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Very disappointed by the WildStar business model
Source: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/the-game/business-model/
Basically the game will be pay per month but you get an option to "Play to pay" by exchanging your in game gold for game time, which doesnt really matter to most of us who spend more time on real life.
I am very disappointed by this because the trend of online games are either one time purchase or free to play.
I personally dislike pay per month model because it pushes me to play the game more than I wanted to b/c I paid for it.
Very often I play a game for some time and then go for a break for couple weeks and then come back and play again.
With the pay per month model, I will be bound to play 1 game because I paid for it and wont be able to try other new games. I wont be able to just come back and try out new stuff for couple days or just check out my stuff without paying the monthly fee first.
It is not about money because I have spent over hundred of dollars on LOL just for buying the skins.
It is about my sub-consciousness that I feel uncomfortable with the pay per month model.
Regardless how great WS will be, the business model of it just pushes me away so I would say NO to this game.
Comments?
Comments
In other words this is just a precursor for an ingame/F2P shop ?
The guy who has a subscription buys "C.R.E.D.D" online (where ? in an ingame shop ?) and sells it for gold so he can "achieve" something.
Who decides what is the exchange rate for CREDD and how is it influenced ?
This all sounds quiete fishy....either its a sub based game or not. But this seems something else.
I voted 'No' because I won't be pre-ordering. However, my decision has nothing to do with your text.
Bad poll is bad.
You Know....
I like things upfront. I don't like to be nickel'd and dimed. I don't like cash shops. $15 a month isn't even on my radar as long as I'm satisfied with the service.
I can appreciate kid's and or adult's with small income's that makes things hard for them to afford. I don't begrudge them anything that will help them afford to do something that's fun and put's a smile on their face.
As long as a business model is respectful I'm OK with it.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
More like taking EVE's feature, where you can purchase sub time with in-game credits if you are somehow wealthy enough in game. I don't see what the issue is.
You make me like charity
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
As an example they write about a sub based player who has not time to get gold and to achieve a mount.
So he buys C.R.E.D.D online (from an CX Ingame Shop offered by an anonymous vendor) and sells it to other players for gold. These players can buy C.R.E.D.D with gold because they cant afford a monthly subscription for the game and can play for free with C.R.E.D.D.
With this Ingame Shop players can buy GOLD for money and for GOLD free to play time.
In other words it sounds it is a system which supports Free To Play.
This is not a true and pure sub based game like some thought maybe and it is a great invite to encourage gold farmer and botter.
Eve has a similar system with PLEX
How it works in WS:
Player A buys a CREDD from NCSoft ($20US)
Player A goes to the commodity exchange in game and post it for whatever they think it'll sell for.
Player B goes to the commodity exchange and buys a CREDD, he gets the lowest cost CREDD on the exchange.
Player A gets gold once his CREDD sells
Player B uses CREDD and gets 30 days added to his account
CREDD can't be traded directly between players or posted on the AH.
Again, it's just like EVE.
You make me like charity
EVE Online has had the same thing in PLEX for years now and it has worked just fine.
You go to the website and you can simply order it the same way that you pay your monthly fee. You then receive the ingame tradable items the same way that you might get a vanity pet if you bought that from the website. In EVE there is an item redemption button on your options window.
This person then sells the items on a broker for how ever much he thinks he can get. It doesn't take long for supply and demand to set the price naturally. There will be a lot of people selling and a lot of people buying. To begin with the price will be lower because there will not be as much in game currency circulating.
From the perspective of the buyer. You spend some extra time. perhaps a few days grinding gold how ever that is done in the game. dailies, killing mobs what ever. In EVE most people would do missions and ratting (killing NPC pirates) for bounties. You then take your couple of evenings worth of cash to the broker and buy the cheapest CREDD you can find. It will still be expensive, they always are because someone did spend real money to buy it for you. You then use the item, like any consumable in the game and it adds 30 days of game time to your account.
The great part of this system is that the game is still purely sub based. The only difference is that instead of me buying my month and you buying your month and that being the only option, I can buy two months for the both of us and you can farm up some cash for me because maybe you have more free time than I do. All I did was convert some of my money into your time. It is really no different than if you live down the block from me and I hired you to mow my lawn which saves me time and then you used those earnings to pay for your subscription. The difference is only in what you do for the 30 days of game time.
All die, so die well.
Hodor!
As an example they write about a sub based player who has not time to get gold and to achieve a mount.
So he buys C.R.E.D.D online (from an CX Ingame Shop offered by an anonymous vendor) and sells it to other players for gold. These players can buy C.R.E.D.D with gold because they cant afford a monthly subscription for the game and can play for free with C.R.E.D.D.
