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F2P being considered for SotA long term, says Richard Garriott
blorpykins
Member RarePosts: 466
"Clearly there is a worthy debate on the long term best plan be it
subscriptions, vs free to play, vs buy once and sell vanity items as we
do." - Richard Garriott
Check the comments section of the SotA SeedInvest page. Months away from commercial release and they're still debating on how to offer the game; F2P is the likely future of SotA just like what happened with Tabula Rasa. So below I copied the messages for context, a backer voices some concerns and Richard responds and that's where he discloses that they're debating F2P for the long term. How can Portalarium not know how they're going to make money?
---
Deckard Cain
There
are many who are concerned that SotA will never be successful in the
long run - there are major core issues with the game that cannot be
solved by throwing more money into it. The biggest issue many gamers
have with SotA is the conflict in creating an RPG with so much Real
Money Trading involved. Most gamers in this market absolutely despise
"Add-on" stores and things of this nature, especially when the items
being sold are so crucial to advancement and economic competition in the
game. Many players will quickly lose interest in this title knowing
that a home and tax-free lot deed can be simply purchased for hundreds
of real life dollars instead of working towards it like everyone else. A
player who is wealthy in the real world can gain massive economic
advantage in the game by simply selling their high-level backer tier
rewards or by purchasing indestructible crafting tools, special
armor/weapons, etc.
Everyone I know that has taken a look at
SotA's add-on store have reacted extremely negatively, and if you look
at reviews and initial impressions of this title you will find mostly
everyone agrees.
---
Deckard Cain,
For their initial purchase of about $40, players get full unlimited access to the game. Most all we sell in the ad on store is primarily “vanity items” like outfits, emotes and homes. These are optional and generally have little or no effect on player gameplay competition and progress. Clearly there is a worthy debate on the long term best plan be it subscriptions, vs free to play, vs buy once and sell vanity items as we do. We continually poll our players and work to find the fairest most pleasant exchange of value we can. While theses standards continue to evolve for us and many games in the online segment, I believe we have a strong economic model foundation, and are improving it with time. While there is no one billing method that will please all players, we constantly review and poll to help us find a positive and fair method of raising funds for the development of Shroud of the Avatar.
- Richard Garriott
Comments
Even Chris talked about what their subscription could look like.
"BTW, I think we've discussed a monthly pledge option publicly before. It would have multiple different levels, maybe $5,$10,$20,$50 a month pledge tiers. They would include a number COTOs at a good exchange rate, and a few fun items based on how many consecutive months you had pledged. COTO rewards per month could also increase over time as a reward for sticking with it. I know this isn't exactly what you want with a subscription BUT it would be really hard to force a completely new mandatory payment model onto the existing audience."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/quick-brain-dump-on-our-logic-behind-cotos.71486/page-3#post-705035http://steamcharts.com/app/326160
It's time to refund all the money they collected and admit they failed.
I've never worked in the crowdfunded game development industry, but the dozen or so game projects I do track seem to have a firm grasp on how they intend to monetize their product. Most recent one being Ashes of Creation, they're subscription based... at least that's what they said during Kickstarter. Looking at Portalarium's SeedInvest page and knowing that they are in fact attempting to raise funds to Market and Publish the game for a Commercial Launch I think them not knowing how they're going to make money is a significant problem. Their development process has been flippant and careless and now at the 11th hour, launching later this year is most definitely quite late in development; they don't even know what sort of marketing strategy they want to move towards. But hey, at least they know they need another $2,000,000.00 USD to do it!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But it's time the people still backing this did a reality check. The project has failed, the money is gone. This is the time when people need to have courage to accept they've lost everything they put into this game and move on. To linger with the game as it slowly dies out will only prolong the suffering.
They are doomed to fail.
Richard Garriott Probed Over Additional Shroud of the Avatar Funding
POSTED BY: PAUL YOUNGER JUNE 17, 2017
“At this moment it’s our one product focus, by all means we do in the long-term hope to partner both with other companies to help not only Shroud of the Avatar, but any other games we might work on, sell to their maximum potential around the globe, but concurrently to have partners to help and work on developing other titles that we would be bringing out under our label.”“If we have 65,000 backers now, if you just move that up to something as small as 100,000, and you look at a modest spending like in Ultima Online which was usually about $10 per month, that’s 12 million a year. If you bump that up to 200,000, that’s $24 million in revenues. Those kinds of numbers I think for many roleplaying games including ours are well within reach.”
Yea, "old person who isn't with the times" is seriously correct, else you'd think RG would know about the low rate of initial-player-base retention that's common knowledge by now.
And in the case of MMO's, there's often a wipe or two during development, which also discourages frequent or prolonged play.
Bartoni's Law definition: As an Internet discussion grows volatile, the probability of a comparison involving Donald Trump approaches 1.
C'mon Garriott...you know this shit is not going to have a "long term".
No publisher or independent financier in their right mind would ever agree to loan or fund something without knowing the plan of repayment.
Yes , you are.