Honestly I prefer sub + box + expansion, but I don't mind wow's token system - though it hinges entirely on the fact that crafted gear really isn't very good so having an abundance of money isn't THAT big a deal, its a short cut to mediocrity. I would prefer - if there is a cash shop - for it to be limited to cosmetic pets and mounts. Mounts only if everyone can get a mount in game easily enough. For me the cash shop is fine as long as the shop gives absolutely no combat or time reducing advantage - though I don't like people buying cosmetic gear sets from the shop, but if they want to sell a ribbon for your hair or something whatever i can tolerate cosmetic crap.
imho, cash shop is expected in any game, sub or f2p. Games must have alternating revenue sources.
This is the sound of drinking the Kool-Aid.
Nme a single mmorpg release that doesn't have an item mall. I'd rather have a quenched thirst then die of delusion in the desert.
Please list your detailed revenue numbers clearly proving the need for RMT in order to make a profit. Please list which developers return all investment per game directly into the support of that game and are not distributed across investor relations.
You know NOTHING about the reality of why companies have gone with RMT. It's greed and big business only.
You don't even know what the Kool-Aid is or when you drank it.
Another point that should be made is the price of a sub should be much higher than the standard $14.99. I would gladly pay a much higher price for a premium experience. I really do not see any studio earning a comfortable living with the only revenue stream being each player paying 50 cents a day
That's a very good point. My Netflix subscription started out at $8/mo (streaming no discs 2 users at a time) and has gone up over the last few years to $12. The mmo section of the industry has been charging $15/mo as a standard since forever with a few deviations.
Would Pantheon players be willing to pay for $20 or $25? Maybe they could offer tiered options like FF14. I'd probably do $20/mo, but I'm not sure if I'd keep that up for the whole year.
I get a lot of value out of Amazon Prime and family Spotify, but an expensive game sub only benefits me and only for gaming. I think that's why gaming subs are a harder sell, or at least harder to keep accounts consistently subscribing.
What options could VR offer on a tiered sub plan that would appeal to its base.
That's the thing, tiers necessitates that you divide the gamers up by their socioeconomic contribution. Pantheon is a PvE game, so they have the benefit of blunting any detrimental effect whales can inflict on others, though. I think it could work, it's just a matter of what benefit do you provide the higher tiers that the lower ones don't enjoy.
Skins alone don't seem like enough to get anyone paying a higher sub month in and month out. Honestly, content to explore is likely the best way, but again, then you're creating content for a small portion of your base and telling the others they don't count enough to get in on the action.
I'm wondering why devs don't add stretch goals after release. Literally say, "here's an idea for new content, but we need to earn X amount of dollars via current subs to undertake that project. It will be a free update paid for by the revenue generated now." Then, offer a way for folks to donate over the sub to help achieve it. If it works for promises and hype videos prior to release, I can't imagine it wouldn't generate revenue with gamers who are already enjoying the game and just want more content to enjoy. Unless, of course, backers merely purchase into those games because they're given huge in-game rewards for doing so. That's almost certainly not true according to the folks around here who have backed games, right?
imho, cash shop is expected in any game, sub or f2p. Games must have alternating revenue sources.
This is the sound of drinking the Kool-Aid.
Nme a single mmorpg release that doesn't have an item mall. I'd rather have a quenched thirst then die of delusion in the desert.
Please list your detailed revenue numbers clearly proving the need for RMT in order to make a profit. Please list which developers return all investment per game directly into the support of that game and are not distributed across investor relations.
You know NOTHING about the reality of why companies have gone with RMT. It's greed and big business only.
You don't even know what the Kool-Aid is or when you drank it.
I almost choked on my ham sammich from laughing . The fact you can't name a single mmorpg in this era that doesn't have a cash shop kind of proved my point.
imho, cash shop is expected in any game, sub or f2p. Games must have alternating revenue sources.
This is the sound of drinking the Kool-Aid.
Nme a single mmorpg release that doesn't have an item mall. I'd rather have a quenched thirst then die of delusion in the desert.
Please list your detailed revenue numbers clearly proving the need for RMT in order to make a profit. Please list which developers return all investment per game directly into the support of that game and are not distributed across investor relations.
You know NOTHING about the reality of why companies have gone with RMT. It's greed and big business only.
You don't even know what the Kool-Aid is or when you drank it.
Couldn't the same thing be said about you? Please list the revenue numbers that show that companies don't need additional revenue streams because x, y and z.
not a good argument.
If you are going to make a claim then make a claim and back it up. Otherwise your just saying things.
I should add, very few people here could make a case one way or another with examples. However, a few probably could if they were allowed to.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
What sort of things could different sub tiers offer?
