Vortikai said:
Just reiterating that it is a really bad idea to gather the opinions of us investors as we are only a small part of the larger target audience. We are a bit different in that we have some money to invest in the game. Wait until Pantheon has larger investors who can give adequate advice for the business model of the game before changing anything.
The whole "we need to charge more because it is a niche game. And if they don't like paying $25/mo, then they can not play, because that means faster ticket response times!" rhetoric is beyond "unwise" and really bad for the community.
I'm not sure what we think larger investors will want except for a greater return on their investment and I mean they will want money... not play time in game. That is the obvious reasons why so many games get rushed or dumbed down, they see the $$ signs and then they make the decisions. It doesn't take a genius to see that is all they will see. It is however their job to make their company money by investing so we can't blame them for it.
However I don't believe any price was set in stone and I don't believe we are changing anything. We are simply discussing what would be reasonable and that means to me personally that I will pay a little extra to one see the game made and continue on for years to come.
I also want to say Vortikai, that I don't mean this to sound mean or rude, though I was trying to be direct with my opinion that investors see $$. So please don't take any offense. :) And if you could provide something a larger investor would want besides more money for their money... please educate me as I sincerely don't know.
I don't mind paying $15.00 a month for a game and wouldn't spend more then $20.00 for the best MMO. I however would pay more if it prevented a company from laying off developers. I really hate how gaming companies hire people to create a wonderful game and then as soon as it's released they drop these developers and cut back staff instead of redirecting them into making the game better.
I'm actually paying for two AA accounts one for me and my cousin. I just ordered a Skyforge founder pack and H1Z1. I played ESO for like a couple weeks before I figured out I hated the fact I couldn't quest with my friends. When GW2 came out I purchased the game for like three of my friends just so they would join me without convincing them to purchase the game. So I have no problems paying for ok games you can imagine the money I would sink into a game for one as good as EQ1/VG mix.
Niien said:
Vortikai said:
Oh, sorry. I meant that as a response to the OP and Brad's question. Have a good game first with major investors giving financial advice before you start charging even more than planned (else it end up like the TESO nightmare).
Haha, that's funny... you know what they will say... dumb it down so you can bring it X number of more people for X number of months to grab as much cash as you can grab at once and then dumb it X number of months later to a FTP model. Companies are all about money and profit all companies want to continue to grow because they and the people that run them are greedy.
There is no dumbing down, or I should say, that is not what investors or parent companies demand of the games or why those are failures. The only problem is when investors demand a subscription based game to be published before it is ready (Vanguard, TESO) which ultimately kills the game.
Also the dev team has an understanding that the chances of this game being published are low without investor support. Those investors will not think highly of a game that has fewer people playing it because of a higher-than-market rate for subscription fees. It's a bad business move.
cram9030 said:
Zandil said:I have always wanted to see how a tier payment system would work i.e. you pay for pure game time per month/week
$5 - gets you 20 hours for a month
$10 - gets you 40 hours a month
etc etc
If i'm a hard core gamer you have a maximum of say $25-$35 a month and you get unlimited access a month, but if I know I only play a few hours a week I could cut my costs and go a cheaper month sub.
If your max lvl and just a weekend raider you could pay less for your game time, the only restriction in the sub is once you reach your time limit per month you lose access till month roles over or you pay for extra time?
I am actually rather fond of this concept but I imagine the numbers would have to be worked out. I think in general people would probably willing to pay up to $20 a month if that is what was chosen BUT I think there is likely a better way. The reason FTP does well is because it creates the illusion of lower cost which any marketing person could tell you is important. Easily digestible numbers often hide total cost behind it. A pay as you play billing cycle akin to what we used to do for phone bills might be something that could work but it would have to have the option for going over you amount of "minutes" or whatever. I imagine that the relative feeling of predatory practices from the phone industry is something that Brad and the team would not feel great about, in the same way they are opposed to FTP.
On a side note I have a buddy that is an economist at a game company, would anyone (read devs) be opposed to me dropping a line to him and brain storming? I mean I don't represent Pantheon and its not a conflict of interest but this is a closed forum and I do wonder as to some limit of what is appropriate. On the other hand my roommate is a AI game research and I have already talked to him about Pantheon and possibly types of AI, so...
