Burst of power AA, F2P players.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Strawberry, Jan 3, 2023.

  1. Zarkdon Augur

    Just wait until the F2P crowd find out about BMWs plan to make heated seats in cars subscription based. And other auto makers aren't far behind.
    Nennius and CatsPaws like this.
  2. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Just one of the features that is being tried on.
  3. Iven Antonius Bayle

    There is always something cheaper but also enough activities do cost more. For $20 you can get a fast internet flatrate + phone connection. That does make the whole internet accessible and not only the bonuses of a single game.

    My point is not to claim that a subscription is cheap or expensive generally because that is pretty subjective. My point is that a subscription based payment method does not fit to many gamers today. I do add a further argument to reinforce that claim: When EQ got released there were not many serious competitors. In 1999 it was just Lineage (mostly asian market), Ultima Online and The Realm Online. Later Asheron's Call, DAOC, FFXI and more games entered the market. Until 2004 EQ was in a good market position with a share of 10-20%. Lineage was the giant until WoW dominated the market.

    During that time period (1999-2004) subscriptions were fine. Most players sticked to just one game like EQ and one account as there were not many alternatives. The MMORPG genre and even the internet was new to most players and there was so much to learn and to explore from just one game. The situation today is different as there are many more games on the market and players have learned a lot in 23 years. Many other MMORPGs have been played and many players do use multiple accounts per game.

    Why should a player buy a monthly/quarterly/yearly subscription for each game that they do play ??
    For multiple accounts per game ??

    It won't be cheap anymore as limited play time will be shared on several games. Such players do concentrate on a single game for only a few days or weeks and will then swap over to play another one. Irregular play times. This is where micropayment and weekend tickets would come in handy. EQ is missing both options as micropayment does only offer a few very weak features like small and overpriced AA cap unlockers and access to rank 2 spells.
  4. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    And you seem to be ignoring the issue that a FTP game can end up costing a lot more then a subscription game because of all the micropayments that you end up making. Subscriptions can be better for both the player and the developer as it sets a steady cost/income so that everyone has expectations on what it is going to cost/earn. There is no need for those type of things in EQ and they would end up costing a lot more then just paying for a subscription.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and CatsPaws like this.
  5. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Fair enough, and I like your response.

    As a counter perspective, I'll offer this...

    1 - Yes, there is a lot of competition today. And yet, EQ makes it all work with the slice of customers that they have. Look at the sub base for other big MMOs, and EQ is likely much smaller, but it's extremely loyal. Many for well over a decade. So, I guess I'm saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

    2 - the multiple game issue. Of course, you're going to have a hard time finding people willing to "sub" for many games at a time. My counter would be, these types of games tend to attract the type of person who mainly only plays one game. Not the type to have 10 or more games active in their stable, constantly rotating through them. And even if they did, for the times you can't get by with F2P, you can always choose to just sub for one month.

    And that last comment does remind me of an idea I had a while back, which kind of bridges the sub model with the micro-transactions model you mention. Why not offer 1-week all-access, for those who do pop in and out a lot? 1 month is $16, and is the worst per-month deal they have (obviously). So offer 1-week subs, price it at $4.50, and see how that floats. And the best part about that idea? You don't have to change anything else about your business model. Other sub deals which exist now would keep right on going.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  6. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Tesla has already been doing that for multiple features.

    Must work for the younger crowd. For this old guy, when I buy a car, it's MINE.
    Windance likes this.
  7. Iven Antonius Bayle

    Good idea. As the US-americans do prefer round numbers it would be:

    3-days: $1.99 ($20.19 / month)
    1-week: $3.99 ($17.35 / month)
    1-month: $14.99

    I calculated with 30.44 days per month which does include leap years. The 3-day sub would be the weekend ticket and could also be used to test out AllAccess. For greedy mode $1 could be added.

    [IMG]
    Tatanka likes this.
  8. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    OMG the headaches with Perks and pro rating and the mass amounts of petitions that would generate.

    So for $1.99 you can play free for 3 days and turn on auto grant and get all your AA

    Or join in General Chat for those 3 days and be really bitter when its over and your back in newplayers chat. Which might help drive subs.

    I bought 1 month of Netflex. I watched quite a few series and moves that are only out on dvd if at all or they cost to watch via other methods. So saved over $200 easy by paying $7 for one month of Netflix.

    Then I cancelled Netflix.

    Hope that $7 that I gave them at least pays for the coffee in the big office.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  9. Rijacki Just a rare RPer on FV and Oakwynd

    They tried a week duration "sub" token about a decade ago. I'm pretty sure it was before going F2P with most of the games and might have been around the time EQ2 added Faydwer. I didn't use it so I don't remember specifics, but it was discussed on the boards and I had a couple friends use it 'cause they could only log on a few days a month due to work and other real life stuff. I don't think it lasted long. I suspect the cost of managing it on the back end might have exceed the payments they would get from customers or it wasn't used enough. I also don't recall if that might have been before there was an All Access vs individual subs per games.
  10. Iven Antonius Bayle

    Many players might forget to cancel the recurring payment so that would generate extra revenue which could be used for extra costs like a cheap AA auto-grant. ;) But I don't think that auto-grant has that much of a negative effect as players only do that once in maybe 10 years per account. The positive effects on the revenue should be much bigger. It should be a win-win scenario for Daybreak and the players.
  11. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    No, it shouldn't increase the cap. But there should be a special unlocker which sets your AA cap to some amount above your current AA count.
  12. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    The whole point of subscription based bonuses are to encourage subscriptions not to cater to very casual players with low play hours. Not sure I see a reason for the company to cater to those playing the game so infrequently.

    PLUS.... how do you know how many hours folks are playing the game? How do you know the average player isn't playing as much per week? Where are you pulling all these stats from? I suspect it is more about your own play times which you somehow interpret as every ones play time.

    And in my opinion a sub is still worth it for playing a couple of hours a week if this is their main game. That's all we seem to be talking about is opinions and not facts.
  13. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    They would be sued and lose for predatory pricing practices. There is a reason why all of those 1-, 3- 7-, 14- day trial periods revert to a monthly subscription after that. The legal system requires a reasonable amount of time for people to realize that they have been charged, cancel the subscription and have the charge refunded or reversed. People get monthly statements, not weekly statements or semi-weekly statements. Even people who check their accounts online regularly would have gotten multiple charges before they had a chance to cancel, because it is not uncommon for charges to take more than 3 days to show up depending on when they are due. When you then add in the tens of thousands of dollars in fines that they would incur from the federal government for these practices not to mention separate lawsuits, it would not be profitable let alone good for the revenue of the game.

    Also, you're crazy if you think that the majority of players only use Auto-grant once in ten years. The majority of players use it at least every year. The only people who don't are those who are max AA, and contrary to what some people on these forums think, that is a relatively small portion of the playerbase. This is also just considering the casual players whose level is already above the auto-grant expansion cap. Those leveling their characters up use it far more often than even once a year.

    On the issue of playtime. A person can play as little as 2 hours a month and they are still getting more then their money's worth in entertainment costs. You spend that going to see a single movie these days. From there the savings only go up.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Nennius like this.