Here's an example of what I have in mind having taken inspiration from FF14, Tera, ESO and conversations with BlueTurtle about that.
For $15/mo you get...
1 character slot and access to the box fee/dlc/xpac content you've purchased.
For $20/mo you get...
access to your purchased content
mail to alts with item and gold attachments
dedicated crafting material storage (shared amongst all characters on the account)
An additional weekly try or reduced cooldowns for weekly dungeon/raid locks. Or whatever the content loot throttle is for this sort of content, this sub-tier would provide reduced restrictions or slightly better results for the RNG.
Special emotes
For $25/mo you get...
access to all post launch dlc/xpac content whether you've purchased it or not (the original game still needs purchased)
mail for alts with item and gold attachments
double the slots and stack size of the crafting material storage (shared)
More attempts or better cooldowns for weekly dungeon/raid locks. Or whatever the content loot throttle is for this sort of content, this sub-tier would provide reduced restrictions or slightly better results for the RNG.
Special emotes
Access to a special mount. Doesn't grant the riding ability or any special benefits. It's basically a mount option, but could provide a mount before a character has purchased one. It's only available while paying for this sub tier. The mount appearance rotates.
The "cash shop", if present, could supplement subscription income and would sell...
Name changes
Server transfers
Guild charters (not exclusive to the store) and guild account services
DLC/Xpacs post game launch
Game time Tokens - This is RMT but not a gold font. As a sink it should pull some of the gold out of the economy rather than a direct monetary transfer. These would be sold on the broker or auction house.
It could sell the digital goodies and deluxe items from the base game and expansions. So you could buy deluxe edition upgrades later. Not for sale on the broker.
Some very limited selection item skins, pets, or mounts that are also available in game could also be added. These would rotate out every month or quarter. They could include event items. These items could potentially be sold on the broker. This adds a serious measure of value to the player.
If I was at Visionary Realms I'd take a hard look at how currently successful MMORPGs are selling their games. If they want to ditch the lootcrate honeypot they need to look at how those games are leveraging their other revenue streams. ESO is a great example along with WoW, FF14, and even some revenue systems and streams from games like SWTOR and Tera.
Another incentive system to consider are the various loyalty systems. The longer and more a player has been paying into the system they can earn percent discounts in the cash shop, sub, DLC, etc. It doesn't have to be huge but it encourages and rewards retention. Included with veteran tiers would be titles and emotes, but not items.
Not a bad list, though I dislike the parts about RNG or lockout cooldowns, mostly because manipulating RNG for cash is a slippery slope we've seen a million times, and lockout timers on content is a bad idea in the first place.
The loyalty system is a great idea, one that I think any MMORPG offering subs should consider. The longer they're subbed, the higher the likelihood they spend more money on top of it.
I dislike name changes, but can see a use for server transfers. Name changes makes it way too easy for asshats to "reset" by changing their names. Anonymity is the biggest contributor to asshat behavior, and so I'd rather folks not be given a free pass anon card they can play once they've had their giggles harassing other players.
Why should we need more than 1 character slot,Altaholic game design is utter crap,there should be no need for multiple alts.None the less who am i to say people can't make alts,go ahead,not like it takes a lot of space storing a couple hundred lines of code for each character.But NO to restrictions/cash shop.
Also NO i don't want to see a population segregated by different subscription models,that is pay to win. ONE sub model,ONE price,the ONLY exception should be if paying up front for multiple months,as we have all obviously seen before.Sooo 1 month=$20 3 month= $50 6 month=$80 1 year=$125
It all comes down to "confidence".If a developer has no confidence in their product,then yeah cash shops work to soak those whales that are there for good/fanbois.When i see cash shops,it tells me the developer does NOT have confidence in their own product,so then why should i?
So doing VERY simple math,build a really good game,maybe 100k maybe 500k players.100k at 20 bucks is a LOT of money,2 million to be exact,24 million a year.They can not only cover debt,but ongoing costs AND still make ongoing content for free.
Not everyone needs to hire million dollar lawyers and waste millions on advertising/marketing like Blizzard.Point being,run your business properly "unlike how Chris runs SC" and you can do very well on 24 million a year,yes even after taxes.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
A monthly sub and everything available in the game just like the old days
The only problem with this model is that it requires a very high population of players to stay viable because you put a low, fixed cap on how much a player can spend on the game.
The real problem is that is unsustainable - it is literally impossible to run a MMORPG on pure subscription for a long time.
The population over time declines - and only continues to decline - thus inevitably reaching a point where running a game costs more than the number of players remaining to sustain it.
