"On the down side, subscription fees seem to favor the player who is able to play their game 40+ hours a week, while leaving the more casual player more likely to spend their gaming dollars elsewhere.
Who benefits most: The "hardcore" player"
Huh? What?
I quit reading after this humongous leap of logic.
How does a subscription plan favor any player over another?
I just don't get the writing here lately.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
"On the down side, subscription fees seem to favor the player who is able to play their game 40+ hours a week, while leaving the more casual player more likely to spend their gaming dollars elsewhere. Who benefits most: The "hardcore" player"
Huh? What? I quit reading after this humongous leap of logic. How does a subscription plan favor any player over another? I just don't get the writing here lately.
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
"On the down side, subscription fees seem to favor the player who is able to play their game 40+ hours a week, while leaving the more casual player more likely to spend their gaming dollars elsewhere. Who benefits most: The "hardcore" player"
Huh? What? I quit reading after this humongous leap of logic. How does a subscription plan favor any player over another? I just don't get the writing here lately.
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
I appreciate your condescending tone. I'll see if I can take time out of my flight schedule for that basic math course... I'm sure it will compliment my aeronautical engineering degree.
Too bad these forums always turn into a game of who can be the biggest asshat to other posters.
If you look at it from a basic math standpoint the hardcore gamer gets more for his money, than a casual player sure, but a hardcore player is afforded no real advantage over a casual player through this subscription model alone. Both have equal amounts of time available from the company throughout the month. One being able to utilize more of his time throughout the month is not a direct function of the sub model itself but of the player.
If time is the metric of advantage, then all games despite sub model are inheremtly advantageous to hardcore gamers.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
As somebody mentioned in this thread, there’s another business model out there for mmos, and that’s CCP’s Eve model.
On the surface it’s a flat subscription fee with free expansions, end of story. That holds true for some casual players, but only for casual players.
Some of the ways Eve differs from other mmorpgs include,
First:
One way of charging customers more so to speak is rather to do the opposite, just give them less for the same subscription price.
Eve costs less to produce because it’s a ‘sandbox’ game, not a ‘content’ ‘amusement park’ game. The ‘expansions’ aren’t free by generosity, they’re free because nobody in their right mind would pay for them. Eve advertisements talk about epic missions like Hellgate: London advertisements mentioned ‘mini-raids’. Clever language that potential customers want to hear, but in fact the game pve content is shallow as a puddle, paper thin, at least when compared to the ‘amusement park’ games anyway.
Some Eve fans could care less about all that pve ‘content’, and that’s fine, but we’re talking production costs for the developer here. Whether you like it or not whether you see it as a defect or just a perfectly cool different way of doing things, the bottom line is that a sandbox game costs less to produce. Love sandbox, or hate sandbox, I don’t care, for purposes of this post anyway, but it costs less to produce a sandbox.
(‘But it’s such a big sandbox!’ you say? Yeah, and it’s heavily instanced. All on one shard, but people are spread thin across thousands of zones, and you know how the servers crash when people try those huge fleet battles in one zone.)
Second:
As someone mentioned, CCP makes money by allowing RMT, real money trade, on their official website. They not only allow it, they are constantly referring to it, in essence promoting it.
The heart of the their RMT system is the exchange of game time cards, GTCs, for gold (isk).
No surprise that CCP earns around 80 dollars more per year per account that uses game time cards instead of using the cheapest subscription plan paid directly to CCP.
I’ll repeat that,
CCP makes around 80 dollars more, per year, per account when someone uses game time cards instead of using the cheapest direct subscription plan.
Of course CCP allows RMT. They don’t just ‘allow’ it, they thrive on it.
Third:
Many game mechanics in Eve push players into getting multiple accounts.
The vast majority of players who stay in the game more than six months will eventually get multiple subscriptions.
Fans say that nobody is forcing you to get them, but neither are other games forcing people to make several alts. The fact is that people DO make a bunch of alts in other games, and veteran Eve players DO get multiple accounts, that’s just what people do to explore different aspects of the game. In Eve, game mechanics just make it so. Example: Eve accounts only have 3 character slots.
