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Why not have seperate subscription only servers?
Nilden
Member EpicPosts: 3,916
While reading the MMORPG.com ArcheAge review I picked up one point that made serious sense to me. Having separate servers that do not have any cash shop and are subscription only.
I hate cash shops. Even cosmetic stuff for sale in cash shops hurts the game for me. I want people running around with crazy mounts and armor and tons of gold because they crafted it, killed bosses or earned it in-game not by *CHA-CHING* getting out the credit card.
Some companies have subscription options but that cash shop is still looming there on every server. The casino, whale harpooning, greed that is going on is not something I want any part of.
Really as a consumer who would be driven off by a cash shop you provide me with an option I am willing to pay for by having cash shop free subscription only servers.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/
Comments
They are making zero off me right now because of the cash shop. I would be willing to actually pay a sub on a cash shop free server.
Couldn't they in theory make even more? Or would offering the sub only servers kill the cash shop ones?
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/I completely agree. I hate cash shops, micro-transactions, and nickel-and-dime nonsense in games. Just let me pay my $14.99 a month and have access to everything.
Everquest 2 started out its F2P with only 1 server and the rest were sub only. So essentially what you are asking for, only in reverse. It didn't take long for it to go f2p across all servers.
I understand what you're saying and we are both making a fair amount of assumptions when we express our opinion, but to me at least, offering a sub without a cash shop option would likely cause a very large amount of people to migrate to the sub-only servers. They don't actually want that to happen because cash shops bring in a helluva lot of money. Besides that, there really isn't any guarantee that "if they build it, they will come." A great many people that like the game and don't like cash shops are likely already playing the game in spite of the cash shop.
Actually the opposite is what happens. There are a LOT more F2P Players than P2P players. Exclusive servers end up being underpopulated, and unpopular. They are just not cost effective to operate.
I think that a good amount of people that are currently paying a sub would migrate and they could easily fill a server with those types. But who knows, maybe like you said there isn't even a market for that.
Because they want F2P players to see the advantage of having a subscription by watching their subbed peers.
If you create servers where everyone is either subbed or F2P, the latter group will not aspire to spend money.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Don't you see it?
They're doing just fine without you. Quit ******** about it and move on. Nothing in your post is as black and white as you describe it. And if you deal in extremes all day everyday for everything in your life, I feel sorry for you. I truly am.
I can spend all evening explaining why you are completely wrong, but that'll be just a waste of time for the both of us. So move on and play Minecraft or whatever rows your boat.
If you think this through... you will realize that P2P isn't really that popular in comparison, and that empty servers need to be closed (i.e. why create a server that is basically doomed).
1. P2P servers need to be exclusive (no transfers in etc) else people will just start on F2P and then transfer to P2P with the benefits that they got from the cash shop.
2. P2P would not add anything, it would just remove access to the cash shop.
3. People don't like to start over (for those already playing
4. People like to play with their friends, many of which will want to try the game via F2P.
5. Many people who are paying a monthly sub like the OPTION to do so. They don't want to be locked in.
Bottom line, people like to have options of all types, servers, people to play with, types of payment, etc. Anything that blocks those options reduces the number of players, and the more limiting, the more it is reduced. If is common for 90+% of all players in a F2P game to never pay for anything (9 out of 10). Those 1 in 10 that do pay, they choose from a variety of methods (cash shop, monthly sub, one time purchase, etc). Monthly game time/sub is the most common, but it is still less than 10%, and the people that would want to play on an exclusive server without anyone else (including likely friends) is going to be an even smaller subset.
I think you can see why a sub only sever just isn't worth the effort. It would cater to a very small group of players, and create a server that is likely under populated (and hard/impossible to populate after the fact). The players would also likely be unhappy with the results, as they would see the stuff that people have/do on the other servers, and feel that they are left out because they don't get that stuff.
Oh, sorry. Did I make it sound like I didn't agree with you? I do agree with you that adding a sub-only server isn't in Trion's best interest. I understand the effect a pay wall can have on a game (even if it's only $1). I just happen to also think that there are likely enough people to fill at least one sub-only server to a sufficient size. I also think that it would be counter-productive for them to try anything like that because they want as many people in that cash shop as possible. And the people currently subbing? They are likely the easiest marks for the cash shop because they already have their wallets open.