The only variable is how fast you get to this point - 6 months, a year - or decades - but it is inevitable.
That's the same nonsense like EA saying that they can't develop great games anymore without loot boxes because the development costs are too high. Monster Hunter can. Others can too. WoW would still be a great success even without any cash shop.
Server costs are not that high anymore even. And when your population dwindles the game runs into financial issues independent from the payment system it uses.
Don't fall for what the marketing guys want you to believe. They just found out a long time ago that you can squeeze much more money out of your customers with a F2P/cash shop/loot box game than a subscription based game.
Unless you can point to actual numbers, I really wouldn't say things like this.
I realize people like Jim Sterling (and I am a fan though don't always agree with him) like to say things like this the truth is they have no actual numbers nor do they actually work in the business.
I mean, you say Server costs are not that high anymore, ok great, what does it cost for servers/services/maintenance "whatever" for a specific game? I understand at one point there was a connection fee for game companies per player to connect, is that still a thing?
Do you actually have numbers or are you just saying things that others have said on the interwebz?
You act as if subs aren't still around, and there's no titles using it for their only/primary source of revenue.
Iselin is right- people expecting millions of subs is the issue. Sorry, but MMORPGs just aren't that popular. They've been twisted, watered down, butchered and sold in pieces because just offering the game in full doesn't earn as much as selling it piece by piece, skin by skin, pot by pot using predatory marketing and monetization tactics. But there's already evidence in the market that those aren't needed to maintain a successful MMORPG. WoW has never depended upon anything other than subs primarily, DAoC has been surviving for over a decade, and DBG is still charging subs for EQ, if I'm not mistaken. The only thing today's landscape says is large publishers have seen how much MTs earn in mobile and wanted a piece of that for themselves.
Somehow, not challenging revenue records has become failure. It's silly.
The genre isn't a competitor for revenue records. At least, not while there are a few juggernauts (WoW and Lineage in the East). This idea that you need millions of players to enjoy success when you have ample evidence (between crowdfunding and the aforementioned titles supported by subs) to support the idea that smaller groups of fans in this genre will pay extra for the unique experience the genre brings, it's ludicrous to assert that you can't support a title on less than millions.
The genre started with less than millions total, it's never been a genre that caters to the majority of gamers, because it evolved from a tabletop that never catered to a majority of consumers.
I fully know subs are still around. I also know they haven't gone up significantly in years.
And my post still stands, unless people actually have numbers they are sort of pissing in the wind.
Final Fantasy 14 is sub (and I believe it's variable depending on how many characters you have) and they still have a cash shop.
Dark Age of Camelot ... yup, sub. How many people work on that game? is it 5? 10? 30? I bet it's closer to the lower number than the higher number.
And yes, I agree that game companies need to have more realistic ideas about their revenue. But that doesn't change the fact that there are a variety of truths as far as how much things cost.
Do we know the entire team at Visionary Realms and what they do? That will help one with ballpark salaries right there. I think they develop remotely so don't have an office is that correct? If they do have an office where is it? That will help ballpark commercial real estate.
None of this is really hard, just go through everything that is a cost and one can at least see what they will most likely have to make.
So will 10k subs do it? We know that subs always go down over time. What happens if subs go below a certain mark? Will they add cash shop then or close the game?
Neither me nor Iselin mentioned 10k. But this isn't binary; there are a whole lot of numbers between 10k and millions that you guys seem to be completely ignoring.
The point is, MTs have nothing to do with mere success or failure. It has to do with degree of profit being extracted from the project. Nothing more. There are multiple examples of success and failures utilizing both subs as primary revenue and MTs. That's not the crux of the issue.
What is binary is the need for profit, just getting by doesn't cut it, it means a stagnant product. Profit is the guiding line for all that happens with an MMORPG. Decent profit means you can take risks, and add to that product safely, medicore profit means you have to play it safe for overall survival. It's really as simple as that. Whether you're a big or small game...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
NO! to pay-to-win, NO! to a 2 tiered system like we see in games where the "free" players are cannon fodder for the precious ego's of the pay-to-winners. Understanding pay-to-win is simple if you're buying any kind of advantage it's pay-to-win, -period-.
Instead of having a cash shop, they could always have all items in game tradeable and allow people to purchase either gold or items from each other for real money and take a percentage of those transactions.
Probably want to limit the amount of real money people could spend each month to decrease inflation. I'd probably keep it to only gold purchases and maybe at a set value.
People are going to buy from others for money outside of the game anyway, might as well get their cut. And at least the gold, items are being obtained in game by someone and not just bought from a cash shop.
