445 replies to this topic

[Robsy128]

raspberry jam, on 10 December 2012 - 07:16 PM, said:

Of course they won't make it a sub fee MMO... lol you...

Then what's the point of this thread? o.O

[MazingerZ]

Discussing how the payment model dictates implementation.

[Kymeric]

So to summarize:

1. Subscription causes grind to keep players subbing.
2. Cash shop causes grind to make people use cash shop for shortcuts.

My take, is that if I don't care about keeping up with the grind, I can at least ignore the cash shop.  With a sub, even if I follow my snail's pace through the game, I have to keep shelling out the $15.

With the CS, I get to decide moment by moment whether something is worth my money.  If the game gets more and more grindy, until it's no fun any more, I haven't sunk any more money into it.

With a sub, the game can start to take on more and more grind, and I'll be sinking my sub into it every month during the process, and I'll be out that much money when I finally decide enough is enough.

[raspberry jam]

Kymeric, on 10 December 2012 - 07:45 PM, said:

So to summarize:

1. Subscription causes grind to keep players subbing.
2. Cash shop causes grind to make people use cash shop for shortcuts.

My take, is that if I don't care about keeping up with the grind, I can at least ignore the cash shop.  With a sub, even if I follow my snail's pace through the game, I have to keep shelling out the $15.

With the CS, I get to decide moment by moment whether something is worth my money.  If the game gets more and more grindy, until it's no fun any more, I haven't sunk any more money into it.

With a sub, the game can start to take on more and more grind, and I'll be sinking my sub into it every month during the process, and I'll be out that much money when I finally decide enough is enough.

Dude what

If you pay $50 to the cash shop you have paid $50

If you pay $50 in total in sub fees you have paid $50

$50 = $50

At least last time I checked

The difference is that people in general pay less for cash shop items (in total), so the details of how it affects the game is quite different. CS games have a profit interest in forcing any player that doesn't pay to move at "snail's pace". Also, sub fee games are more certain of their monthly profits. Cash shop funded games need to keep the pot boiling, which means stupid panic decisions such as one-time events that don't even work properly. You would have a point if the sub fee game deleted your character when you stop paying, but most don't, because they want you to come back.

[MazingerZ]

raspberry jam, on 10 December 2012 - 08:08 PM, said:

Dude what

If you pay $50 to the cash shop you have paid $50

If you pay $50 in total in sub fees you have paid $50

$50 = $50

At least last time I checked

The difference is that people in general pay less for cash shop items (in total), so the details of how it affects the game is quite different. CS games have a profit interest in forcing any player that doesn't pay to move at "snail's pace". Also, sub fee games are more certain of their monthly profits. Cash shop funded games need to keep the pot boiling, which means stupid panic decisions such as one-time events that don't even work properly. You would have a point if the sub fee game deleted your character when you stop paying, but most don't, because they want you to come back.

His argument is the cash shop is optional, and if the game changes to the point where he's forced into that 'option' he can leave with no money lost beyond the entry fee we all paid.

A sub game forces him pay month to month, regardless of how he chooses to play.

I can see how on a personal level, the cash shop is a good option.

But as someone said in another thread, this leads to finding the lowest common denominator in gaming.  The people who are willing to pay the cash shop for the least amount of effort and how it is going to dictate to the industry what a successful model is in MMO gaming.  I think once a western MMO begin engaging in Korean grind cash shop mechanics successfully, it's going to damage MMOs until probably Titan.  Maybe beyond.

[raspberry jam]

MazingerZ, on 10 December 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

His argument is the cash shop is optional, and if the game changes to the point where he's forced into that 'option' he can leave with no money lost beyond the entry fee we all paid.

A sub game forces him pay month to month, regardless of how he chooses to play.

I can see how on a personal level, the cash shop is a good option.

But as someone said in another thread, this leads to finding the lowest common denominator in gaming.  The people who are willing to pay the cash shop for the least amount of effort and how it is going to dictate to the industry what a successful model is in MMO gaming.  I think once a western MMO begin engaging in Korean grind cash shop mechanics successfully, it's going to damage MMOs until probably Titan.  Maybe beyond.

Ahh... Ok, sure, I see now. Still, even if an individual don't pay, the profit incentive (of slowing you down, and annoying you more than a sub fee game would) is still there for the developers.

