$15 per month

I appreciate that this topic could get a little "emotional", but I figured it would be good to gauge opinion.

Inflation is always with us.

If by the time Ashes releases the sub cost was higher, say $20 per month, how would you feel?

How do you judge where your value-for-money vs. affordability threshold is?

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George_Black

I think that every adult in developed countries can affort these things.
It is a matter of putting your priorities in order.

I dont know how it will be for developing countries. However, if people can afford internet and a pc that can run such games, then they can pay a subscription as well.

But ppl will always complain.

daveywavey

$15 is probably my limit!

maouw

$20 would be doable for me

BUT

If you compare that price to other subscription prices... it's not a good look.

JustVine

I think 20 is better for the long term health of the game given everything I know about future content plans after launch and similar games at this scale.

Here is the real problem as I see it. So on the one hand you have a situation where due to its niche appeal your not going to generate a high rate of new payers at a certain point after the release on sub, but you also due to game mechanics need a bunch of people to support any server loses over time in order for the game to stay enjoyable. I think season servers are a concept that will help this problem in the long run (sub retention even if not server retention), but not enough to solve the problem relative to the staff they need to keep on hand for post launch content.

This is tricky because technically I expect Ashes will need to go ftp at some point if it wants to keep up the population to solve this problem without hurting the game's design. FtP only works if enough people are buying cosmetics. But you either need a uniquely high rate of player to purchase of these I.e. pseudo sub or a huge population for this, to work in a game of this scale. But to get enough population you have to take the risk to go ftp due to above mentioned issues. This is why I think that 5$ extra is ultimately required for a bit, to subsidize this ultimate shift in pay model for long term longevity of server populations.

Or I could be wrong about how niche ashes is and they can ultimately go ftp np or have higher layer retention than other open world pvp games but I severely doubt that given past historical evidence of open world pvp games.

clone63

Higher subscription means you might see a few less cosmetic clones wandering around. But probably not

Seriously though, in my case, if that's 20$ USD converted to CAD. Eesh

Azherae

I feel that even $15 a month is asking a lot for a game that explicitly says it will have a high community requirement and high barrier to entry (in terms of both time and initial hardware to make it work well).

On the other side, with the current designs implied, Intrepid might let certain very high level staff phase themselves out when the bulk of the game is done and all their guidance documents and structures are written, at which point it would come down to how well the remaining staff have been trained to follow those guidelines.

If some number of alts (let's say 4) are available for no additional monthly cost, I can see it working because the bits of this game type that lead to burnout will be automatically dealt with, even with the restrictions on Freeholds. Just 'being able to start on a different server' would be meaningful for many people feeling like they are continuing to get their money's worth. The size of the world, combined with what is probably the most important part, the lack of some curated story that automatically takes you to every region, would handle the rest.

But I feel like $20 a month, while sounding fine, will start to stick into many people's feelings, particularly those who do things like 'splurging on a pack that gives them a few months play'. After all, the decision that normally loses these games their sub isn't 'can I afford to pay this every month', it is 'I barely played the last two months and it still cost me $'.

At that point, the difference between $24, $30, and $40 is Pricing Psychology, and they don't get the 'bonus' of being able to go '$19.99' since you lose that as soon as people have to consider 2x of the item or think about it for too long.

$12 would be an 80% drop in revenue though, so I don't think it would be worth it unless it causes an additional 20% retention. Similarly, raising to $20 would be a 33% increase, and whether or not that could hit hard enough to lose that many subs would be difficult to say.

Gaining new subs is iterative though, whereas losing them is weak exponential (if people's friends leave, they reconsider their positions).

It'll probably all come down to what they have planned for their first Expansion.

Jonta

Tbh if it's more than £10 what's that about $15 I'm out ..

Lailesh1

Infaltion or not, yes of course everything will be more expensive, but ask yourself the following question. Do you get more salary too? Mostly not, so $ 15 is enough for me. I'm pretty sure that 20 would be too much. You want to get a few players onto the server, and not just those who have money.
My Opinion.

Greetings,

beaushinkle

Lailesh1 wrote: »

Infaltion or not, yes of course everything will be more expensive, but ask yourself the following question. Do you get more salary too? Mostly not, so $ 15 is enough for me. I'm pretty sure that 20 would be too much. You want to get a few players onto the server, and not just those who have money.
My Opinion.

Greetings,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

In 1950 in the USA, the median income of folks 15 year olds or older, who have non-zero income was $2,570. In 1980 that number grew to $12,530. 1990: $20,293. 2000: $28,343. 2004 (circa WoW release): $30,513. 2016: $38,869.

Folks are objectively getting paid higher salaries than before, on average.

bloodprophet

Now try that again accounting for costs and what it takes to fun a basic household.
You know income then and what it bought vs income now and what it buys.

beaushinkle

Not sure where this going - Lailesh1 wrote "Do you get more salary too? Mostly not", which is something that is factually incorrect.