I'm also fine with higher subs at $20 a month, or even tiered (as mentioned), but more like 1 character only for $18 a month.
imho, cash shop is expected in any game, sub or f2p. Games must have alternating revenue sources.
Woah there tiger, from which rulebook are you getting this "games must have alternating revenue sources"? It sounds a bit like confirmation bias than any real objective understanding of the industry.
These games never NEEDED cash shops or other forms of revenue. They did it, namely the publisher rather than the developer, because they realized people would still spend money even on those. Need? No. Remember, its not the developer making a big profit here, it is the publisher.
If you understand how game publishers think, then you will know that if you give them an inch, they will take a mile. Its all about getting "more".
For sustainability, you just need to hit the expected or necessary ROI, aka return on investment.
Remember, Cash shops are a newer trend, not one born of of necessity but due to normalization of business practice. Publishers always want more, they want more profit (not necessarily a bad thing) compared to initial investment. If they can get away with finding some way to get more, they will go with it.
Neither me nor Iselin mentioned 10k. But this isn't binary; there are a whole lot of numbers between 10k and millions that you guys seem to be completely ignoring.
The point is, MTs have nothing to do with mere success or failure. It has to do with degree of profit being extracted from the project. Nothing more. There are multiple examples of success and failures utilizing both subs as primary revenue and MTs. That's not the crux of the issue.
What is binary is the need for profit, just getting by doesn't cut it, it means a stagnant product. Profit is the guiding line for all that happens with an MMORPG. Decent profit means you can take risks, and add to that product safely, medicore profit means you have to play it safe for overall survival. It's really as simple as that. Whether you're a big or small game...
And no one is saying they don't want folks to make a profit. We're challenging the assertion that you need to compete with MOBAs and multiplayer shooters to make a profit.
I mean if that's not there - monetization discussion is moot
I don't draw any lines as far as paying for a game - if the game is amazing - I will spend money on it, lots of money
Give me an amazing game and I will:
1. Buy the box
2. Pay for a subscription
3. Spend money in the cash shop
4. Pay for expansions
5. Keep spending money in the cash shop
I agree to an extent. But most MMO's aren't worth subbing to imo. GW2 works best as a B2P with a cash shop because it doesn't hold my interest long. If it required a sub I never would have bought the game or expansions.
POE, while not an MMO, is another game that isn't worth subbing for but is definitely worth spending money in a cash shop for. This is because i only play a few weeks in a season.
I never subbed to SWTOR and because of their model I simply stopped playing. A more generous model could have gotten me to play longer and use a cash shop instead. I felt the same way about Age of Conan.
These days, if I'm going to pay a sub it will be at the start of a WOW expansion. No other MMO feels like it's worth the hassle of not being able to progress when unsubbed.
People here who think that all games can survive without a cash shop are simply misinformed because they have never seen the internal financials for MMOs.
In majority of cases today - MMOs absolutely *need* cash shop revenue to cover the dev cost and pay the bills including employee salaries and hosting/operational costs.
....
It's easy to say "oh it's just pure greed, cash shops are not needed" from your comfy chair and be a armchair MMO CFO though
That is just simply NOT true. What you are expressing is whats known as confirmation bias.
Cash Shops are our gift from the Asian mmorpg scene. The reason cash shops were their primary revenue source was due to PC Arcades/Net Cafes being the cultural norm over there. You would rent time on a computer, as such the f2p model was geared towards PC Arcade/Net Cafe gaming culture. Their revenue came from cash shops primarily because of that gaming culture.
Here in the west, we DO NOT have that culture. It was never necessary either. Cash shops came along with asian localization into the west. Since it was somewhat successful, western publishers combined both since hey, more money!
That is all there is to it.
Careful on the assumption that everyone with this position/understanding is coming from a place of "ignorance". You do not know works in the industry, who has worked in the industry or who knows what about the publishing world. One could easily just turn it around and say, "oh its easy to claim cash shops are required, like some armchair CFO". Would it be any more valid? No.
Cash Shops are not a requirement, nor a necessity, they are simply an adopted business model publishers picked up on after seeing the kind of money Asian mmorpgs brought in with such a model. The practice has been becoming normalized, not due to need, but behavior and the belief it is accepted (to which, based on some of your relies, it is).
It doesn't matter how good it is, if I have to buy items to compete, it wouldn't be a game for me. I don't care how much you charge for the game or a subscription, but I do care if I have to go to the "item" store and buy. I know they have a lot of games like that but to me it's then not about the game, it's about how much you want to pay to be the best......keep the playing field even and let us go at it. You can't have any satisfaction playing a game that you were good at because you bought more items than the next guy.......I feel the same way about RMT....it allows you to cheat(my opinion) to gain an advantage by spending money.
