Well...what's better? A 2 million people paying $60 and no monthly fee, or 200,000 people paying $60 + $15/month?
After three years, the two breakeven.
Come on now, you now it's not that simple.
Cash shop = mad bank and no commitment.
Why not have both?
Because that's evil.
Why?
So you compound the market risk of the consumer by not only asking people to rent your product but to also buy things they won't have access to if they stop renting?
Very few people are going to believe in a new game that much.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
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+2
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
@ironzerg Don't take this as an insult but it seems like you don't have a great grasp on business. There is much more at play than you seem to think regarding all aspects of this.
@ironzerg Don't take this as an insult but it seems like you don't have a great grasp on business. There is much more at play than you seem to think regarding all aspects of this.
That's totally an insult.
I agree with the assessment that I am more likely to avoid a game with a cash shop and sub, but that's an insult and not just a part of the discussion. Just lay out your arguments and why they apply next time.
What is this I don't even.
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
@ironzerg Don't take this as an insult but it seems like you don't have a great grasp on business. There is much more at play than you seem to think regarding all aspects of this.
That's totally an insult.
I agree with the assessment that I am more likely to avoid a game with a cash shop and sub, but that's an insult and not just a part of the discussion. Just lay out your arguments and why they apply next time.
Not understanding something you are not educated in is completely normal. If some told me I don't understand chemistry I would say "you are very right good sir, my knowledge of chemistry is very small!"
Your analogy doesn't hold up. No one is going to use your non-knowledge of chemistry to shut down your arguments out of hand as an ad hominem attack. You're also making direct assumptions about him you have no knowledge of.
Now let's continue this on the merits of B2P and such without the silly goose part, please?
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
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0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Your analogy doesn't hold up. No one is going to use your non-knowledge of chemistry to shut down your arguments out of hand as an ad hominem attack. You're also making direct assumptions about him you have no knowledge of.
Now let's continue this on the merits of B2P and such without the silly goose part, please?
Hmmm it seems I have been greatly misunderstood. I did not say he doesn't understand business, I said it seems which means I did not make a direct assumption but told him what it seemed to me. I figured if I were incorrect he would correct me.
I was never even involved in an argument nor did I realize one existed. I thought ideas were being thrown around and people were discussing those ideas. I thought his first one was an attempt to make one option seem worse by purposefully using limited information. I then realized after his next post that maybe his thoughts were not coming from a place malice but instead a lack of understanding.
This is not a thread to discuss business so I wasn't going to just go off and explain everything and instead intended to mention that maybe he doesn't have the best grasp on it and if he were interested in more details I figured I would leave that power in his hands as the very basics had already been mentioned.
I did not know that post would be so misunderstood but I hope this one clears up my intentions!
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Also I would edit but vanilla is awful and it would ruin my post. The Chemistry anology was in the idea that no true argument was going on but instead a discussion. If I were involved in a chemistry discussion and I said "But shouldn't those sugars have been disolved quicker because I was running?" and someone educated in chemistry responded with "You don't really know much about chemistry do you?" There is no way I would take that as an insult because it would be very true. I would agree with them because they would be right, but that wouldn't stop me from having the conversation in the first place, ya dig?
Regarding subscriptions, part of me wants to say I think in 2013 launching an MMO with a monthly sub and expecting to have lasting success is a long shot. But then part of me realizes that GW2 was supposed to be the game that proved not having a sub doesn't mean you can't have a full featured MMO.
But then, GW2 had garbage dungeons, no PvE end game to speak of besides the garbage dungeons, and lost me and all 20+ of my friends who absolutely couldn't wait for it within about 3 or 4 months because we did everything there was to do in the game and the WvW wasn't the RvR experience we wanted, and I was left thinking man, if they had just been a subscription game, they could've had a design team/live team that could make dungeons that don't suck compared to TBC era WoW dungeons.
In the end, a good game is a good game, and I've never not tried an MMO or quit one because of a subscription. You simply have to make a good game. I stayed subscribed to Everquest, FFXI, and WoW each for years, and some other MMOs for shorter periods, and every time the length of my subscription was just based on how much I enjoyed playing the game.
Wildstar looks so far like a game worthy of paying a subscription for, at least for me. I've never really understood the hesitation to pay a sub fee. I've had people tell me the only reason they won't play an MMO is because they don't want to pay a monthly fee for a game. Same people who are glad to play the latest Tomb Raider, God of War, Assassin's Creed, etc. and pay $60 for a 10 hour game experience are like man no way would I pay $15 a month for a game I might play 100+ hours a month. It's a bit crazy.
I spent minimum $30 bucks to see a movie with my wife in the theater. Paying $30 a month for the two of us to subscribe to a fun MMO we play together at least 30 or 40 hours a month is a no brainer if the game is something we enjoy.
Also I would edit but vanilla is awful and it would ruin my post. The Chemistry anology was in the idea that no true argument was going on but instead a discussion. If I were involved in a chemistry discussion and I said "But shouldn't those sugars have been disolved quicker because I was running?" and someone educated in chemistry responded with "You don't really know much about chemistry do you?" There is no way I would take that as an insult because it would be very true. I would agree with them because they would be right, but that wouldn't stop me from having the conversation in the first place, ya dig?
Eh, the interwebs be a touchy beast. It seems you've awknowledged you didn't mean to insult someone so there isn't much else to continue with on this unless someone else WANTS to start an argument about that.
I personally don't have an issue with a subscription for MMOs. I think this may just stem from the fact that I started playing MMOs back with Everquest and for the majority of my experience they have always been that way. B2P may work but I'd like to see a bit more success with it before it is deemed the way to go. The cash shop or pay to play parts of a game model I am pretty strongly against as I find it an intrusive and unnatural way to play a game. Those are just my personal feelings and they aren't necessarily supported by any real backing beyond that.
Yeah, subscriptions might be viable again if enough people have cash shop fatigue. Maybe make the subscription provide a month or a flat X hours of playtime, whichever lasts longer.
A lot of things about Wildstar appeal to me, but I'm still skeptical about the telegraphs in combat. It seems overly simplistic and causes you to pay more attention to the ground than the enemy. Hopefully I can get in beta and try it out myself!
It's not crazy though. Part of the thing is that it requires a large user base for these things to make sense in the long term. Not wow large but enough of a large base that the people in the thread here can't take up the full slack of it.
Part of that is based on what people are willing to pay for a game and how they perceive the value they get for their money.
Let's take the movie analogy. People are willing to spend $30 to go out to the movies because there is value there. They go and see it on a large screen, get some snacks, get out of the house. If they really like the movie then they can buy it on disc in a few months and watch it as they please. There is no perceived loss in this situation.
For an mmo you've got box cost and a maintenance sub after. There is perceived loss if they stop paying this fee. You can simply no longer play and the money and time people have spent on it is gone. If the person is worried about having money in the long term they are not going to feel comfortable paying for something that could just end because of a lapse.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
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+1
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Regarding subscriptions, part of me wants to say I think in 2013 launching an MMO with a monthly sub and expecting to have lasting success is a long shot. But then part of me realizes that GW2 was supposed to be the game that proved not having a sub doesn't mean you can't have a full featured MMO.