It's an interesting idea (and I think throwing ideas out here is awesome) - I see within it though a frustration point for players. Specifically, if I pay for the number of hours I play - I will be clock watching. I might be upset if I ran out of my allotted time a week early (and didn't want to spend more) - I might be upset if I went 10 minutes into the next block before the month ended and I paid for it all, etc...
Any way around that issue?
One thought that is stuck in my head is to think about just who exactly Pantheon is catering to in terms of gamers. They are catering to the people who played EQ and VG who were more than happy to pay upwards of $30-50 PER month to play the game they loved (whether through sub-fees, multiple accounts, or store vanity items). Who are these people now, they are all in their 30's (for the most part), all have jobs (for the most part), and all want a game that smashes the current MMO/MMORPG models out of the water and lets them relive the old days when they were blissfull. :)
They are NOT catering to the Barrens-WoW-chat trolls. They are NOT catering to the kids and pre-teens who grew up with "immediate-gratification" games (unless they were raised by us old-school gamers and not our peers who all thought we were total nerds - who we are now the boss of - thanks Bill Gates). In that case we are probably happy to pay for our kids games as well if they want to play an awesome game like Pantheon. They are NOT catering to anyone for that matter who is just searching for the next big name MMO to satisfy their next 5 minutes before they move on. In my personal opinion, so what if those kind of people complain and leave the community - think about it...do you REALLY want them around anyways??
That said, I understand that not everyone makes a ton of money and have families to support. I have plenty of gamer friends who don't make a ton of money and they always seem to find a way to make their sub-fees. Personally, I pay $15/mth for a game I haven't played in 6 weeks...what does that say? I know people still paying for their WoW subs and haven't played in over a year! So what I'm saying after all this is...I'd be willing to pay up to $30/mth in subs for a game that offers what I know we're all hoping for in Pantheon. I kind of like the idea of a store that has vanity items you can buy for real money (but I don't want to see them benefit the player in any way or take away from the immersion by adding flip-flops and beach shorts - as someone else mentioned earlier). The store will allow players who want to contribute more do so in a way that doesn't affect the rest of the community. I also believe that subscription levels does lead to elitist behaviours - and there is enough of that in other games and the world these days.
Vortikai said:
Niien said:
Vortikai said:
Oh, sorry. I meant that as a response to the OP and Brad's question. Have a good game first with major investors giving financial advice before you start charging even more than planned (else it end up like the TESO nightmare).
Haha, that's funny... you know what they will say... dumb it down so you can bring it X number of more people for X number of months to grab as much cash as you can grab at once and then dumb it X number of months later to a FTP model. Companies are all about money and profit all companies want to continue to grow because they and the people that run them are greedy.
There is no dumbing down, or I should say, that is not what investors or parent companies demand of the games or why those are failures. The only problem is when investors demand a subscription based game to be published before it is ready (Vanguard, TESO) which ultimately kills the game.
Also the dev team has an understanding that the chances of this game being published are low without investor support. Those investors will not think highly of a game that has fewer people playing it because of a higher-than-market rate for subscription fees. It's a bad business move.
Investor see their Return On Investment (ROI) as quicker, when they see people willing to pay $20/month for Brad's brand, than people wanting to pay nothing for SOE's brand.
Pantheon will have zero problems getting investors. It is choosing the right ones, that VRi will have a difficult time with.
Wandidar said:
It's an interesting idea (and I think throwing ideas out here is awesome) - I see within it though a frustration point for players. Specifically, if I pay for the number of hours I play - I will be clock watching. I might be upset if I ran out of my allotted time a week early (and didn't want to spend more) - I might be upset if I went 10 minutes into the next block before the month ended and I paid for it all, etc...
Any way around that issue?
Yeah thats part of what I meant about the predatory practices and the clock watching would be an issue. I would imagine there would be an unlimited subscription, like a $25 cap that would be unlimited play and it would act like a normal subscription but if you wanted to do less than that you could and that way casual gamers would not be scared off by a monthly price tag.
Wandidar said:
Ok, a different idea just popped into my head:
We all know that expansions are typically $50 or so for the basic expansion, and something more for the deluxe version...
Why not offer people the chance to "pay as you go" on expansions?