I rather have the game with a cash shop I can tolerate then no game after awhile because they are unable to make a profit they can live with.
We really need to lose the idea that not buying into predatory monetization practices means no games. Games existed prior to the monetization, games we loved and played, they will continue to exist after that monetization method has been shed.
It seems to be working well for ESO, except they have loot crates as an additional source. I made that list with a dedicated niche audience in mind. If a smaller group isn't willing to pay a little more then they're unlikely to ever see their MMO. That's why, in this case, I think it's important to spread the costs as evenly among the players as possible. You have a $10 range in predictable revenue plus some cash shop and game time tokens.
I don't think a simple $15 sub alone is practical for niche MMOs. I would prefer to pay a box fee for a game and nothing more until the next box fee. In the end I think it doesn't matter. There is a revenue goal. The real question is, how to best split that up among the players?
That specific tiered sub is just a brainstorm idea. The idea is to provide tiered benefits to a more premium sub as opposed to solely leveraging the cash shop for extra revenue. The cash shop can still be part of the equation.
What does a premium sub mean to people, more specifically Pantheon fans? What do the people who will actually pay for and play the game want out of a premium sub. Will a tiered sub work with that community? If not how can VR leverage revenue streams?
Well said.
I could see myself utilizing that system, altering the sub according to how much time I was able to currently dedicate to playing. I mentioned a few posts up there were only a few items that I thought would be detrimental, one of which isn't really an issue with the idea itself, but with time-gating content through lockouts in general.
I'm willing to pay more, but the offering has to be robust enough to warrant. That has little to do with graphics (WoW's graphical fidelity is perfectly adequate to me), and more to do with how involved I'm able to get within the game itself. While yes, Discord and other programs offer community services and are popular, a unique melding of gameplay systems and community tools to communicate and coordinate in-game would be very attractive to me. I dislike using third-party apps to communicate and coordinate with folks in-game.
I draw the line based on whether the game is good or not. If its a good game with longevity I'm willing to pay $250 per year, if it lacks the longevity I'm paying less than $100, if its a mediocre game I'm paying $0-$20 per year.
If I pay $250 over a year it better include everything.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
People here who think that all games can survive without a cash shop are simply misinformed because they have never seen the internal financials for MMOs.
In majority of cases today - MMOs absolutely *need* cash shop revenue to cover the dev cost and pay the bills including employee salaries and hosting/operational costs.
....
It's easy to say "oh it's just pure greed, cash shops are not needed" from your comfy chair and be a armchair MMO CFO though
That is just simply NOT true. What you are expressing is whats known as confirmation bias.
Cash Shops are our gift from the Asian mmorpg scene. The reason cash shops were their primary revenue source was due to PC Arcades/Net Cafes being the cultural norm over there. You would rent time on a computer, as such the f2p model was geared towards PC Arcade/Net Cafe gaming culture. Their revenue came from cash shops primarily because of that gaming culture.
Here in the west, we DO NOT have that culture. It was never necessary either. Cash shops came along with asian localization into the west. Since it was somewhat successful, western publishers combined both since hey, more money!
That is all there is to it.
Careful on the assumption that everyone with this position/understanding is coming from a place of "ignorance". You do not know works in the industry, who has worked in the industry or who knows what about the publishing world. One could easily just turn it around and say, "oh its easy to claim cash shops are required, like some armchair CFO". Would it be any more valid? No.
Cash Shops are not a requirement, nor a necessity, they are simply an adopted business model publishers picked up on after seeing the kind of money Asian mmorpgs brought in with such a model. The practice has been becoming normalized, not due to need, but behavior and the belief it is accepted (to which, based on some of your relies, it is).
What he meant to write was Trion games can't survive without cash shops.
It doesn't matter how good it is, if I have to buy items to compete, it wouldn't be a game for me. I don't care how much you charge for the game or a subscription, but I do care if I have to go to the "item" store and buy. I know they have a lot of games like that but to me it's then not about the game, it's about how much you want to pay to be the best......keep the playing field even and let us go at it. You can't have any satisfaction playing a game that you were good at because you bought more items than the next guy.......I feel the same way about RMT....it allows you to cheat(my opinion) to gain an advantage by spending money.
This and don't come with "but you can also buy them on the auction house for ingame currency". Why should I farm/grind for days just to upgrade 1 item, while others can play the game the way they like because they can/will spend $$. Especially when I pay a subscription, there's a reason why I avoid F2P games.
It's fairly apparent subscription locked mmos didn't work either. So you're not telling the whole story, or rather you're telling the bits of the story that make your point sound right. So if you're and insider like you're implying you should show the entire picture.
