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Understanding why AOC is subscription based.
Hello everyone, i have been finding a lot of posts of people expressing their concerns that this game will not be Free To Play.
I wanted to post this to help those understand why a company goes Subscription based.
Lets start from the ground up. A MMORPG is a long costly commitment to make.
It starts with a person or a group of people with a idea and having to go to a bank to get a loan to get everything started.
This isn't like a car loan of about $15,000 that you have to pay off in 8 years slowly.
These Loans are in the Millions. DC Universe Online cost 50 Million to make. Elder scrolls online cost about 200 million.
The average MMO takes about 4 to 7 years to make with a large staff.
This means there is going to be alot of cost before the game is even made.
You need a place to work. That means Rent, Power, Water, Garbage, Internet.
You need equipment. Servers, work stations, office supplys and many many other things.
You need staff. Paying a lot of people hourly to develop the game, Market, Manage accounts, costs, websites plus others.
You have to do this for a few years with pretty much no income coming in, just dept and interest.
Now its time for the game to launch, but you dont just walk away and call it good. Now you must maintain those servers, keep staff on hand, keep developers there to make new content, admins to keep Bots and Hackers away. Paying your rent and bills.
Going subscription base keeps a steady income coming to both pay off your debt, pay staff, and also have money to keep the game going.
With Free To Play options, you are no longer keeping a steady income. Yes some of us pay alot in the cash shop, but lets say 1 in 1000 people spend $20 a month in the cash shop, you have only paid one person 1 hour worth of work. At this rate a company will go bankrupt and fall apart. This is were company's are forced to change things. Making the game Pay 2 Win to draw Free to Play players to spend 100 for a quick win to something they want or doing. Restricting content for Free To Play Players to force them to buy other temp accesses. Having to Cut staff and extend projects. This means slower development of new content or maybe no new content at all. Less protection from Hackers, botters, or Gold Farmers. Bugs not getting fixed, Servers having issues and not getting fixed or replaced.
Having every member in a game paying a small fee insures that a steady income is coming in and that everything is getting paid, things are getting fixed, and development keeps moving forward while they are getting out of dept.
I wanted to post this to help those understand why a company goes Subscription based.
Lets start from the ground up. A MMORPG is a long costly commitment to make.
It starts with a person or a group of people with a idea and having to go to a bank to get a loan to get everything started.
This isn't like a car loan of about $15,000 that you have to pay off in 8 years slowly.
These Loans are in the Millions. DC Universe Online cost 50 Million to make. Elder scrolls online cost about 200 million.
The average MMO takes about 4 to 7 years to make with a large staff.
This means there is going to be alot of cost before the game is even made.
You need a place to work. That means Rent, Power, Water, Garbage, Internet.
You need equipment. Servers, work stations, office supplys and many many other things.
You need staff. Paying a lot of people hourly to develop the game, Market, Manage accounts, costs, websites plus others.
You have to do this for a few years with pretty much no income coming in, just dept and interest.
Now its time for the game to launch, but you dont just walk away and call it good. Now you must maintain those servers, keep staff on hand, keep developers there to make new content, admins to keep Bots and Hackers away. Paying your rent and bills.
Going subscription base keeps a steady income coming to both pay off your debt, pay staff, and also have money to keep the game going.
With Free To Play options, you are no longer keeping a steady income. Yes some of us pay alot in the cash shop, but lets say 1 in 1000 people spend $20 a month in the cash shop, you have only paid one person 1 hour worth of work. At this rate a company will go bankrupt and fall apart. This is were company's are forced to change things. Making the game Pay 2 Win to draw Free to Play players to spend 100 for a quick win to something they want or doing. Restricting content for Free To Play Players to force them to buy other temp accesses. Having to Cut staff and extend projects. This means slower development of new content or maybe no new content at all. Less protection from Hackers, botters, or Gold Farmers. Bugs not getting fixed, Servers having issues and not getting fixed or replaced.
Having every member in a game paying a small fee insures that a steady income is coming in and that everything is getting paid, things are getting fixed, and development keeps moving forward while they are getting out of dept.
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Comments
i have been wanting to hear the true lord speak after mo much nonsesnce from the non believers!
Its been anoying me all these kids wanting free to play games and pay to win gear.
Nice post :)
i have been wanting to hear the true lord speak after mo much nonsesnce from the non believers!
Its been anoying me all these kids wanting free to play games and pay to win gear.
Nice post <img alt="????" src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2.2.1/svg/1f642.svg" />
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@Zyzzyx
Thanks i thought it would be good to break things down a little for people to get a bigger picture and understanding of how things work.
Just sayin.
Nice to hear from you. I truely agree hopefully they are able to keep things going and meet up to everything they promise. Going F2P though i believe will ruin this game, more if it gets bought out by a money grab company.
Yeah i used to be that way being a kid wanting Runescape Classic Membership and it was a struggle. Now im getting married and can still be hard to get $15 from the wife to play games she hates lol. But i always new that P2P was the best way and the games that did seemed to run smoother for me then others.
@tinukeda
Thanks for the Reply, yeah this is just a guesstimate number means no one can track what player or how many use the shop on a Free to play. Thats why requiring Subscription is easier to track for the company. If they know they have a 200,000 player bases they can give a guess what they will make, at least a min. With Free To Play you never know. Out of 200,000. Maybe only 20k actualy use the cash shop.
And yeah im that 1 in 1000 that uses way more. In SWTOR i went back and counted my transactions. i spent over 1200 in a year, about 800 in the summer on subscription and random chance gambling in the cash shop to get Pay 2 Win items.