You know that friend or relative of yours with the awful gf or wife and you just can’t say anything because he’s in total denial? Well, Eve fans are kinda like that.
Outsiders would be outraged over being scammed into using multiple accounts, whereas Eve veterans are proud of having multiple accounts. It separates them from the pubbies, the newbs, the uncommitted. In Eve culture, having multiple accounts is like being rich and having a bunch of wives in Middle Eastern culture. It’s a status symbol separating veterans from lowbies.
CCP designed the game that way. It’s not some odd, player driven peculiarity.
For fanboys who protest, I’ll lay out the obvious:
3 character slots per account. Only 1 character can mature at a time on each account. It takes years for a character to mature. What does that mean? If you wanna do the equivalent of alts like in another game, in Eve you either buy another toon through RMT, or you train another character up using more than one subscription.
You’re a pirate, but you also wanna hang out and do missions with your newb carebear buddies in high-sec? Can’t. Your sec status is too low. Guards will shoot at you. You can’t unless you buy another character through RMT or get another subscription.
You’re in a 0.0 corp in the end game of alliance and coalition politics and big fleet battles.. but you want to try Faction Warfare? You can’t because you’d have to quit your corporation and join a FW corp to do it, unless you get another subscription or buy another character through RMT.
You want to spend a year infiltrating another corporation from within? Your main character now couldn’t get in, you have a history, you’re labeled the enemy already. To clean that history, to fake your way in, you either buy another character, a clean one, through RMT, or get another subscription to train a clean character.
You want to teach new players, students in the famous Eve University, but you’d also like to try FW, or pirating, or 0.0 big fleet warfare, or whatever… you can’t because the Uni is neutral. They won’t let you do any of that, and with good reason, while you’re teaching there. You have to buy a toon through RMT, or get another subscription for another character. All the faculty there have had or have now multiple accounts.
Blah blah blah, the list goes on. The game is rigged so you can NOT just go willy nilly here and there diong what you want. The game mechanics push you into multiple accounts.
(Fanboys will also say… “but, but, you can pay for those accounts with isk(gold), they’re FREE”. Lol, WRONG. Nothing is free. Someone had to pay for those GTCs. Bottom line is that CCP makes money on those accounts, lots of money. “But, but,” says the fanboy, “it’s easy to make isk(gold) in Eve, you can play for free!” , um, lol, NO. If it were that easy, then everyone would do it, and CCP would get paid in isk? No, fanboy, no. The richest players can use isk to get GTCs. They’re a tiny minority. The vast majority of players put plenty of money into the game, real money. Otherwise CCP wouldn’t be in the business.)
So,
CCP’s way of tweaking the subscription model: Sandbox, RMT, veteran player Multiple subscriptions.
Sandbox. Reduce development cost by making a sandbox, not an amusement park.
RMT. Bleed a great deal of money from players in the RMT market under the pretense of doing them a ‘service’ by facilitating safe RMT trade.
Multiple subs. Bleed a great deal of money from players by pushing them, through game mechanics, to get not just ‘alts’ on one account like in other games, but rather multiple subscriptions.
A majority of those 11M are NOT paying monthly fees. They are paying using time cards.
So people playing with time cards don't need/merit support? And if their payment towards the game works out at less than a western monthly sub, how does that reduce costs?
Your argument doesn't cancel mine out, rather it provokes more questions.
You are perfectly right. CCP subscription model is a very effective on long term for the development company. They started with a small "garage" in Iceland with ca. ten ppl, now they have their own office bldg, 2 new development teams in USA and China, a supercomputing serverfarm, and 500+ employees.
They sacrificed their short time succes for a long time one.
But I am still more happy to pay my subscription fees (however I play for free) to them as to any other studios for any other games I played before.