And don't ding him for confirmation bias when you went on to editorialize with no facts to support your argument of authority. Your entire post reads like, I'm an authority figure, but won't do full disclosure, so what I say is right. Maybe you're right, but I need facts and proof and the Paul Harvey Page 2 and Rest of the Story pieces you left out.
You are missing one key part of that though, the ones that did not do well did not do so because of the business model, but rather due to other factors. One of them is the elephant in the room, WoW. The other is that the game's were just not very good, the bar was set high and few could match it.
Final Fantasy Online is doing great right now and it is designed to be subscription based.
The other problem is that western mmorpgs tend to throw too much money into sub-par products. After release, they also fire a large portion of their developers or they move onto new projects, which leaves a small team left over to continue to pump out new content, at usually a rate thats too slow for most gamers.
Asian game devs on the other hand have primary markets in Asia first and their games are designed with f2p (net cafe) business models in mind, which is why when they come over here (localized outside of asia) they retain that property. It is not a sign that cash shops are better or necessary, its just that they were designed around such from the get go (for their own markets).
The fault mostly lay with Western Developers. In Asia, they have been raising the bar in terms of graphics and scope, in the West, our developers keep lowering the scope and often failing at the design. Its a problem, sure, but again it has nothing to do with business models.
Your characterization of my post and me personally is a bit funny tbh, it reads as projection. I offered facts and presented my opinion as well as observation. If its hard to argue against, then I get it, attack the messenger.
As for what facts you seem to need? Do you need me to prove to you that the Asian mmorpg market is based around PC Arcades (PC Rooms known as Bangs) and Net Cafes? There are around just as many PC Bangs in Korea as there are convenient stores. This is not just in relation to Korea as well, but also Taiwan, HK, China and even the Philippines to a smaller extent. See:
As for "authority figure", I am presenting no such thing in so much as I am returning what was already given in the post I was responding to. Do you criticize them as well over the same issue? I haven't seen that. There are no winners or losers in this, only correct information and incorrect information.
What he meant to write was Trion games can't survive without cash shops.
lol That would probably be an argument I could agree with. Sad too, when I saw them at E3 long ago, showing off Rift with a booth that was probably one of the most expensive on the floor... they made a good showing as to the confidence they had in their product. Why they were spending that kind of money on promoting a less than ideal product is beyond me, they really dropped the ball, financially and with their flagship products. It was all show, no substance.
For an MMO like Pantheon (i.e. where PvE progression is the main focus) then box price + monthly subscription is by far the prefered method*. The cost of the sub depends on the rate of meaningful additional content (e.g. FFXIV is, IMO, about the benchmark for $15 a month). A cash shop is acceptable, but only if it is a. cosmetic only, and b. contains less than 5% of the overall cosmetics available in the game (and preferable only containing ex-event items that have long since ceased to be earnable in-game).
* While technically F2P or B2P would be possible, it would start ruining the gameplay, either by being Pay2Win/Skip (which would be against the whole point of the game), extending the grind (e.g. to sell XP boosters) which is never fun, or taking away content / elements that would otherwise be game-in (e.g. putting a large portion of the cosmetics in a cash shop, or making bag upgrades a paid service instead of an in-game milestone).
Where I draw the line is no worse than "Black Desert Online"
Optional Subscription with benefits (If going F2P)
Unlimited Character Customization with the paid subscription must be included.
Cosmetic Unlocks can be sold on the market for a USD Value or Virtual Currency Value.
Expansion Packs Are Fine.
What I hate seeing is RNG like in "Arche Age" where you spend $200-$400 USD to get a costume and you don't even get it i've been there before...
What I also hate is a game like Warframe, or Albion, which allows users to buy virtual currency and directly trade it thus bringing fraud into the game and risking peoples accounts, this must not be in the game "Gifting is fine" however.
Another thing that really sucks is Enchanting Gear, when you have to pay for items that make it a must to try to get to +15, and either losing your item entirely, or having to buy items to attempt to get it there "Black Desert" has Artisans memory but its not that bad as you can get for free without spending only Korean MMO to get it right that I am aware of.
Comments
You know NOTHING about the reality of why companies have gone with RMT. It's greed and big business only.
You don't even know what the Kool-Aid is or when you drank it.
You stay sassy!
Skins alone don't seem like enough to get anyone paying a higher sub month in and month out. Honestly, content to explore is likely the best way, but again, then you're creating content for a small portion of your base and telling the others they don't count enough to get in on the action.
