Start New Server all begin from 0

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by SirStressALot, Apr 19, 2016.

  1. SirStressALot

    As i read a lot of threads about losing playerbase constanly. What you think about starting a new server where everyone is starting from Br1. No accounts of others servers allowed due to NS weapons on all chars. Starting off with 1 Br, maybe no daybreak cash at all (probably) but a monthly amount cash to play on that server like WoW?
  2. YoungPedro

    Im sure if you pay for the server costs and the dev teams food they will be delighted to help you out on that idea.
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  3. Liewec123

    i don't think that would work for PS2
    subscription based games like wow have pve, even if you were the only person in the game you could still enjoy yourself.
    PS2 is entirely reliant on a large number of players,
    and as i think the majority of our players are f2p i don't think a subscription server would do very well,
    plus starting at br0 again would suck XD
  4. Mezinov

    There has always been some interest in a subscription based server, but I think it would have logistical hurdles to overcome. As Liewec123 mentioned - the biggest of which would be population.

    If the server could be located in such a way that world-wide stable pings were possible, it was open to all players from all regions, and allowed Console and PC players to play together - it might just be manageable enough to turn a small profit.

    However, if you are going to offer a "premium" playspace - especially one where progression and purchases don't transfer - it is going to need to come with some perks that make up for. No DBC purchases would be an obvious one, and certs for cosmetics another, but you would also need a reliable way to keep it "cheat free" - and the only real reliable way to do that is full time moderation.

    Which would pretty much eat up any profit you were getting.

    If access to the server is $15 USD a month, and lets say the current average Steam population all opt in (so no stand-alone client numbers), that is 2,045 users pitching in.

    That is $30,675 USD a month, less the Federal Tax (34% of the value over 355,000 USD) [$11,254 /12 = 937.84 a month], less 9% CA Tax (where DBG is HQed). For the sake of brevity I won't try to figure out what % of the playerbase is foreign, but each of their $15 pay in would be lessed by 25% or more. For now - we ignore this.

    That leaves us 27060.82 USD a month.

    Now from this we need to less the operational cost of the server. This is the hardest part to estimate, because we don't know what they are using. If it is internal. If it is outsourced. But for an MMO, $250,000 USD per-year is an extremely conservative estimate. That knocks off 20,900 USD a month.

    That leaves us 6,160.82 USD a month.

    Not exactly an amount worth bragging about at the stockholder meeting; and from that value you then need to less nine moderators (to keep it cheat free, two people broken into 3 shifts for 24/hr S-S coverage with 2 days off each). Like as not the box will also need its own admin and minions - we will say 2 Entry-levels to do the work - since it is hard to get a location that is easily and playably pingable by the whole world (and we know DBG doesn't already have their servers there).

    Our moderators won't cost less than 40,000 per year each (minimum wage w/ basic benefits), our admin will cost 70,000 per year (entry level w/benefits), and his two underlings will be 50,000 per year each (same). That is another $40,450 USD a month.

    We are now in the hole more than we were making... -34,269.18 USD.

    ....
    ..
    .

    I know that was probably far more in depth than anyone wanted - but it just highlights how expensive such a venture would be, and how hard it would be to make it profitable. Might even put into perspective how hard it is to pull a profit on any Free to Play title; let alone a subscription title.
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  5. KoRneY

    That feels like an awful lot of contrived numbers. You have nothing other than concurrent users on a service that doesn't show a true value. Speculation at best.

    If 2045 people were to chip in monthly, on average there would be 28 people on for every faction (or 84 people) logged in on average. To put it into context, even Briggs has more people on and that server is seems to be almost dead.
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  6. Halo572

    I struggle to remember to check on the progress of this title on a monthly basis and haven't logged on now since the 2nd October 2014.

    And yet whenever you come back there is always 'what about x to boost player numbers?', with x being innumerable contrived ideas about how to boost the player base.

    And every time I come back I look for added objectives and game play updates and there is none, still nothing that makes me want to reinstall after 18 months.

    And still none of you seem to see it, because there are innumerable contrived ideas that are before these two simple concepts.

    Whatever, therebelscum shows that while there are still an impressive number of players that just won't let go that it is a downward gradient.

    Good luck to you all, I prefer my gaming with fun, objectives and game play.

