Do you mind subscriptions in F2P?

laxie

I'm wondering how people feel about subscriptions in free-to-play games these days? That is having a game where ~80% of the features are free, but a part of the game is being a subscription that you buy using premium currency.

I have been working on an online game as a hobby project, am not expecting a massive community, but started thinking about monetization so that it can sustain the server costs + me getting more help with art assets. It is a social MMO based around crafting and city ownership, so I was thinking putting some features like larger housing plots and extended NPC dialogues behind a tiered subscription (where the additional gameplay features are unlocked for $5-10 a month, and there are additional more expensive tiers that give you cosmetics like reskins of housing materials).

I am not sure how that would be received though. People could see that as putting content behind a paywall, or giving paying players an advantage. To me that's only partially true, because it's a flat subscription. In my mind, that's preferable and "fairer" than putting too much focus on a piecemeal in-game store. But I wonder how the broader community sees it?

Angrakhan

I think what you're going to fight is the expectations of precedent set by F2P games that have gone before you.

I personally prefer a sub to the typical F2P model because when you price out what it takes to get the same value as a sub by paying a la carte it's usually much more expensive. I feel a straight sub is more fair in that their aren't whales and freeloaders. Either you're in or out. But that's not what you're asking.

Your cosmetic reskins I think are going to have to be a one time charge in the cash shop. No one wants to rent cosmetics. The features you want to put behind a sub are going to need to be of tangible value but you're going to walk a tightrope with P2W. 

Honestly it would be simpler to have a forever trial that gives you a solid taste of the game but if you like the game and want to commit then you subscribe and get the full experience unlocked. You'll get more traction on the sub if there's no box price.

Just my thoughts.

Wargfoot

I'm not a game developer.
I don't have my finger on the pulse of the market.

I can only say that from where I'm sitting, I don't care to be in a game with players who won't play a game unless it has a F2P option.  While I understand there are good people out there who cannot afford to buy games, I think for the most part it opens the door to abuse.  In a F2P title if one is caught doing nasty things the punishment is a banned account that cost nothing.

I want a game I can throw my money into and be dedicated to it - and be in the game with others that feel the same way.

Theocritus

It seems like most games try to have a system that allows for all kinds of players...Whether it be free, sub, buy to play, whatever....In the end your game needs to make money somehow. If you want to try and bring in more players, then the free to play route is probably the best. Low cost of entry is often a good lure to at least try the game.

Asm0deus

Depends...I think sub game should have no cash shop period all is done through gameplay or all is unlocked since its a sub game.

F2p I dont want a sub I feel they don't mix and that it is scummy to mix them.  F2p I don't mind a cash shop but it depends on how it is done selling power and nickle and diming people is not okay.

For example nickle and diming people locking content behind paywalls like for example gw 2 has come content locked behind a paywall if you are not there when that content drops. All content etc should be there in sub or b2p games.  For b2p expansions having to be bought is fine.

Likewise you buy a mount for 20 or 30$ in a f2p game and it's bound to character....that is nickle and diming people, mounts and cosmetic need to be be account wide.

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waveslayer

I only play games with subs like WoW or f2p with optional subs like LotRO, DDO or SWToR...for me the few completely free games with item shops I have tried seem to be lacking in some manner and like said by others seem to end up being more expensive then a sub or buy to play, dont really do buy to play either unless its a game that I have been paying alot of attention to and know its something I am looking to play. When it comes to single player games I like a demo unless the game is a traditional RTS, 4X or top down tactical turned base combat game.

Slapshot1188

Subscriptions were the Golden Age of gaming monetization.   At least from a customer perspective.

Theocritus

Slapshot1188 said:

Subscriptions were the Golden Age of gaming monetization.   At least from a customer perspective.

Im not so sure about that....Really we didnt have any other option....It was sub or not play any of them...The only one I can remember that had any free option was Anarchy Online but you had to watch ads (this is in its f2p infancy, they removed them later).......I played EQ from 2000-05 and spent more on its subs than I have on all other games combined since.....If you do the math long term, subs are not a great way to play for the customer.

ValdemarJ

I hate subscriptions with a passion and I'm sick and tired of being bombarded with them from every angle.

Paying $60/year in box fees + $180/year in rental fees, where I lose access to everything I paid for if I don't keep bankrolling the company, puts me off.

