I'm very happy to pay for a subscription if it gives value for money and I see my money contributing to the development of the game.
The reason I quit WoW was the my months and months of subscription wasn't adding any value to the game because the mediocre content that came out with a patch between expansions didn't justify, in my opinion, the sum of money I am paying, only to then pay the cost of a new game for an expac that was never as big or original or worthy of the price itself, let alone paying a sub for the pleasure. Other games have one-off costs and give greater value for money. I got a sense that Blizzard / Activision are playing with WoW subscribers now and seeing how far they can be pushed for little reward. All the time they well 5m expansions and keep subscribers, they'll keep churning it out, and nothing will really improve until people vote with their feet.
There's nothing on the horizon that is so intruging as to merit a subscription and it may be that no new games can justify it, but if you want to sell good DLC at appropriate times then fair enough, but I won't pay a sub for 'average' released or no released.
However, $15 a month in rental fees to access a game that doesn't give you full access does make sense? I mean you rent access to WoW and FF14 and still pay $40 - $60 a year in DLC xpac fees plus the cash shop. That makes sense?
Of course. It is a free market. Any pricing scheme that makes money, by definition, makes sense.
I assumed that we would see a varied sub market with some games charging between 5 to 15$ a month. I would have thought that older games like anarchy online would offer a lower sub price by now. How much more wrong could i have been.
Lowering your price won't get you more customers. Economics 101...
I assumed that we would see a varied sub market with some games charging between 5 to 15$ a month. I would have thought that older games like anarchy online would offer a lower sub price by now. How much more wrong could i have been.
Lowering your price won't get you more customers. Economics 101...
Price Elasticity. Look it up. Very few goods are price inelastic.
I assumed that we would see a varied sub market with some games charging between 5 to 15$ a month. I would have thought that older games like anarchy online would offer a lower sub price by now. How much more wrong could i have been.
Lowering your price won't get you more customers. Economics 101...
t0nyd said: Then coupons and rebates wouldn't exist. Black Friday exists because lowering prices leads to more customers. Games go from sub based to F2P because it brings in more customers.
You are mixing up several things up..
"Promotions" and sales do not equal to lowering your price as a whole.
Not all customers are paying under F2P model, most don't. You are comparing apples to oranges there..
Barrier to entry is the biggest issue imo. F2P has no barrier to entry. You try out a F2P game if you don't like it, only time is lost. Buy to play is like a normal game purchase. Some games you buy and get 100 hours of entertainment, some give you 20 hours. Buy to lay are what people are used to. With subscriptions you are the most financially invested and if later on the game changes in a way that you don't care for, you will feel burned.
With games that evolve over time it is possible to end up with a game or patch cycle that you do not enjoy. With F2P or b2p you can implement not play until the next patch cycle. If the game never improves you can simply move on. With a sub game you are not only out the initial investment, you are also out 3 years of subs.
I find it odd that F2P and b2p emerged as soon as they did. I assumed that we would see a varied sub market with some games charging between 5 to 15$ a month. I would have thought that older games like anarchy online would offer a lower sub price by now. How much more wrong could i have been.
I never really understood the mentality that you were somehow out of 3 years of sub. You didnt pay in advance and your gonna quit at some point, (or the game will close) you didnt just lose 3 years of sub money, you paid for 3 years enjoyed yourself for 3 years, sounds like money well spent
I know someone will bring this up and that is why I should be more precies and say "make more money" but given the context, I considered it would put more emphasis on my point...
Regardless, Walmart is a different story.
What Walmart did was that they were able to cut their costs due different approach to logistics thus they could operate at lower prices, yet they kept their margins. Something just lowering your price won't do, you will only lose money that way - cut your margins.
But did they get more customers than others because their price was lower?
Again, Walmart is very different story. Walmart is a retailer - they are selling same products for lower price. That is not the same as lowering price of YOUR product.
The point is simple.
People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
I keep reading criticisms of the subscription model for MMORPGs.
A subscription only works for a GOOD game...and most MMORPGs are not good games.
The only MMO released since WoW that was better than average was FFXIV...and its also the most popular subscription game since WoW.
