Valorous1 said:
@Prevenge, If the plan is to monetize 247 to gather additional funds to complete Pantheon, then lets ALL pay to play it. Shouldn't that fix the issue? How do we get everyone on board?
(trying to be constructive here)
Prevenge said: So, I humbly ask you to channel your thoughts and energy into brainstorming positive ideas, offering suggestions, and sharing any insights that could contribute to Pantheon's success, right here in this discussion.
Vandraad said:
Prevenge said: So, I humbly ask you to channel your thoughts and energy into brainstorming positive ideas, offering suggestions, and sharing any insights that could contribute to Pantheon's success, right here in this discussion.
VR needs more person-power so they can do more thing in parallel where, right now, too much can only be done serially. Many people have told VR they would happy volunteer to provide assistance but VR has insisted there are legal problem with that. VR is wrong. With an appropriate contract, the 'legal issues' that VR vaguely mentions can be eliminated. But VR needs someone who is capable of negotiating such a contract...and they dont have that.
VR needs money. But outside of large scale investment that would give an immediate influx of money so they can immediately hire people to solve the problem in my first point, that of VR needing more people, VR's solution is to sell 247 in the hope that enough people buy it.
Sadly, there are not ideas that we, the potential playerbase can say that has not already been said time and time again as Vjek mentioned above. So while I can appreciate your effort, the reality of the situation is that we can do nothing about this.
VR's solution is a serious and sizeable descope of the project but that too has its problems. People have mentioned just doing away with continents of Reignfall and Whitethaw. But then what do you do with the Skar, Ogre, Dark Myr, Dwarves, and Archai that start on those continents? Set up some temp housing solution on some beach somewhere on Kingsreach? People had suggested descoping the races that dont start on Kingsreach, releasing only with Human, Elves and Halflings. But that is a big middle finger to everyone who doesn't want to play those races. So we keep the 3 continents and all the races but descope many of the zones. Also descope the initial level cap going from 50 down to 30. Descope any intended raid content at release because why bother making raid content nobody can access for months? Then they can descope game mechanics like Progeny, Perceptions, Climate and Fractures.
That's the only viable solution: Descope.
Vandraad said:
Prevenge said: So, I humbly ask you to channel your thoughts and energy into brainstorming positive ideas, offering suggestions, and sharing any insights that could contribute to Pantheon's success, right here in this discussion.
VR needs more person-power so they can do more thing in parallel where, right now, too much can only be done serially. Many people have told VR they would happy volunteer to provide assistance but VR has insisted there are legal problem with that. VR is wrong. With an appropriate contract, the 'legal issues' that VR vaguely mentions can be eliminated. But VR needs someone who is capable of negotiating such a contract...and they dont have that.
VR needs money. But outside of large scale investment that would give an immediate influx of money so they can immediately hire people to solve the problem in my first point, that of VR needing more people, VR's solution is to sell 247 in the hope that enough people buy it.
Sadly, there are not ideas that we, the potential playerbase can say that has not already been said time and time again as Vjek mentioned above. So while I can appreciate your effort, the reality of the situation is that we can do nothing about this.
VR's solution is a serious and sizeable descope of the project but that too has its problems. People have mentioned just doing away with continents of Reignfall and Whitethaw. But then what do you do with the Skar, Ogre, Dark Myr, Dwarves, and Archai that start on those continents? Set up some temp housing solution on some beach somewhere on Kingsreach? People had suggested descoping the races that dont start on Kingsreach, releasing only with Human, Elves and Halflings. But that is a big middle finger to everyone who doesn't want to play those races. So we keep the 3 continents and all the races but descope many of the zones. Also descope the initial level cap going from 50 down to 30. Descope any intended raid content at release because why bother making raid content nobody can access for months? Then they can descope game mechanics like Progeny, Perceptions, Climate and Fractures.
That's the only viable solution: Descope.
