Microtransactions reduce the amount of revenue you will see in an MMO.
Look back at games like UO, FFXI, and others that are long running. It took time to obtain items and to reach various milestones. Later on after subscriptions declined they began offering items to purchase to generate additional revenue.
When you take a new game and start offering items for purchase it usually negates the time needed to obtain a similar or the same item in game. Experience increases, armor, weapons, and mounts gained outside of gameplay negates the need to obtain these items in game and speeds a player towards end game and thus ending their desire to subscribe until new content is released. They may or may not return at that point.
I don't completely admonish cash shops, but there is a time and place for them and at launch is not the it.
The longer it takes to get things in a game, the longer people play. When they run out of things to obtain (Items, skills, abilities, levels, housing, deco, etc.) they leave. When you devalue these items by making it available on a shop you also diminish the desire to obtain items in game.
Probably not very coherent considering I'm not completely sober at the moment and it is around 1am-ish, but hopefully you get the jist of what I'm saying.
The old MMO's in which is took time to obtain things were able to keep decent subscriber numbers for quite some time. Newer MMO's that launch with these cash shop offerings seem to go free to play fairly quickly. Maybe there isn't a correlation and I'm way off base, but I do know I personally felt a lot of pride and gladly paid each and every month in games where it took time to get things done and to obtain items( UO over 10 years, FFXI over 5 years), I typically fizzle out on these new MMO's after about 3 months.
3 Months at 14.99 a pop + maybe 50 to 60 bucks on the cash shop
vs.
10+ years at 9.99 a month and 5 years at 12.99 + my mules bringing it to 14.99 a month.
In 2004 this would have been a compelling argument. When there were very few games to play, and all of them required a sub, people weren't nearly as likely to game hop, because doing so would mean paying the same amount of money for a less developed character roster and starting over at building social connections. But fast forward to 2014, and the barriers to entry are so low in most games that people will shop around, and if they see more value in game B than game A, they will probably switch. As a purely practical matter, games which offer cash shops offer more value than games which don't. It may not be value that every customer cares about, but it is still value, and this is a numbers game. Look at TOR; they made more money just on their cash shop in 2013 that any game other than WoW made from subscriptions. They have to design revenue models for the way people actually behave in these games now, not for the way the (much smaller) audience behaved ten years ago. And who knows, even back then the games might have made more money with sub + cash shop, nobody tried so the question is academic.
EA got somewhere around 2k from me for UO
EA got around $120 from me with TOR. TOR's a revolving door. Sure, marketing has probably been pretty good at getting people to stop by for a month or 3 and dropping a bit in the cash shop but it certainly isn't keeping them. With the money they've had to keep dumping into marketing and advertising to keep that revolving door going how worth it could it be?
In any case... in the year 2013 and 2014, WoW still exists and still has far greater revenue than TOR and its a sub based game that has never relied on a true cash shop. So the epitome of your microtransaction setup still pales in comparison to a sub based game from about a decade ago... I think my point might still be relevant in 2014 lol.
Microtransactions reduce the amount of revenue you will see in an MMO.
Look back at games like UO, FFXI, and others that are long running. It took time to obtain items and to reach various milestones. Later on after subscriptions declined they began offering items to purchase to generate additional revenue.
When you take a new game and start offering items for purchase it usually negates the time needed to obtain a similar or the same item in game. Experience increases, armor, weapons, and mounts gained outside of gameplay negates the need to obtain these items in game and speeds a player towards end game and thus ending their desire to subscribe until new content is released. They may or may not return at that point.
I don't completely admonish cash shops, but there is a time and place for them and at launch is not the it.
The longer it takes to get things in a game, the longer people play. When they run out of things to obtain (Items, skills, abilities, levels, housing, deco, etc.) they leave. When you devalue these items by making it available on a shop you also diminish the desire to obtain items in game.
Probably not very coherent considering I'm not completely sober at the moment and it is around 1am-ish, but hopefully you get the jist of what I'm saying.
