123910-b2p-sub-credd-suggestion-page-3

Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5

Content
{| style="width: 100%;"

Protip: GW2 is not the only F2P game that is brought up in comparison to WS because GW2 is not F2P. You don't think that maybe GW2 and WS get compared to each other here more often than other games because they're both owned by the same publisher and release their financials at the same time and in the same document, and this forum happens to be owned and run by that same publisher? Just sayin'.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

I personally know a LOT of people in my guild who outright stated they'd leave if it went F2P. And unlike your 7 people, all mine are definitely contributing on some level to the game's development (mostly via their own subscriptions). So your 7 people will have to pay more than 15 dollars a month for each of mine, just ten right off the top of my head and without asking again. That's NCSoft's calculation, because even having more people play that don't pay more overall isn't worth it to them.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Well the cost is the reason they went away for 100% since they felt they didn't play the content as much to warrant the sub. I'm sure they would still log on almost every day just to check how things are going and if i would ask them outside the game to do a dungeon i'm sure they would hop on to play since those are the part most of them liked.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Pretty much this. You're asking a studio to make a monetary change and focus on non-monetary methods. That's not how this works. At present (ostensibly) you have as many engineers as you can working on improving the game. That's where the money is; you need as many people playing as possible and you are rewarded per player. Even in Wildstar's case, CREDD users are still accounted for monthly per player. That changes in a traditional F2P, and to a relatively lesser extend the B2P format. You don't get excess development hours, so you have to reallocate your staff. You have to make more money than before, and now you aren't being rewarded for gameplay in an F2P format (and only sparsely so in a B2P format, which is why the latter mimics the former more often than a game with a more regular payment plan). That means that, to fund the game, you have to make sure you are dedicating enough time to the stuff that makes you money, and in large enough volumes (or in the order of P2W schemes, enough regularity) that you are making up for lost revenues. You might have gameplay eating a huge net loss (because less people actually pay for it than play, but everyone uses bandwidth, customer support, support staff, security, etc.) that you have to make up for. If you're lucky, you can minimize this by selling enough to enough players that you can reduce the time you spend on monetized items. If you're not, and most aren't, P2W is in your future because you need to sell things people want to make money, and once cosmetics don't cut it, you only have a few more options left. There are models whereby people can play free this doesn't happen, but those have no revenue redistribution. That's not F2P or B2P as we know it, that'd be something like ads shoring up their revenue.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Except that most of us wouldn't want a skin over a dungeon, but that's exactly what happens. That skin doesn't come from a vacuum, no matter how nice, and for it to presently fund the game, you'd have to sell one at 15 dollars apiece to as many people who are paying for a subscription now. That's not easy to do when your stated playerbase is concerned with monetizing your game to that amount (the entire point of F2P is to let in people who "can't" pay). Realistically, you release a TON of them, using a bevy of your development hours, hoping a few people will buy them all, far weighing in excess of one player alone (meaning someone's going to have to be dropping hundreds, or thousands, of dollars into the game). If you don't, you don't get all the skins, either because you don't want them (that quality argument you make there) or you don't need them (more likely). So you can try to minimize, but you can't minimize too far because, as stated, you have no idea how many hats or pairs of wings you're going to sell. You need enough to make sure you make back enough money to pay for development. If you don't, you obviously go beyond skins, hats, and wings. People need to be paying for your game. That takes precedent. The only thing you are not rewarded for, the one thing that doesn't pay your bills, is the game itself. That is the free gift in this telemarketing campaign, the game is essentially worthless. It's inefficient if your highest priority, as a player, isn't what's being monetized and you're not willing to pay for all of it. That's very few of us. The reason a subscription game has a HUGE incentive to do more than the minimum is because they aren't funded by a portion of their playerbase who has money and will buy things, they are rewarded by how many people play the game. That's a huge incentive to make your game as good across as broad a spectrum as possible and to never skimp on the gameplay details. You saw that earlier in this game's life, where bugs (as Esper will relate) nearly killed the game on a monthly drop cycle. Right now, NCSoft and Carbine are rewarded for having a game worth 15 dollars to as many people as possible, not to have a game that's functionally worthless and hoping to get as much money as possible from sources outside gameplay.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Hey, keep paying your sub or eating a CREDD, and you wouldn't have to see them. It's only for the people who aren't paying to play or playing to pay.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

Well, the devs promised new monthly content. In fact, they used new monthly content as a justification for paying a monthly subscription fee. Then they dropped back to a quarterly release. So, it's not so much the price barrier as it is the company taking away the main thing they said would make the game worth paying a subscription for - and still charging a subscription fee. It's not surprising that players, who took the devs at their word, would feel they weren't getting their money's worth.


 * }
 * }

{| style="width: 100%;"

This is 100% true. There were thousands of Dev posts and flicks explaining why Carbine chooses a sub model over B2P and ALWAYS everything was about monthly updates that would justify a monthly fee. I was one of them who tempted by that and bought the game. It wasnt the only reason, but after so many years i thought this is a game that deserves a sub. A monthly sub for monthly content. Great! Considering this went in quarterly basis anymore, they have to say a big sorry to players and remove subscription. This was for them the ultimate reason to justify the sub. Not the raids, not the chuas not anything. Monthly sub for monthly content addition. Anyway i wouldn't care about sub if there were ppl in game. Not only in prime time but every hour of the day. Hell, there is only 1 megaserver in EU (PvP one is empty anyway) and its almost empty in non prime time. As i m writing this i m into the game (Jabbit EU) and there are 4 ppl in Thayad http://imgur.com/q9qACCg. You cant call this a mmo, you just cant. I hate B2P models comparing with P2P ones, but even more i hate a ghost town mmo. We are also almost a year after and we still discussing about how future patches etc will raise pop. There isnt more time anymore. We all pay for a year now and we all experienced dead servers. I even payed my first transfer to Hazak a month after release. I keep paying and still waiting that i ll be able to play in non peak hours. This has to stop and it must stop now. We need more ppl ingame and if this means WS should drop sub then do it. There isnt any other solution in the horizon, other than wait again for the next miracle Drop. So i hope after Drop 5 and the nice additions coming with it, game will be ready for a B2P+Sub+CREDD transition in Drop 6. This would be very a very welcome move for a huge amount of ppl who own the game and they choose to stay away due to the sub. It will also be good for those like me, who are paying and will continue to pay their sub, because finally i would be able to play WS as a mmo every hour of the day, with others and ofc with many many friends that will come back. Ofc there will be the ones who doesn't like this idea, but considering the total sum of players WS will have after the transition, they will be a small minority. Btw while you ppl hope for an increase of pop, you must consider that ESO already went B2P and tons of ppl returned. Tons of others also buying the game every day after the transition. In a few days WoW also applies Token. FFXIV expansion comes in June and GW2 HoT is also on the horizon. There isnt much room for a P2P mmo and especially for a low pop one like WS.


 * }
 * }