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The Subscription System


Ravenhawkhero

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Hi all,

 

I've been interested in DU for a long time now, and the one thing that bugs me about the game is the subscription system. I can see why NQ want to use it, but I have a suggestion I beg you to consider. 

1. Add a decently priced one time fee for full access to the game, no restrictions. (high enough to keep the cod kids out)

2. KEEP a monthly subscription but add subscription only cosmetics etc, mabe even only let subscribers create Orgs? 

 

Cheers,

 

Hawk

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11 minutes ago, Ravenhawkhero said:

Yeah I get all that, its just that we are not all rich, especially me in Australia, the currency conversion hurts, its about 20 dollars a month.

yeah. That's not NQs problem is it? They already did implement something for ppl like you: DACs. Earn enough ingame money, buy a DAC with ingame money, use it and get 30 days of game time. You CAN play for free if you make enough ingame money.

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This has been discussed to death in several threads here and there will always be those who feel they can't afford/think it will not work/need something different. Point is that for a game such as DU a subscription model is simply the most efficient. If you can't afford to pay roughly $4/week to pay for a sub you can choose to put in the effort to make the money in game and sub that way.

 

This is not a 'play the loop, solve the game, move on' kind of experience.. There is no real endgame here and you will get many, many hours of ongoing playtime out of the game which more justify the subscription fee IMO. While my backer package will give me well over 4 years of playtime I doubt I will need the DAC for that after maybe a few months at most and make enough in game to pay for playtime. It's how I run all my accounts in EVE (about 7 right now) which is similar in that regard although EVE is probably easier to fund in-game subs due to the amount of NPC/PVE content with a good to excellent payout.

 

Part of the fun will be to build a business model in game which will make it profitable to the point where the game characters can sustain themselves. And like myself I'm sure there's a good number of players already developing these plans.

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- Subscriptions are the best and most honest revenue model for a MMO in my opinion. No extras, no pay2win, no item-shop bs for any player. Everyone is equal. How far You get is all about Your skill and what You make and build in the game.

- There indeed were lifetime subscriptions within some of the old pledge packages. Probably similiar offers will come back one day...

- No need to buy overpriced ships You can't design, change or modify Yourself like in Star Citizen.

 

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16 minutes ago, Costanius said:

... Probably similar offers will come back one day...

 

Doubt it. Those kinds of offers are expensive for the devs over time; they effectively remove a player from the funding stream once their package cost is exceeded by whatever the subs would have cost to that point. They are a reward for very early backers with deep pockets who take a chance on an early concept. Once early backing is done, the life-sub offers always vanish, and never return. 

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On 04/12/2017 at 9:57 PM, blazemonger said:

This has been discussed to death in several threads here and there will always be those who feel they can't afford/think it will not work/need something different. Point is that for a game such as DU a subscription model is simply the most efficient. If you can't afford to pay roughly $4/week to pay for a sub you can choose to put in the effort to make the money in game and sub that way.

 

This is not a 'play the loop, solve the game, move on' kind of experience.. There is no real endgame here and you will get many, many hours of ongoing playtime out of the game which more justify the subscription fee IMO. While my backer package will give me well over 4 years of playtime I doubt I will need the DAC for that after maybe a few months at most and make enough in game to pay for playtime. It's how I run all my accounts in EVE (about 7 right now) which is similar in that regard although EVE is probably easier to fund in-game subs due to the amount of NPC/PVE content with a good to excellent payout.

 

Part of the fun will be to build a business model in game which will make it profitable to the point where the game characters can sustain themselves. And like myself I'm sure there's a good number of players already developing these plans.

Sorry to everyone here I thought It would end up like Wow where it is next to impossible to get the equivalent of a DAC

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12 minutes ago, Ravenhawkhero said:

Sorry to everyone here I thought It would end up like Wow where it is next to impossible to get the equivalent of a DAC

It's a player run market and supply and demand will regulate that - NQ might step in if prices are ridiculous for DACs but we'll have to see.

 

People who want to play for free may do so (or ppl who don't have time for grinding money) - but the sub has to be a part of DU

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This has been discussed to death. However I feel that it's been a year since the F2P thread started, so everything does deserve a valid answer.

 

So, there was actually a way to avoid the subscription. That is to get a lifetime subscription in the kickstarter and crowdfunding period. How much? $475 USD for the physical rewards pack offered with the kickstarter. I think $425 USD for the digital rewards. I got the lifetime subscription for these reasons. A) I wanted to support Dual Universe and B ) I know that I'll be playing Dual Universe for the amount of time that my investment turns back, which is over two years.