Prevenge said: But at least some of it wouldn't need to be permanent. You descope for an alpha, make it clear to the community that it's going to be a long-running alpha, as the game is nowhere near ready to be launched. A playable product, stripped down holds far more interest to me than 247. Do people not agree with that? So hold up, if the option was between: 1. 247 with all the currently available continents and races being introduced in the different 1 hour /2 hour trials, at different times. 2. A stripped down version of Pantheon, moved into alpha, potentially missing continents and races and classes, but an actual alpha available now for alpha pledgers and up. Which would you pick? I'd much rather have the Pantheon alpha. Part of Joppa's response was that it sounded like the current pre alpha testers weren't really testing much any more, because they are bored of doing the same content over and over, they've already "min maxed" the pre-alpha, which means they are PLAYING more than testing, but if it's opened up to Alpha pledges, we've never tried it. I'd be happy to do a bunch of testing of the stuff pre-alpha testers are already bored of. Sign me up. In fact I am already signed up, bring me on board. I think you'd get far more interest from new alpha pledgers for Pantheons alpha, than you will ever get for 247. I don't think either option will bring in enough to get them the kind of money they seem to need, though. Hence the reason why I didn't start the thread like this, because there's already threads like this.
My thought is that since they seemed to indicate that 247 is needed as a revenue stream, that proposing an alternative revenue stream is necessary to correct the course of development. The sooner 247 is abandoned, the better, because monetization of it is unlikely to succeed, and even in the event it does, it will probably be bad for the further development of the MMO, even if Joppa himself feels committed to delivering the MMO. I simply cannot trust that VR would not pivot to putting their efforts where the money would be.
My proposal would be to monetize access to the MMO itself. The option may or may not upset certain pledgers, but, I don't think this is really taking anything away from anyone. So, if I was the one making the call on this, this is what I'd do:
A phased opening up 24/7 MMO client access in an early access subscription model based on pledge levels. Pre-Alpha pledgers continue to have access with no additional subscription (or a reduced subscription), Alpha pledgers are brought in and are able to pay a monthly subscription ($10? $15?) for access to the MMO. They will get this access for some number of months, say 3-6, before Beta pledgers are brought in, paying the same subscription the Alpha pledgers are. After another time interval, open access to all people who pledged anything but did not get Beta access, and then shortly thereafter open it to the general public.
In my view, this honors and respects the pledges that were made while also providing a revenue stream for VR that Pantheon supporters are likely to be willing to participate in. I, for one, will not pay any more money to VR without getting immediate access to the MMO client, and I won't pay anything more than a reasonable fee to do so (ie, I'll pay a $15/mo sub, but I won't pay $600). I understand that Joppa expressed that he thinks this sort of model would only be successful for a few weeks, but I haven't heard an argument for why 247 would last any longer. Honestly, based on what we've been shown, I think I would play that mode at most a few dozen times before I'd be utterly sick of it - and if they tried to get me to pay money to access it, I simply wouldn't even bother trying it.
If the monetization part of 247 is essential, then they had best call it off sooner rather than later, because it dooms Pantheon one way or the other.
Vandraad said:
Prevenge said: But at least some of it wouldn't need to be permanent. You descope for an alpha, make it clear to the community that it's going to be a long-running alpha, as the game is nowhere near ready to be launched. A playable product, stripped down holds far more interest to me than 247. Do people not agree with that? So hold up, if the option was between: 1. 247 with all the currently available continents and races being introduced in the different 1 hour /2 hour trials, at different times. 2. A stripped down version of Pantheon, moved into alpha, potentially missing continents and races and classes, but an actual alpha available now for alpha pledgers and up. Which would you pick? I'd much rather have the Pantheon alpha. Part of Joppa's response was that it sounded like the current pre alpha testers weren't really testing much any more, because they are bored of doing the same content over and over, they've already "min maxed" the pre-alpha, which means they are PLAYING more than testing, but if it's opened up to Alpha pledges, we've never tried it. I'd be happy to do a bunch of testing of the stuff pre-alpha testers are already bored of. Sign me up. In fact I am already signed up, bring me on board. I think you'd get far more interest from new alpha pledgers for Pantheons alpha, than you will ever get for 247. I don't think either option will bring in enough to get them the kind of money they seem to need, though. Hence the reason why I didn't start the thread like this, because there's already threads like this.