I tolerate subs because I want a service, but very few services remain valuable enough for me to keep on in perpetuity. Microsoft 365, Xbox GamePass, Apple One family, Max, Disney+/Hulu, Paramount+, Acorn, Britbox, Amazon Prime, Peacock, and several others all want to tap my wallet monthly. They all cost between $10 and $25 per month and the fatigue adds up, not just cost fatigue, but management fatigue.

All the services I mention offer enough value that I pay for them, but only a few are always on. The rest get turned on for a month or two and then right back off again.

So, now GAAS enters the picture and they want a $70 box fee, a cash shop, and that sweet $15/mo in subscription fees. The problem is, in comparison, they're a high cost low value proposition. In all the above cases, my entire family can use the service for those fees. In the case of a game only one of us can. It's by far the biggest ask of all the recurring fee options. So, I end up only end up playing "subscription games" for 1 - 3 months before cost/value has me cancelling the sub because those games are designed on a treadmill to keep people paying, while offering substantially lower quality game play compared to their single player counterparts.

cameltosis

I'll repeat what I say whenever the subject of monetisation comes up:

Match your monetisation to the game's design.

A subscription is best when your game is built for long term retention and community. The long term retention means that each of your players will give you a decent amount of money over months / years. A sub also acts as a filter: it'll keep out a lot of the people who don't really care about your game, ensuring that your community is higher quality than F2P. Just make sure you add a free trial, so that players have an opportunity to test the game for themselves before committing to a subscription.

F2P is best when your game is designed more around short term play / drop-in-drop-out sessions. F2P removes the ceiling for how much each player can spend, so it means you can get the most amount of money out of a player before they inevitably move on.

B2P, in my opinion, is best for games that have an end. Buy the game, play through it until you finish, then move on. Come back again when they release new content (DLC), which I'll also need to buy, play through, and finish. I don't feel this is a particularly good business model for an MMORPG, given the ongoing server and maintenance costs. However, it comes down to design. I don't see anything wrong with designing an MMORPG, releasing it, running it for 5 years, then closing it down and launching a sequel. But, noone seems to be doing this.

If you double-dip or triple-dip by combining multiple payment options..... /shakesfist

Now, how you actually design a game for retention vs churn, pugs vs community, is a whole other topic!

cameltosis

Also, purely in terms of personal preference, I only play subscription-only MMORPGs (which is none of them these days......) or completely free MMORPGs (i.e. emulators). I can't stand F2P.

Vrika

I'm ok with subscription.

However I don't think your issue will be whether people are ok with subscriptions or not. If you try to charge a subscription, your game's quality will be compared to those developed by professional teams, and there's no way you can make your game good enough.

I think in your situation you might be able to do better by asking charity from your players. For example run a Patreon that gives access to development blog and one cosmetic item each month.

Amaranthar

A lot depends on how wide of scope your game design is. 
Dungeons? Lots of Monster types? Mounts? Spell's and shape-changing and teleports? Etc., as examples. 

If not a wide scope of game play, if it's just a social simulation and not much more, then your doors are pretty much open to monetization. (And it's not for me.) 

Otherwise, I don't like CS's at all. A free first month, and then sub. 

Otherwise, there are few things I could accept. 
A low sub;
plus a little extra for each plot size;
plus a little extra for each additional character;
That's all I can think of at the moment, but I'd accept that. 

cameltosis

Vrika said:

I'm ok with subscription.

However I don't think your issue will be whether people are ok with subscriptions or not. If you try to charge a subscription, your game's quality will be compared to those developed by professional teams, and there's no way you can make your game good enough.

I think in your situation you might be able to do better by asking charity from your players. For example run a Patreon that gives access to development blog and one cosmetic item each month.

This is a very good point - comparisons to others with the same business model.

But, you can alter your price accordingly. If you go the sub route, you don't have to charge the same as everyone else. You can make it cheaper if your game is smaller, or more expensive if ur better than the competition.

Angrakhan

Yeah sorry there's no way some solo dev's hobbiest online game he works on in his spare time is going to compare with WoW or FFXIV or something with an army of devs and a 8-9 figure budget. Honestly if you want a sub, charge $2.50 a month and hope people forget to cancel it because it's so cheap. It's the gym membership monetization model. Sell dirt cheap memberships to thousands of people with the expectation 90% won't even show up.

