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Monthly Subscription vs. Cash Shop
UngoHumungo
Member Posts: 518
This is a topic of much debate, should mmos adopt the F2P cash shop model or stick with the $14.99 a month. I am going to attempt to help weigh the pros and cons of each type as I see them please be constructive and point of anything I may have missed.
Monthly Subscription
The monthly subscription is a common model for many types of successful mmos offering the player ulimited play time for the 30 days of prepaid pay time, giving them complete access to all feature of the game depending on personal achievment status. Most people are comfortable with this model and feel it stops people from being able to gain an 'unfair advantage'. Assuming most people play monthly as I have done in the past, not sure I would have the money or not each month, the players will spend 239.87 the first year on a box sale game and a years worth of subscription fees. In the 7.5 years WoW has been released a consistant player would have payed $1589.06 on box sales, xpacs, and subscription fee (roughly esistimated math subject to error)
F2P Cash Shop
The cash shop is a model usually introduced in the Free to Play or F2P model where usually features of the game such as but not limited to content, account options, cosmetic item, non-combat pets, and various buffs. The Cash Shop uses a secondary type of currency usually only purchasable with real money. This model gives the player to play the game as they want without having to a subscription to pay. The player can invest as much or as little into the game as they want without feeling locked into a strict subscription schedule. The average Cash Shop F2P player pays for the Box sale of the game and only unlocks content relevant to the game. Assuming the expansion costs are the same as WoW, they would pay $239.96 to get all the content (Again math subject to error)
Please discuss
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
Comments
Man not this shit again...
Besides OP post seem biased by alot.
Similarly OP is seem mix and confuse F2P and B2P in his F2P section.
please stay on topic
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
It IS exactly on topic.
You also cannot have any viable discussion if you make fundamental mistakes in describing F2P business model in first post.
Unless you meant Freemium or B2P models.
You cover the basic aspect of the two models, but I think people and publishers need to realise there is more than just two formats to monetise your game with. Jagex have successfully publish a game with what I think is a very good format, a good chunk of the game completely free, but the rest with a subscription, and now other companies are catching on with there unlimited time trials. We also have the Guild Wars format of Buy to Play, of course they also have a cash shop, but I believe you can still make a successful MMO on just Buy to Play, probably with paid expansions/large content updates.
There is many formats companies can choose or even develop there own, but simply put, badly implementing these monetisation formats will lead to a bad game and lack of profit. Publish a Pay Monthly game but rarely give new content? What will keep people subbed? Develop a Free to Play(CashShop) MMO but badly manage the CashShop, people will leave. A well managed format, any format can make a good game and good profit.
stylin'
Another post trolled, in an attempt to derail, please post something relevant to the topic.
How do I seem biased (which way)
How have I confused F2P with B2P, F2P to the best of my knowledge is a game with no monthly subrscription. Which would make B2P and F2P the samething.
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Then your knowegedle is wrong.
F2P - no barriers in access to content at all (don't have to buy box or expansions or quest / zones / dungeons / etc) + CS.
Freemium - no entry fee , no need to buy game client. Frequently need to buy expansions , frequently more or less optional subscriptions. In many freemium games those optional subscriptions are almost a must on end-game or /and for dedicated players + CS
B2P - have to buy box to play game & access content (trial possible like in P2P). Paid expansions. + CS.
Learn and educate.
When accusing everyone critical of trolling and writing from 'high horse; position you will be trolling yourself and not be taken seriously.
Please give me an example of each. "Learn and educate" lead by example, your first post was so counterporductive and hostile how could I have not thought you were a troll. Because I have been an mmo player for a while and F2P has always meant no subscription fee, like LoL F2P, DDO F2P, GW1 F2P........you gave very generalized it so much we could measure the difference in each game but thats just splitting hairs and I don't think any of us are barbers...
I am trying to start a constructive dialog please add to the discussion without making attacks on me or my opinions or simply don't post please and thank you
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
You forgot the P2P + Cash shop that is becoming ever more popular. WoW has it in limited form (for mounts and pets + character services), K-Tera has it (though it is unclear if this is coming to NA/EU), and TSW will have it.
"Loading screens" are not "instances".
Your personal efforts to troll any game will not, in fact, impact the success or failure of said game.
Math isn't biased, subscription fees are guaranteed money spent, CS's are not.
TSW stated it will be P2P and Cash shop, and yeahI totally forgot you can buy stuff for wow from the blizzard store, not to mention paid server transfers and in GW2 you can server transfer with a shop purchase
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
While I partially agree that it is splitting hais to seperate them into that many blocks, I can still give examples.