    And who knows, maybe one day they might even add those game play and objectives they have been talking about for 4 years?
  7. KoRneY

    Some games are just not meant for some people. Wish it were different for you.
  8. Mezinov

    I was intentionally addressing only the financial side of things, as I had acknowledged population shortages would itself be a major problem.

    And the numbers are of course speculation, as nobody on the forum is likely to admit they work in DBGs finance dungeon. That said, all of my figures were low balls or known amounts. $15 a month is standard subscription price fare, the corporate taxes are easily pulled up, as is what a starting salary for the necessary positions would be (and the amount over that benefits cost). Population was grabbed from a random source that represents a subset of the population (Steam users vs Standalone users). The hardest number to make an educated guess on is the servers - and I only addressed maintenance cost of the server (lease, power, service) and not acquisition cost (of the server and building space).

    It serves to illustrate the point that making such a venture would be financially risky, and far more expensive than one might assume.

    I also completely glossed over the fact that finding a location for an FPS server that a mass of users from all over the globe could connect to with enjoyable pings is one of the most handwavium aspects of the entire adventure.
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  9. DrakeFang

    Is your name Nancy? Because you're pretty negative.

    I'm sorry you don't enjoy PS2, but luckily for the rest of us, fun is subjective.
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  10. zaspacer

    I'm pretty sure taxes are not applied on the Gross Business Income. You get to subtract "cost of goods sold" and other business expenses, to arrive at your Net Business Income which is the amount taxed.

    I fully applaud the work to ballpark it out, I'm just noting the taxes be applied later in the tally.
  11. zaspacer

    SOE/DBG doesn't make their games for what the gaming community at large wants to play (or even their own playerbase at any given time), they make it for the game their Devs want to see/make. They are more like an indie Mod Community than a normal Dev. They are frequently creative and do some wild new stuff, and their ability to convince Businesses to fund their Creative Whims is very impressive.

    Oh, and they also just "don't get" (as in comprehend) certain concepts (and struggle/fail when they try to) and don't like to do cleanup work like Bug Fixes. Once you understand all that, it gets much easier to put them in a box.
  12. FateJH

    Since we're talking about ideas that aren't terribly good, I'll throw something out there, just so it stops eating at me.

    Annually, respective to creation, a character undergoes a partially-complete reset. The account retains access to anything bought with store tokens (DBC) but everything the character unlocked through certification points is re-locked, the character is set back to BR1, and that character gets their certs set to zero. Previous Directive score does not reset, but the actual Directive progression does, which also resets Reward access. If the account connected to the character has active Membership or All Access or such, its characters will not be reset at all.
  13. Razeprime

    How to get rid of most of the playerbase:
  14. Hegeteus

    What is the main idea here, to have this server more appealing to new players? This server would soon have the same exact atmosphere as the rest of the them anyway
  15. Mezinov

    You are technically correct Sir, which is the best kind of correct. The Federal and CA tax would come out of DBG as a whole - not per product - after they had deducted all operational expenses. As they are owned by Columbus Nova and not individually traded, they may even have their tax taken from Columbus as a whole - but I won't pretend to know what kind of tax ****ery Columbus Nova and the DBG Finance Bros are magicking.

    And we will never know - because Columbus Nova is not publicly traded (and as such, DBG is not). So they do not have to make public finance reports for investors. Atleast when SOE was owned by S we could look through S's "Tax Return" quarterly and see how SOE was doing.

    Though, my example does serve to show what the specific product would add to their tax burden due to revenue. However, if we ignore the tax numbers we still come up 20 grand short a month of being a standalone profitable product.
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  16. zaspacer

    All good. I do projections/ballparks/analysis all the time, and I think you're doing it right. You just want to get a crude frame work/starting-point up and running. Then, depending on your needs (or the needs of your users), you can research/edit/etc. and get your model more precise as needed.

    I was just knit picking the tax cost because (as you noted) it would be later in the order and reduced to some degree. And so on any revisions to your model (if needed) it could be adjusted.

    For sure DBG/Columbus may have multiple Expenses/Costs that will be routed to various operations, and who knows what item (or what % of that item) will get allocated to PS2. But I'd just run with any model from SOE (normalized as needed), and adjust. Columbus isn't a tech/gaming powerhouse with pooled resources across ventures that they can/will bring to bear for things like cost scaling, so choosing to allocate any new/different costs than SOE did is probably just book cooking that would have to be normalized anyway.