at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
Also, SWToR has such a high cost due to their numerous cutscenes with voice actors. That costs quite a few pennies.
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
Also, SWToR has such a high cost due to their numerous cutscenes with voice actors. That costs quite a few pennies.
I'm sure its costs were higher than average but the point is that a lot of people have been sold the idea that only the cash shop F2P games can be profitable and they've bought into that idea totally disregarding the success of games that continue to thrive with the old sub model in 2019.
If you have a good game and are happy with "enough profit" the sub model still works. F2P is all about more and more profits - fair enough if you're all about greed or keeping you shareholders happy - but it sure as fuck isn't needed to turn a profit.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
I play FFXIV, it has a box price, sub AND cash shop.
Also, FFXIV is the only MMO out there that launched twice and was actually completely rebuild, it cost the company an absolute fortune and was only done to keep the integrity of the series intact, fortunately I might say (I am a massive fan and own a big library of FF games, about 35+ titles). And no, I don’t have exact numbers, the numbers for Ultima Online and SWtOR are correct though, so my point still stands I guess.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
Also, SWToR has such a high cost due to their numerous cutscenes with voice actors. That costs quite a few pennies.
I'm sure its costs were higher than average but the point is that a lot of people have been sold the idea that only the cash shop F2P games can be profitable and they've bought into that idea totally disregarding the success of games that continue to thrive with the old sub model in 2019.
If you have a good game and are happy with "enough profit" the sub model still works. F2P is all about more and more profits - fair enough if you're all about greed or keeping you shareholders happy - but it sure as fuck isn't needed to turn a profit.
This is a good point and I think you are right. But, compared to the ‘good old games’ companies would have to generate much, much more revenue to get the same amount of profit per dollars spend. So, companies can keep doing what they have always done and turn a smaller profit then before but I know of no business that works that way. Or, they find additional ways of generating money.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
I play FFXIV, it has a box price, sub AND cash shop.
Also, FFXIV is the only MMO out there that launched twice and was actually completely rebuild, it cost the company an absolute fortune and was only done to keep the integrity of the series intact, fortunately I might say (I am a massive fan and own a big library of FF games, about 35+ titles). And no, I don’t have exact numbers, the numbers for Ultima Online and SWtOR are correct though, so my point still stands I guess.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Which point is that? That you believe the sub model can't be profitable and I do, and that neither you nor I have access to the books that would prove it one way or the other?
The "Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014." bit is interesting though. Don't you think?
Also is the FFXIV cash shop even accessible from inside the game these days? Last I heard it was only accessible from your account page outside the game same as WOW. WOW does go one extra step in cash shop integration by giving you in game links to the shop but it's still a link to a web page outside the game. That's not how F2P games work with their fully integrated and in your face shops.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
Also, SWToR has such a high cost due to their numerous cutscenes with voice actors. That costs quite a few pennies.
I'm sure its costs were higher than average but the point is that a lot of people have been sold the idea that only the cash shop F2P games can be profitable and they've bought into that idea totally disregarding the success of games that continue to thrive with the old sub model in 2019.
If you have a good game and are happy with "enough profit" the sub model still works. F2P is all about more and more profits - fair enough if you're all about greed or keeping you shareholders happy - but it sure as fuck isn't needed to turn a profit.
Oh, I agree with you. I just mentioned that because comparing SWToR with other mmorpgs is a little unfair considering they spent so much resources in voice acting.
A monthly fee is profitable enough if the game is good. Costs increasing or not has nothing to do with population retention. Maybe the game wasn't as good as expected after all.
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
I play FFXIV, it has a box price, sub AND cash shop.
Also, FFXIV is the only MMO out there that launched twice and was actually completely rebuild, it cost the company an absolute fortune and was only done to keep the integrity of the series intact, fortunately I might say (I am a massive fan and own a big library of FF games, about 35+ titles). And no, I don’t have exact numbers, the numbers for Ultima Online and SWtOR are correct though, so my point still stands I guess.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Which point is that? That you believe the sub model can't be profitable and I do, and that neither you nor I have access to the books that would prove it one way or the other?
The "Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014." bit is interesting though. Don't you think?
Also is the FFXIV cash shop even accessible from inside the game these days? Last I heard it was only accessible from your account page outside the game same as WOW. WOW does go one extra step in cash shop integration by giving you in game links to the shop but it's still a link to a web page outside the game. That's not how F2P games work with their fully integrated and in your face shops.
My point would be that I think sub models can be profitable, just not as much as they did back in the day per dollar spent, so companies will have to find different ways to generate revenue unless they want to be less succesful. Whether this is through an internal or external cash shop doesn’t matter, it could also be through game passes, higher box or sub prices etc..