That is:
- Standard monthly rate = $15 a month
- Regular expansion = $5 a month (at one expansion a year)
- Deluxe expansion = $10 a month (at one expansion a year)
Now you have the potential to have some up front cash (people paying for their expansions in perhaps easier doses of $5 - $10 a month), and people just waiting to buy their expansion when it releases.
I actually think this out of everything I have read in this thread is the best idea out there. Its kind of like if you pay this much and we release an expansion we are going to reward you for giving us extra each month.
Vortikai said:
Niien said:
Vortikai said:
Oh, sorry. I meant that as a response to the OP and Brad's question. Have a good game first with major investors giving financial advice before you start charging even more than planned (else it end up like the TESO nightmare).
Haha, that's funny... you know what they will say... dumb it down so you can bring it X number of more people for X number of months to grab as much cash as you can grab at once and then dumb it X number of months later to a FTP model. Companies are all about money and profit all companies want to continue to grow because they and the people that run them are greedy.
There is no dumbing down, or I should say, that is not what investors or parent companies demand of the games or why those are failures. The only problem is when investors demand a subscription based game to be published before it is ready (Vanguard, TESO) which ultimately kills the game.
Also the dev team has an understanding that the chances of this game being published are low without investor support. Those investors will not think highly of a game that has fewer people playing it because of a higher-than-market rate for subscription fees. It's a bad business move.
Investors or Parents companies do not demand games to be dumbed down, this is true...what they do demand is a maximum return on their investment so the game HAS to appeal to as large an audience as possible thereby forcing the devs to dumb the game down.
Feyreisa said:
One thought that is stuck in my head is to think about just who exactly Pantheon is catering to in terms of gamers. They are catering to the people who played EQ and VG who were more than happy to pay upwards of $30-50 PER month to play the game they loved (whether through sub-fees, multiple accounts, or store vanity items). Who are these people now, they are all in their 30's (for the most part), all have jobs (for the most part), and all want a game that smashes the current MMO/MMORPG models out of the water and lets them relive the old days when they were blissfull. :)
They are NOT catering to the Barrens-WoW-chat trolls. They are NOT catering to the kids and pre-teens who grew up with "immediate-gratification" games (unless they were raised by us old-school gamers and not our peers who all thought we were total nerds - who we are now the boss of - thanks Bill Gates). In that case we are probably happy to pay for our kids games as well if they want to play an awesome game like Pantheon. They are NOT catering to anyone for that matter who is just searching for the next big name MMO to satisfy their next 5 minutes before they move on. In my personal opinion, so what if those kind of people complain and leave the community - think about it...do you REALLY want them around anyways??
That said, I understand that not everyone makes a ton of money and have families to support. I have plenty of gamer friends who don't make a ton of money and they always seem to find a way to make their sub-fees. Personally, I pay $15/mth for a game I haven't played in 6 weeks...what does that say? I know people still paying for their WoW subs and haven't played in over a year! So what I'm saying after all this is...I'd be willing to pay up to $30/mth in subs for a game that offers what I know we're all hoping for in Pantheon. I kind of like the idea of a store that has vanity items you can buy for real money (but I don't want to see them benefit the player in any way or take away from the immersion by adding flip-flops and beach shorts - as someone else mentioned earlier). The store will allow players who want to contribute more do so in a way that doesn't affect the rest of the community. I also believe that subscription levels does lead to elitist behaviours - and there is enough of that in other games and the world these days.
I'm perfectly fine with a vanity store with items that may not suit my preferred tastes, however I would also like the option to turn off those visual items. :)
Other than that, you are spot on with your reply and my personal opinion.
Niien said:
Feyreisa said:
One thought that is stuck in my head is to think about just who exactly Pantheon is catering to in terms of gamers. They are catering to the people who played EQ and VG who were more than happy to pay upwards of $30-50 PER month to play the game they loved (whether through sub-fees, multiple accounts, or store vanity items). Who are these people now, they are all in their 30's (for the most part), all have jobs (for the most part), and all want a game that smashes the current MMO/MMORPG models out of the water and lets them relive the old days when they were blissfull. :)
They are NOT catering to the Barrens-WoW-chat trolls. They are NOT catering to the kids and pre-teens who grew up with "immediate-gratification" games (unless they were raised by us old-school gamers and not our peers who all thought we were total nerds - who we are now the boss of - thanks Bill Gates). In that case we are probably happy to pay for our kids games as well if they want to play an awesome game like Pantheon. They are NOT catering to anyone for that matter who is just searching for the next big name MMO to satisfy their next 5 minutes before they move on. In my personal opinion, so what if those kind of people complain and leave the community - think about it...do you REALLY want them around anyways??