If the game is good, I would pay a sub, otherwise there isnt a chance.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
I keep reading criticisms of the subscription model for MMORPGs. In addition, it seems as though very few of the upcoming games are planning to use it. Why is that? It seems as though it's an ideal compromise between scaring off users by charging them a larger amount to buy the game up front, messing up game balance with pay to win in-game purchases, and not generating enough revenue by selling only cosmetic in-game purchases. It seems as though the WoW model of letting users play for free until they're hooked, and then charging them a relatively modest monthly fee is the best mix of generating a lot of revenue, not scaring off users and not negatively impacting game play and game balance. What am I missing that's convinced everyone that it's not a good business model for most games?
Part of the reason people where willing to put up with a monthly fee was because they could see the fruits of that fee in time. There was a time where monthly / bi monthly content updates made it worth paying that monthly fee. But even taking WoW as an example that is no longer the case. Your more or less just paying $15 a month for next to nothing and then being asked to pay some stupid price for an expansion to continue progressing at a later date.
Players are just tired of being milked dry with the silly $15 a month and then turn around and charge for another box price expansion every year / two years or whatever they decide. Would you turn around and pay $15 a month + box price just to play a single player game?
Almost gone are the days where companies cared enough about there mmo's to pump constant content into there game.
Example buying mats needed to upgrade weapons and armor, these should never be something you pay real world money for. And it is something you couldn't see in a true sub model because everyone would just quit.
In either case you "have" to pay - being it a sub fee or upgrade material. What was your point again...?
The difference is that with my sub I pay a one time fee for what I need vs. the gambling scale of the you failed to enchant or destroyed your weapon go buy another one. This is where you pay ten times what a sub fee would cost for the same thing. Don't believe me go into one of the f2p and tell me how much you ended up spending to upgrade a weapon to its highest tier. Got a feeling it will be in the hundreds unless you are the luckiest person alive. Guess what in a p2p without that I get the highest tier for just my time and a flat $15 or less. Oh and when the next xpac come out and your new shiny weapon becomes worthless I can do the same for $15 or less and you spend over a hundred to do it again.
What am I missing that's convinced everyone that it's not a good business model for most games?
Without reading through the other posts, this is what I think.
Players dislike it for the excuse, "I feel compelled to log in every day." Even though they don't feel compelled to watch their cable TV a set number of hours (monthly fee), or use their phone a set number of hours (monthly fee), watch "X" number of NetFlix shows (monthly fee), or live in their home a set number of hours (monthly fee), games seem to get this stigma.
Companies do not like it because it stunts possible revenue. The old subscription models gave players the whole game for $15/month. That was all there was. They were unable to tap into the mega-millions that some gamers feel the need to spend on video game entertainment.
There are also 2 roads here: 1) Players with time 2) Players with money - Time makes no money for developers/publishers.
PS: If a player "feels compelled" to log in when they have no desire to do so, they are playing the wrong game.
The difference is that with my sub I pay a one time fee for what I need vs. the gambling scale of the you failed to enchant or destroyed your weapon go buy another one. This is where you pay ten times what a sub fee would cost for the same thing. Don't believe me go into one of the f2p and tell me how much you ended up spending to upgrade a weapon to its highest tier. Got a feeling it will be in the hundreds unless you are the luckiest person alive. Guess what in a p2p without that I get the highest tier for just my time and a flat $15 or less. Oh and when the next xpac come out and your new shiny weapon becomes worthless I can do the same for $15 or less and you spend over a hundred to do it again.
So your complaint is you cannot afford to pay for some content in some MMOs...?
I still fail to see what is supposed to be wrong there....or do you expect to be able to afford anything you desire in life?
I advocate the buy-to-play model because I like speaking with my wallet. When a game receives money from me, it should be because the developers did something to deserve my money - not because that's the compulsory stipend they demand each month, regardless of whether or not they did anything to warrant it.
What are you paying for with a subscription? These games often carry microtransactions these days, so you aren't always being spared that stick. Updates are just as prevalent in AAA f2p & b2p titles. They're going to sell you expansions on top of the subscription. In other words, the subscription carries no benefit to the player anymore.
