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Novaquark Monetization  


Captain_Hilts

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14 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

But you are.. Unless you are saying those who can should pay full price, those who can't should have the option to get in cheaper.

Simple truth of the matter is that playing (subscription based) games is a luxury some will not be able to afford.

Once again: this is not about "can pay" and "can't pay". I know people for example, who "can pay". But they are busy during the week days and they can play only on weekends. And in case of monthly subscription they are loosing most of their subscription for vain. Another example - I know a person who works such a way that he needs to travel a lot - sometimes couple weeks he works in home town and couple weeks he's out. And while he's on the trip he usually has no chance to play the game or use his subscription. And these people could be very loyal players and they "CAN PAY", but they want to pay fair price.

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21 minutes ago, Kirtis said:

But when people pay for the time they are online - developer gets money. Alternative in that case will be no income at all. Which is worse for developer? ;)

Until everyone (and all of their alts) start using pay as you go because it's cheaper.    Welcome to the real world.  Don't want to pay?  Don't play.  It's a harsh reality, but it's a necessary one.  If you can't afford it, get your ducks in a row.  It's cheaper than going out to eat 1ce in a month. 

 

Pay as you go never works.  It has worked in the east, but this is the western market... don't adapt eastern methodologies in the western market.  It NEVER works.

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11 minutes ago, Kirtis said:

I know people for example, who "can pay". But they are busy during the week days and they can play only on weekends. And in case of monthly subscription they are loosing most of their subscription for vain. Another example - I know a person who works such a way that he needs to travel a lot - sometimes couple weeks he works in home town and couple weeks he's out. And while he's on the trip he usually has no chance to play the game or use his subscription. And these people could be very loyal players and they "CAN PAY", but they want to pay fair price.

ah so I guess it's also fair for people who have more time to play to pay more.....by that logic of yours I just switch to this model too....and play with 3 accounts for WAY LESS MONEY than I would pay with a monthly sub. gg, you killed NQ

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11 minutes ago, Hades said:

Until everyone (and all of their alts) start using pay as you go because it's cheaper.  

 

Pay as you go never works.  It has worked in the east, but this is the western market... don't adapt eastern methodologies in the western market.  It NEVER works.

The last time I read introduction of DU it was positioning as "Global", not as "Western".

 

So you want to say, that money from the eastern market are not worth to be earned? :) I would do some research if I would you and would find out how much the "eastern gaming market" is worth before making any statements ;)

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The argument about paying for more milk than you need makes sense, it's just that the analogy is all wrong. You can't compare paying for a product to  paying for a service.

 

Paying a subscription, for a game, entitles the gamer to as much play time as they want. It ensures that the online universe will be there, when they want to participate. Kind of like paying rent on an apartment... whether you're there or not, the cost is the same.

 

Paying only for the time played is intriguing only for those that don't play much. Imagine paying $1/hr to play. Sounds great if you only play for a few hours a month. The folks that play a couple hundred hours a month are screwed. With a subscription, you can do the math and determine how much you need to play, in order to get your money's worth. That number will vary from person to person, but it's not like the price of admission is a secret. Odds are some months you'll hit the mark, some months you might not. In the end, the price of admission doesn't change, which is a good thing.

 

ninja edit: I'm lazy, so I pay $1 or so for coffee each morning on my way to work. Seriously, at the end of every month, my coffee bill will be higher than my DU bill.

Edited by Captain Jack
addition thought about coffee
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31 minutes ago, Kirtis said:

Once again: this is not about "can pay" and "can't pay". I know people for example, who "can pay". But they are busy during the week days and they can play only on weekends. And in case of monthly subscription they are loosing most of their subscription for vain. Another example - I know a person who works such a way that he needs to travel a lot - sometimes couple weeks he works in home town and couple weeks he's out. And while he's on the trip he usually has no chance to play the game or use his subscription. And these people could be very loyal players and they "CAN PAY", but they want to pay fair price.

Hate to break it to you, but the full subscription is a "fair price", even if you can only play one session per week. Compare it to other forms of leisure activity, it is not uncommon to blow the full price of the DU monthly subscription in just one session of other leisure activities. I find the price to be fair despite the fact that I'll be able to commit one, maybe two, evenings per-week to play at the most.