That said, I understand that not everyone makes a ton of money and have families to support. I have plenty of gamer friends who don't make a ton of money and they always seem to find a way to make their sub-fees. Personally, I pay $15/mth for a game I haven't played in 6 weeks...what does that say? I know people still paying for their WoW subs and haven't played in over a year! So what I'm saying after all this is...I'd be willing to pay up to $30/mth in subs for a game that offers what I know we're all hoping for in Pantheon. I kind of like the idea of a store that has vanity items you can buy for real money (but I don't want to see them benefit the player in any way or take away from the immersion by adding flip-flops and beach shorts - as someone else mentioned earlier). The store will allow players who want to contribute more do so in a way that doesn't affect the rest of the community. I also believe that subscription levels does lead to elitist behaviours - and there is enough of that in other games and the world these days.
I'm perfectly fine with a vanity store with items that may not suit my preferred tastes, however I would also like the option to turn off those visual items. :)
Other than that, you are spot on with your reply and my personal opinion.
The problem I have with the vanity store is that those items should be going to TSers to support the in game economy. Devs start designing for the store and the game suffers.
Vortikai said:
Just reiterating that it is a really bad idea to gather the opinions of us investors as we are only a small part of the larger target audience. We are a bit different in that we have some money to invest in the game. Wait until Pantheon has larger investors who can give adequate advice for the business model of the game before changing anything.
The whole "we need to charge more because it is a niche game. And if they don't like paying $25/mo, then they can not play, because that means faster ticket response times!" rhetoric is beyond "unwise" and really bad for the community.
We are not Investors we are donaters and supporters. Please be ware that there is a massive distinction between investors and us, we have given of our free will money to support the game development, we are not financial investors getting a return on our investment of the game makes a profit.
Yes you have invested money, but we are donaters or supporters.
Sevens said:
The problem I have with the vanity store is that those items should be going to TSers to support the in game economy. Devs start designing for the store and the game suffers.
Yes but keep in mind one thing, you can make more money from the cash shop than it costs to add items to it, especially if you do it right.
My idea for the perfect cash shop:
When designing craftable items for fluff in game, design slight variations, make some cratable and some cash shop. Take housing items, lots of people love housing items, and if your going to design 10 tables for crafters to make, design 15, add 5 unique ones to the cash shop. You have supported the game, supported crafters, and added items that can make the game extra cash. the cost of making 5 extra tables will easily be recovered by the money made.
I would love to dyes in game for armor and boat sails and window curtains, as examples. But this is fluff, so make the dyes purchasable in the cash shop fully tradable and have to be used when the item is crafted by a crafter. Again you have supported the game by adding the ability to color armor, but you also supported the crafter as it must be crafted armor and done at the time of creation. The dyes will make money for the game.
You want to add particle effects to weapons, treat it the same as the armor dye.
I can name hundreds of examples, each changes the game zero from a game play perspective, however each one has the potential to income earners for the game. In fact each one of my examples was purposely used to both support in game play, and the cash shop with out affecting the gameplay. having red armor or a cool table in your house affect the out come of the next fight zero, but both can be cool.
I hate F2P, P2P and every other name for it, nothing makes me happier, than to know Pantheon will be a subscription game. However I am also not an idiot and I Know Pantheon is a niche game and will need every possible income avenue, and done right an in game cash shop can support the gameplay and its financial status with out ruining either as well. We all seem to know this too, as this sort of thread/dicussion has come up before.
The secret is the Dev team and management keeping the cash shop out of the realm of changing the game play. No XP pots, No potions, no items beyond appearance items that have no stats, no keys for stupid lock boxes. Keep it to fluff, or vanity items, fun things like illusions.
One last item, make monthly subs a buyable, tradable item at the cash shop. If people have the time to grind away and pay with in game currency, and there are those with the extra cash, why not? At the end of the day VRI gets the money for the sub. This is not new, Eve proved this to be a huge boon to the sub model.