[Krazzar]

raspberry jam, on 10 December 2012 - 08:08 PM, said:

Spoiler

Dude what

If you pay $50 to the cash shop you have paid $50

If you pay $50 in total in sub fees you have paid $50

$50 = $50

At least last time I checked

The difference is that people in general pay less for cash shop items (in total), so the details of how it affects the game is quite different. CS games have a profit interest in forcing any player that doesn't pay to move at "snail's pace". Also, sub fee games are more certain of their monthly profits. Cash shop funded games need to keep the pot boiling, which means stupid panic decisions such as one-time events that don't even work properly. You would have a point if the sub fee game deleted your character when you stop paying, but most don't, because they want you to come back.

That's $50 you are forced to pay versus $50 given voluntarily. In other words you are certain to pay $50 in one and can potentially pay $50 in the other, so no, it's not $50 = $50 in the real world.

So cash shops take advantage of the impatient and hardcore players (ignoring gold to gems) and subscription fees take advantage of everyone. Seems pretty standard in a normal market, last I checked convienience is a major feature in all markets.

MazingerZ, on 10 December 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

But as someone said in another thread, this leads to finding the lowest common denominator in gaming.  The people who are willing to pay the cash shop for the least amount of effort and how it is going to dictate to the industry what a successful model is in MMO gaming.  I think once a western MMO begin engaging in Korean grind cash shop mechanics successfully, it's going to damage MMOs until probably Titan.  Maybe beyond.

That's no different than a sub-fee game, especially since it may have a cash shop too, except perhaps the sub-fee game is designed with that ideal from the start. Korean grind cash shops aren't really the same thing; they are not convieneince items. In games like that it's a subscription fee in another form, they have a structure that makes shop purchases required to play the game at a normal pace, such as game tokens or exclusive gear that allow access to game zones.

On the other hand, for long-term success a game with a convieneince cash shop needs to provide a game people will actually play in order to sell those items, so they will keep providing content and features people want and have to listen to the community.

[Robsy128]

raspberry jam, on 10 December 2012 - 08:26 PM, said:

Ahh... Ok, sure, I see now. Still, even if an individual don't pay, the profit incentive (of slowing you down, and annoying you more than a sub fee game would) is still there for the developers.

True, but does Guild Wars 2 really have that?
Look at it this way - everyone goes at the same pace. However, there are items that can make things go a little faster (not much, just a little). So, instead of gaining 1 level in an hour of play time, you gain 1.5.
The difference between the Guild Wars 2 cash shop and pretty much every MMO out there at the moment is that Guild Wars 2 offers you those same exact boosts within the game. You can literally get a key from an event, open up a black lion chest and get a karma boost as well as an exp boost. Or you can complete a map (I'm sure they give you a black lion key... although I could be wrong). The point is, you only need to spend a little more time in the game in order to get the same boost.
I'd say levelling in Aion and WoW as well as SWTOR is a lot slower than Guild Wars 2. Why? Because they need you to be slow so they can suck every penny from your bank. With Guild Wars 2, it's completely optional and is the best option for the players as they don't feel like they have to play every hour of everyday to get their moneys worth. And let's not forget that the fun part of those games is right at the end, so you have to pay the box fee as well as the subscription fee for about 2 or 3 months just to access the fun content (which really isn't fun anyway).

Edited by Robsy128, 10 December 2012 - 10:21 PM.

[Kymeric]

Sorry, I wasn't terribly clear.  Here's another attempt to describe it.

January, a little grind gets introduced, since both models encourage it.  On a sub game, I plunk down my $15, on a CS game I haven't even got close to the endgame grind yet, so I ignore the CS and pay nothing.

February, the grind gets dialed up a notch.  Sub game, I'm out another $15.  CS game, I'm getting nervous, but the grind doesn't seem that great, and I'm just getting close enough to endgame for it to matter.

March, the grind is getting bad.  Sub game, I'm out $45 total now.  CS game, I'm starting to feel the pinch, because I'm getting one-shotted by players with tier X in PvP, but I'm plugging away at the grind in hopes of keeping up.  At the rate things are going, I really don't want to contribute to the CS.

April, instead of fixing gear disparity at endgame, they add several more levels with extraordinary time requirements to achieve.  I play out my last month because I have a hard time letting go of the game I really enjoyed early on, as well as the people I've met and gotten to know in game.

Sub game, goodbye $60 plus the box price.
Cash shop game, I'm just out the box price.