"On the down side, subscription fees seem to favor the player who is able to play their game 40+ hours a week, while leaving the more casual player more likely to spend their gaming dollars elsewhere. Who benefits most: The "hardcore" player"
Huh? What? I quit reading after this humongous leap of logic. How does a subscription plan favor any player over another? I just don't get the writing here lately.
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
I appreciate your condescending tone. I'll see if I can take time out of my flight schedule for that basic math course... I'm sure it will compliment my aeronautical engineering degree.
Too bad these forums always turn into a game of who can be the biggest asshat to other posters.
If you look at it from a basic math standpoint the hardcore gamer gets more for his money, than a casual player sure, but a hardcore player is afforded no real advantage over a casual player through this subscription model alone. Both have equal amounts of time available from the company throughout the month. One being able to utilize more of his time throughout the month is not a direct function of the sub model itself but of the player.
If time is the metric of advantage, then all games despite sub model are inheremtly advantageous to hardcore gamers.
Well, obviously you must have good math skills, but I still wonder about the flexibility of your logic skills or you wouldn't have referred to the author making a "humongous leap of logic". You also wouldn't have failed to noticed that I prefaced my recommendation with "IF". Now are you actually having trouble with seeing it from the other point of view or are you just pretending to be dense to avoid conceding the point?
As far as your "biggest asshat" comment, please note that I have been very diplomatic, with no name calling or direct insults. I gave you a hook whereby you could decide insult yourself and you took it.
To help you along, I'll continue the explanation to the conclusion that you didn't seem to grasp. Picking it up with the 40 hr hardcore and 4 hour casual player, lets assume that they can both earn the same exp/hr (the hardcore probably has an advantage here too); then to reach the max level where they can participate in the end-game content, the casual player will take 10x as long and thus spend 10x the $$s to achieve the same result. The fact that the game provides them both with the same opportunity doesn't help the casual player if he doesn't have the spare time to take advantage of it.
Note: There are a few subscription games where this is not true, notably Eve, where your skills can continue to advance while you are not online. This make Eve a lot more casual player friendly than most of the other sub. games.
However, when you look at the F2P game with an item shop, the casual player doesn't have to spend more top achieve the same level, and even has the *option* to spend a little more to speed up his advancement instead of spending extra time which he is short of. Of course the hardcore player can also spend extra and advance even faster, but in both cases they get the same results for the amount of money spent.
"On the down side, subscription fees seem to favor the player who is able to play their game 40+ hours a week, while leaving the more casual player more likely to spend their gaming dollars elsewhere. Who benefits most: The "hardcore" player"
Huh? What? I quit reading after this humongous leap of logic. How does a subscription plan favor any player over another? I just don't get the writing here lately.
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
I appreciate your condescending tone. I'll see if I can take time out of my flight schedule for that basic math course... I'm sure it will compliment my aeronautical engineering degree.
Too bad these forums always turn into a game of who can be the biggest asshat to other posters.
If you look at it from a basic math standpoint the hardcore gamer gets more for his money, than a casual player sure, but a hardcore player is afforded no real advantage over a casual player through this subscription model alone. Both have equal amounts of time available from the company throughout the month. One being able to utilize more of his time throughout the month is not a direct function of the sub model itself but of the player.
If time is the metric of advantage, then all games despite sub model are inheremtly advantageous to hardcore gamers.
Well, obviously you must have good math skills, but I still wonder about the flexibility of your logic skills or you wouldn't have referred to the author making a "humongous leap of logic". You also wouldn't have failed to noticed that I prefaced my recommendation with "IF". Now are you actually having trouble with seeing it from the other point of view or are you just pretending to be dense to avoid conceding the point?
As far as your "biggest asshat" comment, please note that I have been very diplomatic, with no name calling or direct insults. I gave you a hook whereby you could decide insult yourself and you took it.