I had three vanguard accounts, and will likely have at least three for Pantheon. I split my harvesters and crafters between accounts equally. In Vanguard crafters had dependancies, so I want to make a magic weapon and realize I am out of gems (In VG weaponsmiths had to use a refined gem with the upgrade process along with a rare or ultra-rare resource), I can log my artificer on my lappy and blast off a few gems for the process. I have no issue paying 20 or 25 bucks per account.
One thing to remember, I am hoping VRI gives reduced prices for longer subs, if its 20 bucks per month, make it 19 a month if you buy three at a time, pay 17ea for six months and maybe 15ea if you buy a year at a time.
Exmortis said:
Sevens said:
The problem I have with the vanity store is that those items should be going to TSers to support the in game economy. Devs start designing for the store and the game suffers.
Yes but keep in mind one thing, you can make more money from the cash shop than it costs to add items to it, especially if you do it right.
My idea for the perfect cash shop:
When designing craftable items for fluff in game, design slight variations, make some cratable and some cash shop. Take housing items, lots of people love housing items, and if your going to design 10 tables for crafters to make, design 15, add 5 unique ones to the cash shop. You have supported the game, supported crafters, and added items that can make the game extra cash. the cost of making 5 extra tables will easily be recovered by the money made.
I would love to dyes in game for armor and boat sails and window curtains, as examples. But this is fluff, so make the dyes purchasable in the cash shop fully tradable and have to be used when the item is crafted by a crafter. Again you have supported the game by adding the ability to color armor, but you also supported the crafter as it must be crafted armor and done at the time of creation. The dyes will make money for the game.
You want to add particle effects to weapons, treat it the same as the armor dye.
I can name hundreds of examples, each changes the game zero from a game play perspective, however each one has the potential to income earners for the game. In fact each one of my examples was purposely used to both support in game play, and the cash shop with out affecting the gameplay. havign red armor or a cool table in your house affect the out come of the next fight zero, but both can be cool.
I hate F2P, P2P and every other name for it, nothing makes me happier, than to know Pantheon will be a subscription game. However I am also not an idiot and I KNnw Pantheon is a niche game and will need every possible income avenue, and done right a in game cash shop can support5 the gameplay and its financial status with out ruining either as well. We all seem to know this too, as this sort of thread/dicussion has come up before.
The secret is the Dev team and management keeping the cash shop out of the realm of changing the game play. No XP pots, No potions, no items beyond appearance items that have no stats, no keys for stupid lock boxes. Keep it to fluff, or vanity items, fun things like illusions.
One last item, make monthly subs a buyable, tradable item at the cash shop. If people have the time to grind away and pay with in game currency, and there are those with the extra cash, why not? At of day VRI gets the money for the sub. This is not new, Eve proved this to be a huge boon to the sub model.
I had three vanguard accounts, and will likely have at least three for Pantheon. I split my harvesters and crafters between accounts equally. In Vanguard crafters had dependancies, so I want to make a magic weapon and realize I am out of gems (In VG weaponsmiths had to use a refined gem with the upgrade process along with a rare or ultra-rare resource), I can log my artificer on my lappy and blast off a few gems for the process. I have no issue paying 20 or 25 bucks per account.
One thing to remember, I am hoping VRI gives reduced prices for longer subs, if its 20 bucks per month, make it 19 a month if you buy three at a time, pay 17ea for six months and maybe 15ea if you buy a year at a time.
You argue this doesnt change the game but it does...fundamentally it does. Devs will put more time and effort into items for the cash shop over items for in game tradeskillers...not only that it just becomes nothing more than a money grab and a way to nickle and dime me, no thanks. Dont like cash shop, never will. EQ survived 12-13 years being full sub on shops, WoW went how long before a cash shop? And tbh the ONLY reason that was added was a greedy money grab. There has been enough feed back on these forms that most here are very much against a cash shop and the inclusion of one would hurt the game in the worst way possible.