 

play or don't, that's up to you.

 

Not to mention, those of us who have the money where the price is no-object, often don't actually have the time to play a ton. Those of us who can actually afford to spend money on DAC's to use in contracts in-exchange for the stuff we'd have to grind for. The folks that actually do have the time to play tons and tons of hours (students, underemployed) woundn't be able to afford an hourly rate that would be player-footprint neutral.

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Sooo... what are we thinking the price point would be?
$15/month is what, a max of $0.50/hour? But that's probably a discount for bulk rate/advanced pay.
So... $0.75/hour?
I have a feeling the vast majority of DU players are going to be playing more than 30 hours per month.
I think the minimum amount of hours to make much of any progress at all in DU is going to be about 16 hours per month.
So, at best, people paying by hour might save 3 dollars per month.
People who are so strapped for cash that they cannot spare an extra 3 dollars per month are not going to be playing DU anyways.

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3 minutes ago, wizardoftrash said:

play or don't, that's up to you.

Exactly :D

 

And in case of developer it's "get paid or don't get paid". So which is better? To get paid once in a longer period of time... or not to get paid at all?

 

When CCCP introduced their PLEX system there were also whole flame of arguments that "this is beginning of P2W", "the game is dying", "you ruined the Idea of fair game" "Noone will be paying subscription and you'll loose more than earn". But you know what - CCP had courage to introduce innovative method and they benefited from it - a lot. But they only gave a decent option to players - nothing more. It sounded strange, it wasn't common neither for eastern, nor for the western market... but now it works fine in both... though methods and prices vary.

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Just now, Captain Jack said:

This is neither here, nor there, but I wonder if we'll have beggars on the streets of our DU cities?

we might have people begging for DAC's right out of the gate.

 

There will be a "trial period" where people can try out the game, and can in-theory earn a DAC to start their subscription before their trial period runs out. You can bet your butt that there will be a slice of players who instead of just paying IRL money, try to earn a DAC, give up part way through and resort to begging.

 

Heck, I started an ORG dedicated to providing DAC's to poor players who can fill a reasonable mining/refining contract.

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I think some of the other comments have touched on this, but part of the reason you buy the the game time in bulk is to prevent the same kind of griefing you get from F2P games (granted it wouldn't be nearly as much). Also NQ and game companies in general simply make more money this way, and that's not necessarily so bad: individual players could potentially save a few dollars/cents from smaller pay/time intervals, or NQ and other companies could make huge amounts of extra money from the accumulation of all those peoples' lost $0-3 which can be a game-changer if you have tens of thousands or more players.

I think the idea is noble but not worth it.

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1 minute ago, Kirtis said:

 

And in case of developer it's "get paid or don't get paid". So which is better? To get paid once in a longer period of time... or not to get paid at all?

 

Which is better, devaluing your own product by letting less-dedicated people play, or provide a better experience for all players?

 

You are making the argument that a significant slice of the potential player base will just opt not to play if there is no per-hour option. Sounds like you are one of those players, and given that you aren't a founder or a backer, that means that you aren't a customer. Why should they or any of us listen to you? 

 

"hey but it worked for someone else"

and NQ isn't CCCP. DU isn't EVE. this is a doozey of a false-equivalency.

 

Most of us are here to play the game we are paying for, we aren't here to play EVE.

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2 minutes ago, Sir_Rat said:

I think some of the other comments have touched on this, but part of the reason you buy the the game time in bulk is to prevent the same kind of griefing you get from F2P games (granted it wouldn't be nearly as much). Also NQ and game companies in general simply make more money this way, and that's not necessarily so bad: individual players could potentially save a few dollars/cents from smaller pay/time intervals, or NQ and other companies could make huge amounts of extra money from the accumulation of all those peoples' lost $0-3 which can be a game-changer if you have tens of thousands or more players.

I think the idea is noble but not worth it.

Also. OP seems to think the devs will make more money if those "on the fence" players have a way to play per-hour, but the reality is that the number of players for whom the monthly subscription is a deal-breaker is very very small. The devs stand to lose only a handfull of players at a discounted rate by sticking with a monthly sub, but stand to lose a lot per-player of the people who would happily pay the monthly sub if that was the only option.