 

Now Lethys has been doing an excellent job explaining this. There is also a dev blog about it here:

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2016/04/08/monetization-player-happiness-and-economic-viability/

You can hear it explained by the people personally working on the game that way.

 

Along with that, here's the way I'm going to put it. Let's take a look at a game like Space Engineers. It's been a big hit, selling many copies, and so on. However you should have noticed that it hit beta at a certain point, with a release planned at some point evidently. This is a simple problem of the fact that not everyone is going to buy Space Engineers at the same rate for extended periods of time. KSH is likely planning to put the cap on it when it no longer has enough profit(if it hasn't already done that). So you will see Space Engineers have a life cycle that's impressive for a B2P game, but would not cut it for an MMO. Infact I'd call myself a detriment due to my status not having to pay monthly.

 

That's a summary of it all. I tried to touch on points that Lethys didn't cover. Hope you were able to get some more information from it.

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I Play video games -I don't watch TV- I don't smoke cigarettes- I rarely go out for dinner- I don't have a phone data plan for 100$ a month(phones are stupid they just let people interrupt you playing video games)

 

Point is I spend my money where I spend my time & subscriptions keep a large amount of douchbags out. I think its a great idea!!!

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Subscription games are like buying a 60 USD game once every six months and DU's plan of free expansions once every six months or so, means you can take a six months break and - unlike WoW - you won't have to buy the Expansion you never got to play, since each Expansion is ADDING to the game, not the "end game".

 

And if you guys didn't notice, B2P is not even good enough to support EA's games which come out every year or two years. 

The recent debacle of Lootboxes, had analysts in EA's favor saying "Gamers need to spend 10 USD a month for these companies to sustain the game post-launch". That's 10 USD a month ON TOP of the 60 USD you payed for the game itself. DU has no B2P price due to that.

DU is not lying to you with "free to play" and then shoving a paywall and saying "pay or grind forever like a limeston quarry slave". and EVEN the DAC system (you buying subscrtiption for other people and selling it in-game for in-game cash) is built around the notion of subscription as a microtransaction.

 

See, in DU, you don't get in it cause it's F2P, then paying a metric fuckton to be on equal footing with others. You START at an equal footing with others and then end up - literally - playing for free, by buying you subscription for in-game cash - which is not hard at all, if you are business savvym or, you know, pay attention and talk to people.

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10 hours ago, Raza157 said:

I Play video games -I don't watch TV- I don't smoke cigarettes- I rarely go out for dinner- I don't have a phone data plan for 100$ a month(phones are stupid they just let people interrupt you playing video games)

 

Point is I spend my money where I spend my time & subscriptions keep a large amount of douchbags out. I think its a great idea!!!

Did we just become best friends?

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On 12/4/2017 at 1:41 PM, Ravenhawkhero said:

Yeah I get all that, its just that we are not all rich, especially me in Australia, the currency conversion hurts, its about 20 dollars a month.

In my country average salary is ~200-250$ per month. 

That means half of citizens cannot afford anything like this subscription. But as mentioned before - DACs (PLEX) system is best option for them. 

If you enjoy the game - you will spend enough time to purchase subscription with game currency. If you are good at some game aspect or at least communication with other players - they may find you useful and may pay for you to stay in the team.

I'm playing EVE since May 2009 and I disagree with anyone who thinks such kind of games may be 'purchase once and play'. If developers have not enough money to sustain severs and team - game won't exist.

The second issue with DU as well as EVE - they won't ever become so popular as some titty-elf-rpgs, as they are complex enough to push away casual players. That is why developer company won't get insane money from initial sales.

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1 hour ago, Miamato said:

In my country average salary is ~200-250$ per month. 

That means half of citizens cannot afford anything like this subscription. But as mentioned before - DACs (PLEX) system is best option for them. 

If you enjoy the game - you will spend enough time to purchase subscription with game currency. If you are good at some game aspect or at least communication with other players - they may find you useful and may pay for you to stay in the team.

I'm playing EVE since May 2009 and I disagree with anyone who thinks such kind of games may be 'purchase once and play'. If developers have not enough money to sustain severs and team - game won't exist.

The second issue with DU as well as EVE - they won't ever become so popular as some titty-elf-rpgs, as they are complex enough to push away casual players. That is why developer company won't get insane money from initial sales.