I totally agree. Money is almost always an emotion thing. But it's very hard to say, "No, but if you really wanted it, you could afford it." Because that always leads to another emotional response of, "You don't know how tight things are for me, etc." You can always make the case for the glass being half empty or half full. In honest, the free to play model was as much a fad as the next marketing scheme will be. Even though it was all the rage a few years ago, it's quickly turning into a storm, and pretty soon people will probably be crying buy to play or returning to a sub model. Depending on the game, a different business model can be better or worse. Probably in todays world, with the models available to us, a subscription is the best model for Pantheon. I do agree that $15 month is too cheap. But it's funny because if you raised it to $25 dollars, even though its has probably appreciated to that value, everyone would freak. People are already freaking about $15 dollars when it has been the industry standard for over a decade. I can't tell you how many of my friends have complained about a $15 dollar sub when they were eating a $15 meal at a restaurant. People don't realize that as far as services go what you charge has very little to do with its actual value, it has to due with the perceived value of the service and how good you are at making that value clear. It's not a deception thing; it's just the nature of the beast. Just for a quick example, when all my korean friends come to america, they choose to open Japanese restaurants, why? Because people perceive Japanese food as being worth more. The ingredient don't cost more, and you could certainly make the decor of a Korean restaurant look just as nice, but it's our impression. Conversely, if you want to buy a stake at TGIF in Korea it might cost you 45 bucks, and a salad 25. Why? It's not because lettuce or beef is hard to find in Korea. It's because it's American. Just like McDonalds in nicer there too.
Guys i also believe the game is worth 25-50 dollars a month. but we have to be realistic about this. we are also the ones who believed in nothing more than an idea with brad's name on it. there arent enough of us to keep this thing going by ourselves even at 50-100 dollars a month.
in order to attract the players who are roaming around the net, looking for that next game, we cant overprice. i am of the opinion that at $20 people would say "well its a bit overpriced, but if it delivers on its promise of a challenging game i will give it a try." anything more than that and i think that you will see a ton of naysayer posters on the mmo sites saying, "That Mcquaid making another money grab" and then going on to say that eq only charged $15/mo and the mmo genre has only grown since then so the game should be able to support even lower fees. we need to think about not only what we would pay for a old school mmo, but what all those potential customers who werent willing to put money on an idea alone would pay.
I agree that a lot of other people outside of the supporters here will throw stones at the idea... however I will refer to a previous post of mine that will sum up their reaction.
This situation is very easily and overly simplified with this analogy.
One of my children doesn't do their chores for the week. As a consequence we ground them and tell them no games, friends, electronics, TV, etc for the week.
They then do the following:
- Complains, moans, and says anything they can to get out of it. Any excuse they can think of for not taking care of her responsibility, and trust me there have been some off the wall excuses.
- After the tantrum is over, they then try to bargain their way out of it.
- After that doesn't work, they gets really sad and starts to cry.
- Then after they are done crying they accept their punishment because we didn't give in.
- Then they are happy again five minutes later and a better person because of it.
So while I know a lot of people are afraid of taking chances, I believe that we should be setting expectations and put the word out into the community. After two years most people will have gotten their complaining out and people will be used to the idea that we are charging $25 a month and will just accept it.
I'm not 100% sure, so please don't quote me here, though I believe they are going to give one month's free sub to the box/digital copy of the game, so that will be more than enough time for someone to tell if they like the game enough to spend the $25 a month.
This thread seems to be evolving into, "What is the best payment option for an MMO," and I think that's a hard question to answer. If we want to be totally fair about things, buy-to-play is probably the best option with a very small, once a year sub that covers server maintenance. Another nice way to do it, would be buy-to-play with a sub that supports a small development team that focuses on making adventure packs for subscribers. These would be free for subs, but a small fee for non subscribers. With this model, the fairest way to do it, in my opinion, would be to have production run on a quarterly or biannual basis, giving the development team a deadline, and you could only get the subscribed content if you were subscribed for the duration of the development cycle. As a subscriber, you would probably have to get some other benefit, like increased experience, because at $15 a month you would undoubtedly pay for the adventure pack several times over.
Niien said:
I agree that a lot of other people outside of the supporters here will throw stones at the idea... however I will refer to a previous post of mine that will sum up their reaction.
This situation is very easily and overly simplified with this analogy.
One of my children doesn't do their chores for the week. As a consequence we ground them and tell them no games, friends, electronics, TV, etc for the week.
