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How to incentivise players to pay, without disenfranchising all but the whales?
somersaultsam
Member UncommonPosts: 230
In F2P or Freemium games, I recognise the need for free players to bolster the population, but I also recognise the need to reward those players who actually fund the game.
If I pay towards a game I want a tangibly improved experience over those who do not. If I do not receive a tangibly improved experience then there is no incentive for me to pay for the game.
However, I do not want to see limitless advantages, or excessive time-walls or fail-states that can be overcome, depending upon the size of a player's wallet, because this unbalances the game, often to the point that the endgame becomes untenable for free players, or those who spend a moderate "subscription substitute".
This monetisation system disenfranchises all but the whales.
It also tends to prey on those with poor impulse control. To me, the best examples of bad, intrusive or morally ambiguous monetisation systems are those utilised by PWE.
So my question is, how do you incentivise players to pay for a game, without disenfranchising all but the whales?
If I pay towards a game I want a tangibly improved experience over those who do not. If I do not receive a tangibly improved experience then there is no incentive for me to pay for the game.
However, I do not want to see limitless advantages, or excessive time-walls or fail-states that can be overcome, depending upon the size of a player's wallet, because this unbalances the game, often to the point that the endgame becomes untenable for free players, or those who spend a moderate "subscription substitute".
This monetisation system disenfranchises all but the whales.
It also tends to prey on those with poor impulse control. To me, the best examples of bad, intrusive or morally ambiguous monetisation systems are those utilised by PWE.
So my question is, how do you incentivise players to pay for a game, without disenfranchising all but the whales?
Comments
Change it to whales pay money to publisher for items and freebie play game for items .
Make sure those item can't be trade so it kind of pointless to multiple boxes .
This way you can feed the whales without kill off the freebies . Many f2p game success with this kind of f2p system .
Anyways, to have a f2p model and have it influence the entire game is little as possible could be:
No rmt shop with items, the only connection to rmt should be "playtime currency" - Freebies should spend time farming/trading the currency (pay with time), paying players can buy the currency (pay with money). Simple model no hidden devious tricks, you know what you pay for. Pay per hour, pay for unlimited play time during a week or month - New players get a free week to start out with.
Optional content or classes as micro transactions - Making this truly optional is the hard part, and so far hardly any games do this.. but in theory it can be done by an attentive developer without making micro transactions mandatory (like the new class is way OP and is a must have; or the new loot is bis so you need access to the dungeon). Micro transactions gets picked up at regular intervals (half a year?) and sold as a package deal (expansion). The cutting edge players (whales, fans, whatever you call them) will want to be updated with the newest content.
Other things such as inventory space, character slots, and convenience things or services are ok as long as they are truly optional (there we go again, but it is important) - Make life easier = good , make easier life mandatory to have a reasonable experience = bad.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Tired of this idea that P2P business model is dead. It's not the model that's dead, it's the games that are dead. Otherwise games like WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR and other games would not still have the subscriber base they do.
Most F2P is just a byproduct of bad game design
I say go back to a modified sub model.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Eg. You can sell a quick travel cooldown reduction if and only if that cooldown is reasonable (10-15min). Better if you offer a permanent unlock.
Rationale: The current whale-centric monetization practices make gameplay and content production a cost center. That places a huge disincentive on making a fun game. Funding models need to swing back towards incentivizing games that are attractive in and of themselves.
Back in 2010, I watched Funcom implement an Item Store into Anarchy Online. Nothing good came out of that. All development and content began, to center and focus around encouraging item purchases, They even removed many of the methods players used to generate credits with. There was a mid-level zone based on the Alien Invasion expansion that was used to farm items to resell. Funcom removed one of the staple drops from the loot table from there...........yeah, after spending huge sums of credits building a character just for the purposes of farming that zone, they nerfed the ability to make credits.......That was one example.
Anyway, the response has always been...."It allows the games to continue longer"........but if they are altering the content to revolve around a cash shop, who cares if the life of a shitty game getting shittier is extended?
They create a VERY competitive market,that is why all those crap games went away from that,they could not compete.
They also prove who is a bad developer because numbers although not the tell all,are a decenbt indication of product quality.
Not so much the huge mass bandwagon jumping but STAYING power.We have all seen it said game gets 2-4 million then 2 months later is a ghost town.