What I'm saying is that VR will need to descope all that through release. Not Alpha. Release. Alpha is irrelevant if you're looking at it as a source of revenue. Revenue is what VR desperately needs. Only at release can VR then start to get revenue but to get to release with the amount of money they currently they have to do a massive descope. If they do not, we're back to Joppa's statement in the Q&A that the 'currently projected' release is "years" away. And that doesn't mean 2 years, or 3 years. That's more in line with 5 or more years..at a minimum.
Prevenge said:
That's what I'm getting at though. 247 is being made to bring in additional revenue, but look around, it clearly has very little interest. I doubt it will make any money, let alone enough to finish anything.
So wouldn't opening alpha access to the actual MMORPG and cancelling 247 make for the kind of news article that would make peoples ears perk right up and potentially bring in new pledges since it's now an actual alpha, instead of the 247 debacle?
If I think this situation over to myself - I'm already pledged, but I can say that 247 I definitely would not have pledged for. However a stripped down long running Alpha for Pantheon starting in 3 months? I would definitely have pledged to.
I feel like there's more people in that camp, than there are in the 247-positive camp.
Ruinar said:
Llydon said:
Two things must become true for there to be any hope:
a) return to the original vision completely and totally.
b) produce results.
There are some prerequisites to that. Namely, money.
How will opening alpha access create revenue? Alpha access is a pledge reward. Unless they just get rid of that pledge reward and let everyone in for a sub. How could they do that after so many champions bought it as a pledge reward? Or are you saying start alpha now and get a bunch more people to buy champion pledges? I think the market of people willing to pay hundreds of dollars for alpha is mostly tapped out.
Additionally, I don't know that the press would be any better to open alpha and get a lot of people to spend hundreds of dollars and the game barely exists.
Prevenge said:
How will opening alpha access create revenue? Alpha access is a pledge reward. Unless they just get rid of that pledge reward and let everyone in for a sub. How could they do that after so many champions bought it as a pledge reward? Or are you saying start alpha now and get a bunch more people to buy champion pledges? I think the market of people willing to pay hundreds of dollars for alpha is mostly tapped out.
Additionally, I don't know that the press would be any better to open alpha and get a lot of people to spend hundreds of dollars and the game barely exists.
Well that's what I mean - I don't know. But wouldn't it generate more than 247? How is 247 going to generate any revenue at all, when no one is even interested in it? At least people are still interested in the MMORPG.
I mean 200 new pledges to alpha is a lot more than 5 new pledges to 247. (completely made up numbers, but the alpha would certainly generate more interest than 247 will)
Ruinar said:
Prevenge said:
How will opening alpha access create revenue? Alpha access is a pledge reward. Unless they just get rid of that pledge reward and let everyone in for a sub. How could they do that after so many champions bought it as a pledge reward? Or are you saying start alpha now and get a bunch more people to buy champion pledges? I think the market of people willing to pay hundreds of dollars for alpha is mostly tapped out.
Additionally, I don't know that the press would be any better to open alpha and get a lot of people to spend hundreds of dollars and the game barely exists.
Well that's what I mean - I don't know. But wouldn't it generate more than 247? How is 247 going to generate any revenue at all, when no one is even interested in it? At least people are still interested in the MMORPG.
I mean 200 new pledges to alpha is a lot more than 5 new pledges to 247. (completely made up numbers, but the alpha would certainly generate more interest than 247 will)
247 could generate revenue by targeting a completely different audience. Which is what everyone is afraid of. But even that seems unlikely.
Off topic comments have been removed. Please keep your comments ON TOPIC to avoid having your posts removed.
If you think nothing will cause Pantheon to succeed at this point....
then there are over a dozen active posts you can express that opinion on.
(and you've likely said so already on at least one of them)