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Why not offer multiple business models?
raykor
Member UncommonPosts: 326
There have been a couple of prominent upcoming games that recently announced they would be using a subscription business model. Lots of drama ensued from people on both sides of this thorny topic.
Why don’t companies offer some servers with a FTP model and others that are subscription based?
Sure, it takes more work to offer both but not a whole lot considering what it costs to create and launch an MMOG. They would avoid all the drama and I’m sure it would attract enough extra players to offset the expense of offering multiple models.
Comments
splitting a game server by payment model is completely retarded and useless.
There are however already games that are f2p but also have a subscription plan in place for those who wish to. SWTOR, LOTRO, TERA(best f2p model w/ subscription and cash shop i have ever seen)
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My guess is they don't want to pay for the infrastructure and development costs to attract people to their game that don't want to pay for it. They wouldn't even receive the so called "benefit" of non-paying players in the form of more populated servers. At least it wouldn't benefit the sub paying users that they want to attract.
They already do. Many F2P games have a sub option.
Already in place, as others have said.
The reality of what you describe, where you segregate players, would turn into a nightmare on all fronts.
Sure, some games offer a sub option as a component of their FTP model but that is altogether different than a pure subscription-based model. In every one of those games, the subscriber can choose to spend more than their monthly sub on supplementary “stuff.”
Many of the proponents of subscription based games absolutely want to be segregated from the FTP crowd. They are willing to pay for a game where 100% of the content must be earned in-game and absolutely nothing can be purchased beyond the monthly sub.
Let me add that I don’t want to engage in yet another discussion of the virtues of one business model over another. I simply don’t understand why companies don’t avoid the controversy entirely by offering some servers with each business model and let players decide which server they want to play on.
This has been tried before. It was called Everquest 2 and the whole experiment failed miserably.
Most microtransaction games are too low quality and would not gain enough players for a sustainable population. The only game I know that will be trying both models on different servers is Allods. They have a subscription server in Russia that runs along side their microtransaction servers, and they have plans to open a subscription server in the NA market. It will be interesting to see how well it does, since during beta there was a lot of forum activity.
Yes i like it 2 different buiseness plans..
one at initial releasee, b2p with 15 dollarr sub.
and another one after some years if players start leaving f2p with cash shop..
Wildstar and ncsoft proove to me that gw2 was despite the 3 mil box sales not as succesfull as it would have been as a subscription game. Basically f2p is the mode that gives aaa games a 2nd live..
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
The logic is in seeing NC launch WildStar with a sub.
If GW2 and its B2P model was the best, which NC has all the info to determine, NC I am sure would have launched WS with the same model.
Some Math: you spent $200 + $120 for 1 year = $320. WS's model would be $120 + $180(year sub) + $180 = $480
RuneScape does it right,if i sub i dont need to watch and listen f2p crowd.
And they have free to play servers for them with own rules.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014.
**On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
This was tried with EQ2 and when SoE made a free 2 play server called EQ2 extended. After a year Free 2 Play won out and all the servers went F2P. There was tonns of analysis and market research done on this. For a year there were two buttons on the EQ2 home page. One button said Play FREE now and the other button said BUY NOW $15/mo sub. Guess which one 99% of the new players picked? It was a landslide in favor free 2 play. Starting areas in subscription server became ghost towns. Meanwhile there were 20 different spawned channels on the Free server for weeks after F2P conversion.
This is why Smedley decided go right to Free 2 Play with EQ-Next. The title above the two buttons said something like One game two models Play it your way. Never had there been a more fair comparison between F2P and P2P over a single product. The market had spoken and they wanted EQ2 to be Free 2 Play.
Except it is the subscribers that are funding those that are truly attempting to play the game for free. I should say the subscribers and the few that actually use the item shop. I am opposed to such a thing.
By the way, has nothing to do with placing subers on on server and f2p players on another....the models just do not logically work period when mixed. The arguments FOR f2p are always "it brings in more players". No brainer there. But it is those paying the subs fees and/or buying off the item shop that actually PAY.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Ok, lets say we have two servers - F2P, and Sub only.
I'm a F2P player. I found a guild, I made a few friends. I decide that "Hey, this game isn't so bad, I'm going to sub"
Now what? Does he have to go to the sub server? Does he stay?