Problem with no subs is it HIDES or allows devs to fake or lie about their games health,subs don't lie.A game for example that has even 200 players but is constantly growing into the many thousands is a good sign where as a game with even 15 million dropping to 12 million is a bad sign.
Famous marketing BS is when you see "50 million accounts",enter the game and nobody is there lol.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I think one of the best systems are the ones that allow f2p players to buy "premium" status for in game items and or currency that require a fair amount of effort to gain.
Then you can keep both the population and the revenue stream. But usually if you divide anything.... it will ofc be divided and many people paying or no dont like division and or segregation no matter what side they are on.
Server Type 2: $100 cap on spending per month, $5 sub minimum to play on server.
Server 2 provides whale protection, but requires you to at least become a payer at a minimum level and could push you towards eventually paying that $100. Characters can freely move from server 2 to server 1 but not from server 1 to server 2(except as a first purchase for a formerly free player // new subscriber)
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
You have to compensate for this, by removing the ceiling for those that do pay. 100 free players get to play, because one whale pays 1000$ a month.
Because publishers want money, the obvious thing to do is to try and convince free players to pay. Paying in a F2P game is by definition voluntary. How do you make someone do an act "voluntarily"? The game design becomes immoral on many levels to accommodate this conversion. The F2P genre often uses the most questionable marketing techniques to get people to pay.
If you were to remove the prevelance of whales, you would need to compensate for this by boosting the mid-range profits. In other words, implement even more questionable marketing, converting non payers to medium payers.
A subscription model, is in essence the extreme of this. Where you disallow there to be any whales, and require all "free players" to pay monthly. Because paying a subscription is mandatory, there needs to be no misdirection. As soon as you try to apply this to the F2P model, you'd need to employ some extremely questionable marketing, in order to make 100% of the free players to "voluntarily" pay.
That is if you want to decrease the presence of whales. If you don't mind the whales, as long as they don't influence gameplay, you need to get creative with the rewards. What is worth 1000$ a month, that doesn't actually have any gameplay effect at all? How can you convince someone to spend 1000$ (monthly!) on something that has no gameplay effect?
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Example: i have standard lvl.10 armour. A loot, bought from other player - does not matter.
I go to shop and voila - for a few $ I can decorate armour with silver, gold,m platinium, precious stones.
Imagine I have a house. Oh well, I can have standard roof. But hey, I can have shiny roof juist for few dollars.
http://www.mmoblogg.wordpress.com
How much money have you spent in the cash shop in each of those games in the past year?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
How to monetize a game? There's basically 3 approaches.
- Subscription. Everyone pays the same, everyone gets the same.
- Cash Shop. Put in a cash shop, with careful diligence to the P2W concerns.
- Make money. Forget anything else and do whatever the accountants think will give the product / company the best possible return on investment.
Ultimately, players are customers. Customers can alter parameters of a basic product, selecting color, style, sizes, etc. MMORPGs are not basic products or goods. Customers can't alter the basic parameters of the product, like making orcs have 4 legs or choosing between snakes that kick and snakes that slither away before you notice them. The company control access to the game and can restrict or allow players as desired. Players are given a 'take it or not' option.Customers do not set the business model. That is the companies right. Investors and creditors to the company have a vested interest in how the product is sold.
How to keep players, and encourage them to participate in the payment model? Just like anything else. Produce a quality product, make it interesting, market it honestly, and price it within reason -- don't try to deliver a Lamborghini for the price of a Kia, and don't try to charge Lamborghini prices for a Kia.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
The thing to keep in mind is that if you have enough whales you only have to keep them happy, to these people other players are content. That's why f2p works, it brings in people who don't spend money but who keep the whales amused and paying/playing.
Other players are content.
Bankspace, bag space to some degree (but not too much difference with them, from 60 to 100 is acceptable but not from 20 to 100), character slots, hairstyle kits are all fine.
Races only work if they are just cosmetic (and that is rather lazy). Classes is way out, as well as rangerpets or mounts that aren't just cosmetic.
And of course skins for anything is fine as well as long as they don't outshine the top tiered gear.
I think we should start calling Pay to Win Free to Lose!
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
B: Cosmetic only cash shop.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey