MMO Subs are a dead model - John Smedley

[Mrbloodworth]

Honestly, the sandbox game type likely has more of a chance in a F2P world.

[Merusk]

Only because there's quickly becoming no such thing as a AAA single player game on a PC.  There's "single player campaigns" that last for miniscule #s of hours and then multiplayer.

Dragon Age 2 was just fine. Stop buying or supporting crap games and replay oldies if you have to.

 

First, I'm older than you, dipshit.

Second, my point was in support of your Single Player argument but pointing out there's a dearth of good SP games these days.  

Third, if those games had been more successful they'd have been copied.  Guess what, the audience didn't want them - at least not at the price the companies wanted.  Business reality sucks; get over it and move on.

[Sky]

Those games also had a lot of sociopathic shitsacks running around crapping up everyone's game time.

NOT ANYONE POSTING IN THIS THREAD OF COURSE

 

[Dren]

So, why are you playing mmorpgs again? To solo starting zones? Single Player games do it much better, give it a try.

This bit is starting to sound a bit hollow these days.

I do play non-mmo games.  I pay for them and enjoy them.  Not sure what that has to do with this subject though.  If you like them so much better than MMO's, why come to these threads and fling poo?

Huh? Why was I quoted?

Cuz I was lazy. Sorry.  Was aimed at OP of course.

[Dren]

Ultimately, I prefer the F2P model because I'm tired of having to pay up front to find out later if the toy I just bought is broken later (yes, stolen from Lum...thanks Lum!)

I'll start to pay when I figure out the toy isn't broken or I just like playing with this particular broken toy.  Pretty simple.

[sinij]

Third, if those games had been more successful they'd have been copied.  Guess what, the audience didn't want them.

I don't buy into this argument. You assume that 'successful' shares definition between gamers and business that sell them, you also assume that businesses have some, any ability to estimate what audience wants.

Way I see it businesses are clueless what gamers want (example - why would they push punitive DRM on PCs?), are risk-averse and unwilling to invest into unproven model, and following "past performance" modeling to write business cases for new titles resulting in unreasonable expectations for "same old shit" product. End result is that market is largely monolithic, mature and over-saturated (see Pepsi vs Coke). Traditional industry at this point would consolidate into 2-3 players and start advertising wars for the market share.  We are likely to see this with WoW vs Star Wars Republic.

[Ingmar]

I'm nearly certain that the majority of gamers don't give a shit about DRM.

[Merusk]

If you're so certain it's just that they're risk averse why not write up a business plan and begin your own company?  Clearly you have it all figured out and there's throngs of people just waiting to jump onto something other than these F2P piles of junk or DIKU II, electric boogaloo.

[tgr]

I'm nearly certain that the majority of gamers don't give a shit about DRM.

Ask Ubisoft how their PC sales are going. I'm sure they'll say that the piracy rate of their games will have increased to 98%, coincidentally around the time they began implementing their DRM.

[Paelos]

If you're so certain it's just that they're risk averse why not write up a business plan and begin your own company?  Clearly you have it all figured out and there's throngs of people just waiting to jump onto something other than these F2P piles of junk or DIKU II, electric boogaloo.

Funding.

Don't be a dick.

[Ingmar]

I'm nearly certain that the majority of gamers don't give a shit about DRM.

Ask Ubisoft how their PC sales are going. I'm sure they'll say that the piracy rate of their games will have increased to 98%, coincidentally around the time they began implementing their DRM.

Maybe among denizens of neckbeardy old gamer forums.

[tgr]

Maybe among denizens of neckbeardy old gamer forums.

I'm serious. They're currently whining about how PC sales are in the shitter without any similar uptake on their console versions. While I don't doubt that piracy is a major part of the number of copies being played for most titles out there, and I don't doubt that there are a lot of people who really couldn't give less of a flying fuck about DRM (my cousin is one of those), I do doubt that it's "just neckbeards".

[Merusk]

If you're so certain it's just that they're risk averse why not write up a business plan and begin your own company?  Clearly you have it all figured out and there's throngs of people just waiting to jump onto something other than these F2P piles of junk or DIKU II, electric boogaloo.