But then, GW2 had garbage dungeons, no PvE end game to speak of besides the garbage dungeons, and lost me and all 20+ of my friends who absolutely couldn't wait for it within about 3 or 4 months because we did everything there was to do in the game and the WvW wasn't the RvR experience we wanted, and I was left thinking man, if they had just been a subscription game, they could've had a design team/live team that could make dungeons that don't suck compared to TBC era WoW dungeons.
In the end, a good game is a good game, and I've never not tried an MMO or quit one because of a subscription. You simply have to make a good game. I stayed subscribed to Everquest, FFXI, and WoW each for years, and some other MMOs for shorter periods, and every time the length of my subscription was just based on how much I enjoyed playing the game.
Wildstar looks so far like a game worthy of paying a subscription for, at least for me. I've never really understood the hesitation to pay a sub fee. I've had people tell me the only reason they won't play an MMO is because they don't want to pay a monthly fee for a game. Same people who are glad to play the latest Tomb Raider, God of War, Assassin's Creed, etc. and pay $60 for a 10 hour game experience are like man no way would I pay $15 a month for a game I might play 100+ hours a month. It's a bit crazy.
I spent minimum $30 bucks to see a movie with my wife in the theater. Paying $30 a month for the two of us to subscribe to a fun MMO we play together at least 30 or 40 hours a month is a no brainer if the game is something we enjoy.
First I must ask, why do you think any of those things would have been different had the game been a sub game? All of the content you spoke of seems to have been the way they wanted it to be or close to. They obviously have plans to change and update that stuff based on the reactions but I don't feel as though being a Sub game would have had ANY effect on that stuff.
As for the second part I first want to note that I don't actually care about paying a sub. The amount of content I would get for $15 a month is a no brainer. But that isn't so for every one. My best friend is a teacher who doesn't make much money and he would be hard pressed to be convinced into a sub. Does he want to play all the big titles? Hell yes! Does he buy them? Hell yes? For full price? Hells to the nizzle. He plays games years after they release when they have a good sale because he can't afford them otherwise. There are many other people like that out there. There are also loads of young people that would need to save a whole months worth of allowance if they wanted to buy a brand new $60 game and that would be ALL they could afford that month.
The biggest complaint I notice would be people saying the inability to feel like they can freely jump in and out of the game. They need to think "am I going to play enough this month?" ahead of time. They may think "what if I pay and don't play at all?" It makes people feel like they are obligated to play because they already paid. Without the sub people can come and go as they please. They don't have a hurdle to jump over if they haven't played in awhile. They can just say "lemme see what's new!" And if they like it they play more. With a sub it can just slip to the back of their mind. What if they pay and decide they don't like the changes?
Lastly, the current market has shown that is a product is good and it is what people want they will gladly support it at their leisure (kickstarters come to mind) And then I would ask, how many subscription based MMOs have come out and needed to switch to B2P or F2P to stay afloat? And then keeping in mind that the very nature of making that change is a PR snafu it shows how much better they would have done if they started with that model.
I don't know if anything would've been different in GW2 if they had used a sub model. There's no way to know if that would've been true or not. We can't know how many people bought the game who would not have bought it had it had a sub fee. We don't know how much money they made off their gem shop. All I know is that game was the poster child for MMOs can be good without a subscription, and it managed to totally fumble the PVE content that people expect from a modern MMO.
I don't buy the can't freely jump in and out of a game either. With MMOs which have subscription models, they usually have content patches at regular intervals between expansions. If you don't think you'll play for a month, you cancel your sub. If you see a cool patch came out with a new dungeon you want to check out, you pay $15 for a game card or just pay with a credit card and cancel and now you have access to the game again for a month. I know plenty of people who pay month to month and cancel their sub each month on MMOs. It's perfectly fine to do that if you're not sure you're going to play it every month. I also can't speak to people who only have enough discretionary income that they have to make choices about whether to spend $15 a month. Those people aren't a factor in a business selling entertainment's decisions anyway. Like you said, that guy isn't buying any games new, so he's not even in the sales forecast.
I like your point about games that had to switch to F2P after the fact, and I think it's a risk. IMO, you're much much better off budgeting and making your game B2P or cash shop from the start if you think it might end up that way anyway. Starting out subscription and changing to F2P looks like a failure, and even though some games have done the transition and managed to still stay successful or even do better(LOTRO), to me, it's still not as good as consistency.
I think any game that switches to F2P or B2P does not do so due to failings of the payment model though. They do it because their games aren't good enough. There's a reason WoW charges a subscription still, and also manages to make shitloads more cash selling pets and mounts in their shop. Because they make a good game and deliver content that people actually want.
They just have to make a decision on what they think is best for their game, and if the game is good enough, it'll have staying power regardless of whether or not they require a sub.
I really feel like WoW is not something that can be used as a comparison at this point as it's reached critical mass. Most of the people who play and subscribe to WoW do so because they've put so much time in, made enough friends that it's just easier to maintain than to throw it away.
I'm not saying it's a bad game but it gained it's momentum in a very different economic time and now people would rather pay the fee to maintain what they have than the alternative of walking away. A brand new game has none of that pre-built momentum.
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+1
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
WoW charges a subscription fee because they've still got 9 million people paying subscriptions. When they drop down to 1 million sometime in the 2020's, then... they'll probably continue to charge for subscriptions because $15 x one million is still a whole lot of money.
I generally agree with Joshmvii's assessment that most MMOs out there just aint very good, thus them going F2P.
+1
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
The problem is those people *do* count in the sales forecast because there are plenty of them that will put the funds aside and save if it means playing with their friends. There are also the young people I spoke of. There is also the mental aspect of 'monthly fee' that make people shy away because MONEY even though it isn't a lot of money for many people.
Bringing up WoW is important because their very existance is a detriment to a sub model game. They made their game at the right time and due to how popular they've become if you choose the subscription model you ARE competing with them. It's dangerous and a huge risk. I'm not sure if there are even any sub based games that came out since WoW that are still sub based... maybe Rift? Is that still sub-based?
The point is WoW is dug in, they continue to produce what they produce BECAUSE of their success. Which is why others cannot compete. They are too big.
I like your point about games that had to switch to F2P after the fact, and I think it's a risk. IMO, you're much much better off budgeting and making your game B2P or cash shop from the start if you think it might end up that way anyway. Starting out subscription and changing to F2P looks like a failure, and even though some games have done the transition and managed to still stay successful or even do better(LOTRO), to me, it's still not as good as consistency.
I think any game that switches to F2P or B2P does not do so due to failings of the payment model though. They do it because their games aren't good enough. There's a reason WoW charges a subscription still, and also manages to make shitloads more cash selling pets and mounts in their shop. Because they make a good game and deliver content that people actually want.
They just have to make a decision on what they think is best for their game, and if the game is good enough, it'll have staying power regardless of whether or not they require a sub.
I like the idea of B2P with Cash Shop and a sub *option*. I.e., if you pay the $15, you get X amount of Cash Shop credit (maybe $20 worth) each month and a few quality of life perks. Now you have an incentive to sub if you really enjoy the game, the B2P "lower bar of entry" to the game and the cash shop for people who don't plan to spend $15 a month but might spend $5 (or nothing at all). To me, that's the balanced approach, as long as you keep the Cash Shop and sub option to Quality of Life only elements. When I have to start paying real cash to experience content it defeats the system, IMO.