@BCGiant
Thanks for the Reply, @2landman makes the perfect point for this question.
The game lacks the developers and the testers to properly work on the game. not so bad in a smaller game, but in MMORPG...RIP
people find the bugs and exploit them. at times, line between a bug and a beneficial side effect becomes very fuzzy. for example, I found that in a weak internet connection, if done correctly, you can freely regain lost HP by overloading the connection, so causing the game to dump the data on the damage you took, replacing it by 0. I can exploit this to make a DPS who can wreak the boss even if underleved and way too frail.
second, as they can't pay for proper admins, so you have to pretty much rely on player reports on hacking and whatever sorry attempt you made at protecting your data. so hackers, bots and other unwanted people slip into the game. once bots gain the ground, gold sellers enter the scene. the inject unreal amounts of gold into the economy, causing hyper inflation and making it impossible for players to keep playing competitively unless they can shell out a lot of bucks.
The animations, graphics and everything is going to be bad. really really bad.
in essence, you remember what happens when you have a budget? you go for lower quality. same here, f2p with no p2w is like only 5% of the budget to work with. you will get a product out no one will want to play.
1. people with no wallet who will be unable to help support the game anyway
2. people with huge wallets, no skill or willingness to earn their upgrades but still want to own others in pvp and will simply pay their way to being able to do so
Pretty sure most skilled pvpers and most pve players who can afford $15 a month would rather pay a sub and earn their upgrades rather then just simply handing over cash and getting upgrades with zero in game effort
1. people with no wallet who will be unable to help support the game anyway
2. people with huge wallets, no skill or willingness to earn their upgrades but still want to own others in pvp and will simply pay their way to being able to do so
Pretty sure most skilled pvpers and most pve players who can afford $15 a month would rather pay a sub and earn their upgrades rather then just simply handing over cash and getting upgrades with zero in game effort
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Agree, let the Asian games keep their cash shop until they fizzle out. I think most of us are sick of them.
I do have some issues however when publishers double or even triple dip.
Having to buy a retail box then expansions and then adding a cash shop to me is really disrespectful to a subscription based pay model.
It I am committing to a subscription I want to believe I have access to all aspects of the game during my time period.
Besides the mage video, finding out that there was a going to be a monthly sub, made this game for me. I feel it helps weed out some of the toxic players in the MMO world, gives the company a steady flow of cash, and hopefully prevents the game from going pay to win. ( and let me tell you my bank account is going to love it after what Archeage and Black Desert Online did to it. )
For the players that are leery about the subscription model, I think that they should give a free trial to new players with limitations of course to help avoid gold seller spam, etc. A show of good faith from the company to those who are interested in the game and want to see what it offers them hands-on. Get them in and get them hooked.
The thing about this genre is that people really do look at the population of a game before they decide if they want to play. The less players in the game, the less players that want to be in the game. It is a pretty harsh snowball effect. Going F2P can bring back players when times are rough. The only thing I'd really want them to do if they ever had to go F2P would be to please restrict trade, inventory space, and chat options to people who have never paid a dime. Nothing is worse than gold farmers making their rounds with free accounts. Having players paying at least once for the game greatly reduces these problems. I've also read that getting players to pay at least once greatly increases their chances of paying again. For some reason I've seen F2P games with sub options chase away players by taking away things like inventory space after a sub expires. F2Pers won't even pay once after they see things like that. They're like fish rejecting a hook at the first sign of danger. Got to make them feel like they can play for free after an initial cost and next thing you know they're buying those cool glider skins.
*sob* Why do I keep buying these glider skins?
"Let's give players limited bag space so we can let them expand it in the cash shop."
"Let's lock player slots, but let players purchase more."
"Let's artificially slow down leveling time, but offer exp pots in the shop."
ETC, ETC, ETC, ETC.
I could write a short novel on how manipulative f2p games are required to be in creating a million little annoying inconveniences that can be overcome by spending a few extra $$$. Really terrible way to design a game, imo. Whereas a sub frees up the devs to concentrate on making a fun, immersive, challenging, wonderful experience. I opt for this path.
The B2P ends up adopting F2P systems to be competitive with a more or less core MMO player base.
The biggest issues that turns an MMO sour is when the dreaded publishers "NCSoft, SoE, EA, Activision" arm twist developers to cash in on its player base forced out cosmetics/quality of life items at the sacrifice of legitimate content or delayed repairs to known game issues.
Yet the Players base is so invested that they are willing to hang on to a sinking ship.
P2P is the only way to sustain an ongoing game world respectfully, however the game hast to be worthy of a subscription and never take advantage of its core player base.
Next job is to get players to WANT to spend money, either via time savers, or OP gear.
If this game was being marketed as a f2p title it would just be another AA in the market, for the monthly sub reason alone im sticking around and will be putting as much into the KS tomorrow as im comfortable with.
I simply refuse to pay for costumes with stats, and I looove costumes and bling, but as soon as there is the slightest stats on it (like +xx speed to a mount) I don't buy.
Thank you for all your comments and feed back, it really shows how people view this situation :)
"Let's give players limited bag space so we can let them expand it in the cash shop."
"Only allow 1 character slots, but let players purchase more."
"Let's artificially slow down leveling time, but offer exp pots in the shop."
ETC, ETC, ETC, ETC.
I could write a short novel on how manipulative f2p games are required to be in creating a million little annoying inconveniences that can be overcome by spending a few extra $$$. Really terrible way to design a game, imo. Whereas a sub frees up the devs to concentrate on making a fun, immersive, challenging, wonderful experience. I opt for this path.