To be honest, EVE is not popular cause it's a point-and-click adventure in space - and the Incarna fiasco with the introduction of pointless Avatars made it abundantly clear those who paly EVE and pay for it don't wnat Avatars. It got nothing other than explode or be expldoed as of gameplay - and let's be honest, EVE's main thing is PvP, not gas harvesting :P.  DU - for better or worst- has a far greater appeal and reach. Most seasoned EVE players say the same thing after seeing DU "no more station spinning I guess", which is the mai nreason people leave EVE or leave it and come back later on (as I do often enough, cause stealing loot from escalations can be limitedly exciting when you do it 20 times in one week).

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7 minutes ago, CaptainTwerkmotor said:

To be honest, EVE is not popular cause it's a point-and-click adventure in space

Only from first glance. The same I can tell about any other game - on high level all games are just about pressing some buttons to see a different picture on monitor. 

Eve and DU are at the same time totally different games, that have similar approaches to some gameplay aspects.

Definitely both will be hardcore and have difficult learning curve. And this two factors are one of key factors to limit the public. The third one - less sexy elfs that fulfill fantasies. 

 

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  • 1 month later...

I was 100% against monthly fees but now I defend them with 100% conviction, and here is why...

 

Keeping up quality online content and thousands of high quality servers running daily, assuring all gameplay goes smooth for thousands and thousands of players is quite expensive, is not the pledges and game purchases that will be insuring that quality continuously for months and years

 

A company has only 2 choices

 

1 - Ask for a monthly fee, assuring payment equality for all gamers, bringing free updates and avoid too much of a grinding for ingame resources

 

2 - Bring on micro-transactions that will degenerate everything, give advantage to bigger wallets and forcing devs to create horrible grinding, promote grieffing against grinders, launch very expensive contents and impose many paywalls to force people to get fedup and go pay for micro-transactions

 

I'm addicted to GTA5 Online and if you check on youtube about shark cards you will see what happened to an once great game

 

If your online maintenance income is micro-transactions you must force people to get tired and bored with grinding or else you go broke, so yes, monthly fees are the way to go

 

And please do not answer me people should not be lazy to grind - On GTA nowadays you spend half time and half stress working at Macdonalds to pay for micro-transactions than actualy grinding ingame for the same currency amount, and Im not exagerating at all, I actually did the math, and that is if people grind in teams, not solo

 

Monthly fees all the time, PLEASE

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

In short, as I likely posted elsewhere in time already:

 

The subscription fees make sure the game keeps running or that the devs can calculate better, more or less, while the ability to in theory purchase game time through in-game efforts serves as good compromise or enticer for those who do not necessarily want to pay hard cash for each month.

 

The DAC idea is a good compromise and can get players into the game that would not pay initially. And if they are successful (and / or lucky) in the game, they might not even have to pay a dime, or only rarely, per month.

 

I'd argue that most players can also manage to pay the monthly fee in hard cash, at least initially. Those who have trouble or might have trouble and are aware of this now, or in other words, interested in playing the game, they have plenty of time to save up until it becomes relevant.

 

And for all others or those who cannot, there's still an option in theory: Earn game time by working for organizations without playing the game. You can surely offer some service and earn a DAC or two. Not everything is done in the game.

 

If all of that fails and if you lack money long-term without wanting to contribute to orgs on a meta or out-of-game level, you likely have other problems.

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Another angle on this sub question topic: A superior product can demand a sub price OP, if DU achieves that, then it will be the commercially best pricing option for NQ irrespective of any person's personal preference. Not even coming back to server costs, player investment in virtual economy and social groups ROI of sub...

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Due to family , work and other things going on I will probably only get to play on weekends and I'm sure I am not the only one ! I will probably try to fine someone how has more game time and can mine for me ! So this is another thing that's great about the DAC system because I would probably have to spend 1 day of mining to get the materials I need and I will only realistically have 2 day a week for game play .   =(

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  • 4 weeks later...

What is the monthly fee for? Just for saving the players progress?

 

Novaquark just has to keep the server(s) running.

They don´t have to create new content, they don´t have to create new maps or zones. There are no quests, no NPCs no PVE content.

 

Don´t get me wrong, I´m willing to pay a monthly fee but I would like to know what for as the community is generating all the content.

 

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31 minutes ago, Gerald_Deemer said:

What is the monthly fee for? Just for saving the players progress?

 

Novaquark just has to keep the server(s) running.

They don´t have to create new content, they don´t have to create new maps or zones. There are no quests, no NPCs no PVE content.

 

Don´t get me wrong, I´m willing to pay a monthly fee but I would like to know what for as the community is generating all the content.

 

A gigantic single shard universe requires a giantic server cluster that costs to run. The monthly fee is for that as well as the future content they create. There's already plans for expansions and those are free for the players. Meaning you pay the monthly sub and the game will keep running and giving you new content every now and then 

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