F2P is a different beast altogether for me, here the money making actually needs to be integrated into the game, including the enticement to spend cash. Its a design decision and one that I don’t like. Regular games that have gone F2P also have different systems then those that started as F2P, in the former the enticement to spend cash isn’t built into the actual gameplay.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
F2P is a different beast altogether for me, here the money making actually needs to be integrated into the game, including the enticement to spend cash. Its a design decision and one that I don’t like. Regular games that have gone F2P also have different systems then those that started as F2P, in the former the enticement to spend cash isn’t built into the actual gameplay.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I don't know about that. ESO, SWTOR, LOTRO, Rift, etc., all have fully integrated their cash shops into the games when they dropped the compulsory sub and went freemium. I can't remember about the others but ESO even includes the F2P staple, loot boxes, complete with a cutesy mini-game for opening them.
I actually see very little difference between MMOs that started as F2P and those that started as sub-only and went freemium. Almost all of them these days have optional subs, fully integrated cash shops, daily log-in rewards, etc., and most either have or are trying to have an up-front "box" cost.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
12 comments on an Archeage news aaaand 5 of them are from a certain person and funny enough he got the first 2 comments with a wot bashing Gamigo again. I wonder why I'm not surprised...
Can you not focus on me and instead focus on my points?
This is an ArcheAge thread - can we just talk about that instead of derailing?
On the next thread can you not repeat your ass and let others have a conversation? We're obviously over you. I don't mean to come off like an ass I just wanna see what is said without you in the mix. Plz and thank you.
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
Make us an mmo that updates continuously based on a single purchase. That's idealism my friend.
Either make the MMO F2P with a cash shop or make it sub-based without it.
It's not difficult, but these companies want to double dip and then they wonder why everyone gets upset.
Costs to make Ultima Online: 5-6 million dollars, 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Costs to make SWToR: 200 million dollars. 60 dollar box price and 15 dollar sub.
Not difficult at all right? See where it goes wrong?
I agree 100%, people dont realize cost has increased greatly.
People don't realize all kinds of shit.
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
By the end of the first week of release, the PS3 version of A Realm Reborn placed second in Japan's sales charts, with 184,000 physical copies sold. In late October 2013, Square Enix announced that the game had one and a half million registrations. It was the 16th best selling personal computer game of 2013 in the United States.[156] In Japan, the PlayStation 3 version was ranked 32 in sales, with 244,574 retail copies sold.
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
Also, SWToR has such a high cost due to their numerous cutscenes with voice actors. That costs quite a few pennies.
I'm sure its costs were higher than average but the point is that a lot of people have been sold the idea that only the cash shop F2P games can be profitable and they've bought into that idea totally disregarding the success of games that continue to thrive with the old sub model in 2019.
If you have a good game and are happy with "enough profit" the sub model still works. F2P is all about more and more profits - fair enough if you're all about greed or keeping you shareholders happy - but it sure as fuck isn't needed to turn a profit.
Oh, I agree with you. I just mentioned that because comparing SWToR with other mmorpgs is a little unfair considering they spent so much resources in voice acting.
A monthly fee is profitable enough if the game is good. Costs increasing or not has nothing to do with population retention. Maybe the game wasn't as good as expected after all.
I wish that was true, unfortunately it isn´t. With higher costs you need much more people to sub, and stay subbed. Older "better" games couldn't get those numbers, let alone keep them, newer games can't either. It isn't 'oww, you used to need 250.000 subs for a 10 million dollar game so now you just need 5.000.000 for your 200 million dollar game, easy peasy."
A big myth is that when playing with substantially bigger numbers in anything, products, money, people, you can apply the same tactics and models you are used with smaller numbers. There are more risks, more overhead costs, need for streamlining etc. etc. When dealing with 20 times the needed customers, you have 20 times the different interests, 20 times the risk, 20 times the problems, a different load on servers, different server techniques (phasing, instancing etc.), having to deal with drop outs, server merges, getting new people into the game and so on and so forth. Its a completely different game, literally.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Seriously? He is just offering his opinion. Far as I am concerned he nailed it and then you had to jump all over him without even attempting to address his points. That is what we call trolling around here. I disagree with Kano all the time, but I point out how I disagree and let it go at that, you, however, can't seem to address anything except that you don't like his posts.
As to the game, it is absurd such a poorly designed and badly implemented feature made it into the game at all. It is one of the "what were they thinking moments". So I have to agree with Kano on this one.
He's not just stating his opinion. He is shoving his opinion down everyone's throat... then arguing with them if they have a different opinion based on actual knowledge.
Why is this an issue? Because every ArcheAge post made is completely derailed into a DMKano bitchfest in which he acts as though he is talking from a position of knowldege, which he is not. He gave his hate fuelled ignorant opinion, over and over and over in the last post and the post before that and the post before that. It has gone way past him giving his opinion.