To help you along, I'll continue the explanation to the conclusion that you didn't seem to grasp. Picking it up with the 40 hr hardcore and 4 hour casual player, lets assume that they can both earn the same exp/hr (the hardcore probably has an advantage here too); then to reach the max level where they can participate in the end-game content, the casual player will take 10x as long and thus spend 10x the $$s to achieve the same result. The fact that the game provides them both with the same opportunity doesn't help the casual player if he doesn't have the spare time to take advantage of it.
Note: There are a few subscription games where this is not true, notably Eve, where your skills can continue to advance while you are not online. This make Eve a lot more casual player friendly than most of the other sub. games.
However, when you look at the F2P game with an item shop, the casual player doesn't have to spend more top achieve the same level, and even has the *option* to spend a little more to speed up his advancement instead of spending extra time which he is short of. Of course the hardcore player can also spend extra and advance even faster, but in both cases they get the same results for the amount of money spent.
I insulted myself, lol. I guess the suggestion that I was in need of a basic math course was a compliment.
I do see your side of the argument, I just don't agree with it. The sub model itself does not cater to any style of gamer more than another. That is an individual function of the player and his/her available time. The sub model has no bearing on that one way or the other.
I admit the player with more time is able to take advantage of it moreso than the casual player with less time, but both have equal opportunity to advance within the framework of the sub model.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Einherjar_LC: If you really have a legitimate aeronautical engineering degree, then you must have a better grasp of logic than you are demonstrating here, so I'd have to conclude that you are just bating me, which is a waste of my time. If you lied about the degree, then then I can't trust any of your assertions, so again, a waste of time.
Perhaps there is another explanation, but unless I find it interesting, this will be my last reply.
The casuals are just gonna have to suck it up because the standard P2P is the only way to go with AAA. Go F2P and play a lesser quality game.
DDO is a great example of a quality F2P game. I expect you'll see more companies using this model.
DDO started as a P2P game and reportedly did not go F2P with shop until long after it had made back its initial cost AND subs were so low, that trading sub revenue for cash shop was not a huge trade off.
Einherjar_LC: If you really have a legitimate aeronautical engineering degree, then you must have a better grasp of logic than you are demonstrating here, so I'd have to conclude that you are just bating me, which is a waste of my time. If you lied about the degree, then then I can't trust any of your assertions, so again, a waste of time. Perhaps there is another explanation, but unless I find it interesting, this will be my last reply.
I am not bating you, we simply don't agree dadown.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I respect your opinion, and I see where you are coming from, but my perspective is different. I'm ok with that, and as a caveat, I apologize for the asshat comment.
Have a good one.
BTW, yes I am a pilot with the above mentioned degree.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Comments
"On the down side, subscription fees seem to favor the player who is able to play their game 40+ hours a week, while leaving the more casual player more likely to spend their gaming dollars elsewhere.
Who benefits most: The "hardcore" player"
Huh? What?
I quit reading after this humongous leap of logic.
How does a subscription plan favor any player over another?
I just don't get the writing here lately.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
I appreciate your condescending tone. I'll see if I can take time out of my flight schedule for that basic math course... I'm sure it will compliment my aeronautical engineering degree.
Too bad these forums always turn into a game of who can be the biggest asshat to other posters.
If you look at it from a basic math standpoint the hardcore gamer gets more for his money, than a casual player sure, but a hardcore player is afforded no real advantage over a casual player through this subscription model alone. Both have equal amounts of time available from the company throughout the month. One being able to utilize more of his time throughout the month is not a direct function of the sub model itself but of the player.
If time is the metric of advantage, then all games despite sub model are inheremtly advantageous to hardcore gamers.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
As somebody mentioned in this thread, there’s another business model out there for mmos, and that’s CCP’s Eve model.
On the surface it’s a flat subscription fee with free expansions, end of story. That holds true for some casual players, but only for casual players.
Some of the ways Eve differs from other mmorpgs include,
First:
One way of charging customers more so to speak is rather to do the opposite, just give them less for the same subscription price.
