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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
$15 per month
McMackMuck
Member
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?
Inflation is always with us.
If by the time Ashes releases the sub cost was higher, say $20 per month, how would you feel?
How do you judge where your value-for-money vs. affordability threshold is?
1
Comments
It is a matter of putting your priorities in order.
I dont know how it will be for developing countries. However, if people can afford internet and a pc that can run such games, then they can pay a subscription as well.
But ppl will always complain.
BUT
If you compare that price to other subscription prices... it's not a good look.
Here is the real problem as I see it. So on the one hand you have a situation where due to its niche appeal your not going to generate a high rate of new payers at a certain point after the release on sub, but you also due to game mechanics need a bunch of people to support any server loses over time in order for the game to stay enjoyable. I think season servers are a concept that will help this problem in the long run (sub retention even if not server retention), but not enough to solve the problem relative to the staff they need to keep on hand for post launch content.
This is tricky because technically I expect Ashes will need to go ftp at some point if it wants to keep up the population to solve this problem without hurting the game's design. FtP only works if enough people are buying cosmetics. But you either need a uniquely high rate of player to purchase of these I.e. pseudo sub or a huge population for this, to work in a game of this scale. But to get enough population you have to take the risk to go ftp due to above mentioned issues. This is why I think that 5$ 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.
Seriously though, in my case, if that's 20$ USD converted to CAD. Eesh
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.
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.
You know income then and what it bought vs income now and what it buys.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
Reason being is it's a game. Games require players to play. We want more people to play even those who are poor. If the game is so expensive it gets in the way of life for the poor. Then the game will suffer due to lack of players.
It's also never wise to base things like this on a minority. Averages don't mean crap either considering the disparity between rich and poor in America right now is higher than any country has ever had it in history. It's too big to base data off of it. This disparity will make the game completely unaffordable in other countries.
Most families these days have like 50 bucks of disposable income simply because the job decided not to pay them what they are owed. Most jobs don't pay a living wage. Just some imaginary wage from the 80's most likely. This majority will be the ones you want to play the game because it leads to the most money.
However, money has said to be a secondary issue. So even more reason to tune it to the majority than the minority. 15 bucks is the sweet spot. It still may cause some people to turn down the game over others though. 15 bucks a month per person is plenty to develop a game off of when you already paid most of the big costs upfront. Especially a world wide game.
If half the world bought it that is already quite a couple billion. That's not going to happen, but they aren't going to run out any time soon. If it is successful. Which it might be. I got enough faith that it will.
U.S. East
Personally, I am all for a higher monthly sub because of inflation.
The 15$ sub games had in the year 2000 would be 24$ and some change in 2021.
As long as the product is worth paying for, people will buy it.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I think that is perfectly fair. In the long term, some of these services do get screwed by inflation if they stick to a flat rate.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Assuming you're basing it off the inflation rate, which country's inflation rate would you use? Or would you just set it at something like 1.5% every year, regardless of global inflation rates?
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.[/quote]
Gz In the USA, you know not all PPL live in the USA? Not Overall give it more Money, bzw all get expensiver that it not rlly see that you get more money, becouse you have to pay more?
There are definitely areas of the world for which income didn't inflate. That said, you said "Do you get more salary too? Mostly not,"
First, the "you" there might be from the US, but maybe not. If it is from the US, that should be amended to 'mostly so'. If you're just talking about folks in general, from the world at large, salaries have also been inflating. See https://www.statista.com/statistics/612444/real-salary-forecast-by-country-2016/
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AV_AN_WAGE
Some examples from around the world for 2004 -> 2020 in case you don't want to click links (everything converted to USD for ease of discussion):
Note - the above salaries are all listed in 2020 dollars. This means that the figures listed are already inflation adjusted. Inflation is real, ya'll.
There are definitely particular areas in the world that have been stagnant. There are places like Greece that have had a really tough time. There are citizens living in areas that have seen growth who haven't gotten to participate in that growth. It can be frustrating for those folks having their wages stay constant, but seeing prices (rent, bills, commodities) rise. It would be extremely frustrating having some guy on the internet come in and tell those folks that wages are going up anyway. Still, for the median global citizen, salaries have gone up.
Second, if you want to talk about income vs the cost of things you want to buy, you're talking about buying power! If you're saying that income went up, but prices went up, then buying power stayed flat, but you're still staying that income, went up, which is the claim I challenged.