The old MMO's in which is took time to obtain things were able to keep decent subscriber numbers for quite some time. Newer MMO's that launch with these cash shop offerings seem to go free to play fairly quickly. Maybe there isn't a correlation and I'm way off base, but I do know I personally felt a lot of pride and gladly paid each and every month in games where it took time to get things done and to obtain items( UO over 10 years, FFXI over 5 years), I typically fizzle out on these new MMO's after about 3 months.
3 Months at 14.99 a pop + maybe 50 to 60 bucks on the cash shop
vs.
10+ years at 9.99 a month and 5 years at 12.99 + my mules bringing it to 14.99 a month.
In 2004 this would have been a compelling argument. When there were very few games to play, and all of them required a sub, people weren't nearly as likely to game hop, because doing so would mean paying the same amount of money for a less developed character roster and starting over at building social connections. But fast forward to 2014, and the barriers to entry are so low in most games that people will shop around, and if they see more value in game B than game A, they will probably switch. As a purely practical matter, games which offer cash shops offer more value than games which don't. It may not be value that every customer cares about, but it is still value, and this is a numbers game. Look at TOR; they made more money just on their cash shop in 2013 that any game other than WoW made from subscriptions. They have to design revenue models for the way people actually behave in these games now, not for the way the (much smaller) audience behaved ten years ago. And who knows, even back then the games might have made more money with sub + cash shop, nobody tried so the question is academic.
GTA is the future.
Everyone had to pay.
You can avoid those that pay more or those that ruin your experience. And their micro sales will be around TOR's.
Just what people wanted.
Why isn't Elder scrolls the future? Why is ToR the last of it's kind?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
You still don't get it. You think it's not about money. You do get to decide whether or not to play a given game. But guess what? The people who are financing these games don't care whether you play. They do not care about any individual. They only care about market segments. If they believe they can lose 100% of the potential revenue from the market segment of people who refuse to play a game with cash shops, and still make more money than if they weren't offering a cash shop, then eventually we will reach the point where no AAA game is without a cash shop. Historical trends in the industry have shown (so far) that there is no financial downside to adding a cash shop to a game.
The actual creative artists making the games don't make these decisions, not now, if they ever did. Nobody who says "Yeah, we could do it without a cash shop and make a ton of people happy, but there is a 99% chance our revenue would be far, far less doing it that way" is going to get their project financed at a high level. Just not going to happen. Unless, as I state in the OP, somebody finds a compelling argument for how the road to the highest profit actually requires rejecting microtransactions/cash shops.
Let's go by the poll in their beta forums.
What % of customers standing in the complaint department are happy with their purchases ? Does that sample represent what all customers in that store think ?
Forum polls do not represent what all players think, just those that visit the forum and feel the need to vote on that issue.
You still don't get it. You think it's not about money. You do get to decide whether or not to play a given game. But guess what? The people who are financing these games don't care whether you play. They do not care about any individual. They only care about market segments. If they believe they can lose 100% of the potential revenue from the market segment of people who refuse to play a game with cash shops, and still make more money than if they weren't offering a cash shop, then eventually we will reach the point where no AAA game is without a cash shop. Historical trends in the industry have shown (so far) that there is no financial downside to adding a cash shop to a game.
The actual creative artists making the games don't make these decisions, not now, if they ever did. Nobody who says "Yeah, we could do it without a cash shop and make a ton of people happy, but there is a 99% chance our revenue would be far, far less doing it that way" is going to get their project financed at a high level. Just not going to happen. Unless, as I state in the OP, somebody finds a compelling argument for how the road to the highest profit actually requires rejecting microtransactions/cash shops.
Let's go by the poll in their beta forums.
What % of customers standing in the complaint department are happy with their purchases ? Does that sample represent what all customers in that store think ?
Forum polls do not represent what all players think, just those that visit the forum and feel the need to vote on that issue.
