Are non-paying customers useful?

laxie

F2P companies have crystal clear metrics on everything. I'm wondering what the general stance is on non-paying customers.

The hope is to convert free users to paying ones. But is there a cut off point? If you have a Farmville user who has not bought anything ever, is it in the companies best interest to let them go?

Every non-paying customer is costing the company server traffic. If they take support resources, the cost is even higher.

Does the mere presence of a user outweigh this cost? Perhaps people playing means more exposure for the product? Perhaps they may invite potentially paying friends in the future? Perhaps they form a better community for the paying consumers, enhancing retention of the paying segment?

Do developers see these as valuable enough to support the non-paying segment?

Aeander

I would say yes.

Non-paying players can provide positive word-of-mouth which may bring in paying customers.

Non-paying players can become paying customers if something that appeals to them is released.

Non-paying players populate the game, maintaining the community that keeps paying customers playing and paying.

In games with currency conversion systems, non-paying customers indirectly buy currencies purchased by paying customers.

pantheron

non-paying customers are content for the paying customers, either directly, as in a PVP game where they can be slaughtered by the dudes with fat stacks, or indirectly, making the game world feel full, providing people to do dungeons with, group up with, etc. All free players are also potential paid players, and once the initial barrier is broken, ie, players make 1 purchase, its unlikely that they won't make another. 

iixviiiix

For "devil - lopers" anything not whales aren't useful and should be remove from the game.

The devil only care about your "soul" , useful or not .

cameltosis

Yes, for many reasons

1) Conversion to paying customer

This is the most obvious reason - some free players convert into paying customers. Its a pure numbers game: the more players, the more likely you are that people will pay. A game like LoL, for example, has an extremely low conversion rate (think they said 3%) so they need as many players as possible so that the 3% is a large number of players

2) Proportions stay the same

Most of the "open" free to play developers have stated that the ratio of free-to-paying customers doesn't fluctuate based on player base, i.e. if you lost the free players, you'd also lose paying players. 

3) Word of Mouth

An oft-overlooked point, even if your free player never spends a dime, they might tell their friends and attract new potential customers to your game. Again, its playing the numbers: the more free players, the more likely word of mouth will get out and the more likely you are to gain customers. 

4) Content - Its an MMO!

We're playing massively-multiplayer games, so you need other people online to play with. Sure, a lot of people solo, but other people bring the world to life. Everything from just making the landscape look alive, to grouping for dungeons, finding leveling buddies, crafters, pvp etc....other people are important when it comes to making the game fulfil it's potential. 



I'm sure we've all been playing an MMO and noticed when the server population drops too far. There always seems to be some crucial cutoff point where it just becomes too difficult to find groups, recruit new guild members or enter pvp arenas. Anything developers can do to stave off the point is good. Admittedly, I hate F2P and avoid F2P games so this issue is somewhat moot, but if F2P games stopped scamming customers and increased the quality of their games then I'm sure I would play them. 

Kyleran

Sure, they are cheaper to provide "content" to paying players be it as fodder or just silent avatars running everywhere than it cost to code actual NPCs.

As a bonus they occasionally exhibit some intelligence.

Kyleran

DMKano said:

Yes - absolutely. 

Free players add to the total player interaction of the online world.

Mmos are all about player interaction so all players count.

Considering most players spend most of their time in game not interacting with other players I have to wonder at the validity of your statement.

sunandshadow

If they want revenue from non-paying players the best way to do it is to have a secondary site where players can choose to watch ads and get paid in cash shop currency.

SEANMCAD

Lets be realistic here.

How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.

Vermillion_Raventhal

They probably data mine us and sell our information.   Corporate big bro is epidemic these days.

paul43

One of the more common things non-payers do is to fill up the old leveling part of the game 1-xx, since most subscribers or payers are at end game. 

It's no fun for a subscriber who have just started or rolling a alt if it's not possible to run a dungeon or pvp. 

waynejr2

SEANMCAD said:

Lets be realistic here.

How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.

They believe they are entitled to a free game.

paul43

sunandshadow said:

If they want revenue from non-paying players the best way to do it is to have a secondary site where players can choose to watch ads and get paid in cash shop currency.

Some games do split the playerbase up like this, (haven't seen adds ingame since Anarchy Online tried it though). Usually the paid servers have fewer players, and you end up having to go to free servers to do anything outside the farmed dungeons.

SEANMCAD

waynejr2 said:

SEANMCAD said:

Lets be realistic here.

How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.

They believe they are entitled to a free game.

that is the most bizzare response to my question ever

waynejr2

SEANMCAD said:

waynejr2 said:

SEANMCAD said:

Lets be realistic here.