Slapshot1188

Theocritus said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Subscriptions were the Golden Age of gaming monetization.   At least from a customer perspective.

Im not so sure about that....Really we didnt have any other option....It was sub or not play any of them...The only one I can remember that had any free option was Anarchy Online but you had to watch ads (this is in its f2p infancy, they removed them later).......I played EQ from 2000-05 and spent more on its subs than I have on all other games combined since.....If you do the math long term, subs are not a great way to play for the customer.

Disagree.  Subs made us all on equal footing. There was no such thing as a whale, thus games were designed to keep us playing them.  Because subs continued when we played and cancelled when we left. 

texhnolyze

cameltosis said:

I'll repeat what I say whenever the subject of monetisation comes up:

Match your monetisation to the game's design.

A subscription is best when your game is built for long term retention and community. The long term retention means that each of your players will give you a decent amount of money over months / years. A sub also acts as a filter: it'll keep out a lot of the people who don't really care about your game, ensuring that your community is higher quality than F2P. Just make sure you add a free trial, so that players have an opportunity to test the game for themselves before committing to a subscription.

F2P is best when your game is designed more around short term play / drop-in-drop-out sessions. F2P removes the ceiling for how much each player can spend, so it means you can get the most amount of money out of a player before they inevitably move on.

B2P, in my opinion, is best for games that have an end. Buy the game, play through it until you finish, then move on. Come back again when they release new content (DLC), which I'll also need to buy, play through, and finish. I don't feel this is a particularly good business model for an MMORPG, given the ongoing server and maintenance costs. However, it comes down to design. I don't see anything wrong with designing an MMORPG, releasing it, running it for 5 years, then closing it down and launching a sequel. But, noone seems to be doing this.

If you double-dip or triple-dip by combining multiple payment options..... /shakesfist

Now, how you actually design a game for retention vs churn, pugs vs community, is a whole other topic!

The problem is, a whole lot of P2P games in the past 2 decades failed and went F2P. That's when the F2P with a sub come out. They originally designed their games for subscription, but it failed, so they had to change the design with cash shop and subscriptions in mind.

Nowadays, most F2P games have subs from the get-go, usually for battle pass and such, while some others have premium benefits. But initially, subs in F2P was not a thing until those P2P games invented it.

My biggest gripe is a B2P game with sub, like come on.

cheyane

I don't mind it. However renting stuff is annoying.

Amaranthar

cheyane said:

I don't mind it. However renting stuff is annoying.

What do you mean by "renting" it? If you lose your stuff because you stopped paying the sub?
What a game could do about that is, when the sub isn't paid, and after a waiting period, just "box it all up" and store it for the player's return, within say, a year or so. 
Their house location may be lost, but they could still drop it somewhere new. 
The game would have to have a large enough world, though. 
Box up housing, bank accounts, characters, and everything so they have it if they return in a reasonable time period. 

cheyane

I am talking about renting inventory space, bank slots or a loot pet. The parts of the inventory will be unavailable and any items in them will be greyed out . You cannot access them until you rent the space again. So if you placed an important weapon or other item in that extra space until you rent that space again it is unavailable for use.

Some games will also rent out skill trees and if you do not pay that skill tree is unavailable until you do. I find this pretty scummy to be perfectly honest. I use the word rent because it is a temporary advantage and only available when you pay for it. This is not necessarily connected to a monthly sub although it can be part of it.

The way some games monetise every aspect of a game can be quite shocking in its thoroughness. That they looked through a game and then decided what aspects can be monetised successfully. I suppose it does cheapen the experience quite drastically when you have to rent the right to run a dungeon every time you have finished your allotted free runs.

While many of these practices belong to mobile games it is slowly making its way to games that aren't mobile because why not when they are looking to squeeze blood from a stone.

I just realised that I seem to have stumbled upon some truly horrible monetisation. I'll put that down as my adventurous spirit of trying various games and payment models that many of the old hats here would look askance at.

cameltosis

texhnolyze said:

cameltosis said:

I'll repeat what I say whenever the subject of monetisation comes up:

Match your monetisation to the game's design.

A subscription is best when your game is built for long term retention and community. The long term retention means that each of your players will give you a decent amount of money over months / years. A sub also acts as a filter: it'll keep out a lot of the people who don't really care about your game, ensuring that your community is higher quality than F2P. Just make sure you add a free trial, so that players have an opportunity to test the game for themselves before committing to a subscription.