Polls on login would be better, but there must be something completely wrong with them because they are almost certainly avoided. I wonder why?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
In any case... in the year 2013 and 2014, WoW still exists and still has far greater revenue than TOR and its a sub based game that has never relied on a true cash shop. So the epitome of your microtransaction setup still pales in comparison to a sub based game from about a decade ago... I think my point might still be relevant in 2014 lol.
If that's the case then companies should be making wow clones to copy that success. If it is the true mold which successful mmos are made then it's success should have been duplicated many times over in the past 10 years.
Are you happy they are selling mounts now in the cash shop?.
331 votes
Yes I am happy - 28% in favor of (95 votes)
No this sucks - 71% in favor of (236 votes)
o-[xxx||]:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::>
C'mon now, the second the cash shop takes over people will be screaming about paying a sub at all. They won't accept both at once...
Not trying to remove the context of the rest of your post, just trying to avoid bloat by only quoting the portion I am responding to. First, I see your poll with less than 500 votes, and raise you 250,000 physical pre-orders (just the physical copies) across all three platforms, plus an indeterminate but likely massive number of digital pre-sales, and physical IEs being sold out everywhere.
And the number of people currently accepting both at once numbers in the millions. Every game that has a subscription and a cash shop still has subscribers. Usually *more* subscribers than they had prior to announcing they were adding a cash shop. After adding cash shops, DDO gained subscribers, LotRO gained subscribers, TOR maintained it's subscriber numbers. The average spend in games with a cash shop fluctuates month to month, but the absolute lowest report I have seen placed average revenue per player in games with a cash shop at $26/month, with spikes as high as $40 averages in some months. More people subscribing, plus more revenue per subscriber. Assuming those numbers are accurate, it's kind of a no brainer.
If the best argument against cash shops that you can think of is trying to treat a tiny poll with self-selected participants as representative of the entire market, it might be time to give up.
Originally posted by GrayGhost79
EA got somewhere around 2k from me for UO
EA got around $120 from me with TOR. TOR's a revolving door. Sure, marketing has probably been pretty good at getting people to stop by for a month or 3 and dropping a bit in the cash shop but it certainly isn't keeping them. With the money they've had to keep dumping into marketing and advertising to keep that revolving door going how worth it could it be?
In any case... in the year 2013 and 2014, WoW still exists and still has far greater revenue than TOR and its a sub based game that has never relied on a true cash shop. So the epitome of your microtransaction setup still pales in comparison to a sub based game from about a decade ago... I think my point might still be relevant in 2014 lol.
What marketing and advertising? I wasn't aware they had some big push. And you are splitting hairs when you say "true" cash shop. A cash shop is a cash shop. WoW makes more money in it's cash shop in a year that many subscription games make on subs over the lifetime of their product. Even the epitome of your argument has embraced cash shops.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
If people don't want to play with those that use a cash shop, they should have that option. This isn't about everyone having a business model they prefer so that option won't be offered.
No one cares what the customer wants, which is why the pipe dream is over.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
If people don't want to play with those that use a cash shop, they should have that option. This isn't about everyone having a business model they prefer so that option won't be offered.
No one cares what the customer wants, which is why the pipe dream is over.
Why does it matter whether someone else used a cash shop? If you're looking for a group, and you need a healer, why do you care whether the robe that healer is wearing was a drop he grinded for, or something he spent five bucks on? As long as he does his job, how is it relevant to *your* experience what his experience has been?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
There are two kinds of "theme parks", not the MMO kind, the real world kind. For the Dutch the Efteling vs Julinia Heuvel.
In the Efteling, you buy a ticket (an expensive one) and all the rides beyond the gate are then free. In Julinia Heuvel there is no entry free but each rides costs.
Can you make a wild guess which one is by far the more popular? The big fee up front Efteling is. The largest attraction park in The Netherlands.
The business reason is SIMPLE: With a large one time fee, the customer only has to draw their wallets ONCE. With multiple small fees the customer can resist everytime. My mother was't very rich and she would take us to Julinia Heuvel for the free slides. On our bicycles, bringing our own food.