Anyone seeking actual information has to weed through all of the ignorant DMKano arguments based on nothing other than his opinion and hope they find the information they need. God forbid that person asks a question because it will be completely derailed by yet another a DMKano bitchfest. It really needs to stop. It's a little disappointing that the MMORPG moderators have allowed it to go on.
XL put in a very poor system in game - archepass is not well designed nor thought out, they should not have put in Archepass the way it is in the game to begin with
Gamigo has no QA staff - this is what I am told from people in the know - this is also obvious because they never caught how bad Archepass was and they never gave feedback to XL until it was too late
Gamigo should have tested Archepass on PTS for at least a month - since they have no QA staff - let players test and find the exploits
So players are going to say - they disabled it - praise them - lol
No instead look how both XL and Gamigo failed to catch this before launch - that is the real problem Future exploits will come up again and again - due to all 3 points above
if anyone has a chance to do an interview with XL or Gamigo - please ask them who came up with the Archepass system?
How could something so bad even make it into the live game?
Allright lets see if I can do this by the rules.
Firstly Do game companies have QA staff.
Well yes, all game companies have QA staff, but the bit you are incorrect about is what their function is. This is not Quality Analysis or control this is very very loosely user experience testing, something that is far more subjective and entirely different to QA. All the QA staff in the world wont help you if the fundamental design is the issue, QA are there to go "Here is the expected input, here is the expected out put, I do the expected input do I get the expected output" they are not paid to provide systemic feedback on User experience.
In large scale game development you will have some methods for staff to provide feedback, but said feedback often has to be framed positively so "Yeah Archepass sucks change it" would just get ignored by any self respecting developer until there was more to it than that.
In terms of giving feedback to XL about the Archepass, Feedback is likely passed on all the time. But heres the big deal.
Understanding feedback is not acceptance
Acceptance is not agreement
and agreement is not always actionable.
The Archepass was revealed very late, and likely based on successful systems in other games (Rifts Battlepass, Fortnights, Lol, Minion Masters, Apex, to name a few) now are these games directly comparable, no but contextually they are.
Developers are often so intimately familiar with the intricacies of the game they can not bear to play it and when they do they know too much about it to spot a lot of this stuff.
So thats the what went wrong part.
Now for the why should we praise them, I am not sure praise is the right word, but to disable your primary method of making money off a game two weeks after its launch to try and improve the experience for players based on player feedback is about as good an outcome as you can hope for these days, and it should be recognised that they did this rather than burying their head in the sand or doubling down on the monetisation method.
It is easy to be critical, its easy to find a fault, but if all you look for is negatives then that is all you will find.
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
yea gotta agree here. wanna impress me sub only no cash shop!
Exactly.
Sub only without cash shop is what the fans wanted all along.
In an ideal world this, but do you honestly think it would retain enough subscribers to be a viable product in the medium term this way?
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
yea gotta agree here. wanna impress me sub only no cash shop!
Exactly.
Sub only without cash shop is what the fans wanted all along.
In an ideal world this, but do you honestly think it would retain enough subscribers to be a viable product in the medium term this way?
If DMKano is criticising Archeage than you know something is bad on a planetary scale.
Never even imagined game launch could go this bad. Expected 5h queue, expected crashes, did not expect full raid of purple beard dwaves running around the map exploiting shit together for a week and not getting banned, or Gamigo being clueless about it while they say this on shout chat:
"+exploit" "+exploit raid" "++labor raid"
I mean part of players reached endgame in a matter of 10 days and Gamigo has no response as of yet.
Talk about shame.
at least they are listening to their fans. That's good!
If they really listened - there would be no Archepass system in game period.
There would be no cash shop period.
So please let's not use this excuse - let's not praise companies for reacting to their own mess - Archepass was something they messed up to begin with.. and players didnt want it.
So yeah let's rethink the whole "listening to the fans"....archepass was so exploitable of course they had to disable it - they had no other choice period.
So listening to the fans? I dont think so
yea gotta agree here. wanna impress me sub only no cash shop!
Exactly.
Sub only without cash shop is what the fans wanted all along.
In the end cash shop hit the last nail with the hammer and ended Archeage for all times.
People told me about Gamigo buying dead games to milk them out, but i was like hey maybe this is the one, maybe theyr better than Trion.
Comments
BTW, FFXIV ARR, using the traditional sub + expansion every 2 years model is not a charity. I have no idea how much it cost to develop...both times, nor am I inclined to pull a $ figure out my ass to try to make some lame point about "keeping the lights on" or some such apologist nonsense:
Following an extremely poor fiscal year 2013, Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014.
