Why you should make broker avail to f2p

Bingo. As I said previously, what the OP is really after is a way to finagle DBG into making it easier to obtain full subscriptions without paying any real money at all.

I'm flabbergasted that someone who claims experience in commodities trading thinks DBG would think this a good idea.

This is not an analysis of what's best for Daybreak. If it were, you would spend attention on what gives subscriptions, thus Krono, value to the player. As others have pointed out, Daybreak doesn't win if a subscription has no value.

Instead, you've taken a position and are making an argument for it. This is because of your personal situation, not an astute analysis of the EQ2 economy. You want to trade on the broker, but don't want to pay for a subscription. Not everyone that is free to play is so shortsighted as to make arguments that are based solely upon their own point of view. What we gather from your argument is that you want that free broker so much that your mind is racing to find justifications for you to have it. We totally get it.

The live servers in EQ2 are currently in the midst of capital flight to the TLE server. People are cashing out their plat for Krono so they can transfer their wealth to the TLE server (same may have merely cashed out of EQ2 and are playing another Daybreak game or are waiting for upcoming games like EQ Next). That has inflated the Krono on live servers and flooded the market with plat and this is exacerbated by engaged Krono buyers leaving.

Yes, you have no hope of farming the game directly for plat to buy a Krono. A huge sloshing pool of plat from ~11 years of play controls the market and you're powerless against it. That's a powerful incentive to pay to play. It is what gives the Krono a lot of value. If you don't want to give Daybreak your credit card info, find a game card elsewhere. If you don't want to pay period, well you've got a problem. There are forces at play that Daybreak can't easily fix. On the bright side, there is bound to be a rebound from the current situation. Maybe some players will come back from TLE or retirement for the new expansion or for the merged servers or both. That might make the situation on live slightly better and bring down the price of Krono.

You guys keep making strawmen then knocking it down.

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1. ----------> I WANT KRONO DEMAND TO GO UP. <-----------
2. ----------> I WANT KRONO SUPPLY TO GO UP <----------
3. -----------> I SAID INCREASE REWARDS THAT KRONO SELLERS(PLAT) GET- I DIDN'T SPECIFY <-----------
4. -----------> I SAID INCREASE THE REWARDS FOR SUBSCRIPTION <-----------------------

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4. Also , regardless of how much money I have, I can't buy people's interest in the game. I could bribe them to play EQ , but I can't make people wan't to play the game if they don't want too. I have probably traded Daybreaks entire net worth in a night on the gold futures markets, so please spare me your emotional calls that "OMG U WANT FREE STUFFS". I get it , you don't like freeloaders. You wan't people to support the game, you are clearly emotional about it. My one subscription isn't going to save this game, nor do I have a reason to subscribe when everyone I want to play with is playing other games with better, up to date, superior in terms of wealth generation for the company and number of players, policies


But hey I get it, you don't understand. I guess I wouldn't make money if everyone understood supply and demand. I profit from people's misconceptions about how these things work. About what makes humans spend their cash.

If a company doesn't earn income, they can not create more product - while giving something away for free is a great "tickler" to consumers to purchase products from the company, giving everything away for free is a sure way of sending that company into bankruptcy.

Here's an idea - those of you FTP only who go to starbucks more than once a month or go to any fast food restaurant more thani once a month or have HBO or other premium service give up that item and pay the subscription fee.Excluding those with fixed income issues unless you fall into one of the previous.

There, problem solved!

Tired of hearing how to give more to FTP - it's free ok? That's enough! Want more? SUBSCRIBE!!!

I think I get the disconnect now. You have a moral that you think people should follow, a validly just one at that. But that's not how this world works. People are like little kids, from the no nothings who do nothing, to the big boys at Goldman and Chicorp. They are motivated by the cheese and stick, fear and greed. As I have reiterated several times now - you should make subscription more appealing, that's the cheese, but you have to give them a path to get there. You might say "they can just sub", but people are also stingy. They will think its free even if they spend 100 hours grinding that 30K plat. It doesn't matter how you feel people should get there, all that matters is more people eating krono, and the incentives increased for people to keep buying it for them.

If you want to make money in this world you don't tell people what to do, you watch when they drop coin and you make sure you are behind them to pick it up. This is why microtransactions work even when they surpass B2P games. People have instincts and behaviors that can be exploited for your means. I know some of the largest quants in the biz and they cannot control the markets, we are just there to pick up pennies when people get scared or greedy. A game company is no different. We all want to have fun, we all like scantily clad women/men, we all like that feeling when we get stronger in our game, we all don't want to lose our premium benefits etc.

I thought about something else, after reading this thread and giving it some thought - what if -because of the nature of the broker, people instead of buying little bitty broker tokens (which will prohibit them form using the broker) they get a broker license? Make it 5-10 bucks, and they can post to their hearts content? What is the average amount of USD that people spend on broker coins really?

This would still be combined with :
1. decrease other aspects of the F2P
2. INCREASE other aspects of Membership
3. Increase the usefulness of plat

They used to have a subscription level called silver which was a one-time $5 unlock. It lifted some of the restrictions (could buy, but not sell on the broker, etc). They discounted that and now only have free and all access levels. That change seems to imply that a 1-time unlock isn't something that makes economic sense for Daybreak.