Man I wish ANet would get around to adding some truly fun things to the cash shop.

Let me show them that I'm willing to pay for purely cosmetic things, rather than "convenience" items.  At the moment, I'm just part of the silent group comprised of "players who don't use the cash shop".  I'd like to be comprised of the group that "buys the cosmetic items".  From pure statistics, I look like an incentive to increase the grind so that I will move into the "convenience item purchaser" group, when in reality I will never do that.  Up the grind enough, and I just stop playing.  If there were actually fun cosmetic items in the shop, I could be an incentive to add more of them, and stop relying on "convenience" items.

Edited by Kymeric, 10 December 2012 - 10:30 PM.

[ToySoldier]

Reading all these interesting posts is making me think:  What if down the road certain posters will get subscriptions from readers, and can earn 1 cent for each read they receive from being on a reader's sub list?  It can make some interesting forums to read.  A forum can still be run via some sort of ads so the reader's won't need to pay.

Then it came to me: Cash shop and sub are probably both going to be history one day.  As I read somewhere, MMORPGs may turn to apps for world building where players can generate content for other players to play.   And the Youtube publishing model may happen for good modules made by good player/designers.

[MazingerZ]

ToySoldier, on 10 December 2012 - 10:26 PM, said:

Then it came to me: Cash shop and sub are probably both going to be history one day.  As I read somewhere, MMORPGs may turn to apps for world building where players can generate content for other players to play.   And the Youtube publishing model may happen for good modules made by good player/designers.

See: Second Life

The problem with that is you'd still have to pay for quality control (like in the stuff that the community makes for TF2 that gets published as part of the game).  There are idiots who can create the wonderful chair.  The only problem is that chair has a billion polygons (hyperbole!) because the guy who made it didn't know what he was doing, but he pushed it out there.  And then players with no concept of computer graphics buy a chair that is going to be hogging a good portion of their GPU.

Not to mention pay for people who create the combat systems and balance that stuff out.  Can you imagine a community-driven balancing?  It would make the British Parliament look like a morgue.

[Kymeric]

Hm, I remember reading a developer talking about player created content a while back.  One of the superhero games had a system, right?  CoH, or Champions?

I remember three big problems that were brought up in the article.

1) How do you make sure content isn't objectionable?  People will go out of their way to create obscene things, so you need some sort of policing for that if you want to open the game up to anyone under the age of 18, as well as people who aren't interested in running across that kind of stuff.

2) How do you make sure the 1% of stuff that is created that is actually good rises to the top, so people can find it among the 99% junk?

3) If you have any sort of reward system, how do you make sure people don't create content just to farm it for rewards?

Not that any of these problems is insurmountable, but they are challenges that are probably even tougher to solve than the technological ones.

[MazingerZ]

Kymeric, on 11 December 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Hm, I remember reading a developer talking about player created content a while back.  One of the superhero games had a system, right?  CoH, or Champions?

I remember three big problems that were brought up in the article.

1) How do you make sure content isn't objectionable?  People will go out of their way to create obscene things, so you need some sort of policing for that if you want to open the game up to anyone under the age of 18, as well as people who aren't interested in running across that kind of stuff.

2) How do you make sure the 1% of stuff that is created that is actually good rises to the top, so people can find it among the 99% junk?

3) If you have any sort of reward system, how do you make sure people don't create content just to farm it for rewards?

Not that any of these problems is insurmountable, but they are challenges that are probably even tougher to solve than the technological ones.

CoH had an system for designing missions.  Because the missions and mechanics from the core game were super-stupid-silly-easy.

The problem with the system was the same reason Big Game Hunters was so popular in Starcraft.  People generated missions that were basically farms for leveling and obtaining loot to sell.

[Merphal]

If this cash shop looks bad to you, you should play Maple Story, they actually sell you lvl 30 characters there, enchantments on items that cannot be gained in any other way and skills! Yes, some professions cannot have all their skills without buying them in the cash shop...

[MazingerZ]

Merphal, on 11 December 2012 - 10:21 PM, said:

If this cash shop looks bad to you, you should play Maple Story, they actually sell you lvl 30 characters there, enchantments on items that cannot be gained in any other way and skills! Yes, some professions cannot have all their skills without buying them in the cash shop...

GW2's top dog in monetization was actual part of the Maple Story cash shop staff.

[Desild]

MazingerZ, on 11 December 2012 - 10:25 PM, said:

GW2's top dog in monetization was actual part of the Maple Story cash shop staff.

This explains so much right? Makes us wonder why certains aspects of the game gives us headaches-

Real world economist in charge of a video game economy? Yes! Laughable since said economists kinda ruined the real economy. Our century's great depression ladies and gentleman!

Mapplestoy store guy is in charge of Guild Wars 2 store? Yes! Now I know who to blame for my wallet woes.

[Kymeric]

I suppose someone must be buying stuff in the CS, but so far Ms. Cox is doing a terrible job of getting me to purchase CS items.

At the moment, I see two ends of a spectrum.  One one side, many of the shortcut items such as experience boosters and repair canisters are so minimal I see no need for them.  On the other hand, Legendaries are so ridiculously beyond my grasp that it would take a silly amount of money to shortcut that process.

If she was really trying to get my money, the grind would be moderate and the shortcuts a little more meaningful.  The things I want should be just outside my reach, instead of way outside my reach, and the CS items should bring them inside my reach for an amount of money that I barely consider.

That's one of the puzzling things about all of this.  If the game is being designed around the cash shop, it seems to be in a very haphazard way.

Edited by Kymeric, 11 December 2012 - 10:50 PM.

[Gilles VI]

Desild, on 11 December 2012 - 10:34 PM, said:

This explains so much right? Makes us wonder why certains aspects of the game gives us headaches-

Real world economist in charge of a video game economy? Yes! Laughable since said economists kinda ruined the real economy. Our century's great depression ladies and gentleman!

Mapplestoy store guy is in charge of Guild Wars 2 store? Yes! Now I know who to blame for my wallet woes.

Economists =/= Bankers..

MazingerZ, on 11 December 2012 - 10:25 PM, said:

GW2's top dog in monetization was actual part of the Maple Story cash shop staff.

And still the cash looks in no-way like the one in Maple Story..

[Illein]

Desild, on 11 December 2012 - 10:34 PM, said:

Mapplestoy store guy is in charge of Guild Wars 2 store? Yes! Now I know who to blame for my wallet woes.

Yourself?

[AstralPhoenix777]

Gilles VI, on 11 December 2012 - 10:55 PM, said:

Economists =/= Bankers..

You're correct, but most mainstream economists still use the John Maynard Keynes theory of economics (advocating central banking influence in the free market, basically), which built up the economic policy framework for the bankers over the last 100 or so years. So fundamentally, both economists and bankers are to blame for the Crash of '08 and resulting depression.

But anyway, this isn't a political-economic forum. I've never spent a penny in GW2's CS, mainly for the reasons outlined by Kymeric. The CS needs more interesting skins for weapons and armour, and other miscellaneous cosmetic and fun items. We certainly don't want anything that moves towards a P2Win scenario. Right now though, the CS content is pretty weak and isn't making me want to part with my cash. Then again, GW2's game content is pretty weak and isn't making me want to part with my time right now, either; but that's another story...

[Gilles VI]

Illein, on 12 December 2012 - 07:35 AM, said:

Yourself?

How can you suggest people are responsible for their own spending??

[Zevyr]

This game with a sub fee would reduce the player base by 66.6%, no thanks.

[ToySoldier]

MazingerZ, on 10 December 2012 - 11:11 PM, said:

See: Second Life

The problem with that is you'd still have to pay for quality control (like in the stuff that the community makes for TF2 that gets published as part of the game).  There are idiots who can create the wonderful chair.  The only problem is that chair has a billion polygons (hyperbole!) because the guy who made it didn't know what he was doing, but he pushed it out there.  And then players with no concept of computer graphics buy a chair that is going to be hogging a good portion of their GPU.

Not to mention pay for people who create the combat systems and balance that stuff out.  Can you imagine a community-driven balancing?  It would make the British Parliament look like a morgue.

The magic of Youtue/ITune format is micro-transaction based on player reviews of small packets of contents.  Quality control in a format like that is automatic where the host/providercan compile player reviews.  There may even be players who want to make a living doing their own critique channel.

One reason I'm excited about this format is I see forums like Guru are involving players hitting "like".  To me Guru is a lot more fun for me than a heavily official GW2 forum.  In the end the masses of people can then follow their own favorite reviewer/poster and find their favorite modules of GW2 to play, etc.  A forum like GW2 can almost go hand-in-hand with this kind of modular-content concept.