Maybe I'm just out of the loop in modern MMOs but the argument about perceived value and playing time seem a bit abstract. How many people who play an MMO are really casual players like some of you talk about? I don't mean hardcore raiders but I don't think there is a realistic percentage of players who don't put in enough time to get their monies worth. Either you play regularly or you don't. I can't think of anyone I've ever gamed with that sort of plays an MMO.
Saying WoW made their game at the right time is silly at best. Everquest 2 came out right around when WoW did. I bought EQ2, my buddy came over to LAN with me and my future wife. He was like hey, WoW is more fun than that looks, check it out. And we did, and he was right. WoW succeeded because it's plain better than every other MMO. And no, "most" of the people playing WoW didn't subscribe 7 years ago and just keep subscribing. Hell, pretty much everybody I know who even plays WoW has quit and gone back a million times, because they just put out new expansions with awesome features and stuff and improve on the game.
There is still room in the market for other subscription games. If TOR had actually been good at level 50 and not just from 1-50, it could've been another millions of subscriber having MMO. It just wasn't. Wildstar could be the next MMO that is so fun that everybody starts talking about it, guilds move to it, everybody tells their friends, etc. and suddenly it could have millions of subscribers too. Or it could fall flat and end up a F2P failure. I have no expectations of either thing happening, but I do like watching the development happen, because the devs here say a lot of things that sound to me like they know what they're doing.
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Maybe I'm just out of the loop in modern MMOs but the argument about perceived value and playing time seem a bit abstract. How many people who play an MMO are really casual players like some of you talk about? I don't mean hardcore raiders but I don't think there is a realistic percentage of players who don't put in enough time to get their monies worth. Either you play regularly or you don't. I can't think of anyone I've ever gamed with that sort of plays an MMO.
Peoples schedules change and other games come and go. I might play an MMO 200 hours one month and 2 hours the next. Depends on what else I have going on in my life. I actually know lots of people who play like this. Or people who play until they are full of the current content and then flit in and out until new stuff comes along. With a sub that flitting phase just becomes an un-sub instead of still playing. If I cared about the money that would suck because I'd have to actually think about resubbing or not. Any amount of pondering something like that is wasted time as far as I'm concerned.
I bought TOR, made a character, joined up with my friends... and realised the game supported a max group size of 4 while there were 5 of us. And unlike GW2 you don't get credit for contributing.
Yeah, that didn't last very long.
First, I do appreciate everyone who was willing to tackle the question without resorting to insults. And yes, it was meant to be thought provoking.
Ultimately, I agree with a lot of what @joshmvii has to say. People are willing to exchange money for value. But the problem with a lot of these "failed" subscription MMOs is that they don't bring enough value to the table to justify people paying $X/month. That's the root of the problem. By and large, MMOs are one of the single best entertainment values for your buck, assuming you like playing video games and RPGish type games. So the question I would be asking myself as a developer is, "What does the type of person who enjoys this genre VALUE in a game?" not, "How do I make a sustainable business without charging for it." I think the latter is inevitably a recipe for a lower quality experience. Which is fine for some people.
BUT...
The money is with the people whose rare resource is time, not money. It's the people who are trying to maximize their "fun value" per unit of time, not necessarily dollar. That's the golden ticket. But don't confuse that with being greedy. It's simply developing a high-quality, premium game experience that people are willing to pay money for. And the reason I brought up the point in the first place was the orginal quote by someone who basically said, "I hope they don't screw things up by charging a monthly fee." However, I'd prefer to say, "I hope they make Wildstar so awesome people WANT to pay a monthly fee for it."
And also, back to my buddy @daemonsadi the point of asking, "Why not both a sub and a cash shop" continues on that same thought of proving value to the customer. First, in creating a game that's so fantastic, people are willing to pay a monthly fee for access. Second is asking if there's addtional services that these customers may want AND find valuable that you could provide to them at additional (and reasonable) prices. Think of what a cash shop might look like if it was full of extras and "nice to have" stuff, in a game that wasn't reliant on creating situations where people were almost forced to buy from the cash shop because the game's survival depended on it. Could you possible get away from Pay 2 Win boosts, and overprice cosmetic options, down to very reasonably price and purely cosmetic options to help further customize your character or account?
Options to change the animation on a power? Change the color? Change the look of a projectile? Unique outfits? Special emotes? Stuff that does nothing other than saying, "I want my character to look or feel like this" cosmetic stuff. No EXP boosts. No "have to buy" character slots. No "convienence features" that are there because the game is otherwise programed to be "inconvienent" to entice to you buy. A pure cash shop founded on the principle of providing incremental value to the customer, not coercing them to buy something so the game can stay afloat.
And coming back to Wildstar, did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps they may actually be targetting a smaller, but much more value-oriented customer, whose happy to spend money each month for a highly entertaining and premium quality game? Perhaps Pay 2 Play is dead if you're targetting the masses. But then again, maybe the masses aren't were the money's at these days.
Saying WoW made their game at the right time is silly at best. Everquest 2 came out right around when WoW did. I bought EQ2, my buddy came over to LAN with me and my future wife. He was like hey, WoW is more fun than that looks, check it out. And we did, and he was right. WoW succeeded because it's plain better than every other MMO. And no, "most" of the people playing WoW didn't subscribe 7 years ago and just keep subscribing. Hell, pretty much everybody I know who even plays WoW has quit and gone back a million times, because they just put out new expansions with awesome features and stuff and improve on the game.
There is still room in the market for other subscription games. If TOR had actually been good at level 50 and not just from 1-50, it could've been another millions of subscriber having MMO. It just wasn't. Wildstar could be the next MMO that is so fun that everybody starts talking about it, guilds move to it, everybody tells their friends, etc. and suddenly it could have millions of subscribers too. Or it could fall flat and end up a F2P failure. I have no expectations of either thing happening, but I do like watching the development happen, because the devs here say a lot of things that sound to me like they know what they're doing.
This makes me wonder: are new MMOs working with a sizable handicap? WoW has built up so much content over the years. It also has had a considerable amount of time to refine its game play mechanics (effectively or not, I don't know), compared to any newer MMO. Even with the palatable claims made by the Wildstar devs, it's going to take some time to work out their system's kinks and add a comparable amount of content. A fresh experience doesn't seem like enough in comparison to what I've heard about WoW. I can't say I know too much about it though, given that Vanilla failed to hold my attention and I haven't gone back since.
Will any MMO that doesn't represent an utter paradigm shift in MMO ideology ever have a place in the post-WoW market? Without using a F2P or B2P business model?
+2
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
My two cents on this is thus:
Make the game B2P straight up with the option to sub. Keep the cash shop for people that want to pick and choose and don't have all the time in the world, people they already have kept in mind when designing content and the leveling game, make a deal where the cash shop stuff is made available in some fashion to people paying subs (possibly in the form of a package deal that permanently unlocks a certain amount of cool cosmetic stuff for someone who commits to a set time frame of months), treat subscribers well without going all Blackgate: London on them and borking balance by making them godkings among free players, make the cash shop mainly cosmetic and fair, charge 60$ straight up to keep the bottom line rolling at the start and keep out the mainly F2P stricken riff raff, rely on the merits of your game to carry the day and make any of this viable at all.