I do agree with you fundamentally. I understand how you came to your conclusion (all the subset stuff), I'm just not sure that the numbers are correct. But whatever. This is all really just speculation.
In the case of ArcheAge, the subscribers scoffed up all the land, not the F2P players. The game literally can't support more than x number of land owners and that number is easily well below the number of players that can play the game. You'd still have a land issue, you'd still have labor points, and you'd still have server imbalance. Honestly, that game would have been the same whether everyone paid or didn't pay. Remember, the ORIGINAL version in Korea that was subscription based used labor points and had limited land. So ArcheAge wouldn't be any different than it is today if it were 100% subscription. It was the way the game was written to begin with.
Now, that being said... even subscription games still nickel and dime you to death and have cash shops. WoW, perhaps the richest MMO in history, charges a subscription to play, charges a fee for expansions, charges a fee to change servers (guild and individual), charges a fee to change your name or your guild name, charges a fee to change your faction faction or your guild faction, charges a fee to change appearance, and has a cash shop on top of all that. It doesn't put out content any more frequently than a F2P game does, is constantly rebalancing the classes, and and and...
Now granted they need to make money, but clearly if other games can offer free this and free that on top of a modest game fee, then you know they are milking you.
B2P is the best model. They get the same amount of money per person who buys the game. You are free to play or not play it whenever you like. You pay for expansions, that's it. You know, like the old days when you actually owned the games you bought. As soon as you go the pay as you go route, they've got you by the balls. And believe me, they have plenty of more ways to milk the players, they've only just begun. All because we accepted the idea of paying to play a game we already paid for.
Because whales only spend money if they can feel superior over other players. If you give other players the same for $15 a month, they will no longer feel superior.
Ferrari could sell many more cars of their limited editions, but they don't, because the super rich would no longer feel special if everyone in their neigbourhood had one.
P2P works because everyone agrees that everyone is treated as equals, F2P works because whales can feel superior and freeloaders can play for free. I don't think these two mix.
You get whales to spend money by making sure they have something others don't have, if you remove this advantage, they no longer spend money. Whales will not spend $1000 a month if the person next door gets the same thing for $15 a month.
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the only explanation to that is that XL/Trion want subscribers to use the cash shop as well, which sucks donkey nuts. Otherwise, a subscription only separate server would make total sense.
That way subbers play on their same level field without cash shop interference while freebies play on their same cash shop unbalanced field. Allods Online did that, but the game was already dead so it didnt help them much.
EDIT: unless of course their model is based on whales like Quizzical said... better let the game die then.
Dunno if it's been mentioned, but EQ2 did this for a while.
I didn't play much EQ2, but a friend who did told me that it ended up friends who would let their subs lapse wouldn't be able to stay on their servers with their friends, sub-only servers became mostly ghost towns, and they just decided to merge them all.
that is easily fixed... if your subscription lapse you cant log in. If you want to have a free character make one on the free server or manually transfer your paid character to the free server. To the company, dont let subscription characters downgrade to free automatically. There, fixed.
Then people would moan about having to pay if they wanted to use a toon that's sub had lapsed, they would moan about servers with population problems and then moan that to transfer they had to pay money.
As a sub you can do everything a f2p player can and if you wanted to use the cash shop you could, making sub only servers makes no sense to companies as they just loose out on profits from the cash shop, it would not encourage more subs either, most likely sub players would switch to f2p and just buy what they wanted.
Also games now offer you benefits for using things like authentication tools .. So as long as you don't mind waiting a bit longer you can get the benefits a sub would and all for about £8.99
I'm not advocating doing anything different with the current servers at all. Just adding servers that are subscription only with no cash shop. I'm all for even being able to move characters off the sub only servers onto the regular servers but not the other way around. No cash shop stuff gets in.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Assuming they can keep their greedy hands out of the server and go purist with removing all traces of cashshop this wouldn't be a bad experiment.
Probably never going to happen. Consider most subscription game do have a cash shop to get more money.