Once every two years or so, a trip to the Efteling was on offer. The Efteling charging a far bigger one time fee DID get our money, Juliana Heuvel got quarter guilder for the use of the toilet.
And yes this applies to games as well. F2P games are well known to rely on whales, big spending customers who are a small percentage of players but who spend the most. But that leaves you as a company extremely vulnerable to the whims of a tiny customer base. If they move on, run out of money, wise up, your business model collapses.
It might sound nice that one customer pays 5000 dollars to play but what is more reliable? 1x5000 or 5000x1? One payin customer leaves and you got 0x5000 and 4999x1.
ESO itself is now offering 3 books for 100 dollar plus 60 dollars shipping. Had they put the books in the collectors edition, I would have happily payed the 100 more. But paying yet again 160 dollars for just three books? I managed to resist.
The horse? I never used the horse in Skyrim and with all the nodes to be harvested I doubt I will need one in ESO. So I will resist.
It is NEVER smart business to give your customer to many chances to change their minds.Why do you think Xbox and PS give you free games if you subscribe. Because subscribing is a ONE time choice, buying each game seperately is multiple times you can say "nah".
If people don't want to play with those that use a cash shop, they should have that option. This isn't about everyone having a business model they prefer so that option won't be offered.
No one cares what the customer wants, which is why the pipe dream is over.
Why does it matter whether someone else used a cash shop? If you're looking for a group, and you need a healer, why do you care whether the robe that healer is wearing was a drop he grinded for, or something he spent five bucks on? As long as he does his job, how is it relevant to *your* experience what his experience has been?
People who do not use the shop do not want to play with those that do. Continue not offering that option though.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I don't know how it works in the Netherlands, but in America paying for admission to a theme park, even when it gets you on all the rides, does not let you eat for no additional cost at restaurants in the theme park. It doesn't let you take items from the souvenir shops without paying an additional cost.
To bring it back to MMOs, very few games require that you go to the cash shop in order to ride any of the rides. It's more common for them to sell the online equivalent of hot dogs and souvenirs.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
I don't know how it works in the Netherlands, but in America paying for admission to a theme park, even when it gets you on all the rides, does not let you eat for no additional cost at restaurants in the theme park. It doesn't let you take items from the souvenir shops without paying an additional cost.
To bring it back to MMOs, very few games require that you go to the cash shop in order to ride any of the rides. It's more common for them to sell the online equivalent of hot dogs and souvenirs.
You can bring your own food and drink and eat whenever you want. You can make your own souvenirs. They do not have a monopoly on anything but allowing entrance to the park. the real world people aren't helpless.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Yesterday's announcement of the palomino horse offering in ESO has stirred up anti-microtransaction sentiments again, but just like every other time, all of the focus seems to be on why players shouldn't like it. But if we're being practical, it's not players who decide revenue models, it's companies. If people ever want to see something different, the relevant topic is why companies should want to not offer microtransactions in a subscription based game.
Because let's face it, decisions ultimately aren't made by players or by the game's actual developers, they are made by the business people who control the developer's purse strings. In order to get gaming companies not to move in the direction of subscription + microtransaction instead of subscription only, somebody is going to have to come up with compelling arguments for how refusing to offer microtransactions will result in higher profits. If nobody can come up with such arguments, companies have not only the "right" but the fiscal duty to offer microtransactions.
There are NO "compelling" arguments not to have microtransactions and other pay walls from a business perspective. What I have come to think of as the Casino Model with lock boxes and everything simply makes more cash than any other method. A good game in the broad sense is one that makes money, arguably. Virtual worlds are dead because it became more profitable to make MMORPGs like short term single player RPGs because you net more profit drawing everyone you can into the entry gate and letting them go out the back end rather than funding ongoing content development for a smaller, more stable, player base. The results of this show as well when MMORPGs as a genre can no longer support dedicated sites like this one by themselves and the need for web content requires them to cover other types of games now. Regretfully, I am thinking the virtual world dreams of the past are dead and the future is in hoping that games like Skyrim are developed with multiplayer. But I bet they will have microtransactions and paywalls too for as long as they can sucker people into paying.