I don't want to undervalue the bottom line of the devs and people producing the game and it's constant stream of content updates which are so key and can be hard to finance if F2P/B2P with no long term commitments dries up as these types of financial models/games tend to do (F2P games generally go through slow burn phases and cycles of activity and in slow times things can get dire enough to cause a brutal cycle situation where not enough money is coming in to fund more content generation which will often cause more people and money to leave, keeping that cycle going until the game dies or manages to somehow save itself with a last ditch effort or redesign or something big).
If they make a solid product and you enjoy it you should have a certain sense of obligation to keep paying for more, but the option on how you go about that should be there for people who want to commit and people who just want certain specific things at specific times and can hop in and out, people who can't commit with a sub or don't feel comfortable doing so for valid reasons. It's a hard balance to strike but I believe it has to be struck in order for the game to remain both financially solvent long term and able to deliver content and proper services on a weekly/monthly basis.
I really have nothing else to add to this long back and forth that hasn't already been said before and better; what I will say is that I myself personally agree with Entaru's thoughts on this with the caveat that I am not totally against the idea of a sub fee in this age of F2P/B2P if the game is good enough, and in the case of Wildstar (which is looking good) would like to have the option to go balls deep if I want and pay a sub to get lots of good stuff up front.
If you want an evolving, persistent experience, you have to lay down some money every so often for that to happen. But you shouldn't be punished for not doing so one way or the other as time and commitments allow. Otherwise you end up with SW:TOR's miserable excuse for F2P.
I think WoW already did sub+shop the right way. You can buy pets and mounts, and they have no additional functionality over the pets and mounts you can already get in the game. I'm not a fan of being able to buy cosmetic armor from cash shops, because IMO it incentivizes putting your best art assets in the shop instead of letting players earn them in game, but that's just me.
Part of making up the cost of a subscription MMO is in how much you spend promoting it and what not too. You need way less subscribers to keep an MMO afloat if word of mouth hype and the internet do all your marketing for you. A big part of the reason TOR failed is because not only did they have an enormous budget due to the insane amount of voice acting, but EA spent a ton of money on TV advertisements and stuff too, which just added to the bottom line of how many subs they'd need to make their money back and start profiting. Then when the game wasn't good enough, even the people who love Star Wars so much they wanted to keep paying for that game couldn't save them.
Vanguard is the oldest example I know of, of a company trying to make a niche game for a subset of gamers(Everquest players who wanted a sandboxy "hardcore" MMO), then just let scope creep get in the way of releasing a finished game, so their budget spiraled out of control and they had to release a buggy piece of crap game without crucial pieces of content. I maintain that had they had a much more narrow scope for that game it could've been a modest success that actually had a legit place in the market.
The Wildstar devs to me seem like the kind of guys who realize that.
Joshmvii on
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
First, I do appreciate everyone who was willing to tackle the question without resorting to insults. And yes, it was meant to be thought provoking.
Ultimately, I agree with a lot of what @joshmvii has to say. People are willing to exchange money for value. But the problem with a lot of these "failed" subscription MMOs is that they don't bring enough value to the table to justify people paying $X/month. That's the root of the problem. By and large, MMOs are one of the single best entertainment values for your buck, assuming you like playing video games and RPGish type games. So the question I would be asking myself as a developer is, "What does the type of person who enjoys this genre VALUE in a game?" not, "How do I make a sustainable business without charging for it." I think the latter is inevitably a recipe for a lower quality experience. Which is fine for some people.
BUT...
The money is with the people whose rare resource is time, not money. It's the people who are trying to maximize their "fun value" per unit of time, not necessarily dollar. That's the golden ticket. But don't confuse that with being greedy. It's simply developing a high-quality, premium game experience that people are willing to pay money for. And the reason I brought up the point in the first place was the orginal quote by someone who basically said, "I hope they don't screw things up by charging a monthly fee." However, I'd prefer to say, "I hope they make Wildstar so awesome people WANT to pay a monthly fee for it."
And also, back to my buddy @daemonsadi the point of asking, "Why not both a sub and a cash shop" continues on that same thought of proving value to the customer. First, in creating a game that's so fantastic, people are willing to pay a monthly fee for access. Second is asking if there's addtional services that these customers may want AND find valuable that you could provide to them at additional (and reasonable) prices. Think of what a cash shop might look like if it was full of extras and "nice to have" stuff, in a game that wasn't reliant on creating situations where people were almost forced to buy from the cash shop because the game's survival depended on it. Could you possible get away from Pay 2 Win boosts, and overprice cosmetic options, down to very reasonably price and purely cosmetic options to help further customize your character or account?
Options to change the animation on a power? Change the color? Change the look of a projectile? Unique outfits? Special emotes? Stuff that does nothing other than saying, "I want my character to look or feel like this" cosmetic stuff. No EXP boosts. No "have to buy" character slots. No "convienence features" that are there because the game is otherwise programed to be "inconvienent" to entice to you buy. A pure cash shop founded on the principle of providing incremental value to the customer, not coercing them to buy something so the game can stay afloat.
And coming back to Wildstar, did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps they may actually be targetting a smaller, but much more value-oriented customer, whose happy to spend money each month for a highly entertaining and premium quality game? Perhaps Pay 2 Play is dead if you're targetting the masses. But then again, maybe the masses aren't were the money's at these days.
A subscription model that provided premium/frequent content but was budgeted for a small audience would be an amazingly impressive feat. The more feature rich a game the more it costs and thus the more players are needed for a subscription model.
Path of Exile is a very successful F2P game that relies on a cash shop that is purely cosmetic, not even basic 'boosters' are available. Check out the PAR on it. They go into pretty good detail on why the model works.
The problem with cash shop + sub, especially before you get your business really rolling, is that the question is asked "Why do I need to pay this sub if the game is making enough money through the cash shop?" People will complain about the price gouging.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
Cash shops incentivise bad game design just as much as they can be used for bad business practices; the two go hand in hand. And that's the danger of selling things off in an MMO piecemeal, even if it is better for people who want to play but can't do the sub for whatever valid reason. Even if it's cosmetic, as Josh points out, it can still incentivise the best assets going towards what goes into the cash shop and what goes into the game itself, in a dungeon for example.
Not everyone can do the sub thing. I can, but I accept that others cannot for lots of different reasons ranging from time commitments to tight budgets and so on. But B2P/F2P have plenty of flaws too, and at the end of the day, the game needs to be fun, balanced, and financially solvent enough to keep the devs in business and making content.
I strongly feel that if we want our hobby to be supported with premium, highly quality products, then we as a community should be willing and able to pony up the cash monies to pay for such products.
When I was a kid, I had all the time in the world for video games, and no money to buy them. As an adult, I have all the money I could possibly need to fuel my video game hobby, with no time to play them. I'm living in my worse childhood nightmare.
I think modern MMOs are definitely working with a handicap in the sense that WoW is still out there, and if you don't give your game something to differentiate it, then they may just go back to that game. But no, I don't think it means a subscription game must fail automatically. If Wildstar comes out and has fun combat that is done better than GW2's action style(which it looks like it might), and a good amount of content, along with some things WoW doesn't have, like cool player housing and what not, then it can absolutely compete.