1. Barrier to entry - having to pay upfront eliminates a huge portion of potential customers
2. Irreversible attrition - once players start to leave a subscription game it is very hard to get them back due to entry fee, maybe they just want to check out the latest patch for 10min but $15 entry fee keeps them away
3. Aversion to cash shop - players hate cash shops in subscription games so the low ceiling of 15 bucks per player sucks once you dip below a low player threshold. F2P games can survive even with low playerbase if whales are monetized aggressively
4. Subs are viewed as old and unpopular monetization today
5. Player expectations are much higher in a sub game, again for piddly $15, not worth it
6. Unsustainable long term due to inevitable declining playerbase if not supported by a cash shop for whales
First one to quote WoW is doing it - get a grip - WoW is a huge anomaly, an exception
If I may, let's look at these points.
1. Why do games want to entice players that do not like the genre in first place? It seems to me that a player may look a hell of a lot more deeply into a game before spending money than downloading, creating an account, and jumping in willy-nilly. Clientele can be gated with a sub game.
[EDIT here] If a player can not "afford" to buy a game up front, can they "afford" the cash shop later? Are these the players you want?
2. I don't know about other players, but I had NO problems dropping a sub (when going on vacation or some other time consuming period), and re-subbing when time became available again. Are players really that stupid? They don't know where the billing area is for a game? The thing that is being missed here with this line of thinking is that most players paying a sub WANT to play that game.
3. Agreed. I HATE cash shops. Nothing in a game will drop me out of the game and into the real world faster than a cash shop. "Double Dipping" is still a thing.
4. WTF? "Old and Unpopular"? So what? If ain't broke, don't fix it. But fine tuning is acceptable.
5. Yes and no. Mainly, yes. Players "expect" to play in a sub game for years. Most certainly have no such expectations for a F2P game. What got messed up with WoW was that players started to expect the GAME (developers) to provide the entertainment instead of the other players. Watch WoW's sub numbers drop steadily, then explode with each new expansion. Every. Single. Time.
6. What declining playerbase? A solid 400-500k is quite sustainable in a well made MMORPG. How are those F2P games doing, long term?
As for WoW, why is it an anomaly? What does it have that keeps players subbing? Can it be duplicated?
Now, there is something that F2P does well: They want new players coming in to milk. Old players are a burden to them. Soon, they can not entice the old players to buy anything any more. So player retention is not a "concern" of theirs.
I guess it is all about attitudes, isn't it? If a player enjoys the genre and likes playing a game online with other players, their attitude is quite different from a player that sees everyone else as a nuisance.
I assumed that we would see a varied sub market with some games charging between 5 to 15$ a month. I would have thought that older games like anarchy online would offer a lower sub price by now. How much more wrong could i have been.
Lowering your price won't get you more customers. Economics 101...
But did they get more customers than others because their price was lower?
Again, Walmart is very different story. Walmart is a retailer - they are selling same products for lower price. That is not the same as lowering price of YOUR product.
The point is simple.
People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
But I thought the whole point of F2P was getting rid of that nasty "barrier for entry"?
I keep reading criticisms of the subscription model for MMORPGs. In addition, it seems as though very few of the upcoming games are planning to use it. Why is that? It seems as though it's an ideal compromise between scaring off users by charging them a larger amount to buy the game up front, messing up game balance with pay to win in-game purchases, and not generating enough revenue by selling only cosmetic in-game purchases. It seems as though the WoW model of letting users play for free until they're hooked, and then charging them a relatively modest monthly fee is the best mix of generating a lot of revenue, not scaring off users and not negatively impacting game play and game balance. What am I missing that's convinced everyone that it's not a good business model for most games?
Objectively it is a good business model; everyone knows what they are paying / being payed and can just focus on the game, it's win win. Psychologically though, I suspect it's the fact that most games don't give you much that's tangible for that $15. Also, running the numbers, companies can make more money with less effort by focusing on peoples vanity and instant gratification than making a good game.