Every person places a value on any given thing in their life in a sense.
Why should people not be offered more options in a world where time is so precious. Choice it great. It's why I love the hybrid model games. Gamers aren't victims. If you don't like a model don't support it. If enough people agree with you then the company will feel it and change. I don't think there are any compelling reasons developers or publishers of mmo's shouldn't offer more options. Not saying I agree with everything that has ever been done. I don't. Though to act as if a company is the devil for offering more options to gamers I think is unfair. .
Every person places a value on any given thing in their life in a sense.
Why should people not be offered more options in a world where time is so precious. Choice it great. It's why I love the hybrid model games. Gamers aren't victims. If you don't like a model don't support it. If enough people agree with you then the company will feel it and change. I don't think there are any compelling reasons developers or publishers of mmo's shouldn't offer more options. Not saying I agree with everything that has ever been done. I don't. Though to act as if a company is the devil for offering more options to gamers I think is unfair. .
Now they have to offer more options for free.
Doesn't matter, there are so many free games that offer the same skinner box formula, you can walk away for a misspelling and get the same experience somewhere else. You never have to pay again if you don't want to, and not miss out on anything.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Technically speaking, I am not sure that they are actually doing microtransactions. If you pay X for an item, that is just a direct sale. It does not matter if the purchase is in game, online, or in a store.
For this to be a microtransaction, there needs to be two transactions. One for the exchange of money, the second for the exchange of goods. The reason that many games use virtual currency, is because they only pay the fee for the transaction once, and then can sell multiple items.
P.S. Why all the F2P bashing... on a P2P Game.
...Do you even know what a microtransaction is?
Why yes, yes I do. I am actually much more familiar than most. A microtransacion is small (secondary) transaction, which is used as part of a larger (primary) transaction. When you buy a virtual currency, you are doing the primary transaction. When you spend it, you are doing the secondary (micro) transaction.
The original concept was that these secondary transactions could be very small, even less than a cent. The reason why two transactions were needed, is that the processing fee for such a small transaction would be more than the actual transaction.
Most consider a microtransaction to be a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online.
Micro - extremely small.
Yet, here we are discussing $10 -$20 microtransactions. Most people do not actually know what makes it a microtransaction vs a direct sale. The most common example of microtransactions for games is XBOX Live (Points). However, for a long time, iTunes was also a microtransaction system. There are a few examples of this sytem being used in retail, but it has mostly been used online... as a method to lower the cost of transaction fees.
There aren't really any good business reasons to not have microtransactions in general. Player perceptions of the developer trying to coerce the players into spending more money, or starting a P2W scenario are reasons why certain microtransactions may impact a game's longevity, but even there it's iffy to say that type of thing actually is having an impact over game play.
Microtransactions will absolutely have an impact, but relative to the game play, the only real impact they seem to have is the developer making more money.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
There aren't really any good business reasons to not have microtransactions in general. Player perceptions of the developer trying to coerce the players into spending more money, or starting a P2W scenario are reasons why certain microtransactions may impact a game's longevity, but even there it's iffy to say that type of thing actually is having an impact over game play.
Microtransactions will absolutely have an impact, but relative to the game play, the only real impact they seem to have is the developer making more money.
But today is not forever. IS it normal for companies who make free to play games to have each new release make more than previous releases?
Do you think the item shop in ES will make more than a multiplayer mode people asked for? Or is the IP dead?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Customer confidence. People who are happy to pay subscriptions do so because they don't want to be nickel and dimed.
They have to weigh up how many people will leave because of it, compared to how much money the whales buying it will bring in.