Eve costs less to produce because it’s a ‘sandbox’ game, not a ‘content’ ‘amusement park’ game. The ‘expansions’ aren’t free by generosity, they’re free because nobody in their right mind would pay for them. Eve advertisements talk about epic missions like Hellgate: London advertisements mentioned ‘mini-raids’. Clever language that potential customers want to hear, but in fact the game pve content is shallow as a puddle, paper thin, at least when compared to the ‘amusement park’ games anyway.
Some Eve fans could care less about all that pve ‘content’, and that’s fine, but we’re talking production costs for the developer here. Whether you like it or not whether you see it as a defect or just a perfectly cool different way of doing things, the bottom line is that a sandbox game costs less to produce. Love sandbox, or hate sandbox, I don’t care, for purposes of this post anyway, but it costs less to produce a sandbox.
(‘But it’s such a big sandbox!’ you say? Yeah, and it’s heavily instanced. All on one shard, but people are spread thin across thousands of zones, and you know how the servers crash when people try those huge fleet battles in one zone.)
Second:
As someone mentioned, CCP makes money by allowing RMT, real money trade, on their official website. They not only allow it, they are constantly referring to it, in essence promoting it.
The heart of the their RMT system is the exchange of game time cards, GTCs, for gold (isk).
No surprise that CCP earns around 80 dollars more per year per account that uses game time cards instead of using the cheapest subscription plan paid directly to CCP.
I’ll repeat that,
CCP makes around 80 dollars more, per year, per account when someone uses game time cards instead of using the cheapest direct subscription plan.
Of course CCP allows RMT. They don’t just ‘allow’ it, they thrive on it.
Third:
Many game mechanics in Eve push players into getting multiple accounts.
The vast majority of players who stay in the game more than six months will eventually get multiple subscriptions.
Fans say that nobody is forcing you to get them, but neither are other games forcing people to make several alts. The fact is that people DO make a bunch of alts in other games, and veteran Eve players DO get multiple accounts, that’s just what people do to explore different aspects of the game. In Eve, game mechanics just make it so. Example: Eve accounts only have 3 character slots.
You know that friend or relative of yours with the awful gf or wife and you just can’t say anything because he’s in total denial? Well, Eve fans are kinda like that.
Outsiders would be outraged over being scammed into using multiple accounts, whereas Eve veterans are proud of having multiple accounts. It separates them from the pubbies, the newbs, the uncommitted. In Eve culture, having multiple accounts is like being rich and having a bunch of wives in Middle Eastern culture. It’s a status symbol separating veterans from lowbies.
CCP designed the game that way. It’s not some odd, player driven peculiarity.
For fanboys who protest, I’ll lay out the obvious:
3 character slots per account. Only 1 character can mature at a time on each account. It takes years for a character to mature. What does that mean? If you wanna do the equivalent of alts like in another game, in Eve you either buy another toon through RMT, or you train another character up using more than one subscription.
You’re a pirate, but you also wanna hang out and do missions with your newb carebear buddies in high-sec? Can’t. Your sec status is too low. Guards will shoot at you. You can’t unless you buy another character through RMT or get another subscription.
You’re in a 0.0 corp in the end game of alliance and coalition politics and big fleet battles.. but you want to try Faction Warfare? You can’t because you’d have to quit your corporation and join a FW corp to do it, unless you get another subscription or buy another character through RMT.
You want to spend a year infiltrating another corporation from within? Your main character now couldn’t get in, you have a history, you’re labeled the enemy already. To clean that history, to fake your way in, you either buy another character, a clean one, through RMT, or get another subscription to train a clean character.
You want to teach new players, students in the famous Eve University, but you’d also like to try FW, or pirating, or 0.0 big fleet warfare, or whatever… you can’t because the Uni is neutral. They won’t let you do any of that, and with good reason, while you’re teaching there. You have to buy a toon through RMT, or get another subscription for another character. All the faculty there have had or have now multiple accounts.
Blah blah blah, the list goes on. The game is rigged so you can NOT just go willy nilly here and there diong what you want. The game mechanics push you into multiple accounts.
