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Are we absolutely sure about a pay by subscription model?


Anopheles

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7 hours ago, EagleTrax said:

If it's more than $14.99 a month, I will not be playing.

 

it's 0$ per month if you invest enough game time to accumulate enough in-game currency to buy real 30 day subscription called DAC on in-game markets.

but if you insist on paying real money then cheapest sub should start from around 10e, so it wont be more than 15$ 99.99%.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

https://www.raphkoster.com/2019/01/30/what-drives-retention/

Dual Universe has A LOT MORE GaaS features than other games in one game and the scope is much bigger too.

As for "revenue models" =/= GaaS as per Koster; then  the players to then sell in game creations (& whatnot); which naturally will knock on effect with the in-game currency and out-game investment as well. I think that is quite interesting to think about.

 

 

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On 7/1/2019 at 8:56 AM, blazemonger said:

Don't count on a month playtime being $10.  It's going to be more like 15 I'm sure..

I remember reading somewhere it was going to be in the range of $15-16 USD. It might have been in one of the interviews with JC. 

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I am more than happy to pay 15 - 20 dollars per month for a game like this.   If it is 15 dollars a month and I spend 4 hours per day, that is about 13 cents per hour entertainment value.    If I go to the movies, I can rarely get out for less than 25 dollars...so around 12.50 per hour to entertain me.   And based on how long I spent in EVE, I will probably average a good deal more than 4 hours per day with a game like this.   Heck, I could spend an extra hour working overtime in RL and pay for 3 months of subscription at that price.

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6 hours ago, Aislynn said:

I am more than happy to pay 15 - 20 dollars per month for a game like this.   If it is 15 dollars a month and I spend 4 hours per day, that is about 13 cents per hour entertainment value.    If I go to the movies, I can rarely get out for less than 25 dollars...so around 12.50 per hour to entertain me.   And based on how long I spent in EVE, I will probably average a good deal more than 4 hours per day with a game like this.   Heck, I could spend an extra hour working overtime in RL and pay for 3 months of subscription at that price.

There's any number of these subscriptions however; off the top of the head:

 

1. Monthly gym membership

2. Music streaming sub

3. Amazon prime or somesuch

4. Steam Sales or somesuch

5. Charity per month or somesuch

6. MMO sub...

 

So it's as much the cumulative burden of all these services that is the issue as well as most MMOs are simply terrible and not increasing in returns the longer you play (which is how they need to be).

 

If I am honest, it's less the price that concerns me, as you say, assuming the quality of this game is about "up there" then it's going to be brilliant fun. It's more the time I have available to COMMIT to it that concerns me. That said, I think a huge world like this could kill off interest in a lot of other genres so it does make sense if it's up to quality to allocate a certain time to the game if that criteria is filled.

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You have a good point in saying "a huge world like this could kill off interest in a lot of other genres". That's also the main reason I'm putting a lot of time in this and i expect to be able to put in even more after release. Thinking about the aspects within DU that you can master or at least play will make a lot of the other games semi obsolete for me. Investing about 15 euros per month is actually peanuts if you look at for example the general extra cost of lets say eating in a school or work cafeteria instead of bringing your own bread. the costs of that are probably close to 40 euros per month with an average intake of 2 euros extra cost per day on a 5 day work week. coming form a time where we paid that per month for almost any MMO in 2000 its one of the things that has not inflated that much.

Just keep in mind that any form of free game-play will introduce enormous amounts of bots and gold sellers with respect to any form of payed subscription, paying per month does not stop gold-sellers or trolls but it at least makes the numbers lower.

Greetz AC

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10 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

Just keep in mind that any form of free game-play will introduce enormous amounts of bots and gold sellers with respect to any form of payed subscription, paying per month does not stop gold-sellers or trolls but it at least makes the numbers lower.

Main problem with f2p games is not amount of bots, but amount of real money you need to spend for 'premium' stuff. Bots exist everywhere and DU won't be an exception. The same for RMT, it will be present in any popular game.

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On ‎8‎/‎5‎/‎2019 at 8:47 AM, Aaron Cain said:

You have a good point in saying "a huge world like this could kill off interest in a lot of other genres". That's also the main reason I'm putting a lot of time in this and i expect to be able to put in even more after release. Thinking about the aspects within DU that you can master or at least play will make a lot of the other games semi obsolete for me. Investing about 15 euros per month is actually peanuts if you look at for example the general extra cost of lets say eating in a school or work cafeteria instead of bringing your own bread. the costs of that are probably close to 40 euros per month with an average intake of 2 euros extra cost per day on a 5 day work week. coming form a time where we paid that per month for almost any MMO in 2000 its one of the things that has not inflated that much.

