How Will Cosmetic Items and Cash Shop be Handled?
Sangramoire
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Practically every MMORPG out there has a cash shop from which players can buy cosmetic items to enhance the look of their character. I am in no means against that but I would like to suggest something. I personally like the way RuneScape used to handle their cosmetic items in the past, before they followed all other MMOs and introduced their own cash shop. Before, cosmetics were part of in game drops only. There was no cash shop to buy anything to enhance the look of your character. This created a community of people in which getting those rare cosmetics was valuable because let's be honest everyone wants to look cool. Not only that but it created a need to grind for those ultra rare cosmetic drops that were so valuable or at least your were given the opportunity to strike gold out of nowhere which was a great feeling when you did. This allowed players to continue playing the game even after getting the best gear for PvE or PvP. Many players in RuneScape 3 even today have the goal to acquire one of those infamous party hats that were once handed out for free years ago, now worth Billions.
It is my opinion that a brand new player with little to no play time should not have the ability to look cooler than someone that has been playing the game for years or even just a few weeks.
Now I'm not asking to have limited item drops for cosmetics like party hats were in RuneScape but my suggestions is to instead of releasing a ton of cosmetic items into a cash shop while say also releasing some in-game cosmetics that would be on par with the cash shop ones, why not have most of the cosmetics actually just be in-game drops and have the cash shop sell recolors for those cosmetics?
Obviously the cash shop could also have some cosmetic items that are not just recolors but personally I'd prefer if the in-game cosmetics looked a lot cooler than the cash shop cosmetics rather than just be on par with each other as it would provide for a better incentive to actually grind for those drops. If they are on par with each other, i'll just pay a bit of extra cash instead of grinding for it since it could take me a month or two to get it and I'll already be paying 15 or 16 dollars a month for the subscription so i'd rather just use that money to buy the cosmetic I want and save myself the grind.
This will also give me and many others something to grind for after getting maxed out PvE or PvP gear, or that opportunity to strike gold, even if it's really small. Some MMOs have some system like this and it's proven to work. WoW for example, what do people do in WoW after they get full maxed out gear? They farm for mounts. Many players have spent more time in WoW farming for mounts than they have doing anything else in the game. I think it would be a great way to keep players playing for longer essentially helping the monetization of the game to be more consistent rather than relying too much on cash shop purchases.
What does everyone think?
It is my opinion that a brand new player with little to no play time should not have the ability to look cooler than someone that has been playing the game for years or even just a few weeks.
Now I'm not asking to have limited item drops for cosmetics like party hats were in RuneScape but my suggestions is to instead of releasing a ton of cosmetic items into a cash shop while say also releasing some in-game cosmetics that would be on par with the cash shop ones, why not have most of the cosmetics actually just be in-game drops and have the cash shop sell recolors for those cosmetics?
Obviously the cash shop could also have some cosmetic items that are not just recolors but personally I'd prefer if the in-game cosmetics looked a lot cooler than the cash shop cosmetics rather than just be on par with each other as it would provide for a better incentive to actually grind for those drops. If they are on par with each other, i'll just pay a bit of extra cash instead of grinding for it since it could take me a month or two to get it and I'll already be paying 15 or 16 dollars a month for the subscription so i'd rather just use that money to buy the cosmetic I want and save myself the grind.
This will also give me and many others something to grind for after getting maxed out PvE or PvP gear, or that opportunity to strike gold, even if it's really small. Some MMOs have some system like this and it's proven to work. WoW for example, what do people do in WoW after they get full maxed out gear? They farm for mounts. Many players have spent more time in WoW farming for mounts than they have doing anything else in the game. I think it would be a great way to keep players playing for longer essentially helping the monetization of the game to be more consistent rather than relying too much on cash shop purchases.
What does everyone think?
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Comments
Instead of having an initial $59.99 purchase (ala WoW, FFXIV) and then a monthly fee of $15 they are just doing the monthly fee of $15 and an optional cash shop.
MMORPGs take millions upon millions of dollars to make. Intrepid needs to have some mechanism for ensure they can not only cover the initial $30,000,000 - $40,000,000 core viable product cost, but also that they can make enough money to keep the game going with a robust expansion schedule.
Also keep in mind games like WoW and FFXIV they cover all that development cost for the expansions with the expansion pack price. So when WoW sells 3.4 million copies of an expansion pack in one day and they make $203,966,000 in one day of sales, that is a lot easier to cover the development cost vs having to get 13,333,333 sub months worth of subscribers if your expansion costs $200m and you are only bringing in the money via subscriptions.
Very understandable though I'm not arguing to get rid of the cash shop or anything like that so that money would still be coming in for Intrepid Studious regardless, albeit it might be a little bit less than it would if some of the cosmetics aren't as cool as they could be but it would be a trade-off to say keep an extra 3.4 Million subscriptions for an extra 6 months than they otherwise would have.
