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Game time suggestion


TheBlender

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Their costs and revenue would still be the same, so prices for gametime would go up anyway. This also will make people log off every time they're not doing something important, making the game fell emptier and this actually punishes players that invest a lot of time into the game, because they'll need to pay more (and it's bad since they're the ones who produce most of the content and emergent gameplay). Finally, it'll be impossible for f2p players to play the game by grinding (with time) gametime. 

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They wouldn't need to pay more, though, assuming this payment model would be deployed as an addition to the subscription and DAC based systems some time after launch.

 

If price per game time is determined by the subscription cost per month divided by average play time per month per player over the entire player base, plus a margin to compensate for the loss in revenue from people switching to a more favorable payment model, the people who play more than that average get to keep doing what they're doing with subscriptions, and people playing far less than that average can get a slightly cheaper deal.

 

Like I said, for NQ it becomes an optimization problem, where they have to balance how many new clients they could get by lowering the bar of entry for people with very limited time against how much they'd lose by offering a cheaper deal for the people, who would otherwise have had to pay a full subscription instead, paying slightly less for a small amount of actual hours played. The result of that optimization would determine the pricing of that model, tuned in such a way that it results in an increase in profits for NQ.

 

Whether or not that can be done or not will depend on statistical data that we don't yet have, but in principle the idea is sound, as far as I can tell.

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It wouldn't work in eve - you could just trick the whole system there for good. So i suspect it won't work in DU

1. create secondary acc

2. train for markets (however long that may be - doesn't matter)

3. 10min/day work and subscription

4. profit: billions

5. buy plex

6. "sell" plex to your main

7. play for way way less than actual subs

 

Not to mention the nightmare of storing all those skills and constructs plus keeping track of bills, playtime, statistics and so on

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Frankly, I think "pay-per-hour" would be a terrible idea for DU !

 

Players will very quickly start converting the time cost of ingame activities into RL money costs.

 

The forums will be full of posts demanding that mining should be "faster", because it costs X dollars per hour, which is waaaaay too much !

Reddit will have posts with detailed breakdowns of the "exhorbitant" RL cost of training skills in DU...

 

 

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Doesn't that logic apply regardless of payment model?

 

Even with DACs you could: 

1. Create an alt (or just use your main)

2. Train that account to become very effective in generating quanta, via trading or whatever

3. Use the profits to buy DACs and keep playing for free

 

I think I'm missing some underlying assumption that's not mentioned here.

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I didn't open the thread with intentions of sparking drama or forum necromancy. As you probably can see, I haven't been on the forum a hell of a lot but when I searched I did not see anything like this mentioned. 

 

3 hours ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

@LurkNautili

 

The DAC system is their more revenue. There will always be people who want to buy from Gold Farmers, NQ might as well do what it can to be the one to benefit from such thing AND the people who play the game as well, instead of a dude in Finland who runs 15 bot accounts on his private server and just farms money in-game and sells it, with NJQ seeing no income and having to hammer down on said bot farmers.

The DAC system solves the revenue issue. If EVE has 300K subscribers and is healthy with the PLEX system. NQ can do so uch more with the range of playstyles it has - unlike EVE. 

The OP's idea of a "Fair" sub system is the same old regurgitated topic which eventually ,only benefits gold farmers if it's implemented, cause DACs have no meaning afterwards.

 

Feel free to argue over dry ink, NQ won't such a stupid business move.

While I think your rent analogy is completely inaccurate here, as your belongings and the agreement that no one else lives in your space while it's yours, I do appreciate what you offered to the discussion regarding bots and gold farming. 

2 hours ago, LurkNautili said:

I'm not even sure where to start parsing that series of malformed sentences, non sequiturs and straw men disguised as a forum post.

 

You seem to be implying that a pay-as-you-go type model would somehow result in gold farmers providing access to the game for free to people or something... I'm not quite sure. You're confusing two distinct topics here by bringing up in-game currency. The only people who can produce DACs are NQ, therefore they get revenue for them being produced. The gold farmers, regardless of how they pay for their access to the game, still have to pay for their access. The quanta that they farm can be exchanged for e.g. RL currency (illegal), or DACs in game, but once again, that will only affect the DAC to quanta exchange rate, the price of DAC (in €/£/$) and the revenue NQ gets from them won't be affected by any of that.

Agreed. Glad to see that someone else sees what I see. That's my point exactly, a pay as you go system is already at work. It doesn't matter much if it's pay for the month or pay for the week/day. 

 

Nothing I've said here suggests anything not fair for novaquark or the players. So I'm not sure the point or subtle argument on the quotations around the word "fair". NQ gets their money, and the players pay for access. I've yet to see a valid counter argument (imo) other than your things still existing in the game. Perhaps hourly is too much to ask while, but is a biweekly option too much of a hassle and headache? Paying monthly is still pay as you go, however you look at it the amount of time you pay for. Unless NQ implemented yearly contracts like mobiles, it's pay as you go already. No one is obligated to pay for the following month even if your things are still existing in the virtual world. 