FFXIV: ARR is a good example. It's just another WoW style MMO now, but with Final Fantasy trappings and a few things that not all MMOs bring to the table(level sync, all jobs on one character, slightly more "hardcore" gameplay in the form of losing items in crafting, etc.) that it can actually succeed in today's market, and that's on top of the fact they have to not only convince people the game is good, but to trust them again after the nightmare of FFXIV 1.0.
I honestly would rather just have a subscription model than a sub or cash shop model where subscribers get cash shop stuff at a better value or whatever. If you just make it a subscription game, there's nothing stopping people from paying one month at a time with game cards and only paying the months they want to play. I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I'm just saying what I prefer.
Joshmvii on
+1
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Cash shops incentivise bad game design just as much as they can be used for bad business practices; the two go hand in hand. And that's the danger of selling things off in an MMO piecemeal, even if it is better for people who want to play but can't do the sub for whatever valid reason. Even if it's cosmetic, as Josh points out, it can still incentivise the best assets going towards what goes into the cash shop and what goes into the game itself, in a dungeon for example.
Not everyone can do the sub thing. I can, but I accept that others cannot for lots of different reasons ranging from time commitments to tight budgets and so on. But B2P/F2P have plenty of flaws too, and at the end of the day, the game needs to be fun, balanced, and financially solvent enough to keep the devs in business and making content.
I cannot agree enough. In the end no matter what option they choose it's a matter of doing it correctly, fair, balanced and above all else be used for a truly fun gaming experience.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Make a good enough game, plan accordingly when financing it and designing it, get enough people like me that are willing to commit to that game long term with a 15$ sub, even if that number is small to start (less then 100k people), congratulations, your a success. Your not going to make back SW:TOR levels of money if you put that much in (and I really doubt Wildstar has but would like to know their development cost numbers), but if you make a good game for less then 50-100 mill like WoW was back in the day and play it smart, then your golden with that smaller number long term.
Build a solid loyal base from that and a good enough experience and then open the door a little to entice more with a B2P option and your even better off.
I'm not anti-sub personally. I just think the market has changed enough so that there are enough people anti-sub that any game operating with that model is going to have a very uphill battle and is in a good position to fail.
It's not us that will determine that as we're a gathering of the hardcore who's been doing this forever. We don't represent the general population of gamers, I don't feel.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I strongly feel that if we want our hobby to be supported with premium, highly quality products, then we as a community should be willing and able to pony up the cash monies to pay for such products.
When I was a kid, I had all the time in the world for video games, and no money to buy them. As an adult, I have all the money I could possibly need to fuel my video game hobby, with no time to play them. I'm living in my worse childhood nightmare.
Maximize my fun:time and you can have my money.
I totally agree with the sentiment. Again, I don't mind a sub. I just hate the idea of playing a game, especially if I end up really enjoying it, only to watch it fall and burn because they made a business decision that wasn't sound.
+1
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
WoW was both the best and worst thing to happen to MMOs in these regards because it was so successful at doing one way and then slowly becoming less and less like the game people originally bought into difficulty and atmosphere wise; those left now are in it to enjoy the ease of play once in a while and steamroll some dungeons and raids and are committed to years of characters created and guild ties formed and so on. It is not the be all and end all and we have more then enough proof and essays written on that already.
MMOs are not about making WoW levels of subscriber numbers ever, even if that would be excellent. MMOs are about offering a persistent, massively multiplayer, evolving experience. They are giant undertakings, take years to make, are expensive as fuck even at the cheapest tiers of tens of millions, and have a long history this past decade of crashing and burning or petering out into varying degrees of F2P life support and general failure. You need to be different, sometimes drastically so, and you need to dig a niche for yourself. You need to get as many as you can and then live with that number, and nurture it, and always do right by your players, and do what you can to evolve and do new things and bring in new people without losing the core of your game.
Wildstar can find it's own way and if it's good enough, it should definitely be able to charge a sub for that in order to keep delivering that experience and then some.
@entaru But what defines "failure" of a game? Going back to the question of what's better, 2 Million box sales or 200,000 subscribers?
While people are proclaiming the death of sub-based games, where it seems like the trend is to go F2P or B2P then hope to cover costs with a cash shop, would it be possible for a game to pull a complete 180, shoot for an ultra-premium game experience that justifies a monthly cost?
Maybe this is what Wildstar is aiming for.
Everyone else is aiming to sell coffee like they're a 7/11 while Wildstar is trying to be the Starbucks.
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I'm not anti-sub personally. I just think the market has changed enough so that there are enough people anti-sub that any game operating with that model is going to have a very uphill battle and is in a good position to fail.
It's not us that will determine that as we're a gathering of the hardcore who's been doing this forever. We don't represent the general population of gamers, I don't feel.
True enough; but will the people who do determine whether the game lives or dies really care at the end of the day about it and stick around or will it fall to us and people like us, who do care already and want a longer experience, to carry the game on our backs and keep it alive?
Most gamers love to fly in many directions and play lots of things; so do we. But we are different in our level of investment in this hobby and our tastes and desires are more complex and far reaching. We will probably spend more and commit more to a game like Wildstar then they will. But, will that be enough? I certainly hope so.
I have no problem paying $15 a month for a great mmo. I expect a sub from this game and if it's good it will get my monies per month. If I don't enjoy it , it wont. I had no problem subbing to wow and have no problem subbing to any mmo that offers that same kind of experience with updates and such.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
@entaru But what defines "failure" of a game? Going back to the question of what's better, 2 Million box sales or 200,000 subscribers?
While people are proclaiming the death of sub-based games, where it seems like the trend is to go F2P or B2P then hope to cover costs with a cash shop, would it be possible for a game to pull a complete 180, shoot for an ultra-premium game experience that justifies a monthly cost?
Maybe this is what Wildstar is aiming for.
Everyone else is aiming to sell coffee like they're a 7/11 while Wildstar is trying to be the Starbucks.
It is certainly possible. But the fear lies in the fact that having an MMO start off being this perfect dream machine is very difficult. They need time to get everything where they want it. I really HOPE WS can do it.
And the answer to the first question, given those numbers and assuming a shop exists, the 2million is superior. Mores money upfront allows for them to spend more money on making the game better which would lead to a higher retention rate. This then leads to more people to spend money on the cash shop which comes back around to more money to polish and continue to increase staff and make a bigger and better game.
@entaru But what defines "failure" of a game? Going back to the question of what's better, 2 Million box sales or 200,000 subscribers?
While people are proclaiming the death of sub-based games, where it seems like the trend is to go F2P or B2P then hope to cover costs with a cash shop, would it be possible for a game to pull a complete 180, shoot for an ultra-premium game experience that justifies a monthly cost?
Maybe this is what Wildstar is aiming for.
Everyone else is aiming to sell coffee like they're a 7/11 while Wildstar is trying to be the Starbucks.
Failure is not reaching the amount of subs you need to provide enough money for your staff to eat and continue to provide content for the game.
If everyone here gives them $15 a month and so do 10k other people is that enough? Are there still 200k people left who want to spend monthly for the experience?