Meaning that on those 3.4 million subscriptions they would make 326,400,000 that they otherwise wouldn't have. That's assuming the player base numbers that WoW has of course since that's what we're basing the example off of. These are also arbitrary numbers as there is no proof that people would stay exactly 6 months more on average. It could be more it could be less.
Also, the money coming in from people staying subscribed longer only has to offset the money that is lost due to the cosmetic shop not having as cool cosmetics which I don't think it'd be too much because it would allow for a lot of recolors to be sold some with potentially different glows or effects on the cosmetics you got from in-game drops.
It's really difficult to tell which monetization direction would be best but I think it's worth looking into it.
Yes he has said that, I'm perfectly happy with that though my suggestion is slightly different, just something to think about.
So good response, but you literally pulled 3.4 million subscriptions out of thing air with no backing, reason, rationale, etc.
I don't think people are going to leave the game over cash-shop cosmetics. This isn't WoW where there's literally nothing to do between expansion packs.
Ashes is a living breathing world. There is always something to build....
...or something to burn down
Well the 3.4 million I took directly from you since that's the player base you gave for WoW and if I used different numbers then it would skew the example for better or worse on either side of the argument. Like if AOC only had 10k players then my numbers would have looked like 10k x $15 x 6mo = $900,000.
As you can see 900k seems like a lot less than the 200M you had come up with from WoW, so I just used those same numbers to keep the same perspective.
I do agree with your point though, this isn't WoW and because of how it works it is very unlikely that players will leave right after an expansion so the cosmetics may not really keep players in for much longer on average than on other MMOs. It might only keep someone subscribed for an extra month instead of 6. Like I said though they are arbitrary numbers as there's no telling really if my suggestion would really have any effect on players staying for longer or not.
Also there's no telling how much it would also impact the revenue coming in from the shop, if at all. I'm excited to see which direction they end up taking though since I still think it's worth it to look deeper into by someone that's an expert on this topic that has data on it.
True haha, "If I'm going to die, I might as well look good doing it." I do want to clarify though that I am in no way against the cash shop at all. I think I might be confusing some people. The minor difference that I suggested with the cash shop is that the cosmetics coming from it will still look good, like really good, but not legendary like some of the cosmetics from in-game would look that cannot be acquired from the cash shop.
That would open the cash shop to being able to also sell recolors of those legendary cosmetic items that could only be acquired in-game.
Just to clarify again, I'm not against having a cash shop or even against the cash shop selling cosmetics in general. I just believe that having more legendary cosmetics that cannot be bought from the cash shop would keep players longer without really hurting sales from the shop, which potentially means more revenue for Intrepid Studios.
I'm assuming you're someone that probably loves to buy stuff from the cash shop as soon as you start off in the game, which would mean a change like this would affect you the most out of anyone else, what do you think? Should legendary cosmetics be available through the cash shop to new players from the start?
You make a very good point that I had not thought about because my opinion on the topic is just different. Not to say that one is right or wrong, I think there should be a place for both and finding the right balance is key.
See I get my satisfaction from having cosmetics that others don't when I also know that even if they wanted to really badly, they can't get it.
If I pay $50 for a cosmetic and I go around showing it off, it's cool and all but anyone else could just pay $50 and look like me so I don't get the same satisfaction as being able to show off a cosmetic to someone that I know they can't acquire it no matter how much they want it unless they really work for it or get extremely lucky.
It allows me to rub it in their face longer lol.
Yeah I can see that too. To me though it's not so much that someone else buying the same thing or looking the same as me bothers me but rather it's more of a status thing I guess would be the most accurate way to describe it. Having something that not only looks really good but can only be acquired through hard work is something that gives me that feeling of accomplishment in a game that I wouldn't get otherwise.
Yeah I agree with this. That's why I think I might have confused people into thinking I wanted to get rid of the shop or something which is not the case. As it stands, AoC has a subscription and a cash shop with no box price and my suggestion isn't to change that.
There's would still be revenue coming in from both. The key is to finding the right balance between them because you also don't want to heavily rely on the cash shop as it could mean a few things.
First if a game relies on the cash shop for it''s revenue too much, the developers naturally will have to spend more time making cosmetics than in-game content in order to keep a decent flow of revenue coming in which in turn make it so that they become even more reliant on people buying cosmetics from the shop and it can snowball.
Second, the developers will have to take into account that the cash shop may not be as consistent as the subscription money unless they are consistently releasing cosmetics and that could take some time away from focusing into the development of the game which since AoC is just starting out, I'd say the development of the core game to me outweighs the benefits of Cosmetics to a certain degree and that point could also be argued. Being able to have a consistent cash flow is more secure and allows for future decisions to be made more accurately.