Just keep in mind that any form of free game-play will introduce enormous amounts of bots and gold sellers with respect to any form of payed subscription, paying per month does not stop gold-sellers or trolls but it at least makes the numbers lower.

Greetz AC

The immediate value is very apparent to me:

 

1. I've never seen a comparable MMO with such "VAST 3D-ness". I honestly cannot think of another MMO with that sense of gigantic space all around, instead of a 2d plane to traverse.

2. I'm assuming there will be high numbers able to play in a shared locality that again I've always found other MMOs flunk at irrespective of advertising at being able to do this eg large battles.

3. This does not appeal to me personally, but I am estimating that the voxel "minecrafting-just-one-more-blockalizing...before bed," addictive/creative gameplay will explode for other players in a big way.

4. Put all those together.

 

What I think this will translate to is stored gameplay sessions over time and thus when you play I am hoping some real accumulation of your time invested before benefiting your current play sessions (more and moreso).

 

A lot of MMOs have suggested this but in my experience, I've never actually played an MMO that really delivered this to a realistically experienced degree.

 

So I think DU will go places. The bit that appeals to me is just to be a grunt in someone else's war and pvp on planets, spacestations and space battles! But with the prior background making the pvp not mindless one-offs but all part of a long saga/story. It's not the pvp combat per se, but the quality of stories it generates given fun moments chained together. Seeing an enormous ship either destroyed or hijacked alone sparkles with such quality potential for example.

 

On all that basis it is worth a sub: Doubly so as such a game world would be more rewarding than the sterile trope filled, sci-fi movies from say Hollywood. Interesting to wonder if such a game might even rival boxed tv sets even.

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6 minutes ago, Borb_1 said:

 

On all that basis it is worth a sub: Doubly so as such a game world would be more rewarding than the sterile trope filled, sci-fi movies from say Hollywood. Interesting to wonder if such a game might even rival boxed tv sets even.

it will. Who knows, first DU oriented movie production in 2030 ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, __aes__ said:

What if it were free after a year of playing?

That would be nice, I wish my apartments were free after a year of living there, or my Internet service free after a year of using it.

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3 hours ago, Haunty said:

That would be nice, I wish my apartments were free after a year of living there, or my Internet service free after a year of using it.

It doesn't have to be a year(in fact, that's pretty irrational) but after like 5 years of subscription, a player has done their share in supporting the game, and it should be free.

 

And, Your apartment requires maintenance and can only have one group of occupants at a time. In comparison, DU doesn't have its ability to be sold to others decreased with every user. In fact, quite the opposite. And, although you might not think so, your internet DOES. 

 

Plus, in our society internet and living are more or less essential, while playing dual universe certainly isn't.

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2 hours ago, __aes__ said:

And, Your apartment requires maintenance

 

The server cluster DU runs on requires maintenance, the game requires constant maintenance, updates, additions, new features.

It's not like after 5 years the data center tells NovaQuark.. "hey.. you paid for 5 years, you can now use the servers for free"

 

You are not 'supporting the game' you are buying server time allowing you to access the game. You stop paying, you lose access.

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8 hours ago, __aes__ said:

What if it were free after a year of playing?

I'm sorry, this is one of my hot-button issues.  For the life of me, I will just never understand why people think that MMO games should be free.  I just don't get it.  Programmers spend years and years to learn their trade and then years and years to make a game and in the case of games like this, they then pay years and years of sever costs, maintenance and updates to continue providing access.  Not to mention the innovation, risk taking and passion game devs have is unlike any other service that I have ever paid for.   But people still want them to be free?!

On the other hand, these very same people will buy a $600 phone and agree up front to pay anywhere from $50 -$100 or more per month to use the darn thing for at least two years or they are in breach of contract.   They seem to have no problem paying places like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon $10 a month forever to see reruns of movies that they have, most likely, already seen that took a fraction of the time and money to make and are not near as entertaining as a good MMO.  But no one seems to have a problem with that.   There are tons of similar examples that i won't go into, but I'm sure you get the gist.

So what is it about games that makes people like you believe that its ok to even suggest that other people work for free and even cover any costs they have to pay to provide you untold hours of free entertainment?   How does anyone think that's a reasonable request?

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Can't wait for the ingame fun!! You are just so right @Dhara, anything i would ever want to add can never get over this post. 

We just should rejoice every month we get the pay reminder. "Yesss another month of joy and fun and [ Fill in your very desire in DU] yesss Lets Log and take a few free days from Work to do things that Really matter!!!"

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/15/2019 at 8:39 AM, Anopheles said:

The gaming world appears to be moving away from monthly fees for games.