I'm wondering why devs don't add stretch goals after release. Literally say, "here's an idea for new content, but we need to earn X amount of dollars via current subs to undertake that project. It will be a free update paid for by the revenue generated now." Then, offer a way for folks to donate over the sub to help achieve it. If it works for promises and hype videos prior to release, I can't imagine it wouldn't generate revenue with gamers who are already enjoying the game and just want more content to enjoy. Unless, of course, backers merely purchase into those games because they're given huge in-game rewards for doing so. That's almost certainly not true according to the folks around here who have backed games, right?
not a good argument.
If you are going to make a claim then make a claim and back it up. Otherwise your just saying things.
I should add, very few people here could make a case one way or another with examples. However, a few probably could if they were allowed to.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The loyalty system is a great idea, one that I think any MMORPG offering subs should consider. The longer they're subbed, the higher the likelihood they spend more money on top of it.
I dislike name changes, but can see a use for server transfers. Name changes makes it way too easy for asshats to "reset" by changing their names. Anonymity is the biggest contributor to asshat behavior, and so I'd rather folks not be given a free pass anon card they can play once they've had their giggles harassing other players.
Why should we need more than 1 character slot,Altaholic game design is utter crap,there should be no need for multiple alts.None the less who am i to say people can't make alts,go ahead,not like it takes a lot of space storing a couple hundred lines of code for each character.But NO to restrictions/cash shop.
Also NO i don't want to see a population segregated by different subscription models,that is pay to win.
ONE sub model,ONE price,the ONLY exception should be if paying up front for multiple months,as we have all obviously seen before.Sooo
1 month=$20
3 month= $50
6 month=$80
1 year=$125
It all comes down to "confidence".If a developer has no confidence in their product,then yeah cash shops work to soak those whales that are there for good/fanbois.When i see cash shops,it tells me the developer does NOT have confidence in their own product,so then why should i?
So doing VERY simple math,build a really good game,maybe 100k maybe 500k players.100k at 20 bucks is a LOT of money,2 million to be exact,24 million a year.They can not only cover debt,but ongoing costs AND still make ongoing content for free.
Not everyone needs to hire million dollar lawyers and waste millions on advertising/marketing like Blizzard.Point being,run your business properly "unlike how Chris runs SC" and you can do very well on 24 million a year,yes even after taxes.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Probably want to limit the amount of real money people could spend each month to decrease inflation. I'd probably keep it to only gold purchases and maybe at a set value.
People are going to buy from others for money outside of the game anyway, might as well get their cut. And at least the gold, items are being obtained in game by someone and not just bought from a cash shop.
I'm also fine with higher subs at $20 a month, or even tiered (as mentioned), but more like 1 character only for $18 a month.
These games never NEEDED cash shops or other forms of revenue. They did it, namely the publisher rather than the developer, because they realized people would still spend money even on those. Need? No. Remember, its not the developer making a big profit here, it is the publisher.
If you understand how game publishers think, then you will know that if you give them an inch, they will take a mile. Its all about getting "more".
For sustainability, you just need to hit the expected or necessary ROI, aka return on investment.
Remember, Cash shops are a newer trend, not one born of of necessity but due to normalization of business practice. Publishers always want more, they want more profit (not necessarily a bad thing) compared to initial investment. If they can get away with finding some way to get more, they will go with it.
I agree to an extent. But most MMO's aren't worth subbing to imo. GW2 works best as a B2P with a cash shop because it doesn't hold my interest long. If it required a sub I never would have bought the game or expansions.
POE, while not an MMO, is another game that isn't worth subbing for but is definitely worth spending money in a cash shop for. This is because i only play a few weeks in a season.
I never subbed to SWTOR and because of their model I simply stopped playing. A more generous model could have gotten me to play longer and use a cash shop instead. I felt the same way about Age of Conan.
These days, if I'm going to pay a sub it will be at the start of a WOW expansion. No other MMO feels like it's worth the hassle of not being able to progress when unsubbed.
Cash Shops are our gift from the Asian mmorpg scene. The reason cash shops were their primary revenue source was due to PC Arcades/Net Cafes being the cultural norm over there. You would rent time on a computer, as such the f2p model was geared towards PC Arcade/Net Cafe gaming culture. Their revenue came from cash shops primarily because of that gaming culture.
Here in the west, we DO NOT have that culture. It was never necessary either. Cash shops came along with asian localization into the west. Since it was somewhat successful, western publishers combined both since hey, more money!
That is all there is to it.
Careful on the assumption that everyone with this position/understanding is coming from a place of "ignorance". You do not know works in the industry, who has worked in the industry or who knows what about the publishing world. One could easily just turn it around and say, "oh its easy to claim cash shops are required, like some armchair CFO". Would it be any more valid? No.