Pretty sure the OP isn't concerned about what makes economic sense for Daybreak just what makes economic sense for him or her. Pretty classic Ayn Rand stuff.
I keep getting the impression that this is a class exercise.
Other than my observations I have no pony on this trail ride.

Solution: When you open the Broker, it auto-searches Krono allowing anyone to buy. Only Members can use other options.

the differences between free and silver are silver can create a guild, buy off broker, 2 more character slots, less limited chat functions. given that silver was $5 and charater slots are $10 per i don't see silver making a return, perhaps something like silver minus the two charater slots. i think any reasonable person would part with $5 one time for the ability to create a guild, buy from broker and less restricted chat.

more people buying from the broker means more customers, more customers means more demand.

selling on the broker and mail should be restricted to subscriptions and token-to-use mechanics.

How about some concrete ideas/examples on how to accomplish these wants and suggestions?

Removing the broker as a reward for subscription removes much of the value of having a subscription. Honestly, I can't think of anything that would be as large of a carrot (cheese in your parlance) to replace it, and am curious to hear your ideas.

5$ once is great for the person, not so much for the company. I think 5/month is the way to go for a new plan. People are willing to pay that much for other services to drop advertising. They should do something similar here and make it work for the game of a person's choice.

Drop ads promoting all-access
Allow full broker use
Allow full chat use
No queue (covering that base because as "temporary" as it's supposed to be, they still created the silly restriction which hurts more people than it helps. Everyone should be queued equally, so those in-game can properly enjoy it.)

All other perks and bonuses remain a part of all-access.

For me, it's not about the plat or krono, I'm looking for a more casual plan. I have limited time to play and I have a hard time justifying the full cost for every month on top of all my other monthly entertainment expenses.

the only differences between F2P and Subscribers is character slots, full broker use, send and receive mail, create and join guild, customer support and month 500DB(and soon to be prestige items usable only by subs).

being able to use the broker fully is one of the big ones and likely is the largest draw for people that are subscribed, which is why i left it out. the only differences between silver and F2P is charater slots, partial broker use, full chat functions join and create guilds..

Sorry, bad idea cause it will make the players who pay subscription get pist off and cancel their subscription when a F2P gets the same benefits as the subscriber without paying a subscription! I for one will click the cancel button when that happens when a F2P gets the same game plays as me without paying for a subscription. Get mad at me all you want I don't care.

Well, that's 20 min of my life I'll never get back, all because some F2P dude wants crap that he shouldn't have. Why would I support free broker for F2P? As a subscriber, I get darn little in the way of perks as it is, compared to F2P.

OP, you keep claiming people who don't support you are coming up with strawman arguments, which makes me think you don't actually understand the concept of a strawman argument, because from what I can see, you're the only person here who has one. None of the subscribers will support the idea of unlimited access for a F2P account because I think most of us feel like we're getting precious little over the F2P accounts.

You want unlimited broker access? Pay for an account, just like we do. Or buy broker tokens. Stop whining about this and do something about it. DBG isn't going to change the model just because you think it's a good idea.

Wait, krono had to be paid for with real money, by someone at some point. So how exactly do you figure that someone is not paying any real money at all? Why is that a problem exactly since money did change hands for krono in the first place?

I mean unless your goal is to force everyone to pay with their own money (I can think of several unsavory reasons but I'll table them for now), which seems to be the opposite of the point of krono.

Really? Wow. Maybe you should try making an F2P account and testing it out. Go ahead, get a toon up to level 50 without the broker to buy bags or a harvest box. I'll make it easy on you, choose a mage, at least that way you can be a tailor. Go on, try it.

I don't think they're worried about losing people. The only ones here anymore are the ones who love the game, and they'll be abused until they leave like a dysfunctional family. Setting the players against each other like this is just one way of creating discord. You've just played into it. hint: They don't want you here, they want you on Landmark.

Have you played LOTRO lately? For free? You can gain enough turbine points there to buy the quest packs and it's incredibly easy to make a modest investment and become "Premium" unlocking their Auction hall among other perks. Not to mention that you can simply earn real world money with which to pay by doing deeds there.

There are other games with f2p that give more. I just gave an example but there may be more. The claim that this is the most generous one is false.

The loss of the Silver membership in EQ2 is a disaster. Maybe the OP is saying it badly, but that doesn't invalidate the point that Silver was a more lucrative way to woo people into full membership.

sorry but your example just proved that EQ2 is more generous then LOTRO is. you get everything upto COE without spending a dime or any time grinding to unlocking them. quest packs are like weapons in PS2 you can ether spend real money to buy them or you can grind for currency to buy them.

EQ2 just gives you upto CoE (and all the quests upto that point) and just screams to players 'go have fun, if you like it and are level capped buy the new expansion - now bundled with X or Y expansions that aren't currently free' anyone can look up their expansion page or quest packs and see how many turbine points they'd need to rack up to get them all.

all the LOTRO quest packs cost a total of 7545 turbine points, the expansions cost total 5180 turbine points total comes to 12725 turbine points. in EQ2 you can play upto CoE with only 3 content expansions locked behind a pay wall and that will only cost you whatever the last expansion is since they are all included. in addition with the age of discovery features you can buy them in a bundle or pick and choose what you want.

you don't have to commit any money to EQ2 until you hit level 95 and want to play the latest expansion content.