side of the industry.
Period.
I can't believe any rational person believes they'll pass up the opportunity to try and sell a million+ $60 boxes. There may be a slim chance they'll go with gw2 style over subscriptions, but I've got to think that is very very slim.
The more likely question is will they still be selling subscriptions two years from now, and that will depend largely on the quality of their product.
And... SWTOR's f2p is bad even by f2p standards. I'm also having a hard time believing anyone would even sugest that any other company would emulate that model... I mean... Gpot, Nexon, and PWE have to look at SWTOR's f2p model and snicker.
if its just an 'ok' game then i dont mind what payment method they will implement. but if its a great game that it will be my main mmo (i hope), then imo p2p is the only way. i hate cash shops, i really hate them.
in most mmo's i have played, the only stable community, either to my guild or to the entire server, is when there is a sub in the game.
I play MMOs for the Forum PVP
If you make a bad game and you are sub based, you will fail.
If you make a bad game and you are F2P, people will still play it because it is free and you can still make money on vanity crap. Not to say there aren't any good F2P games, because there are plenty. It's simply F2P let's the developer be lazy if they want to, and still make money.
Personally I prefer sub games, because they are provide value and quality or go home. I play some F2P games too, but what they offer is limited, I grow tired of all the store advertisements in game, and the fact that 90% of new content are store items. For me F2P is something to kill some time, sub games are for games I want to really sink my teeth into.
Problem with subs in this day and age. Is there are so many MMOs out there that if you play more than one a sub makes you feel like you're wasting that sub time by not playing every single day. Like WoW for instance, sometimes I just like to pop back in and check out a new patch or play whatever for a couple days. I have to pay $15 for a whole month of game time every time I do that.
F2P or B2P makes it so much easier to play multiple games and not worry about if I've wasted half a months sub because I was playing something else or busy at work/out of town etc.
Best model (though I doubt they'd ever do it) would be some type of game time purchase that only ran down as you used it. Pay for X amount of hours like a prepaid cell phone and every time you log in you star to use up your time. That would be really nice, but P2P kinda bank on people paying for more than they use so they wouldn't want to do it.
Ah the good old days when everything you had in-game came through honest work.
I don't have respect for item shop games. I don't care if it makes you the most profit, in my opinion it is unethical business practice. If your monetisation methods start affecting the design of your game, then I aint playing it. You make your game insanely grindy, and basically bait people to play with the aid of the item shop. A game is a game, why should one person have any kind of edge (and yes, reducing the time it takes to reach max level is an edge) on someone else just because he has more money irl. Any xp potions and such are pay to win. You don't have to put in the same effort as everyone who did it normally, thus devaluing their honest work.
Age of wushu for example. There is a gathering book in the item shop that doubles the amount of resources you get for 30 days. Otherwise a solid game, but any kind of motivation I had to be a crafter went straight down the toilet when I found out about their monetization schemes. You can stick your book up your ***. I'm not choosing between either paying, or gimping my character. Extortion is the word for it. They advertise free, but then you have extreme disadvantages, and end up paying more than a sub model, just to play the freaking game.
My sincere middle finger to all item shop games. Hope you burn.
You obviously have no clue how good item stores work..
Anyway, enjoy the heaps of sustainable p2p mmos/games that are gonna be released.
"If my only option for playing your game is to shell out $15/month, what are the odds I’ll continue playing when there are so many quality F2P titles on the market, with more coming?"
I'm sorry, but this is an outright stupid argument. Games that start F2P don't have nearly the budget that TES:O has backing it. Because there is a large amount of money backing the project, there is a strong expectation for the project to attract a ton of subscribers. P2P far exceeds the profits of F2P, but only when you have a large subscriber base. So if their expectation is to have a large subscriber pool and make a massive amount of money from this game and not simply to command a respectful profit, then Zenimax would have to be crazy to even consider the F2P model. SWTOR didn't make a mistake. They made the correct decision given the perceived demand they expected for the game. The problem was that the demand for the game waned after people realized that this is another WoW-Clone with some CoH dynamics thrown in. And no, TES:O having a large budget doesn't therefore become a problem. It was obvious that an IP like Elder Scrolls was going to have a ton of money backing it. Anyone who didn't realize that from the beginning must have been surprised that the budget for Iron Man 3 was over 100 million.
Also, let's just get this out of the way: F2P MMO's suck. They're unpolished, grindy, and restricted to hell in the free versions. Not to mention that they cost a ton to be proficient at and generally aren't quality products.
I won't play the game if it's F2P. I'm tired of this crap. Make it P2P at $15 so that we don't have to spend years getting new content and bug fixes and getting nickel and dimed on virtually every feature that the game provides in order to scrape out a living for the company. And that the content continues to be AAA and not weaksauce content.
They need money but they also need subs. There is a trade off of p2p and losing subs and content being seasonal.
However, they should have p2p only with the right content that is repeatable end game that is of high quality.
Otherwise when they bleed subs and can't release content fast enough due to a weak foundation then the alternative is a cash shop.
Yet the first option ignores differentiating by only having a p2p model. Single rpg'ers don't pay subs. So can they make a product that fits them and still make an mmo with high quality features?
Can box sales and stream lined development cover costs for future expansions? If they are efficient and developing content then b2p and a cash shop is better to keep populations healthy at all times of the game and not just at release of expansions.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
To break even they will need ~2 million box sales. It's not inconcievable that could be achieved given the attraction most new MMOs face in their opening month. If using a cash shop or subscription model (B2P or P2P) the game could afford to sell fewer copies and break even a month or two later. It's not as daunting a figure as you'd imagine...however their projected profit numbers will likely be insanely overestimated.
I didn't agree with the article though. While P2P does form a barrier to entry albeit a small one by todays entertainment standards, games live or die by how entertaining they are. SWToR didn't lose subscribers because it was P2P (it may have attracted more if it was free, but then it may also have failed to break even in that case), it lost subscriptions because of a lack of endgame and a niaviety of how long their content would keep people entertained. Simply put..while fun for a bit it didn't have anything to sustain that entertainment beyond a month, 2 at most. Most games that have switched to Freemium have not done so because they chose P2P but because they simply weren't entertaining enough for the price.
Unless companies stop spending enormous amounts of money on games (which also would lead to people having to experience lower graphical fidelity) the F2P model for a budget this size is insanely risky. B2P carries less risk though also has problems with sustainable income after the inital rush which in turn potentially hurts future development (moreso if initial profits were not high enough to sustain the next content's development).
Given the budget for this game I really cannot see anything other than P2P. F2P is a dream for those wanting to play it for nothing, B2P is possible though I believe their projected profits will rule it out due to it's long term sustainable profits. Despite the silence the business model would have been selected some time ago, short of something disasterous happening they won't change that so late in the development cycle.
It would be interesting to see the information from freemium games as to their profitability in comparison to P2P per capita. I would be suprised if their profit is higher, even with the larger potential playerbase.