 

Perhaps a flat fee would be better with payments for ENTIRELY non gameplay items like decorative elements, element skins or paying to import your own models/skins from Blender (subject to review before acceptance) etc?

 

Edit: title fixed 

I can assure you, that this is unsustainable for a sand box mmo. Now if this was a theme park mmo then I would absolutely agree with you, as most theme park mmo's tend to and should go F2P/B2p. 

Now why would a non sub model be detrimental to the game and how can a sub model benefit the game?

  1. Proliferation of griefing accounts with F2P(B2P to some degree) and this is no joke. You have an mmo game that might include the possibility of losing in game assets/ time invested and you want to give people the ability to do this with no risk? I can assure you that the developers/GM's will be overwhelmed with the amount of cheaters/griefers that would take advantage of the system, which detracts from developing the game. We are already seeing this with rmt/bots in Eve where every ban wave another 100-200 accounts are created immediately afterword and banning accounts isn't easy as false positives means one customer that is going to bad mouth your game. I would like to that CCP just banned 100 something corps with nothing but botters and word on the street as they say they were replaced within 24 hours.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 If the J.C decides to implement a sec system that isn't garbo like Eve's, you will now have a way to curb anti social/sociopath behavior. I played Eve online back in 09' and you had gankers that could target you in a secure area and kill you take your loot and laugh at you, but this wasn't a regular occurrence. Since CCP went with a semi F2P model this has gotten to ridiculous proportions (I see at least 3-5 transport wrecks every day I log in) and now it a detriment to the game. For me to travel and bring my goods to another market I either have to wait for a few months to train into a freighter that has a ton of hp  + purchasing one that costs 1.5 months of plex or travel in a transport ship that has smaller capacity, maneuvers/initiates warp as fast as a 100 year old person getting out of bed and I can get dunked by 1-2  some 2 month alt accounts for the lulz.
  2. A sub model that the studio is proposing is very feasible and mostly beneficial, but with some downsides. Pretty much all players that play in western/first world countries are going to drop cash for a sub and this is because no one with actual disposable income wants to grind for plex. Now people from the 2nd world countries/etc are going to be able to leverage the use of Dac's which is basically the equivalent of plex. I can assure you that many players in the 1st world countries will dump cash into dac's to just get easy in game money legally (if the studio prices them right) and put them on the market. How sustainable is it? Well I will admit I dropped over 2-3K in plex since 09' and just recently started to try and actually farm for the in game money instead and I know others that dropped +10k over their 5 years. The fact is (I know I might get penalized by the rules, but real talk as I say) a lot of people that actually has a good chunk of disposable income doesn't like to farm/grind. Myself I would rather drag my sack across a mile of broken glass then farm/mine over doing pvp or more fun activities.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     The only downside to the Dac system is rmt side of the house will take advantage of it, but it will benefit players that can't afford to pay due to currency limitations. When I joined a null sec alliance in Geminate region, I recall a couple players while unemployed because of the financial crisis was able to play as long as they devoted a certain amount of hours to farming/isk making activities. They were able to always play until they found a job and can get back on to a sub plan and I know tons of Eastern European players that were able to do the same as well. I am confident that you and others are going to be better hustlers then a lot of the players in the west because when you don't have a safety net of a sub, but have actual time, I have seen crazy ingenuity to make isk from players.                                                                                       
On 6/30/2019 at 5:18 AM, Oddfella said:

So long as DACs are accessible through hard work during the game, it might not affect the number of new players willing to try DU out. My only concern is if players start pricing DACs at extortionate rates that put off newcomers. It only hurts the core in the long run as they won't see much rise in the player base. But I'm open minded to that test. Hopefully the sub model won't be an issue when players decide between this one and its competitors.

 

Yes yes "10 dollars a month is nothing" and "DU has no competitors" but you gotta hope everyone thinks like you.

I am doubtful on the pricing being high rates  as the in game currency is hard to manipulate if the studio is watching it. All it takes for the studio is to do a sale and the market will be flooded. I noticed in Eve, people has some serious impulse problems. Instead of I don't know waiting and seeding the market, they act like full tards and dump them on the market resorting to an easy 20% drop in price that takes a month or two to get back up to the premium price it was at. Worse now as they moved all in game time from the forum to plex and so it is so transparent with the in game tools to see total volume and line graphs on the avg movement of said product. When it was on the forums it was super easy to manipulate and I also took part in said actions.

 

 

 

*edit tried to fix format issues

Edited by plmkoi
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  • 1 month later...
On 8/5/2019 at 2:04 PM, Miamato said:

Main problem with f2p games is not amount of bots, but amount of real money you need to spend for 'premium' stuff. Bots exist everywhere and DU won't be an exception. The same for RMT, it will be present in any popular game.

 

Hes got that backwards, there are more bots in non cash shop games because there is no legit way to advance, so it creates a bigger black market.  Every game I have played, with a sub, Everquest, Everquest 2, Wow, Ulitma Online, Asherons call, Star wars galaxies, especially SWG,  all had huge black markets in the millions.  People dont have time to grind, and have jobs so they look for a way to compete with people who have 12 hours a day, and if they cant find it in the cash shop they always go to the bot farmers. Eve online tried to stop it with selling plex, but all that did was make it so bots could run big farms. You are right I dono how you would stop it all, I have seen it done in small time games, but not in big games, they give up I guess. 

 

I would like to see a sub required, and a cash shop that sells advancement. Then the majority of people would just buy it from the cash shop instead of seeking it with the bots. Then a public punishment system where if you are caught boting, cheating, or buying outside the game you are publically posted all over, and they put your name in a public list, and ip ban you. Atleast something, that is the only thing keeping me from buying this game, is i dont see they have anything to stop rmt, botter, and cheaters. 

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The game is at least a year away from release, is still in alpha and arguing you will not be "buying" this game because there is no sign of measures against botters, cheating or RMT is at best silly. First off, you will not be buying the game, you will be asked to pay a monthly fee to have access to the game servers.

 

Making methods of counteracting RMT, BOTS and Cheating is generally counter productive. I think DU by nature will be hard to bot in many ways, will see little opportunity to cheat and RMT may be an issue but it will be hard to combat and generally the least harmful. Expecting any sort of visibility or knowledge on how this may be combated is at best premature and at this time actually irrelevant.  

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On 10/20/2019 at 9:27 AM, makasouleater said:

 

Hes got that backwards, there are more bots in non cash shop games because there is no legit way to advance, so it creates a bigger black market.  Every game I have played, with a sub, Everquest, Everquest 2, Wow, Ulitma Online, Asherons call, Star wars galaxies, especially SWG,  all had huge black markets in the millions.  People dont have time to grind, and have jobs so they look for a way to compete with people who have 12 hours a day, and if they cant find it in the cash shop they always go to the bot farmers. Eve online tried to stop it with selling plex, but all that did was make it so bots could run big farms. You are right I dono how you would stop it all, I have seen it done in small time games, but not in big games, they give up I guess. 

 

I would like to see a sub required, and a cash shop that sells advancement. Then the majority of people would just buy it from the cash shop instead of seeking it with the bots. Then a public punishment system where if you are caught boting, cheating, or buying outside the game you are publically posted all over, and they put your name in a public list, and ip ban you. Atleast something, that is the only thing keeping me from buying this game, is i dont see they have anything to stop rmt, botter, and cheaters. 

I think everyone is blowing the rmt'ing way out of proportions. I played Eve since 09' and while yes the plex created a black market, it was no where close to Wow's or any other theme park mmo's scale. All the game's you mentioned were mainly theme park mmo's and the leveling could be done if you paid someone to power level for you. DU is copying off Eve's model for a good reason, that skills/abilities are time based. This in itself is a major deterrent for a lot of players if DU decides to go heavy handed with a ban or CCP's method of draining your account of all the illicit cash you paid for even if it goes into the negative. 

 

If anything the bot's are going to make the studio filthy rich because those accounts are going to have to resub and players punished for buying dirty currency will have to climb out of that hole with game time sales on the forum. If they do what CCP does, it will be wait for a couple months as they collect all the id's of players selling/bot farming  (insta ban) and players purchasing the dirty money. They would then ban those accounts and by that point players have used the dirty currency and so if you don't have that amount in your wallet, well you are going to be in the whole for a lot = aka sell game time on the market or quit and lose that investment of months or years for that account.

 

Plus from what I am seeing so far how the game's vision/development. Botting is going to be very challenging endeavor based off a lot of the mechanics that requires some active participation. The only thing this studio has to do different from CCP, is to make sure that they look into player organizations trying to launder that dirty money and punish the leaders. 

 

 

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8 hours ago, plmkoi said:

DU is copying off Eve's model for a good reason, that skills/abilities are time based.

 

This is a very crucial point. Like EVE, DU will not insta reward someone for buying 10 DAC and then buy in game currency to get an instant advantage. Actual game experience and skill will be more important than the talents you train.

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I think a subscription model is to prefer as long as it is possible. I remember when EQ2 went free to play. Nothing dramatic immediately but soon you noticed that the quality of the people who played the game went down (as in personality and demeanor not skill in playing the game), and that made many old players leave after shorter or longer time.

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