(Fanboys will also say… “but, but, you can pay for those accounts with isk(gold), they’re FREE”. Lol, WRONG. Nothing is free. Someone had to pay for those GTCs. Bottom line is that CCP makes money on those accounts, lots of money. “But, but,” says the fanboy, “it’s easy to make isk(gold) in Eve, you can play for free!” , um, lol, NO. If it were that easy, then everyone would do it, and CCP would get paid in isk? No, fanboy, no. The richest players can use isk to get GTCs. They’re a tiny minority. The vast majority of players put plenty of money into the game, real money. Otherwise CCP wouldn’t be in the business.)
So,
CCP’s way of tweaking the subscription model: Sandbox, RMT, veteran player Multiple subscriptions.
Sandbox. Reduce development cost by making a sandbox, not an amusement park.
RMT. Bleed a great deal of money from players in the RMT market under the pretense of doing them a ‘service’ by facilitating safe RMT trade.
Multiple subs. Bleed a great deal of money from players by pushing them, through game mechanics, to get not just ‘alts’ on one account like in other games, but rather multiple subscriptions.
So people playing with time cards don't need/merit support? And if their payment towards the game works out at less than a western monthly sub, how does that reduce costs?
Your argument doesn't cancel mine out, rather it provokes more questions.
Well GW2 will follow the same model as GW (buy once and play all you want). I much prefer sub fee over cash shop any day of the week.
You are perfectly right. CCP subscription model is a very effective on long term for the development company. They started with a small "garage" in Iceland with ca. ten ppl, now they have their own office bldg, 2 new development teams in USA and China, a supercomputing serverfarm, and 500+ employees.
They sacrificed their short time succes for a long time one.
But I am still more happy to pay my subscription fees (however I play for free) to them as to any other studios for any other games I played before.
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
I appreciate your condescending tone. I'll see if I can take time out of my flight schedule for that basic math course... I'm sure it will compliment my aeronautical engineering degree.
Too bad these forums always turn into a game of who can be the biggest asshat to other posters.
If you look at it from a basic math standpoint the hardcore gamer gets more for his money, than a casual player sure, but a hardcore player is afforded no real advantage over a casual player through this subscription model alone. Both have equal amounts of time available from the company throughout the month. One being able to utilize more of his time throughout the month is not a direct function of the sub model itself but of the player.
If time is the metric of advantage, then all games despite sub model are inheremtly advantageous to hardcore gamers.
Well, obviously you must have good math skills, but I still wonder about the flexibility of your logic skills or you wouldn't have referred to the author making a "humongous leap of logic". You also wouldn't have failed to noticed that I prefaced my recommendation with "IF". Now are you actually having trouble with seeing it from the other point of view or are you just pretending to be dense to avoid conceding the point?
As far as your "biggest asshat" comment, please note that I have been very diplomatic, with no name calling or direct insults. I gave you a hook whereby you could decide insult yourself and you took it.
To help you along, I'll continue the explanation to the conclusion that you didn't seem to grasp. Picking it up with the 40 hr hardcore and 4 hour casual player, lets assume that they can both earn the same exp/hr (the hardcore probably has an advantage here too); then to reach the max level where they can participate in the end-game content, the casual player will take 10x as long and thus spend 10x the $$s to achieve the same result. The fact that the game provides them both with the same opportunity doesn't help the casual player if he doesn't have the spare time to take advantage of it.
Note: There are a few subscription games where this is not true, notably Eve, where your skills can continue to advance while you are not online. This make Eve a lot more casual player friendly than most of the other sub. games.
However, when you look at the F2P game with an item shop, the casual player doesn't have to spend more top achieve the same level, and even has the *option* to spend a little more to speed up his advancement instead of spending extra time which he is short of. Of course the hardcore player can also spend extra and advance even faster, but in both cases they get the same results for the amount of money spent.
All it takes is a little simple math and the ability looked at more than one side of an issue.