 

flat-out, the devs will lose money.

 

I'd rather they collect that money and use some of it to improve the game.

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16 minutes ago, wizardoftrash said:

Which is better, devaluing your own product by letting less-dedicated people play, or provide a better experience for all players?

 

You are making the argument that a significant slice of the potential player base will just opt not to play if there is no per-hour option. Sounds like you are one of those players, and given that you aren't a founder or a backer, that means that you aren't a customer. Why should they or any of us listen to you? 

 

"hey but it worked for someone else"

and NQ isn't CCCP. DU isn't EVE. this is a doozey of a false-equivalency.

 

Most of us are here to play the game we are paying for, we aren't here to play EVE.

No, I am not founder and I wrote already why - seen many projects that had great ideas and promised a lot, but failed badly while trying to implement those ideas. I like Ideas of NQ and I am ready to subscribe to DU if they'll deliver what they promise, but not until I'll see the working game worth of the money.

 

And yes, I am paying subscription for the games that are worth it in my opinion - I have active subscription for two different projects at the very moment. And no, I don't need some pay per hour myself, as I do play games quite regularly and monthly subscription is good enough for me. But never the less I understand that world does not spin around me alone and other people have different needs that I do, so the more options there will be, the bigger community we'll have, the better project it will become. I don't mind even meeting some beggars in game :D - it's way better than empty server with few but proud and arrogant "founders - backers" (no offence - I met really nice and friendly founders here on forum and this is not about you guys ;))

 

Regarding the EvE online.. even the NQ developers do not hesitate to admit, that they are planing to use a lot of ideas from this game and this is normal as that project proved to be successful. So unless you want to hide behind ignorance wall there's nothing wrong in using examples from that project.

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1 minute ago, Kirtis said:

And yes, I am paying subscription for the games that are worth it in my opinion - I have active subscription for two different projects at the very moment. And no, I don't need some pay per hour myself, as I do play games quite regularly and monthly subscription is good enough for me.

There we go, so you aren't even the example of a player who would play if it were pay per hour, but wouldn't play if it were a normal subscription.

 

So where are these mysterious potentially lost customers then, and are there enough of them to out-weight the loss in revenue for players like you who don't need pay per hour but would use it if it were cheaper. This is a no-brainer, don't rock the boat.

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Like I said in another thread on the same topic, we'll need some actual metrics (gathered in game and probably via polls or something) post-launch to see whether something like this would be worth it to NQ. The model itself seems sound, it's just that we don't know if the solution to the optimization problem it entails includes this kind of alternate model or not, without the requisite data.

 

Arguing based on gut-feeling whether there would be enough call for this to make it viable or not is a waste of time. In principle the concept is sound, and though a couple of valid concerns have been raised, I don't think they're insurmountable. Ultimately NQ's the one who has to run the numbers to figure out if it's worth pursuing.

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1 hour ago, wizardoftrash said:

Which is better, devaluing your own product by letting less-dedicated people play, or provide a better experience for all players?

 

You are making the argument that a significant slice of the potential player base will just opt not to play if there is no per-hour option. Sounds like you are one of those players, and given that you aren't a founder or a backer, that means that you aren't a customer. Why should they or any of us listen to you? 

 

"hey but it worked for someone else"

and NQ isn't CCCP. DU isn't EVE. this is a doozey of a false-equivalency.

 

Most of us are here to play the game we are paying for, we aren't here to play EVE.

If he/she is interested in DU and active on the forums, he is a member of the community regardless of whether he backed. All view points are important here, especially the skeptics'.

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23 minutes ago, wizardoftrash said:

There we go, so you aren't even the example of a player who would play if it were pay per hour, but wouldn't play if it were a normal subscription.

 

So where are these mysterious potentially lost customers then, and are there enough of them to out-weight the loss in revenue for players like you who don't need pay per hour but would use it if it were cheaper. This is a no-brainer, don't rock the boat.

Again you do assumptions without even reading what the discussion was bout... where did you take "would use it if it were cheaper" argument? I'ts all your immagination as neither me nor TS wrote about it. If you would read carefully, you would see, that paying per hour is actually more expensive as you get less ingame time for the same money. But sometimes it's better to pay more per hour, while using those hours more effectively. 

 

You don't like analogies with EvE online, but never the less I'll use example from there - you can play that game for ~15 € per month if you buy a subscription (less if you pay for several months in bulk), but it will cost you about 20€ if you use PLEX to pay for it. The trick is that you can sell PLEX in game for the internal currency (or buy it if you wish so) and some people end up paying more, just because it fits their needs more. If there would not be that option, some people, who use in game currency to pay for the subscription would not play that game at all, and those who do pay using cash and sell extra PLEX to fund their ingame activities would loose the option to exchange their RL cash for the ingame currency legally - they would need to spend more time grinding and earning in game currency thus get away from things they like more and probably consider leaving game too. All in all developer would loose potential sales and profit. 

 

Flexibility and wider variety of the options help to meet the needs and expectations of wider audience and in a multiplayer you need it as wide as possible.

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I see where he is coming from. A pricing structure that caters to ALL gamers, is better in some respects than a structure that only caters to the majority. Offering a pay as you go metered plan, AND a subscription based unlimited plan, would be ideal for the consumer. Choices are good. Though, like someone else said, the 25 or so folks behind the curtain went with what is best for NQ and "good enough" for the consumer. It's not perfect, and maybe down the road they'll open up the options some, but at this stage,  a simple and profitable payment structure is the name of the game for NQ. It won't take long for players to determine if the game is worth it for them.

 

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10 minutes ago, Sir_Rat said:

If he/she is interested in DU and active on the forums, he is a member of the community regardless of whether he backed. All view points are important here, especially the skeptics'.

If we want to make that argument based on a users contribution to the forums, I see a little over a dozen posts on Monatization threads, and 2 about pvp. That tells me that someone is really only invested in how much the game is going to cost, and not so invested in the mechanics of the game itself.

 

I agree that people deserve an opinion, and they have the right to express them. However, the weight of those suggestions are not all equal. If we want to weigh this user's suggestions based on their contributions to the community, it boils down to complaints about the game's cost and the user explicitly stated that they were not in the "this changes or I won't play" category. I woudn't weight those contributions highly.

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25 minutes ago, wizardoftrash said:

If we want to make that argument based on a users contribution to the forums, I see a little over a dozen posts on Monatization threads, and 2 about pvp. That tells me that someone is really only invested in how much the game is going to cost, and not so invested in the mechanics of the game itself.

 

I agree that people deserve an opinion, and they have the right to express them. However, the weight of those suggestions are not all equal. If we want to weigh this user's suggestions based on their contributions to the community, it boils down to complaints about the game's cost. I woudn't weight those contributions highly.

You got me :D:D. I am not interested in PvP. And I manage to play as PvE even in a hardcore PvP projects like EvE online, Archage or  several others. And I played there for years, paying subscription. Does it make my money I paid to these projects less valuable than money paid by hardcore PvPers? :) Guess not. Being able to see further than narrow needs of my own and understand why other players like different things than I do makes my opinion less valuable and worth considering? I honestly hope that developers do not share your opinion on that as they would bee doomed then ;)

 

And there's so much to discuss about game mechanics... about game which is in pre-alpha (sarcasm)

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34 minutes ago, wizardoftrash said:

If we want to make that argument based on a users contribution to the forums, I see a little over a dozen posts on Monatization threads, and 2 about pvp. That tells me that someone is really only invested in how much the game is going to cost, and not so invested in the mechanics of the game itself.

 

I agree that people deserve an opinion, and they have the right to express them. However, the weight of those suggestions are not all equal. If we want to weigh this user's suggestions based on their contributions to the community, it boils down to complaints about the game's cost and the user explicitly stated that they were not in the "this changes or I won't play" category. I woudn't weight those contributions highly.

I understand what you are saying about the weight of suggestions. All I'm saying is if someone presents an argument for an idea that logically best achieves the shared goals and values of NQ and the community (like say fair play, reasonable prices, large player base, etc), it shouldn't matter who said it because it is the best idea. 

(I don't agree with the OP btw)

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