Cash Shops are not a requirement, nor a necessity, they are simply an adopted business model publishers picked up on after seeing the kind of money Asian mmorpgs brought in with such a model. The practice has been becoming normalized, not due to need, but behavior and the belief it is accepted (to which, based on some of your relies, it is).
I could see myself utilizing that system, altering the sub according to how much time I was able to currently dedicate to playing. I mentioned a few posts up there were only a few items that I thought would be detrimental, one of which isn't really an issue with the idea itself, but with time-gating content through lockouts in general.
I'm willing to pay more, but the offering has to be robust enough to warrant. That has little to do with graphics (WoW's graphical fidelity is perfectly adequate to me), and more to do with how involved I'm able to get within the game itself. While yes, Discord and other programs offer community services and are popular, a unique melding of gameplay systems and community tools to communicate and coordinate in-game would be very attractive to me. I dislike using third-party apps to communicate and coordinate with folks in-game.
If I pay $250 over a year it better include everything.
This and don't come with "but you can also buy them on the auction house for ingame currency". Why should I farm/grind for days just to upgrade 1 item, while others can play the game the way they like because they can/will spend $$. Especially when I pay a subscription, there's a reason why I avoid F2P games.
Final Fantasy Online is doing great right now and it is designed to be subscription based.
The other problem is that western mmorpgs tend to throw too much money into sub-par products. After release, they also fire a large portion of their developers or they move onto new projects, which leaves a small team left over to continue to pump out new content, at usually a rate thats too slow for most gamers.
Asian game devs on the other hand have primary markets in Asia first and their games are designed with f2p (net cafe) business models in mind, which is why when they come over here (localized outside of asia) they retain that property. It is not a sign that cash shops are better or necessary, its just that they were designed around such from the get go (for their own markets).
The fault mostly lay with Western Developers. In Asia, they have been raising the bar in terms of graphics and scope, in the West, our developers keep lowering the scope and often failing at the design. Its a problem, sure, but again it has nothing to do with business models.
Your characterization of my post and me personally is a bit funny tbh, it reads as projection. I offered facts and presented my opinion as well as observation. If its hard to argue against, then I get it, attack the messenger.
As for what facts you seem to need? Do you need me to prove to you that the Asian mmorpg market is based around PC Arcades (PC Rooms known as Bangs) and Net Cafes? There are around just as many PC Bangs in Korea as there are convenient stores. This is not just in relation to Korea as well, but also Taiwan, HK, China and even the Philippines to a smaller extent. See:
As for "authority figure", I am presenting no such thing in so much as I am returning what was already given in the post I was responding to. Do you criticize them as well over the same issue? I haven't seen that. There are no winners or losers in this, only correct information and incorrect information.
lol That would probably be an argument I could agree with. Sad too, when I saw them at E3 long ago, showing off Rift with a booth that was probably one of the most expensive on the floor... they made a good showing as to the confidence they had in their product. Why they were spending that kind of money on promoting a less than ideal product is beyond me, they really dropped the ball, financially and with their flagship products. It was all show, no substance.
For an MMO like Pantheon (i.e. where PvE progression is the main focus) then box price + monthly subscription is by far the prefered method*. The cost of the sub depends on the rate of meaningful additional content (e.g. FFXIV is, IMO, about the benchmark for $15 a month). A cash shop is acceptable, but only if it is a. cosmetic only, and b. contains less than 5% of the overall cosmetics available in the game (and preferable only containing ex-event items that have long since ceased to be earnable in-game).
* While technically F2P or B2P would be possible, it would start ruining the gameplay, either by being Pay2Win/Skip (which would be against the whole point of the game), extending the grind (e.g. to sell XP boosters) which is never fun, or taking away content / elements that would otherwise be game-in (e.g. putting a large portion of the cosmetics in a cash shop, or making bag upgrades a paid service instead of an in-game milestone).
Optional Subscription with benefits (If going F2P)
Unlimited Character Customization with the paid subscription must be included.
Cosmetic Unlocks can be sold on the market for a USD Value or Virtual Currency Value.
Expansion Packs Are Fine.
What I hate seeing is RNG like in "Arche Age" where you spend $200-$400 USD to get a costume and you don't even get it i've been there before...
What I also hate is a game like Warframe, or Albion, which allows users to buy virtual currency and directly trade it thus bringing fraud into the game and risking peoples accounts, this must not be in the game "Gifting is fine" however.
Another thing that really sucks is Enchanting Gear, when you have to pay for items that make it a must to try to get to +15, and either losing your item entirely, or having to buy items to attempt to get it there "Black Desert" has Artisans memory but its not that bad as you can get for free without spending only Korean MMO to get it right that I am aware of.