Yoshida has repeatedly emphasized that the robust success of A Realm Reborn was due to its traditional monthly subscription model. He sees the free-to-play model as an unreliable source of income predicated on devoting a lot of development resources to monthly consumable or cosmetic items in order to maintain profitability, leaving little time for higher quality story and battle content. He also disclosed that over 80% of players are satisfied with the subscription model and theorized that this is due to players' confidence in a steady stream of quality content because of their subscription.
But hey WTF does Yoshida, the producer and director, know compared to the mmorpg.com crowd.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
If you have a good game and are happy with "enough profit" the sub model still works. F2P is all about more and more profits - fair enough if you're all about greed or keeping you shareholders happy - but it sure as fuck isn't needed to turn a profit.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
The "Square Enix executives commended the game's sales and subscriptions for their role in returning the company to profitability in 2014." bit is interesting though. Don't you think?
Also is the FFXIV cash shop even accessible from inside the game these days? Last I heard it was only accessible from your account page outside the game same as WOW. WOW does go one extra step in cash shop integration by giving you in game links to the shop but it's still a link to a web page outside the game. That's not how F2P games work with their fully integrated and in your face shops.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
A monthly fee is profitable enough if the game is good. Costs increasing or not has nothing to do with population retention. Maybe the game wasn't as good as expected after all.
F2P is a different beast altogether for me, here the money making actually needs to be integrated into the game, including the enticement to spend cash. Its a design decision and one that I don’t like. Regular games that have gone F2P also have different systems then those that started as F2P, in the former the enticement to spend cash isn’t built into the actual gameplay.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I actually see very little difference between MMOs that started as F2P and those that started as sub-only and went freemium. Almost all of them these days have optional subs, fully integrated cash shops, daily log-in rewards, etc., and most either have or are trying to have an up-front "box" cost.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
On the next thread can you not repeat your ass and let others have a conversation? We're obviously over you. I don't mean to come off like an ass I just wanna see what is said without you in the mix. Plz and thank you.
A big myth is that when playing with substantially bigger numbers in anything, products, money, people, you can apply the same tactics and models you are used with smaller numbers. There are more risks, more overhead costs, need for streamlining etc. etc. When dealing with 20 times the needed customers, you have 20 times the different interests, 20 times the risk, 20 times the problems, a different load on servers, different server techniques (phasing, instancing etc.), having to deal with drop outs, server merges, getting new people into the game and so on and so forth. Its a completely different game, literally.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Allright lets see if I can do this by the rules.
Firstly Do game companies have QA staff.
Well yes, all game companies have QA staff, but the bit you are incorrect about is what their function is. This is not Quality Analysis or control this is very very loosely user experience testing, something that is far more subjective and entirely different to QA. All the QA staff in the world wont help you if the fundamental design is the issue, QA are there to go "Here is the expected input, here is the expected out put, I do the expected input do I get the expected output" they are not paid to provide systemic feedback on User experience.
In large scale game development you will have some methods for staff to provide feedback, but said feedback often has to be framed positively so "Yeah Archepass sucks change it" would just get ignored by any self respecting developer until there was more to it than that.
In terms of giving feedback to XL about the Archepass, Feedback is likely passed on all the time. But heres the big deal.
Understanding feedback is not acceptance
Acceptance is not agreement
and agreement is not always actionable.
The Archepass was revealed very late, and likely based on successful systems in other games (Rifts Battlepass, Fortnights, Lol, Minion Masters, Apex, to name a few) now are these games directly comparable, no but contextually they are.
Developers are often so intimately familiar with the intricacies of the game they can not bear to play it and when they do they know too much about it to spot a lot of this stuff.
So thats the what went wrong part.
Now for the why should we praise them, I am not sure praise is the right word, but to disable your primary method of making money off a game two weeks after its launch to try and improve the experience for players based on player feedback is about as good an outcome as you can hope for these days, and it should be recognised that they did this rather than burying their head in the sand or doubling down on the monetisation method.
It is easy to be critical, its easy to find a fault, but if all you look for is negatives then that is all you will find.
Good luck!
In an ideal world this, but do you honestly think it would retain enough subscribers to be a viable product in the medium term this way?
Never even imagined game launch could go this bad. Expected 5h queue, expected crashes, did not expect full raid of purple beard dwaves running around the map exploiting shit together for a week and not getting banned, or Gamigo being clueless about it while they say this on shout chat:
"+exploit" "+exploit raid" "++labor raid"
I mean part of players reached endgame in a matter of 10 days and Gamigo has no response as of yet.
Talk about shame.
In the end cash shop hit the last nail with the hammer and ended Archeage for all times.
People told me about Gamigo buying dead games to milk them out, but i was like hey maybe this is the one, maybe theyr better than Trion.
Check this out