 

If you're going to contribute, please give a healthy discussion and debate, not just "I don't like it and it's stupid". 

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1 hour ago, Lights said:

And yet another, unironic post about wanting free stuff

With another OP agreeing with only the people (1 or 2 at best) and calling everyone else wrong.

It's like poetry with these kind of threads, they HAVE to follow a certain pattern.

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2 hours ago, Lights said:

And yet another, unironic post about wanting free stuff

This post really confuse me. 

I never asked for anything to be given for free. 

 

1 hour ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

With another OP agreeing with only the people (1 or 2 at best) and calling everyone else wrong.

It's like poetry with these kind of threads, they HAVE to follow a certain pattern.

Firstly, I can agree with whatever amount of people I want to, and never said everyone else were wrong. I actually accepted counters and reasonable arguments. Don't be sour now because yours isn't one of them. 

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Gave you reasons.

 

And yes you could do that with a normal sub too, but, as we know from eve, it's not that lucrative. Because you need to earn 2 plex per month. With your "idea" I gladly pay 5€ per month to just generate enough money so that I never ever have toto work again in DU and can pewpew all day

 

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If the markets work as in eve, which they said, then it'll work. But yeah, better to wait for the actual mechanic. That's why such ideas aren't really helpful in the first place. Cause ppl just want smth, but maybe that can be exploited,  As I was trying to point out

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At this point I believe we need to put a rule in place that allows moderators to remove threads with topics that are labeled as "exhausted", by locking the thread and posting a link to the relevant thread with the most discussion on the subject.

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It's a neat idea, but would really cut into the dev revenue. It would also add a larger degree of variability to their income flow. Considering we're paying their wages (presumably a petty static cost) and their server costs (again presumably fairly static, with the exception of player growth), are more stable method seems appropriate.

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IMO the idea of paying for actual game time is not sustainable. Personally I really fail to see how this would be an issue with a sub cost of maybe $3.50 per week. Implementing a system such as this would probably cost more than it benefits the developer if at all.

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I think the earlier Netflix example was a relatively good one. Some people simply benefit less than the average user if their time is limited. 

 

As tough or unfair as it may sound, I'd rather have a stable income / cost coverage for NQ so far.

 

The average mass appears to benefit from the classic sub model. Put it this way,  not counting "sudden deployments" with no game access: if you can at least play 13 hours per month you'd pay 1 buck per hour. Double that and it is 50 cents, etc. That would equal a complete day and a bit. 

 

An actual week drives that down further. The more, the merrier. 

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At a monthly rate of $15 I'd venture to say that anyone considering having to pay a beer a week to play this game needs to take a long look in a mirror and probably just stay away. The mere attitude it takes to consider that means that these people will not be productive, contributing characters in game and probably just sit in a camp a few hours a week hoping to catch their loot for the day.

 

Playing a game such as DU or EVE takes commitment and investment of time, an amount of time which in itself would easily justify the current asking price for a monthly sub.

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On 9/20/2017 at 3:46 PM, Megaddd said:

At this point I believe we need to put a rule in place that allows moderators to remove threads with topics that are labeled as "exhausted", by locking the thread and posting a link to the relevant thread with the most discussion on the subject.

Agreed here. Basically every new monotization thread devolves to a couple people begging and pleading and two dozen regulars going in and saying "no" a bunch of times.

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5 hours ago, blazemonger said:

At a monthly rate of $15 I'd venture to say that anyone considering having to pay a beer a week to play this game...

All I want to know is what kind of beer are you drinking that costs $4?

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23 minutes ago, Megaddd said:

All I want to know is what kind of beer are you drinking that costs $4?

It could be a craft beer, some of them are a little pricey but good. I kind of got away from craft beer as I have keg fridge. Between me and my brother we go through 2 kegs a month, 50L each. 

 

If I had trouble paying the sub I could just drink 1/2 beer less each day.

 

Everyone can afford the sub if they really want to play.

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25 minutes ago, Megaddd said:

All I want to know is what kind of beer are you drinking that costs $4?

If I go to one of my town's microbreweries for a beer, and I pay cash as to not get caught up in the $5 minimum, after a reasonable tip (20% plus round up to nearest dollar) it ends up being about $5. I do that just about every week when I'm taking a break from painting miniatures at my friendly local game store.

 

so yeah, $4 will buy you a really nice craft beer at a brewery, or a pair of pretty decent craft beers if you ate buying 12 packs and breaking it down by unit.

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7 hours ago, wizardoftrash said:

If I go to one of my town's microbreweries for a beer, and I pay cash as to not get caught up in the $5 minimum, after a reasonable tip (20% plus round up to nearest dollar) it ends up being about $5. I do that just about every week when I'm taking a break from painting miniatures at my friendly local game store.

 

so yeah, $4 will buy you a really nice craft beer at a brewery, or a pair of pretty decent craft beers if you ate buying 12 packs and breaking it down by unit.

Good to see the thread is taking a turn for the better :P

 

btw.. we're talking $15 for 30 days, so it's more like $3.50 for a beer .. :D

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  • 5 weeks later...

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