They then do the following:
- Complains, moans, and says anything they can to get out of it. Any excuse they can think of for not taking care of her responsibility, and trust me there have been some off the wall excuses.
- After the tantrum is over, they then try to bargain their way out of it.
- After that doesn't work, they gets really sad and starts to cry.
- Then after they are done crying they accept their punishment because we didn't give in.
- Then they are happy again five minutes later and a better person because of it.
So while I know a lot of people are afraid of taking chances, I believe that we should be setting expectations and put the word out into the community. After two years most people will have gotten their complaining out and people will be used to the idea that we are charging $25 a month and will just accept it.
I'm not 100% sure, so please don't quote me here, though I believe they are going to give one month's free sub to the box/digital copy of the game, so that will be more than enough time for someone to tell if they like the game enough to spend the $25 a month.
I think the problem with that example this time is that people will just say why pay $25 dollars when I can pay $15 or nothing at all. Now, if we can make the case that Pantheon is a Cadillac product unlike other games in the industry we might be able to justify that markup. The best we can do, in my opinion, is say we have a product that nobody else has and make the case that since we have lower members, we have to charge a higher fee for professional content. We might be able to raise the price like that if we also promote the image that our developers are closer to the ground than in other games, which gives us, as subscribers, more input on game development and more consistent content updates.
Saphreal said:
This thread seems to be evolving into, "What is the best payment option for an MMO," and I think that's a hard question to answer. If we want to be totally fair about things, buy-to-play is probably the best option with a very small, once a year sub that covers server maintenance. Another nice way to do it, would be buy-to-play with a sub that supports a small development team that focuses on making adventure packs for subscribers. These would be free for subs, but a small fee for non subscribers. With this model, the fairest way to do it, in my opinion, would be to have production run on a quarterly or biannual basis, giving the development team a deadline, and you could only get the subscribed content if you were subscribed for the duration of the development cycle. As a subscriber, you would probably have to get some other benefit, like increased experience, because at $15 a month you would undoubtedly pay for the adventure pack several times over.
things like faster exp for paying extra are exactly why we are all here. we are tired of Pay-to-Win games where not everyone is on equal footing. where you can pay extra for an easymode game and easily pass the better players in terms of achievement just because you payed more.
Gawd said:
Saphreal said:
This thread seems to be evolving into, "What is the best payment option for an MMO," and I think that's a hard question to answer. If we want to be totally fair about things, buy-to-play is probably the best option with a very small, once a year sub that covers server maintenance. Another nice way to do it, would be buy-to-play with a sub that supports a small development team that focuses on making adventure packs for subscribers. These would be free for subs, but a small fee for non subscribers. With this model, the fairest way to do it, in my opinion, would be to have production run on a quarterly or biannual basis, giving the development team a deadline, and you could only get the subscribed content if you were subscribed for the duration of the development cycle. As a subscriber, you would probably have to get some other benefit, like increased experience, because at $15 a month you would undoubtedly pay for the adventure pack several times over.
things like faster exp for paying extra are exactly why we are all here. we are tired of Pay-to-Win games where not everyone is on equal footing. where you can pay extra for an easymode game and easily pass the better players in terms of achievement just because you payed more.
Of course, I understand that, but I don't think a 10% exp boost is a big deal. Honestly, even with that exp boost, I will not be able to keep up with most other gamers these days. A 10% exp boost means you will, "theoretically," be at level 50 when I'm at 45. There are definitely some F2P aspects that are "buy to win" if you will, but I want a hardcore environment not because I have some dilution of being the most L33t, but because I want to have to work together against overwhelming odds. Anyway, I hope that's not all you saw in my comment, because it was only an off remark in regards to sweetening the pot with something else, such as faster exp gain. The bulk of my opinion was actually held in the first suggestion, which didn't involve anything in-game.
Aradune said:
It's definitely an interesting topic. I always hesitate to reply because I don't want to look like a money-grabber or something, but what if we did charge $20 or $25 a month AND we also used that income to give you guys a better experience and a deeper world and *more* content? We could do monthly updates that would have a lot more to them -- same with full Expansions every 9-12 months. Would Pantheon's target audience want this?
I would be more than happy to pay a higher monthly sub for a niche game. I'd pretty much do anything to avoid item malls and free to play...might be the way to go for a smaller audience.