I'm in the boat that says no. I could be wrong. On some level I'd love to be proven wrong because it'd be nice to play a game without some of the annoyances of the cash shop like lockboxes.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
It'd be interesting to see if an MMO could split the difference. They make the game $60, and provide what's basically an offline single player mode that allows you to exprience a certain slice of the content to max level, plus maybe some bonus content that's there for the single-person to do at max level (just like any MMO would have, honestly).
But for a subscription fee, you get access to the entire, wide-world, complete with thousands and thousands of other people to experience the full game with.
People who are happy with the "single player" experience, that's just as deep and featured as you would expect from a $60, single player box get that, and the company gets the box sales. But for people who are truly looking to dive into the MMO part, they can unlock everything they expect in a fully functioning MMO for a sub fee.
And once you stop subbing, the faucet to the multiplayer MMO universe is shut off. You still have all your stuff, and you can tool around in the "single player" world as much as you like, you'd just need to sub again to get back into the full-on MMO.
I would think of it somewhere along the lines of you buying Skyrim, then being able to pay a monthly fee to unlock something akin to Elder Scrolls Online.
Posts
So you compound the market risk of the consumer by not only asking people to rent your product but to also buy things they won't have access to if they stop renting?
Very few people are going to believe in a new game that much.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
That's totally an insult.
I agree with the assessment that I am more likely to avoid a game with a cash shop and sub, but that's an insult and not just a part of the discussion. Just lay out your arguments and why they apply next time.
Not understanding something you are not educated in is completely normal. If some told me I don't understand chemistry I would say "you are very right good sir, my knowledge of chemistry is very small!"
Now let's continue this on the merits of B2P and such without the silly goose part, please?
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Hmmm it seems I have been greatly misunderstood. I did not say he doesn't understand business, I said it seems which means I did not make a direct assumption but told him what it seemed to me. I figured if I were incorrect he would correct me.
I was never even involved in an argument nor did I realize one existed. I thought ideas were being thrown around and people were discussing those ideas. I thought his first one was an attempt to make one option seem worse by purposefully using limited information. I then realized after his next post that maybe his thoughts were not coming from a place malice but instead a lack of understanding.
This is not a thread to discuss business so I wasn't going to just go off and explain everything and instead intended to mention that maybe he doesn't have the best grasp on it and if he were interested in more details I figured I would leave that power in his hands as the very basics had already been mentioned.
I did not know that post would be so misunderstood but I hope this one clears up my intentions!
But then, GW2 had garbage dungeons, no PvE end game to speak of besides the garbage dungeons, and lost me and all 20+ of my friends who absolutely couldn't wait for it within about 3 or 4 months because we did everything there was to do in the game and the WvW wasn't the RvR experience we wanted, and I was left thinking man, if they had just been a subscription game, they could've had a design team/live team that could make dungeons that don't suck compared to TBC era WoW dungeons.
In the end, a good game is a good game, and I've never not tried an MMO or quit one because of a subscription. You simply have to make a good game. I stayed subscribed to Everquest, FFXI, and WoW each for years, and some other MMOs for shorter periods, and every time the length of my subscription was just based on how much I enjoyed playing the game.
Wildstar looks so far like a game worthy of paying a subscription for, at least for me. I've never really understood the hesitation to pay a sub fee. I've had people tell me the only reason they won't play an MMO is because they don't want to pay a monthly fee for a game. Same people who are glad to play the latest Tomb Raider, God of War, Assassin's Creed, etc. and pay $60 for a 10 hour game experience are like man no way would I pay $15 a month for a game I might play 100+ hours a month. It's a bit crazy.
I spent minimum $30 bucks to see a movie with my wife in the theater. Paying $30 a month for the two of us to subscribe to a fun MMO we play together at least 30 or 40 hours a month is a no brainer if the game is something we enjoy.
Eh, the interwebs be a touchy beast. It seems you've awknowledged you didn't mean to insult someone so there isn't much else to continue with on this unless someone else WANTS to start an argument about that.
I personally don't have an issue with a subscription for MMOs. I think this may just stem from the fact that I started playing MMOs back with Everquest and for the majority of my experience they have always been that way. B2P may work but I'd like to see a bit more success with it before it is deemed the way to go. The cash shop or pay to play parts of a game model I am pretty strongly against as I find it an intrusive and unnatural way to play a game. Those are just my personal feelings and they aren't necessarily supported by any real backing beyond that.
A lot of things about Wildstar appeal to me, but I'm still skeptical about the telegraphs in combat. It seems overly simplistic and causes you to pay more attention to the ground than the enemy. Hopefully I can get in beta and try it out myself!
Part of that is based on what people are willing to pay for a game and how they perceive the value they get for their money.
Let's take the movie analogy. People are willing to spend $30 to go out to the movies because there is value there. They go and see it on a large screen, get some snacks, get out of the house. If they really like the movie then they can buy it on disc in a few months and watch it as they please. There is no perceived loss in this situation.
For an mmo you've got box cost and a maintenance sub after. There is perceived loss if they stop paying this fee. You can simply no longer play and the money and time people have spent on it is gone. If the person is worried about having money in the long term they are not going to feel comfortable paying for something that could just end because of a lapse.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
First I must ask, why do you think any of those things would have been different had the game been a sub game? All of the content you spoke of seems to have been the way they wanted it to be or close to. They obviously have plans to change and update that stuff based on the reactions but I don't feel as though being a Sub game would have had ANY effect on that stuff.
As for the second part I first want to note that I don't actually care about paying a sub. The amount of content I would get for $15 a month is a no brainer. But that isn't so for every one. My best friend is a teacher who doesn't make much money and he would be hard pressed to be convinced into a sub. Does he want to play all the big titles? Hell yes! Does he buy them? Hell yes? For full price? Hells to the nizzle. He plays games years after they release when they have a good sale because he can't afford them otherwise. There are many other people like that out there. There are also loads of young people that would need to save a whole months worth of allowance if they wanted to buy a brand new $60 game and that would be ALL they could afford that month.
The biggest complaint I notice would be people saying the inability to feel like they can freely jump in and out of the game. They need to think "am I going to play enough this month?" ahead of time. They may think "what if I pay and don't play at all?" It makes people feel like they are obligated to play because they already paid. Without the sub people can come and go as they please. They don't have a hurdle to jump over if they haven't played in awhile. They can just say "lemme see what's new!" And if they like it they play more. With a sub it can just slip to the back of their mind. What if they pay and decide they don't like the changes?
Lastly, the current market has shown that is a product is good and it is what people want they will gladly support it at their leisure (kickstarters come to mind) And then I would ask, how many subscription based MMOs have come out and needed to switch to B2P or F2P to stay afloat? And then keeping in mind that the very nature of making that change is a PR snafu it shows how much better they would have done if they started with that model.
I don't buy the can't freely jump in and out of a game either. With MMOs which have subscription models, they usually have content patches at regular intervals between expansions. If you don't think you'll play for a month, you cancel your sub. If you see a cool patch came out with a new dungeon you want to check out, you pay $15 for a game card or just pay with a credit card and cancel and now you have access to the game again for a month. I know plenty of people who pay month to month and cancel their sub each month on MMOs. It's perfectly fine to do that if you're not sure you're going to play it every month. I also can't speak to people who only have enough discretionary income that they have to make choices about whether to spend $15 a month. Those people aren't a factor in a business selling entertainment's decisions anyway. Like you said, that guy isn't buying any games new, so he's not even in the sales forecast.