The things you buy also cost more money. You make more money and you spend more money. Some things haven't inflated with the rest of the market, like AAA game prices or MMO sub fees.

A subscription to WoW costed $15 in 2004, which adjusted for inflation is $21.72 in 2021 (since folks got paid less in 2004 than they do in 2021, and everything else was cheaper in 2004 than it was in 2021, relatively).

This isn't an argument that Intrepid should charge $20 for their subscriptions. That's entirely up to them, their economic models, their expected supply/demand curves, and a whole lot of complicated math and optics.

JustVine

1. Not everyone here is from the states, so both you and the user you are responding to are making a sweeping generalization.
2. This topic is extremely personal and complex. You are not taking into account: race, gender, location, cost of living, debt, and what expenses are more relevant to the person in question.

Come on beau, I know you can read the room better than that. Don't take that bait.

Kesthely

McMackMuck wrote: »

How do you judge where your value-for-money vs. affordability threshold is?

It kind of depends on what the average subscription fee is at that time. I don't think ashes needs to go above the average subscription fee to do really well. Thy hype continuesly grows, and with good marketing, should really kick off close to release. I'm actually more concerned for the Launch, server and Gm situation.

I would estimate that the start of ashes will see a similar playerbase size as wow classic Roughly 4-6 million players worldwide. That would be an astonishing 600 full servers potentially at launch. The amount of resources, in both servers and GM is the thing i worry about, not if they make 90 million or 120 million per month for development and maintanence

If you would average the income of a developer to 10000 dolors per month and you have 100 developers at that time, You'd need about 7 full servers world wide to break even for the salaries, double that for server maintenance, Tripple that for the GM's. Youd be at full servers worldwide for all your costs. or a mere 200.000 concorrent players. my hestiant estimate will give 10x to 30x that amount of players world wide. More then enough to fill development cost of a year per month.

So no, i don't think paying more for it is nessicary. It will be a bigger hurdle for those who do have low funds, and i rather enjoy as many people as i can in the game

beaushinkle

JustVine wrote: »

1. Not everyone here is from the states, so both you and the user you are responding to are making a sweeping generalization.
2. This topic is extremely personal and complex. You are not taking into account: race, gender, location, cost of living, debt, and what expenses are more relevant to the person in question.

Come on beau, I know you can read the room better than that. Don't take that bait.

The original statement was "Do you get more salary too? Mostly not". I know that this was off-the-cuff, and that they probably weren't expecting to walk into an economist, but I have a sore spot for stuff like this. Do I let people say stuff like this, or do I point to objective evidence? I was hoping the response would be "my bad, I guess it's more like 'mostly so'". Since they haven't shown back up yet, that can still happen!

I was careful to say that what I linked to was specifically for the states, but the general trend is broader. If that's something contentious, more data can be pulled up. This is one of the things we have the most data about in general, and we have it by-race, by-gender, etc. Do you doubt, for instance, that women living in Brazil are making more money than they were in 2004?

I'm not sure what the reading-the-room bit is about, and now I'm really confused. Both you and Rae posted some heady analysis, so I figured that getting a little more technical was okay. But in general, if someone writes something factually incorrect about something incredibly relevant to the topic (they wrote that salaries don't generally inflate in a topic about updating the sub price to keep up with inflation), I guess I think I'm justified to link some resources.

Admittedly, I know that I lack grace and take the extremely direct approach 100% of the time. If you want to DM me with some advice as to how you think that could have been better handled, I'd be open to that!

Nerror

$30 a month and no cash shop would be fine with me. I know, not gonna happen, but one can dream.

RAYZZ

If it releases before or in 2023 im down to pay 25 a month.

Chime

Honestly, I'm so used to the $15 a month on MMO's that if it was higher, I would think it's too much. Can I afford it? Yes. But do I want to pay $20 a month subscription? No. It seems silly since it's a 5 dollar difference, but I'd be less inclined because to me, that's less money for gas in my car or something else.

Vaknar

I remember when paying $15/mo for WoW a decade ago was certainly not cheap to me at the time. Now I pay like $18/mo for Netflix as well I think?? I know I play way more games than I watch Netflix haha.

Shoklen

I'm fine with $15, and $20 would be my limit. Back in the day it was $25 for Sony's All Access; though it's come down in price since, but still... Back in 2007 (or whenever all access came about) $25 a month back then... So less now and including 15 years of inflation? Sounds fine to me.

Noaani

I would be happy paying $20 per month. If I am happy to pay $15, I don't see why $20 would be an issue (for me).

I'm actually shocked MMO subscriptions are still where they were almost 20 years ago - they need to go io for the good of the genre, imo.

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