Personally I blame WoW... the biggest (at least in terms of publicity) sub MMO of all time, and yet, despite being fun (at least initially back in Vanilla / BC) I always felt kinda ripped off. Here I was paying $15 a month, yet the majority of the new content they released (when they released any at all) was just the next impossible for the average player to get into raid, or the next only fun if you enjoy PvP battleground. And when they did finally release any substantial new small group content it was in a paid expansion! I wish they had had a buy-to-play option.
The sub model can work though, and again personally, I think FFXIV:ARR is a great example. New, substantial, and varied content, that can be access by the majority of the player base is released on a regular basis, throw in frequent seasonal events, and it does feel like my $15 a month is going somewhere. Yes they also have a paid expansion, but the amount, and quality, of 'free' content is really quite exceptional.
Not everyone has the might of SquareEnix behind them though, or wants to make a game based on perpetual new content, so as others have said, there is room for varied payment options, and it depends on the game as to what works best... it's just unfortunate (but understandable) that we have to go through an adjustment period in the mean time.
Don't the majority of F2P / B2P games offer an optional subscription? This indicates to me that both players and businesses still like subscriptions as an alternative. Unfortunately, games designed with F2P in mind are full of roadblocks, nickel and diming and immersion breaking systems. Especially now that developers are bold enough to offer cash shop only content that cannot be earned in any way by playing the game leading down that slippery slope where more and more content will be filtered through the cash shop to the point where it's not so much a game as a virtual shopping mall with a chat client.
But did they get more customers than others because their price was lower?
Again, Walmart is very different story. Walmart is a retailer - they are selling same products for lower price. That is not the same as lowering price of YOUR product.
The point is simple.
People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
But I thought the whole point of F2P was getting rid of that nasty "barrier for entry"?
If 15 bucks a month is truly a barrier to entry, then there is no hope for this genre. I think people like to pretend there is a barrier when all they really care about is a free ride on someone else's dime.
But did they get more customers than others because their price was lower?
Again, Walmart is very different story. Walmart is a retailer - they are selling same products for lower price. That is not the same as lowering price of YOUR product.
The point is simple.
People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
But I thought the whole point of F2P was getting rid of that nasty "barrier for entry"?
If 15 bucks a month is truly a barrier to entry, then there is no hope for this genre. I think people like to pretend there is a barrier when all they really care about is a free ride on someone else's dime.
Wait I thought the problem was these games aren't worth 15 a month?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
The reason I quit WoW was the my months and months of subscription wasn't adding any value to the game because the mediocre content that came out with a patch between expansions didn't justify, in my opinion, the sum of money I am paying, only to then pay the cost of a new game for an expac that was never as big or original or worthy of the price itself, let alone paying a sub for the pleasure. Other games have one-off costs and give greater value for money. I got a sense that Blizzard / Activision are playing with WoW subscribers now and seeing how far they can be pushed for little reward. All the time they well 5m expansions and keep subscribers, they'll keep churning it out, and nothing will really improve until people vote with their feet.
There's nothing on the horizon that is so intruging as to merit a subscription and it may be that no new games can justify it, but if you want to sell good DLC at appropriate times then fair enough, but I won't pay a sub for 'average' released or no released.
Price Elasticity. Look it up. Very few goods are price inelastic.
I play MMOs for the Forum PVP
"Promotions" and sales do not equal to lowering your price as a whole.
Not all customers are paying under F2P model, most don't. You are comparing apples to oranges there..
Regardless, Walmart is a different story.
What Walmart did was that they were able to cut their costs due different approach to logistics thus they could operate at lower prices, yet they kept their margins. Something just lowering your price won't do, you will only lose money that way - cut your margins.
The point is simple. People play games to have fun.
Does lowering price make the game more fun? No, thus you won't get any more people playing it.
It is generally pretty bad practice to compete with price. In order to make business successful, you have to stand out.
Companies like f2p model because it draws players in and makes good money. (Candy Crush)
Redsalt... the other salt.
The only MMO released since WoW that was better than average was FFXIV...and its also the most popular subscription game since WoW.
If the game is good, I would pay a sub, otherwise there isnt a chance.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Players are just tired of being milked dry with the silly $15 a month and then turn around and charge for another box price expansion every year / two years or whatever they decide. Would you turn around and pay $15 a month + box price just to play a single player game?