I like your point about games that had to switch to F2P after the fact, and I think it's a risk. IMO, you're much much better off budgeting and making your game B2P or cash shop from the start if you think it might end up that way anyway. Starting out subscription and changing to F2P looks like a failure, and even though some games have done the transition and managed to still stay successful or even do better(LOTRO), to me, it's still not as good as consistency.
I think any game that switches to F2P or B2P does not do so due to failings of the payment model though. They do it because their games aren't good enough. There's a reason WoW charges a subscription still, and also manages to make shitloads more cash selling pets and mounts in their shop. Because they make a good game and deliver content that people actually want.
They just have to make a decision on what they think is best for their game, and if the game is good enough, it'll have staying power regardless of whether or not they require a sub.
I'm not saying it's a bad game but it gained it's momentum in a very different economic time and now people would rather pay the fee to maintain what they have than the alternative of walking away. A brand new game has none of that pre-built momentum.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I generally agree with Joshmvii's assessment that most MMOs out there just aint very good, thus them going F2P.
Bringing up WoW is important because their very existance is a detriment to a sub model game. They made their game at the right time and due to how popular they've become if you choose the subscription model you ARE competing with them. It's dangerous and a huge risk. I'm not sure if there are even any sub based games that came out since WoW that are still sub based... maybe Rift? Is that still sub-based?
The point is WoW is dug in, they continue to produce what they produce BECAUSE of their success. Which is why others cannot compete. They are too big.
I like the idea of B2P with Cash Shop and a sub *option*. I.e., if you pay the $15, you get X amount of Cash Shop credit (maybe $20 worth) each month and a few quality of life perks. Now you have an incentive to sub if you really enjoy the game, the B2P "lower bar of entry" to the game and the cash shop for people who don't plan to spend $15 a month but might spend $5 (or nothing at all). To me, that's the balanced approach, as long as you keep the Cash Shop and sub option to Quality of Life only elements. When I have to start paying real cash to experience content it defeats the system, IMO.
There is still room in the market for other subscription games. If TOR had actually been good at level 50 and not just from 1-50, it could've been another millions of subscriber having MMO. It just wasn't. Wildstar could be the next MMO that is so fun that everybody starts talking about it, guilds move to it, everybody tells their friends, etc. and suddenly it could have millions of subscribers too. Or it could fall flat and end up a F2P failure. I have no expectations of either thing happening, but I do like watching the development happen, because the devs here say a lot of things that sound to me like they know what they're doing.
Peoples schedules change and other games come and go. I might play an MMO 200 hours one month and 2 hours the next. Depends on what else I have going on in my life. I actually know lots of people who play like this. Or people who play until they are full of the current content and then flit in and out until new stuff comes along. With a sub that flitting phase just becomes an un-sub instead of still playing. If I cared about the money that would suck because I'd have to actually think about resubbing or not. Any amount of pondering something like that is wasted time as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, that didn't last very long.
Ultimately, I agree with a lot of what @joshmvii has to say. People are willing to exchange money for value. But the problem with a lot of these "failed" subscription MMOs is that they don't bring enough value to the table to justify people paying $X/month. That's the root of the problem. By and large, MMOs are one of the single best entertainment values for your buck, assuming you like playing video games and RPGish type games. So the question I would be asking myself as a developer is, "What does the type of person who enjoys this genre VALUE in a game?" not, "How do I make a sustainable business without charging for it." I think the latter is inevitably a recipe for a lower quality experience. Which is fine for some people.
BUT...
The money is with the people whose rare resource is time, not money. It's the people who are trying to maximize their "fun value" per unit of time, not necessarily dollar. That's the golden ticket. But don't confuse that with being greedy. It's simply developing a high-quality, premium game experience that people are willing to pay money for. And the reason I brought up the point in the first place was the orginal quote by someone who basically said, "I hope they don't screw things up by charging a monthly fee." However, I'd prefer to say, "I hope they make Wildstar so awesome people WANT to pay a monthly fee for it."
And also, back to my buddy @daemonsadi the point of asking, "Why not both a sub and a cash shop" continues on that same thought of proving value to the customer. First, in creating a game that's so fantastic, people are willing to pay a monthly fee for access. Second is asking if there's addtional services that these customers may want AND find valuable that you could provide to them at additional (and reasonable) prices. Think of what a cash shop might look like if it was full of extras and "nice to have" stuff, in a game that wasn't reliant on creating situations where people were almost forced to buy from the cash shop because the game's survival depended on it. Could you possible get away from Pay 2 Win boosts, and overprice cosmetic options, down to very reasonably price and purely cosmetic options to help further customize your character or account?
Options to change the animation on a power? Change the color? Change the look of a projectile? Unique outfits? Special emotes? Stuff that does nothing other than saying, "I want my character to look or feel like this" cosmetic stuff. No EXP boosts. No "have to buy" character slots. No "convienence features" that are there because the game is otherwise programed to be "inconvienent" to entice to you buy. A pure cash shop founded on the principle of providing incremental value to the customer, not coercing them to buy something so the game can stay afloat.
And coming back to Wildstar, did it ever occur to anyone that perhaps they may actually be targetting a smaller, but much more value-oriented customer, whose happy to spend money each month for a highly entertaining and premium quality game? Perhaps Pay 2 Play is dead if you're targetting the masses. But then again, maybe the masses aren't were the money's at these days.
This makes me wonder: are new MMOs working with a sizable handicap? WoW has built up so much content over the years. It also has had a considerable amount of time to refine its game play mechanics (effectively or not, I don't know), compared to any newer MMO. Even with the palatable claims made by the Wildstar devs, it's going to take some time to work out their system's kinks and add a comparable amount of content. A fresh experience doesn't seem like enough in comparison to what I've heard about WoW. I can't say I know too much about it though, given that Vanilla failed to hold my attention and I haven't gone back since.
Will any MMO that doesn't represent an utter paradigm shift in MMO ideology ever have a place in the post-WoW market? Without using a F2P or B2P business model?
Make the game B2P straight up with the option to sub. Keep the cash shop for people that want to pick and choose and don't have all the time in the world, people they already have kept in mind when designing content and the leveling game, make a deal where the cash shop stuff is made available in some fashion to people paying subs (possibly in the form of a package deal that permanently unlocks a certain amount of cool cosmetic stuff for someone who commits to a set time frame of months), treat subscribers well without going all Blackgate: London on them and borking balance by making them godkings among free players, make the cash shop mainly cosmetic and fair, charge 60$ straight up to keep the bottom line rolling at the start and keep out the mainly F2P stricken riff raff, rely on the merits of your game to carry the day and make any of this viable at all.
I don't want to undervalue the bottom line of the devs and people producing the game and it's constant stream of content updates which are so key and can be hard to finance if F2P/B2P with no long term commitments dries up as these types of financial models/games tend to do (F2P games generally go through slow burn phases and cycles of activity and in slow times things can get dire enough to cause a brutal cycle situation where not enough money is coming in to fund more content generation which will often cause more people and money to leave, keeping that cycle going until the game dies or manages to somehow save itself with a last ditch effort or redesign or something big).