To tie in on the topic: Both subscription and cash shop atm are generating grind-content due to a lack of development manpower/funds.  Grind is the only way for a limited team to deal with massive consumption of content.  But when it's open source, there will be all sorts of geniuses in the player population to develop diverse new content, like in the case of Youtube.  There will be crap, yes, but there will also be ample reviewers participating to lend guiding lights.

Edited by ToySoldier, 12 December 2012 - 11:56 AM.

[Lucas Ashrock]

Zevyr, on 12 December 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

This game with a sub fee would reduce the player base by 66.6%, no thanks.

If the results is superb, after an initial shock, ye some would leave but when they realize what piece of art gw2 became, they all will run back in. Clearly, not in the hands of Anet anymore, they proved to not be able to handle this game as worthy of base client's price (let's not mention the junk we got with deluxe edition), now imagine if we pay for overbugged patches, and all the junk they release , community requests ignored, uberlagged events etc we write daily

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 12 December 2012 - 03:45 PM.

[MazingerZ]

Lucas Ashrock, on 12 December 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

If the results is superb, after an initial shock, ye some would leave but when they realize what piece of art gw2 became, they all will run back in. Clearly, not in the hands of Anet anymore, they proved to not be able to handle this game as worthy of base client's price (let's not mention the junk we got with deluxe edition), now imagine if we pay for overbugged patches, and all the junk they release , community requests ignored, uberlagged events etc we write daily

It's a good point that subs actually may make a developer consider the playerbase as a whole instead paying attention to cash shop data and seeing what is selling and what is not, and ultimately focusing on that aspect only and increase it.

They might actually take the game as a whole more seriously than the aspects that monetize it.  What does the shop offer?  Makeover kits, a small collection of skins, RNG products like BLC chests, boosters and gold.

Ultimately by this point they only have to cater to those currently spending to maintain their revenue stream.  If they're already operating close to or beyond their capability to produce content to keep the playerbase spending (spending, not playing), then you will see more content with a grind built into it and further community segregation.

With most MMOs, you have until the first holiday season to build something, because Christmas is when a lot of people could pick up your game.  They'll lose the people who can't be bothered to open their wallets for whats offered and be left with the grinders, who will leave for the next AAA title.

[Lucas Ashrock]

Yep, what i explained and what you wrote, is part of what i was trying to explain about how to force Anet to do a massrefund to every customer for client's price. But meh, let's continue to talk about the topic.

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 12 December 2012 - 04:31 PM.

[Daesu]

MazingerZ, on 10 December 2012 - 11:11 PM, said:

Not to mention pay for people who create the combat systems and balance that stuff out.  Can you imagine a community-driven balancing?  It would make the British Parliament look like a morgue.

Actually that can be worked out through technology.  You have a vast variety of servers and people go play on those servers that they like best, soon the game morphs to the most popular model.  You need a system where people can see what are the popular servers and would prefer to play on servers with the most popularity.

It is competition through "survival of the fittest" for game servers.

Edited by Daesu, 12 December 2012 - 04:35 PM.

[MazingerZ]

Daesu, on 12 December 2012 - 04:31 PM, said:

Actually that can be worked out through technology.  You have a vast variety of servers and people go play on those servers that they like best, soon the game morphs to the most popular model.  You need a system where people can see what are the popular servers and would prefer to play on servers with the most popularity.

It is competition through "survival of the fittest" for game servers.

Players are way too fickle.  There's a reason the phrase FOTM exists.  Reroll, play on realms that favor your new class.  The other classes lse voting power as demographics shift.

[Robsy128]

Lucas Ashrock, on 12 December 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

If the results is superb, after an initial shock, ye some would leave but when they realize what piece of art gw2 became, they all will run back in.

No, people would leave and never come back. A lot of people don't like subscription-based games and they won't pay monthly for Guild Wars 2, regardless of how awesome it would be.

[Daesu]

MazingerZ, on 12 December 2012 - 04:37 PM, said:

Players are way too fickle.  There's a reason the phrase FOTM exists.  Reroll, play on realms that favor your new class.  The other classes lse voting power as demographics shift.

Yes people are fickle, and that is the point.  They can afford to be fickle if they have a huge variety of games and servers to choose from, so if you want your game to stay on top at all times, you have to be on your feet.

On the other hand, people are also creatures of habit and tend to go to the same server unless the server does something really unpopular.