Almost gone are the days where companies cared enough about there mmo's to pump constant content into there game.
Players dislike it for the excuse, "I feel compelled to log in every day." Even though they don't feel compelled to watch their cable TV a set number of hours (monthly fee), or use their phone a set number of hours (monthly fee), watch "X" number of NetFlix shows (monthly fee), or live in their home a set number of hours (monthly fee), games seem to get this stigma.
Companies do not like it because it stunts possible revenue. The old subscription models gave players the whole game for $15/month. That was all there was. They were unable to tap into the mega-millions that some gamers feel the need to spend on video game entertainment.
There are also 2 roads here:
1) Players with time
2) Players with money
- Time makes no money for developers/publishers.
PS: If a player "feels compelled" to log in when they have no desire to do so, they are playing the wrong game.
VG
I still fail to see what is supposed to be wrong there....or do you expect to be able to afford anything you desire in life?
What are you paying for with a subscription? These games often carry microtransactions these days, so you aren't always being spared that stick. Updates are just as prevalent in AAA f2p & b2p titles. They're going to sell you expansions on top of the subscription. In other words, the subscription carries no benefit to the player anymore.
1. Why do games want to entice players that do not like the genre in first place? It seems to me that a player may look a hell of a lot more deeply into a game before spending money than downloading, creating an account, and jumping in willy-nilly. Clientele can be gated with a sub game.
[EDIT here]
If a player can not "afford" to buy a game up front, can they "afford" the cash shop later? Are these the players you want?
2. I don't know about other players, but I had NO problems dropping a sub (when going on vacation or some other time consuming period), and re-subbing when time became available again. Are players really that stupid? They don't know where the billing area is for a game? The thing that is being missed here with this line of thinking is that most players paying a sub WANT to play that game.
3. Agreed. I HATE cash shops. Nothing in a game will drop me out of the game and into the real world faster than a cash shop. "Double Dipping" is still a thing.
4. WTF? "Old and Unpopular"? So what? If ain't broke, don't fix it. But fine tuning is acceptable.
5. Yes and no. Mainly, yes. Players "expect" to play in a sub game for years. Most certainly have no such expectations for a F2P game. What got messed up with WoW was that players started to expect the GAME (developers) to provide the entertainment instead of the other players. Watch WoW's sub numbers drop steadily, then explode with each new expansion. Every. Single. Time.
6. What declining playerbase? A solid 400-500k is quite sustainable in a well made MMORPG. How are those F2P games doing, long term?
As for WoW, why is it an anomaly? What does it have that keeps players subbing? Can it be duplicated?
Now, there is something that F2P does well: They want new players coming in to milk. Old players are a burden to them. Soon, they can not entice the old players to buy anything any more. So player retention is not a "concern" of theirs.
I guess it is all about attitudes, isn't it? If a player enjoys the genre and likes playing a game online with other players, their attitude is quite different from a player that sees everyone else as a nuisance.
VG
VG
VG
Personally I blame WoW... the biggest (at least in terms of publicity) sub MMO of all time, and yet, despite being fun (at least initially back in Vanilla / BC) I always felt kinda ripped off. Here I was paying $15 a month, yet the majority of the new content they released (when they released any at all) was just the next impossible for the average player to get into raid, or the next only fun if you enjoy PvP battleground. And when they did finally release any substantial new small group content it was in a paid expansion! I wish they had had a buy-to-play option.
The sub model can work though, and again personally, I think FFXIV:ARR is a great example. New, substantial, and varied content, that can be access by the majority of the player base is released on a regular basis, throw in frequent seasonal events, and it does feel like my $15 a month is going somewhere. Yes they also have a paid expansion, but the amount, and quality, of 'free' content is really quite exceptional.
Not everyone has the might of SquareEnix behind them though, or wants to make a game based on perpetual new content, so as others have said, there is room for varied payment options, and it depends on the game as to what works best... it's just unfortunate (but understandable) that we have to go through an adjustment period in the mean time.
If 15 bucks a month is truly a barrier to entry, then there is no hope for this genre. I think people like to pretend there is a barrier when all they really care about is a free ride on someone else's dime.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson