Question on upcoming MMORPGs and their monetization

Comments

• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483

  January 14

  Monetization of unreleased games isn't necessarily known yet, in part because it may change from what developers are saying now.  But Uncharted Waters Origin launched less than a year ago, which is recently enough that I'll explain the monetization to you.
  
  The game is "free to play" with an item mall.  There is a ton of stuff in the item mall, much of which looks very pay to win if you don't understand what it is.  Most of it is whale bait that virtually the entire playerbase completely ignores.
  
  Success in the game is dominated by play time, not by money spent.  If a blue whale spends $1000 per month, and a completely free player spends twice as many hours on the game as the blue whale, the free player will tend to be more successful at the game than the whale.
  
  There are really four tiers of monetization:
  
  1)  Red gem mate skills.  These are very cheap, and if you spend $5 on the game, you'll have all you need for this for several months.  Completely free players can readily get enough red gems to cover this just by selling things on the auction house.  And yes, there are some things that new players can get and high level players want, most notably C-grade astrolabes and alder tier shipbuilding materials.
  
  2)  Red gem admirals.  These cost 5000 red gems each, or about a pro-rated $23 if you buy red gems via the red gem fixed-term package.  An admiral is basically a major content pack, which includes the admiral himself (always an S-grade mate), some associated mates, and the admiral chronicle.  The chronicle is basically an epic story quest chain that usually has over 100 parts and generally takes 10-20 hours to complete.  There are five starter admirals, of which you get one of your choice for free when you start the game, and can earn the other four by playing the game.  It's only other admirals beyond those starting five that cost red gems.  Red gem admirals all have minimum level requirements, so you cannot buy any until you're far enough into the game to have a good idea of what they are and what you'd get for your money.
  
  3)  Red gem port investment.  On the PVP server, you can either pay ducats (normal, in-game currency) or red gems (basically, real money) to invest in ports and flip the port to your country and your guild.  On the PVE server, red gem investment is completely disabled, and investments can only come from ducats.  This is arguably pay to win on the PVP server, but it's also completely avoidable by playing on the PVE server.
  
  4)  Everything else.  With rare exceptions, everything else is whale bait that you don't need and most players will ignore.  Only two exceptions strike me as notable.  One is that the game periodically sells some new cosmetic ship effect that gives +0.2 fleet speed.  The other is that some high end players can buy the Grace of Raphael effect to get more land training attempts per day, sell some of the extra astrolabes they gain from the effect on the auction house to cover the cost, and still have some left over.
  
  In particular, spending red gems on any gachas is very firmly in the "everything else" category.  The most important gacha is the normal mate gacha, as you can get C-grade mates, then train them up to S-grade.  You don't need to drop thousands of dollars on the gachas to buy natural S-grade mates and get contracts to promote them.  You should use the gacha tickets that you get by playing the game, but never, ever spend money on gacha tickets unless you're a whale.  And likely not even if you're a whale.
  
  You can also buy stuff from the auction house for red gems, but that's buying things from other players that were obtained by playing the game. I don't regard that as being "pay to win".  Some items are categorically untradeable.  Improved ships, crafted items, and parts from combine have a 10% chance of being tradeable.