How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.

They believe they are entitled to a free game.

that is the most bizzare response to my question ever

They still cost you genius.  The how much does it cost is still a cost.  So the freeloaders are a negative in that respect.  I suspect you are one of those people who feel entitled to a free to play game.  

Maybe you should get someone to build a welfare game for you. 

SEANMCAD

waynejr2 said:

SEANMCAD said:

waynejr2 said:

SEANMCAD said:

Lets be realistic here.

How much does the extra server traffic REALLY cost. lets be honest here.

They believe they are entitled to a free game.

that is the most bizzare response to my question ever

They still cost you genius.  The how much does it cost is still a cost.  So the freeloaders are a negative in that respect.  I suspect you are one of those people who feel entitled to a free to play game.  

Maybe you should get someone to build a welfare game for you. 

that doesnt answer my question.

The reason I ask my question how I asked it is because the cost of .00000000000001 cent every 10 years is less important than the cost of $1,000 per hour.

I even put the most important part of my question in caps so you could not miss it

Iselin

Kyleran said:

DMKano said:

Yes - absolutely. 

Free players add to the total player interaction of the online world.

Mmos are all about player interaction so all players count.

Considering most players spend most of their time in game not interacting with other players I have to wonder at the validity of your statement.

Even if they don't interact all that much, no one wants to play in a dead server. Many like to play alone but in a crowd

Gdemami

What?

You can't have paying customers without non-paying ones, that is entire point of F2P.

What a silly thread...lol

Octagon7711

The players who overspend usually more then make up for the players who never spend.  And it's a bad move to start banning players because they don't use the cash shop.  It's better to do what games do which is make it take a lot longer and a lot harder to get things done in game if you never buy stuff.

Scorchien

No , time to elminate the bottom feeding leeches

Octagon7711

Besides it's called a subscription only game if you only want paying players but you'd better have a great game that people are willing to pay for.  That's on the developers, not players.

MaxBacon

Octagon7711 said:

Besides it's called a subscription only game if you only want paying players but you'd better have a great game that people are willing to pay for.  That's on the developers, not players.

And model that was and is proving itself a failure.

It's a nice good idea for a stable MMO but on past years, subscription MMO's fall one after the other to the F2P model. And here we are today.

But independent of what on F2P obviously they need the non-paying, as the paying ones are far from the majority it would severely hit the player-base and its popularity. They just balance it out.

Octagon7711

MaxBacon said:

Octagon7711 said:

Besides it's called a subscription only game if you only want paying players but you'd better have a great game that people are willing to pay for.  That's on the developers, not players.

And model that was and is proving itself a failure.

It's a nice good idea for a stable MMO but on past years, subscription MMO's fall one after the other to the F2P model. And here we are today.

But independent of what on F2P obviously they need the non-paying, as the paying ones are far from the majority it would severely hit the player-base and its popularity. They just balance it out.

When I first started playing MMO's I would think nothing of having multiple subscription account for several games.  Now I'll only pay a sub to test the game out for a month or to come back to it and try new content for a month.  I regularly play games that are B2P.  I never added it up but probably pay out the same now as I did back then even though I don't sub.

FaunNoe

Non-paying customers are useful.  I've been a non paying customer in plenty of F2P mmorpgs and spread word about the ones that I enjoyed. At the same time I love it when an mmorpg is subscription based. It feels like the quality of the community is much much higher than F2P. I feel more immersed for some reason. This makes me think about those people that say "Hmm, looks like a good game but....I'll wait for it to go F2P" Every time I read that It just feels me with disgust lol. 

Phry

In a F2P MMO a none paying customer have very little actual value, what little value they do have, is perhaps that they can be farmed by the paying customers, they become a cheap replacement for NPC AI's

sunandshadow

paul43 said:

sunandshadow said:

If they want revenue from non-paying players the best way to do it is to have a secondary site where players can choose to watch ads and get paid in cash shop currency.

Some games do split the playerbase up like this, (haven't seen adds ingame since Anarchy Online tried it though). Usually the paid servers have fewer players, and you end up having to go to free servers to do anything outside the farmed dungeons.

There's no need to split the playerbase.  There's no reason paying players can't also choose to watch a few ads for a few extra bits of cash shop currency, maybe while they are riding a bus or train to work and can't play the main game on their phone.  Ideally the ad-viewing could be combined with the game's forum or chat server or wiki, some website that is officially associated with the game but not in the game.

If you are thinking in terms of subscriptions vs. cash shop, some games sell subscription time in the cash shop.