B2P - very much guild wars 1
Freemium - hmm probably FreeRealms would be the best example. Or the more collectiable style games like poxnora or league of legends
F2P - more like the all of these games that started out as P2P but then changed to save themselves such as Lord of the rings and DDO, while yes you can make the case that certain content is locked out making it appear more freemium that stuff is primarilly stuff found originally in expansions. Though I haven't had a chance to compare precentage of expansion to non expansion crap really so that would be subject to debate.
however one thing I agree on is
why in the bloody hell are you bring this up AGAIN?
It will simply devolve into a 5th grader level debate as to why each others form of MMO is nothing more then a big poopy head dummy face, as your immediate "troll" accusation so perfectly demonstrated..
The fact is because of the success of DDO and LOTRO F2P has proven profitable on some form, weather you agree with it from a gamer's perspective or no it showed itself profitable.
In addition microtransaction shops themselves have proven profitable, so everyone, WOW included(yes the celestial steeds and winged lions and lil'ragnos count) will start finding ways to integrate them, this also includes non MMOs as all the DLC debates show.
So in the end bringing this up for the 200th time does nothing but start an internet pissing contest and that is why when you posted this the person you are currently arguing with(and getting nowhere I might add) basically shouted "Oh no! Here we go again".
Thought these terms were quite obvious.
F2P is like Perfect World, no fee to DL client and play.
Freemium is like EQ2 where you can start but to access certain classes, certain parts of the game which you can't play until you pay extra for. Tend to have tiers of payment options.
B2P is buy the box and play.
The cs tends to be incidental to the type of game you play as each will have different items/services available.
But seriously, this is just another CS thread which has been beaten to death as can be seen almost on any of the game forums.
F2P have no box sales, then it ain´t free to play.
And almost all P2P games have a cash shop as well.
The issues is rather complicated since many "F2P" games forces you to buy stuff for real money when you played them a while, which of course makes sense since they need to earn money just like everyone else.
I think people are focusing too much on how you pay and too little on making a great game. I gladly pay any model for a good game and I think most people here agree with that.
In some games you more or less have to buy stuff to get further in the game.
But it really isn't the issue here, spending some money in a CS or on monthly fees are relatively cheap for many hours of gameplay, the important thing is the game in itself.
The real advantage that B2P and F2P games have over P2P is that you suddenly can decide to take a break whenever withou losing money, in P2P do you sub for months so playing once in a while gets expensive if you count in hours for each dollar.
It's not splitting hairs at all actually, each company structures their payments differently, and offer different things for real money transactons. You can't just boil it down to two options with a paragraph of explanation each....it's better to evaluate each games system by itself, or compare it to a close rival game vs game.
There's no constructive dialog to be had about "subs vs cash shops" in general, especially when some games have both....pointless thread.
But is it a good thing? Many big AAA MMOs have switch to F2P now, e.g. AOC and LOTRO, while they attract new players and a rush of money they might not be making more money, but just rather enough to keep going, it depends on how it was implemented and how/when you compared the games. The F2P model while becoming more popular does not make it the best model, the best model is one that is implemented the best and managed the best and it varies from game to game.
stylin'
"Good" is relative and subjective. It is certainly "good" from my perspective. I can sample and play MANY games with ZERO commitment.
There is no reason a game needs to go on forever. If I exhause the content (or just the free content) of a F2P game in a few weeks, so what? There are plenty of games out there that i can never play all the fun ones anyway.
And funny that you mention LOTRO. It is expanding with more content. So is DDO. And ROM has been adding content since release too. So i don't see content drying up.
I feel like F2P games have a hidden agenda to somehow get my money in the end so I'd rather just be up front about it and give $15 a month to a reputable gaming company. If I find that I'm not getting my money's worth I cancel my sub and move on.
Plus, let's face it, any F2P game company would love to be able to charge a monthly fee. The problem is that their games are sub-par so they have no choice but to give them away for free and hope for the best.
hmm .. what hidden agenda? It is not like the cash shop is a SECRET when it is plastered everywhere. I much rather have a cash shop that i can choose NOT to buy from. Plus, if i found the game no fun and stop playing, i will be out only a few hours, and not $15.
Actually LOTRO *was* charging a monthly fee and doing well but F2P can make more MONEY because there are "whales" who subsidize everyone else's gaming.
I don't know about you but i have great fun in STO, DCUO and DDO. So yeah, these game may not be as polished as WOW but who cares? I am having fun and it is free.
The choice is the important part and why this subject is so complicated, and varies from game to game, case to case.
The differences are sometimes subtle, f2p playing with paying guys, or on separate servers, the inability to progress past a certain point without cs items and so on, then the advertised "free to play" becomes blurred and foggy, "free to play(but not forever)", "free to play(but not complete)", and people feel cheated, even if you can argue that "free to play" means just "free to play" and nothing else, making rift f2p
Flame on!