" The Whale" as the only spender in a f2p game is a forum myth perpetuated by people who hate f2p. These games are not only making money off a very few spending thousands each month.
The idea that there is just a small handful of millionaires supporting the entire f2p market while millions of players play for free should seem as ridiculous as it sounds. More so when the avg spending player according to industry reports lists them at $28 each/month.
I think ESO is taking it a bit too far with charging money, everything from restricting a class to in-game horses or whatever. GW2 releaed with at least 3 times more hype and got recieved and hyped much better in the media and from the player-base, yet people complained about it having a game-shop even-though it is totally normal since it is not even sub-based.
I am not surprised players are complaining and I won't blamthem. I just hope ESO won't get too confident and charge more and more. I preordered to enjoy the story personally and I am not impressed with what is happening.
Customer confidence. People who are happy to pay subscriptions do so because they don't want to be nickel and dimed.
They have to weigh up how many people will leave because of it, compared to how much money the whales buying it will bring in.
" The Whale" as the only spender in a f2p game is a forum myth perpetuated by people who hate f2p. These games are not only making money off a very few spending thousands each month.
The idea that there is just a small handful of millionaires supporting the entire f2p market while millions of players play for free should seem as ridiculous as it sounds. More so when the avg spending player according to industry reports lists them at $28 each/month.
Paying for convenience to those who control the convenience is a scam. It's bad for customers. Bad for a companies brand. Good guy developers ask for money in the same manner they wish to be asked.
Nor should any game or company who designs a business model into gameplay even be considered for any type of award . Any review should focus on the business model as the design does.
So take the 28 bucks per paying user after massive layoffs and no service offered and win!!
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
microtransactions balance the costs to be reasonable and attainable by people with many different sizes of disposable income. This means that they can milk a person with $50 /month to spend for everything they can, as well as milk the person with $15/month for everything they can. The people that are paying a subscription should really quit feeling so entitled because they pay a meager monthly fee.
If the cash shop supporters generate more money than the subscriptions are charging, doesn't that imply that these "entitled to everything subscribers" are a waste of resources? People keep saying that cash shop costs you more, so aren't these subscribers a hindrance on the system?
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
Comments
EA got somewhere around 2k from me for UO
EA got around $120 from me with TOR. TOR's a revolving door. Sure, marketing has probably been pretty good at getting people to stop by for a month or 3 and dropping a bit in the cash shop but it certainly isn't keeping them. With the money they've had to keep dumping into marketing and advertising to keep that revolving door going how worth it could it be?
In any case... in the year 2013 and 2014, WoW still exists and still has far greater revenue than TOR and its a sub based game that has never relied on a true cash shop. So the epitome of your microtransaction setup still pales in comparison to a sub based game from about a decade ago... I think my point might still be relevant in 2014 lol.
GTA is the future.
Everyone had to pay.
You can avoid those that pay more or those that ruin your experience. And their micro sales will be around TOR's.
Just what people wanted.
Why isn't Elder scrolls the future? Why is ToR the last of it's kind?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
What % of customers standing in the complaint department are happy with their purchases ? Does that sample represent what all customers in that store think ?
Forum polls do not represent what all players think, just those that visit the forum and feel the need to vote on that issue.
Polls on login would be better, but there must be something completely wrong with them because they are almost certainly avoided. I wonder why?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
If that's the case then companies should be making wow clones to copy that success. If it is the true mold which successful mmos are made then it's success should have been duplicated many times over in the past 10 years.
Not trying to remove the context of the rest of your post, just trying to avoid bloat by only quoting the portion I am responding to. First, I see your poll with less than 500 votes, and raise you 250,000 physical pre-orders (just the physical copies) across all three platforms, plus an indeterminate but likely massive number of digital pre-sales, and physical IEs being sold out everywhere.
And the number of people currently accepting both at once numbers in the millions. Every game that has a subscription and a cash shop still has subscribers. Usually *more* subscribers than they had prior to announcing they were adding a cash shop. After adding cash shops, DDO gained subscribers, LotRO gained subscribers, TOR maintained it's subscriber numbers. The average spend in games with a cash shop fluctuates month to month, but the absolute lowest report I have seen placed average revenue per player in games with a cash shop at $26/month, with spikes as high as $40 averages in some months. More people subscribing, plus more revenue per subscriber. Assuming those numbers are accurate, it's kind of a no brainer.
If the best argument against cash shops that you can think of is trying to treat a tiny poll with self-selected participants as representative of the entire market, it might be time to give up.
What marketing and advertising? I wasn't aware they had some big push. And you are splitting hairs when you say "true" cash shop. A cash shop is a cash shop. WoW makes more money in it's cash shop in a year that many subscription games make on subs over the lifetime of their product. Even the epitome of your argument has embraced cash shops.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
If people don't want to play with those that use a cash shop, they should have that option. This isn't about everyone having a business model they prefer so that option won't be offered.
No one cares what the customer wants, which is why the pipe dream is over.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Why does it matter whether someone else used a cash shop? If you're looking for a group, and you need a healer, why do you care whether the robe that healer is wearing was a drop he grinded for, or something he spent five bucks on? As long as he does his job, how is it relevant to *your* experience what his experience has been?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
There are two kinds of "theme parks", not the MMO kind, the real world kind. For the Dutch the Efteling vs Julinia Heuvel.
In the Efteling, you buy a ticket (an expensive one) and all the rides beyond the gate are then free. In Julinia Heuvel there is no entry free but each rides costs.
Can you make a wild guess which one is by far the more popular? The big fee up front Efteling is. The largest attraction park in The Netherlands.
The business reason is SIMPLE: With a large one time fee, the customer only has to draw their wallets ONCE. With multiple small fees the customer can resist everytime. My mother was't very rich and she would take us to Julinia Heuvel for the free slides. On our bicycles, bringing our own food.
Once every two years or so, a trip to the Efteling was on offer. The Efteling charging a far bigger one time fee DID get our money, Juliana Heuvel got quarter guilder for the use of the toilet.
And yes this applies to games as well. F2P games are well known to rely on whales, big spending customers who are a small percentage of players but who spend the most. But that leaves you as a company extremely vulnerable to the whims of a tiny customer base. If they move on, run out of money, wise up, your business model collapses.
It might sound nice that one customer pays 5000 dollars to play but what is more reliable? 1x5000 or 5000x1? One payin customer leaves and you got 0x5000 and 4999x1.
ESO itself is now offering 3 books for 100 dollar plus 60 dollars shipping. Had they put the books in the collectors edition, I would have happily payed the 100 more. But paying yet again 160 dollars for just three books? I managed to resist.
The horse? I never used the horse in Skyrim and with all the nodes to be harvested I doubt I will need one in ESO. So I will resist.
It is NEVER smart business to give your customer to many chances to change their minds.Why do you think Xbox and PS give you free games if you subscribe. Because subscribing is a ONE time choice, buying each game seperately is multiple times you can say "nah".
People who do not use the shop do not want to play with those that do. Continue not offering that option though.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I don't know how it works in the Netherlands, but in America paying for admission to a theme park, even when it gets you on all the rides, does not let you eat for no additional cost at restaurants in the theme park. It doesn't let you take items from the souvenir shops without paying an additional cost.
To bring it back to MMOs, very few games require that you go to the cash shop in order to ride any of the rides. It's more common for them to sell the online equivalent of hot dogs and souvenirs.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
You can bring your own food and drink and eat whenever you want. You can make your own souvenirs. They do not have a monopoly on anything but allowing entrance to the park. the real world people aren't helpless.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
There are NO "compelling" arguments not to have microtransactions and other pay walls from a business perspective. What I have come to think of as the Casino Model with lock boxes and everything simply makes more cash than any other method. A good game in the broad sense is one that makes money, arguably. Virtual worlds are dead because it became more profitable to make MMORPGs like short term single player RPGs because you net more profit drawing everyone you can into the entry gate and letting them go out the back end rather than funding ongoing content development for a smaller, more stable, player base. The results of this show as well when MMORPGs as a genre can no longer support dedicated sites like this one by themselves and the need for web content requires them to cover other types of games now. Regretfully, I am thinking the virtual world dreams of the past are dead and the future is in hoping that games like Skyrim are developed with multiplayer. But I bet they will have microtransactions and paywalls too for as long as they can sucker people into paying.