F2P is best when your game is designed more around short term play / drop-in-drop-out sessions. F2P removes the ceiling for how much each player can spend, so it means you can get the most amount of money out of a player before they inevitably move on.

B2P, in my opinion, is best for games that have an end. Buy the game, play through it until you finish, then move on. Come back again when they release new content (DLC), which I'll also need to buy, play through, and finish. I don't feel this is a particularly good business model for an MMORPG, given the ongoing server and maintenance costs. However, it comes down to design. I don't see anything wrong with designing an MMORPG, releasing it, running it for 5 years, then closing it down and launching a sequel. But, noone seems to be doing this.

If you double-dip or triple-dip by combining multiple payment options..... /shakesfist

Now, how you actually design a game for retention vs churn, pugs vs community, is a whole other topic!

The problem is, a whole lot of P2P games in the past 2 decades failed and went F2P. That's when the F2P with a sub come out. They originally designed their games for subscription, but it failed, so they had to change the design with cash shop and subscriptions in mind.

Nowadays, most F2P games have subs from the get-go, usually for battle pass and such, while some others have premium benefits. But initially, subs in F2P was not a thing until those P2P games invented it.

My biggest gripe is a B2P game with sub, like come on.

This just highlights a classic mentality problem with MMO studios.

When these sub games started to lose money, instead of thinking "how can we improve the game to attract and retain more players?", they instead said "how can we get more money out of our remaining players?".

Theocritus

cameltosis said:

texhnolyze said:

cameltosis said:

I'll repeat what I say whenever the subject of monetisation comes up:

Match your monetisation to the game's design.

A subscription is best when your game is built for long term retention and community. The long term retention means that each of your players will give you a decent amount of money over months / years. A sub also acts as a filter: it'll keep out a lot of the people who don't really care about your game, ensuring that your community is higher quality than F2P. Just make sure you add a free trial, so that players have an opportunity to test the game for themselves before committing to a subscription.

F2P is best when your game is designed more around short term play / drop-in-drop-out sessions. F2P removes the ceiling for how much each player can spend, so it means you can get the most amount of money out of a player before they inevitably move on.

B2P, in my opinion, is best for games that have an end. Buy the game, play through it until you finish, then move on. Come back again when they release new content (DLC), which I'll also need to buy, play through, and finish. I don't feel this is a particularly good business model for an MMORPG, given the ongoing server and maintenance costs. However, it comes down to design. I don't see anything wrong with designing an MMORPG, releasing it, running it for 5 years, then closing it down and launching a sequel. But, noone seems to be doing this.

If you double-dip or triple-dip by combining multiple payment options..... /shakesfist

Now, how you actually design a game for retention vs churn, pugs vs community, is a whole other topic!

The problem is, a whole lot of P2P games in the past 2 decades failed and went F2P. That's when the F2P with a sub come out. They originally designed their games for subscription, but it failed, so they had to change the design with cash shop and subscriptions in mind.

Nowadays, most F2P games have subs from the get-go, usually for battle pass and such, while some others have premium benefits. But initially, subs in F2P was not a thing until those P2P games invented it.

My biggest gripe is a B2P game with sub, like come on.

This just highlights a classic mentality problem with MMO studios.

When these sub games started to lose money, instead of thinking "how can we improve the game to attract and retain more players?", they instead said "how can we get more money out of our remaining players?".

Very true and they figured "well if some will pay a sub and some will buy from microtransactions, then we can make money off of both!"

Elidien_ga

I just like limited monetization. I am fine with a sub and a free to play option but a sub and a store and a battle pass and and and gets annoying. 

KnightFalz

For MMORPGs I generally prefer those where I can subscribe so as to avoid the nonsense put in such solely to inspire subscription.

That said f2p modes are becoming increasingly generous so perhaps in time my preference in this regard will change.

KnightFalz

texhnolyze said:

My biggest gripe is a B2P game with sub, like come on.

The one time standard of MMORPGs? I wish it were still so. Back then the only path to profit was maintaining and expanding the number of players. As such all decisions made severed long-term player retention and satisfaction.

Now much of the decision making revolves around cashing in on players as much and as quickly as possible, player retention be damned. It leads to lots of flashing lights and ringing bells attached to cardboard cutouts paper thin.