If they make a solid product and you enjoy it you should have a certain sense of obligation to keep paying for more, but the option on how you go about that should be there for people who want to commit and people who just want certain specific things at specific times and can hop in and out, people who can't commit with a sub or don't feel comfortable doing so for valid reasons. It's a hard balance to strike but I believe it has to be struck in order for the game to remain both financially solvent long term and able to deliver content and proper services on a weekly/monthly basis.
I really have nothing else to add to this long back and forth that hasn't already been said before and better; what I will say is that I myself personally agree with Entaru's thoughts on this with the caveat that I am not totally against the idea of a sub fee in this age of F2P/B2P if the game is good enough, and in the case of Wildstar (which is looking good) would like to have the option to go balls deep if I want and pay a sub to get lots of good stuff up front.
If you want an evolving, persistent experience, you have to lay down some money every so often for that to happen. But you shouldn't be punished for not doing so one way or the other as time and commitments allow. Otherwise you end up with SW:TOR's miserable excuse for F2P.
Part of making up the cost of a subscription MMO is in how much you spend promoting it and what not too. You need way less subscribers to keep an MMO afloat if word of mouth hype and the internet do all your marketing for you. A big part of the reason TOR failed is because not only did they have an enormous budget due to the insane amount of voice acting, but EA spent a ton of money on TV advertisements and stuff too, which just added to the bottom line of how many subs they'd need to make their money back and start profiting. Then when the game wasn't good enough, even the people who love Star Wars so much they wanted to keep paying for that game couldn't save them.
Vanguard is the oldest example I know of, of a company trying to make a niche game for a subset of gamers(Everquest players who wanted a sandboxy "hardcore" MMO), then just let scope creep get in the way of releasing a finished game, so their budget spiraled out of control and they had to release a buggy piece of crap game without crucial pieces of content. I maintain that had they had a much more narrow scope for that game it could've been a modest success that actually had a legit place in the market.
The Wildstar devs to me seem like the kind of guys who realize that.
A subscription model that provided premium/frequent content but was budgeted for a small audience would be an amazingly impressive feat. The more feature rich a game the more it costs and thus the more players are needed for a subscription model.
Path of Exile is a very successful F2P game that relies on a cash shop that is purely cosmetic, not even basic 'boosters' are available. Check out the PAR on it. They go into pretty good detail on why the model works.
The problem with cash shop + sub, especially before you get your business really rolling, is that the question is asked "Why do I need to pay this sub if the game is making enough money through the cash shop?" People will complain about the price gouging.
Not everyone can do the sub thing. I can, but I accept that others cannot for lots of different reasons ranging from time commitments to tight budgets and so on. But B2P/F2P have plenty of flaws too, and at the end of the day, the game needs to be fun, balanced, and financially solvent enough to keep the devs in business and making content.
When I was a kid, I had all the time in the world for video games, and no money to buy them. As an adult, I have all the money I could possibly need to fuel my video game hobby, with no time to play them. I'm living in my worse childhood nightmare.
Maximize my fun:time and you can have my money.
FFXIV: ARR is a good example. It's just another WoW style MMO now, but with Final Fantasy trappings and a few things that not all MMOs bring to the table(level sync, all jobs on one character, slightly more "hardcore" gameplay in the form of losing items in crafting, etc.) that it can actually succeed in today's market, and that's on top of the fact they have to not only convince people the game is good, but to trust them again after the nightmare of FFXIV 1.0.
I honestly would rather just have a subscription model than a sub or cash shop model where subscribers get cash shop stuff at a better value or whatever. If you just make it a subscription game, there's nothing stopping people from paying one month at a time with game cards and only paying the months they want to play. I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I'm just saying what I prefer.
I cannot agree enough. In the end no matter what option they choose it's a matter of doing it correctly, fair, balanced and above all else be used for a truly fun gaming experience.
Build a solid loyal base from that and a good enough experience and then open the door a little to entice more with a B2P option and your even better off.
Maybe that's a better option?
It's not us that will determine that as we're a gathering of the hardcore who's been doing this forever. We don't represent the general population of gamers, I don't feel.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I totally agree with the sentiment. Again, I don't mind a sub. I just hate the idea of playing a game, especially if I end up really enjoying it, only to watch it fall and burn because they made a business decision that wasn't sound.
MMOs are not about making WoW levels of subscriber numbers ever, even if that would be excellent. MMOs are about offering a persistent, massively multiplayer, evolving experience. They are giant undertakings, take years to make, are expensive as fuck even at the cheapest tiers of tens of millions, and have a long history this past decade of crashing and burning or petering out into varying degrees of F2P life support and general failure. You need to be different, sometimes drastically so, and you need to dig a niche for yourself. You need to get as many as you can and then live with that number, and nurture it, and always do right by your players, and do what you can to evolve and do new things and bring in new people without losing the core of your game.
Wildstar can find it's own way and if it's good enough, it should definitely be able to charge a sub for that in order to keep delivering that experience and then some.
While people are proclaiming the death of sub-based games, where it seems like the trend is to go F2P or B2P then hope to cover costs with a cash shop, would it be possible for a game to pull a complete 180, shoot for an ultra-premium game experience that justifies a monthly cost?
Maybe this is what Wildstar is aiming for.
Everyone else is aiming to sell coffee like they're a 7/11 while Wildstar is trying to be the Starbucks.
True enough; but will the people who do determine whether the game lives or dies really care at the end of the day about it and stick around or will it fall to us and people like us, who do care already and want a longer experience, to carry the game on our backs and keep it alive?
Most gamers love to fly in many directions and play lots of things; so do we. But we are different in our level of investment in this hobby and our tastes and desires are more complex and far reaching. We will probably spend more and commit more to a game like Wildstar then they will. But, will that be enough? I certainly hope so.
It is certainly possible. But the fear lies in the fact that having an MMO start off being this perfect dream machine is very difficult. They need time to get everything where they want it. I really HOPE WS can do it.
And the answer to the first question, given those numbers and assuming a shop exists, the 2million is superior. Mores money upfront allows for them to spend more money on making the game better which would lead to a higher retention rate. This then leads to more people to spend money on the cash shop which comes back around to more money to polish and continue to increase staff and make a bigger and better game.
Failure is not reaching the amount of subs you need to provide enough money for your staff to eat and continue to provide content for the game.
If everyone here gives them $15 a month and so do 10k other people is that enough? Are there still 200k people left who want to spend monthly for the experience?
I'm in the boat that says no. I could be wrong. On some level I'd love to be proven wrong because it'd be nice to play a game without some of the annoyances of the cash shop like lockboxes.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
But for a subscription fee, you get access to the entire, wide-world, complete with thousands and thousands of other people to experience the full game with.
People who are happy with the "single player" experience, that's just as deep and featured as you would expect from a $60, single player box get that, and the company gets the box sales. But for people who are truly looking to dive into the MMO part, they can unlock everything they expect in a fully functioning MMO for a sub fee.
And once you stop subbing, the faucet to the multiplayer MMO universe is shut off. You still have all your stuff, and you can tool around in the "single player" world as much as you like, you'd just need to sub again to get back into the full-on MMO.
I would think of it somewhere along the lines of you buying Skyrim, then being able to pay a monthly fee to unlock something akin to Elder Scrolls Online.