With this Ingame Shop players can buy GOLD for money and for GOLD free to play time.
In other words it sounds it is a system which supports Free To Play.
This is not a true and pure sub based game like some thought maybe and it is a great invite to encourage gold farmer and botter.
Thats sounds nothing like eve system if you cant buy it on the open market.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
I'm asking because I am not sure... But in Eve is the Plexx $5.00 more than the standard sub?
One month sub = $14.99 (standard issue sub)
CREDD = $19.99
That seems like a stiff kick in the nuts if you ask me.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
People purchasing CREDD (just like people who purchase PLEX) are looking to get in-game currency. It's not intended to be a 1:1 subscription ratio. And yes 1 PLEX is ~$20.
from the perspective of Carbine, it is still completely sub based. Every account has had time bought for it by somebody. They are just being more flexible on who is paying for which accounts.
People will try to bot this but then people will try to bot anyway. What it does help with is RMT spam and trading. What happens is that downward pressure is placed on the RMT goons as they cannot sell their cash for more than the market price of game currency to CREDD. In fact, they usually have to sell there's for much much lower since their customers know they are taking a risk and could loose there accounts. If CREDD is only marginally more expensive people wont bother with the RMT risk, it is worth the extra pennies. They will only take the risk if they have much to gain of it. Also many players simply wont even consider black market RMT if they have any legitimate option at all.
Because of this pressure, smaller RMT outfits will not be able to make enough cash to justify the time investment, they will simply move on to other games. These goons don't care which game they are working on they only care about where and how to maximize their time to cash turn around. This will leave only the biggest most determined RMT outfits running which in turn makes Carbine's job of hunting them down and banhammering them that much easier.
All die, so die well.
I dont play EVE and I would not play a game for longer which offers such a PLEX/CREDD system. Iam more interested what are the reasons such systems are implemented by companies.
EVE Online would have probably lower player numbers without the PLEX option, so CREDD is another boost in the future about players numbers in Wildstar probably.
The CREDD in Wildstar is distributed with an ingame shop and the vendors of it are all anonymous. So there is not really an overview about it who offers it and how the value to gold will change.
But if someone is interested playing Wildstar, I would rather be sceptical about if such a system would not encourage gold farmers/botters aswell. This game is not EVE and the world/maps are probably smaller.
And besides that you can BUY GOLD without any effort as a player and therefore the economy is regulated by those who invest into real cash. Now add gold farmers who offer their gold on ebay and you will probably think about how the economy will look like in this game.
Yes, (or rather 19.95) if you buy them one at a time. If you buy them two more at a time it is only the extra $5 for each two so you do say some if you buy them by twos. That actually dates back to before they had an ingame item to trade. When you could only buy game time codes 60 days at a time and you exchanged them though the website and the time code bazaar on their forums.
All die, so die well.
The economy has and always will be regulated by the consumer. If people won't by CREDD at (just using numbers for reference) 200 million then eventually suppliers will have to lower their price. Remember that collectively the consumer has more power than the supplier.
Even if you play only 1 hour per day, that's only 50 cents per hour of entertainment.
The sub model does seem outdated though. I like freemium the best. You can sub if you want or you can play for free and just pay as you please.
Anyways, just wait awhile if you don't want to sub, this and ESO will probably freemium after 6-12 months.
This. WildStar has bigger problems right now. The business model isn't one of them.
Elite: Dangerous - Space Exploration & Trading.
Having played EVE online for quite some time and used the PLEX system I can say that if well implemented this is indeed a boon for any sub based MMO. The distributor (Carbine) gets the money, the seller gets in game gold and the buyer gets time.
The market is self regulating and it aplies pressure on gold farmers as you cannot readily convert CREDD to $. It also tends to apply a balancing factor on game economy, especially one prone to inflation (No item destruction / full player loot). Players with piles of in game currency will spend on CREDD (Hey, why not?) and those buying the CREDD will spend the in game currency on money sinks (Or they would not need CREDDs). Since the game seems to have limited money sink the earning potential of a player will eventually be higher than spending at some point, meaning players with oodles of time have oodles of cash and this drives market prices up.
The best example of this would be a dear friend of mine who seems obsessed with having alts of every race / class combination possible and raising tradeskills with them. As she has plenty of game time she farms like crazy and sits on piles of virtual gold that might rival first world economies. When she needs to raise a new alt she will gladly pay 200% over market value for something just to have it now, this raises prices globally. Having such a good and steady wealth distribution system in place will help counterbalance this phenomenon. It is no cure but it is darn good retardant to inflation.
Just my 2 cents..