What is the business model for when SotA is "released"?

I would like if they offer rows for a small sub like 5$/month, although it takes just 4 cotos

 

NCSoft should only care about the bottom line. After years of dismayed performance, and depressing shares price. I only wonder why they didn't pull the plug earlier.

 

While this works, forcing people to give up in game time to sustain their in game lifestyle is asinine. The tax system is already pushing it but enshrining grind to maintain as a "feature" is too far for me. It's one if the major reasons I've never picked up EVE.

Is it too much to ask for Port to just make a good game with a satisfying game loop instead on making five or more mediocre games which are stratified by investment held together with a game loop that is starting to resemble a plate of spaghetti?

Funding should be straight forward, charge full price for the game, charge a reasonable amount for expansions, charge whatever the market will allow for character cosmetics, but consider that supplimental income only.

 

Funny thing about that. As well as SotA I also play a survival game (The Forest). You would think that it has no grinding, and if played just for the story it doesn't. Thing is though, it is a sandbox with a lot of creative elements, so I end up cooperating with friends to chop down hundreds of trees and pick up hundreds of rocks to construct things like enormous mansions and insane superhighways through the forest. It seems that if grinding isn't forced on us we do it anyway. The difference is that grinding in SotA is painful because it is necessary, and not painful in The Forest because it is by choice. Is there a lesson? I don't know, but what I can say is that based on my experiences in The Forest, under the right circumstances grinding can be fun.

 

Grinding for new stuff or grinding for fun are different than grinding to maintain. It's the difference between saying grind and I'll give you a treat and fail to grind and I take away your treats. Grinding was a standard part of RPGs for the first decade or so of their existence, and there are still plenty that feature it in some capacity, but none would force you to spend half a play session to retain your progress, that'd tank the game hard.

 

They already have that, it is how I paid for Knight Marshall, 1.5 yr of monthly payments. I had intended a year of Dev+ payments, but upgraded my pledge and ended up getting double charged. I was OK with it since I could move up to a town lot and it was within my 5yr limit on prepaid sub. In retrospect maybe I should have played the game first rather than waiting for final wipe....

 

Those options don't exist anymore to my knowledge. But someone might correct me on that. The bundles cannot be bought with a payment plan I assume?

 

But if you divide the housing bundles by terms of months, then they should be more realistic if thought of as prepaying for years of sub, plus a bunch of collectibles. $180/yr is what WOW and ESO cost (plus game/expansions), so a 2yr prepay gets you a 3 story row house and deed and includes the game.

So the only complaint I could see with that being the sub model, is someone that wants a keep for a years sub. But then they would not have enough land, because unlike ESO they are not doing shared housing instances.

If someone does not want the house and decorations in return for their sub, then they can sell them for in-game gold to somebody else that does.

 

I am not going to buy to find out, but I know they recently announced store purchases elevates your pledge tier, you do not have to buy-in to a bundle. But maybe it was removed at wipe? Not any different than cellphone contracts,. get a free phone with a 2yr contract.

 

I wouldn't mind the so-called subscriptions, if it works like Humble Bundle where you have the option to pay monthly, cancel at anytime or pay 3, 6, 9, 12 months for further discount.

The item that come with it can be something that would normally cost $3-5 more on the add-on store. As long as the dev team can spin out good stuff monthly, we should be good.

 

That part of the site was updated whether you have subscriber access or not. It seems that your options are to buy a lot deed for gold or see what is available in the store. You don't have to buy this game to find this out.
Given the relationship I have with VZW right now I can't talk about cellphone contracts without frothing at the mouth.

 

I don't really see the subscription model working in a traditional sense, but what if they did something as simple as the subscription providing a monthly allotment of COTO's (at a discount) plus an exclusive cosmetic item each month? I imagine the cosmetic item alone would be enough to encourage many people to sign up for a $5 or $10 subscription.

 

I am ambivalent to a subscription. I could go either way, does not matter to me. Since pledges ended I have bought 3 bundles, largely for the deeds and I actually really like buying things on the add on store... which I kinda consider my monthly pledge. I like buying new things for the house.

 

With a new continent coming with Episode 2, Portalarium could charge money for transfering POTs to the new landmass. I doubt that we will get so many new players who want to build hundreds of new towns on the new continent when we now have so many POTs that are empty. So one way to get money would be to transfer some of those POTs for money to the new continent.

Subscriptions are basically dead. You would reach only a small portion of very dedicated fans with this and alienate many others - including new and casual players.

The only way I see funding to go on is with more focus on the ingame shop. Something like ESO does. But I can't see a subscription working at all.

 

If it's an optional sub, giving non-game changing, basically cosmetic freebies and other useful stuff, how do you alienate new and casual players when they don't have to pay it?

The main example here is ESO. Tons of people buy it as a B2P game and aren't put off by the fact there's an optional monthly sub. Indeed, more than a few willingly take that sub up!

 

You always create a two-class society. People will always feel that those who are paying for the subs are players first class.

How many subscribers does ESO have? Are there any official numbers?

 

I'm not sure that's the case at all. Anyone playing ESO, for example, and who isn't heavily into crafting can avoid the monthly sub (as they don't need the craft bag it provides), and not feel second class to anyone.

In other words, the monthly sub in ESO is basically used by hardcore crafters. The other benefits of it (such as getting its dollar value in crowns to spend each month or access to all DLC for "free"), are pretty small-fry.

Which highlights how any MMO should do an optional sub. You include something that's useful, but not a necessity. Easier crafting and storage for that crafting, for example, is not a necessity. It's the perfect selling point.

Someone can buy a copy of ESO ($20 if people look hard enough), and be able to compete with anyone, anywhere in the game -- except in the area of crafting, which not everyone does -- and not pay another cent for it.

 

Im hoping I just have an option to in the least make my PoT overland accessible.

 

Yup. I don't feel any need to pay for a subscription.

 

I am alting on ESO so I can do all crafts, a very time/bag consuming profession as you need to keep all the mats and loot. When I realized I spent more time bagging/banking than I did questing/crafting, I decided to pay up again. But I was a lapsed subber from back when there was no benefits, no DLC, no craft bag, and it was a sub only game. My rule of thumb for playing games is much less than a buck an hour entertainment, I am happy to pay if that is achieved. I would never have returned had it not gone to optional subs, because I did not want to spend more money to find out if the game had improved.

I think offering crowns to subs is the best idea. It removes the perception that only subs get houses, people can buy anything they want. It simply automates billing for what people can do now, buying monthly crowns to support the game, spend it on rent, repairs, potions, gold or cosmetics however you want. At most throw in an exclusive cosmetic to provide an incentive, maybe a special cloak so players can brag about being in the sub club. Of course it will need to have tiers and titles so that the guppies can aspire to being whales.