Time is valuable.
Every person places a value on any given thing in their life in a sense.
Why should people not be offered more options in a world where time is so precious. Choice it great. It's why I love the hybrid model games. Gamers aren't victims. If you don't like a model don't support it. If enough people agree with you then the company will feel it and change. I don't think there are any compelling reasons developers or publishers of mmo's shouldn't offer more options. Not saying I agree with everything that has ever been done. I don't. Though to act as if a company is the devil for offering more options to gamers I think is unfair. .
Now they have to offer more options for free.
Doesn't matter, there are so many free games that offer the same skinner box formula, you can walk away for a misspelling and get the same experience somewhere else. You never have to pay again if you don't want to, and not miss out on anything.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Yet, here we are discussing $10 -$20 microtransactions. Most people do not actually know what makes it a microtransaction vs a direct sale. The most common example of microtransactions for games is XBOX Live (Points). However, for a long time, iTunes was also a microtransaction system. There are a few examples of this sytem being used in retail, but it has mostly been used online... as a method to lower the cost of transaction fees.
There aren't really any good business reasons to not have microtransactions in general. Player perceptions of the developer trying to coerce the players into spending more money, or starting a P2W scenario are reasons why certain microtransactions may impact a game's longevity, but even there it's iffy to say that type of thing actually is having an impact over game play.
Microtransactions will absolutely have an impact, but relative to the game play, the only real impact they seem to have is the developer making more money.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Customer confidence. People who are happy to pay subscriptions do so because they don't want to be nickel and dimed.
They have to weigh up how many people will leave because of it, compared to how much money the whales buying it will bring in.
But today is not forever. IS it normal for companies who make free to play games to have each new release make more than previous releases?
Do you think the item shop in ES will make more than a multiplayer mode people asked for? Or is the IP dead?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
" The Whale" as the only spender in a f2p game is a forum myth perpetuated by people who hate f2p. These games are not only making money off a very few spending thousands each month.
The idea that there is just a small handful of millionaires supporting the entire f2p market while millions of players play for free should seem as ridiculous as it sounds. More so when the avg spending player according to industry reports lists them at $28 each/month.
I think ESO is taking it a bit too far with charging money, everything from restricting a class to in-game horses or whatever. GW2 releaed with at least 3 times more hype and got recieved and hyped much better in the media and from the player-base, yet people complained about it having a game-shop even-though it is totally normal since it is not even sub-based.
I am not surprised players are complaining and I won't blamthem. I just hope ESO won't get too confident and charge more and more. I preordered to enjoy the story personally and I am not impressed with what is happening.
Paying for convenience to those who control the convenience is a scam. It's bad for customers. Bad for a companies brand. Good guy developers ask for money in the same manner they wish to be asked.
Nor should any game or company who designs a business model into gameplay even be considered for any type of award . Any review should focus on the business model as the design does.
So take the 28 bucks per paying user after massive layoffs and no service offered and win!!
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
microtransactions balance the costs to be reasonable and attainable by people with many different sizes of disposable income. This means that they can milk a person with $50 /month to spend for everything they can, as well as milk the person with $15/month for everything they can. The people that are paying a subscription should really quit feeling so entitled because they pay a meager monthly fee.
If the cash shop supporters generate more money than the subscriptions are charging, doesn't that imply that these "entitled to everything subscribers" are a waste of resources? People keep saying that cash shop costs you more, so aren't these subscribers a hindrance on the system?
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.