If hardcore play 40 hours/week and the casual play only plays 4 hours/week, then the casual player is paying 10x as much per hour of play than the hardcore player. Thus the hardcore player benefits from a much lower cost/hour of game play.
If that is still to great a leap of logic and math for you, I recommend an elementary math course in solving word problems.
I appreciate your condescending tone. I'll see if I can take time out of my flight schedule for that basic math course... I'm sure it will compliment my aeronautical engineering degree.
Too bad these forums always turn into a game of who can be the biggest asshat to other posters.
If you look at it from a basic math standpoint the hardcore gamer gets more for his money, than a casual player sure, but a hardcore player is afforded no real advantage over a casual player through this subscription model alone. Both have equal amounts of time available from the company throughout the month. One being able to utilize more of his time throughout the month is not a direct function of the sub model itself but of the player.
If time is the metric of advantage, then all games despite sub model are inheremtly advantageous to hardcore gamers.
Well, obviously you must have good math skills, but I still wonder about the flexibility of your logic skills or you wouldn't have referred to the author making a "humongous leap of logic". You also wouldn't have failed to noticed that I prefaced my recommendation with "IF". Now are you actually having trouble with seeing it from the other point of view or are you just pretending to be dense to avoid conceding the point?
As far as your "biggest asshat" comment, please note that I have been very diplomatic, with no name calling or direct insults. I gave you a hook whereby you could decide insult yourself and you took it.
To help you along, I'll continue the explanation to the conclusion that you didn't seem to grasp. Picking it up with the 40 hr hardcore and 4 hour casual player, lets assume that they can both earn the same exp/hr (the hardcore probably has an advantage here too); then to reach the max level where they can participate in the end-game content, the casual player will take 10x as long and thus spend 10x the $$s to achieve the same result. The fact that the game provides them both with the same opportunity doesn't help the casual player if he doesn't have the spare time to take advantage of it.
Note: There are a few subscription games where this is not true, notably Eve, where your skills can continue to advance while you are not online. This make Eve a lot more casual player friendly than most of the other sub. games.
However, when you look at the F2P game with an item shop, the casual player doesn't have to spend more top achieve the same level, and even has the *option* to spend a little more to speed up his advancement instead of spending extra time which he is short of. Of course the hardcore player can also spend extra and advance even faster, but in both cases they get the same results for the amount of money spent.
I insulted myself, lol. I guess the suggestion that I was in need of a basic math course was a compliment.
I do see your side of the argument, I just don't agree with it. The sub model itself does not cater to any style of gamer more than another. That is an individual function of the player and his/her available time. The sub model has no bearing on that one way or the other.
I admit the player with more time is able to take advantage of it moreso than the casual player with less time, but both have equal opportunity to advance within the framework of the sub model.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Einherjar_LC: If you really have a legitimate aeronautical engineering degree, then you must have a better grasp of logic than you are demonstrating here, so I'd have to conclude that you are just bating me, which is a waste of my time. If you lied about the degree, then then I can't trust any of your assertions, so again, a waste of time.
Perhaps there is another explanation, but unless I find it interesting, this will be my last reply.
The casuals are just gonna have to suck it up because the standard P2P is the only way to go with AAA. Go F2P and play a lesser quality game.
DDO is a great example of a quality F2P game. I expect you'll see more companies using this model.
DDO is a great example of a quality F2P game. I expect you'll see more companies using this model.
DDO started as a P2P game and reportedly did not go F2P with shop until long after it had made back its initial cost AND subs were so low, that trading sub revenue for cash shop was not a huge trade off.
Bad example.
I am not bating you, we simply don't agree dadown.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I respect your opinion, and I see where you are coming from, but my perspective is different. I'm ok with that, and as a caveat, I apologize for the asshat comment.
Have a good one.
BTW, yes I am a pilot with the above mentioned degree.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Relevant:
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/822/results_from_game_design_.php
I even placed! I'm Cass.