Funding.

Don't be a dick.

His inability to acquire funding would prove the point, wouldn't it.  Hell, it's such a guaranteed money maker set up a donation site, people will flock, right?

[Paelos]

I see you decided to go the other way.

[sinij]

His inability to acquire funding would prove the point, wouldn't it.  Hell, it's such a guaranteed money maker set up a donation site, people will flock, right?

My hypothetical inability to acquire funding to produce innovative mmorpg title would only prove that businesses are risk-averse. In the same scenario, I would have easier time securing funding for generic DIKU clone, this also doesn't mean that there is greater demand for generic DIKU clones, only that business are risk-averse. Don't confuse modern corporate risk management practices with satisfying customer needs and market-driven demand.

[UnSub]

Way I see it businesses are clueless what gamers want (example - why would they push punitive DRM on PCs?), are risk-averse and unwilling to invest into unproven model, and following "past performance" modeling to write business cases for new titles resulting in unreasonable expectations for "same old shit" product.

Which is why the innovation is in the F2P / freemium payment structure. Innovation doesn't appear just on the screen.

Again: sub-based titles require at least 3 years development and something like US$40 - $60m investment for exactly one swing at getting players interested. In your "player driven" market, this approach leads to players testing the game out for 30 days then sniffing discontentedly, saying, "This game's knees are too pointy" and going back to WoW. F2P titles can be developed faster and cheaper than that and then built up while the studio is less dependent on putting all their eggs in one basket for survival.

It's very easy for those on the sidelines to say, "Take risks!", but these people aren't the ones firing friends or begging investors for money to keep the doors open.

Besides, let's be honest sinij - you aren't asking for innovation, you are asking for a return to M59 / UO style gaming but with a new graphics engine. The problem there is that EQ appeared and very quickly became more popular than UO in its own heyday and thus pretty much ended the idea of the sandbox as the dominant MMO game type. (EQ has retroactively been re-classified as world-y, although at the time UO players were very dismissive of it as a themepark in comparison to UO.)

Innovation in MMOs would be breaking out of the MMORPG model and into something entirely different. The MMORTS model isn't feasible to charge a sub fee for as the sole revenue point (because Starcraft et al gives away better for free) and the MMOFPS has to be F2P since there are also better options available that you don't have to pay for. There may be other genres the MMO can enter, but box cost+subs will continually act as a barrier to player acquisition.

In fact, I can only really see subs working well in one area: educational MMOs. If I had the money, that's were I'd be - building a MMO that taught kids spelling, typing skills and the like. Parents will pay a sub for that. ... it would still have cosmetic RMT items though. 

[Kageru]

I don't agree with that at all. f2p works best with a game that is polished enough to attract a very large player-base so you can live off the small percentage who will cash shop. And in general you are going to want mechanics that are pretty easy to get into. An innovative MMO, with a limited budget and unusual mechanics is likely to be a niche game with a long gestation period that extends after launch. It is much better served by depending on a core of gamers who like the potential the game-play offers enough to subscribe. This is the model for Eve, Perpeptuum, Wurm, Darkfall. In most cases if those games went free to play they wouldn't expand their activity too much because the games are pretty painful and rough, they'd have difficulty keeping people around long enough to make cash-shop purchases and they'd savage their reliable subscription base. I'm also not sure f2p is going to give you the community that makes most of those games work, it's the "buy-in" of the subscription model that keeps players involved enough to form social groups.

The ideal f2p play game is more something like APB I think (if it was not broken). Log in and be at the action quickly, familiar mechanics and a large community you can flaunt your cash-shop bling or advantage in front of. The f2p document I see quoted a lot is from battlefield heroes which looks to be exactly that sort of game. They don't really have the budget to fully flesh out massively complex innovations in game design. Many of the free MMO's barely have time to do more than strew mobs over a plain (as per early EQ design).

So basically the subscription model suits the slow burn approach of a smaller company trying to innovate, the "market leader" who can get away with demanding subs, and less so the middle bracket which has neither. And the games with the really huge budgets (like SWTOR) can't really afford to innovate too much because they need to be mass-market successes to justify their development cost.

[Malakili]

The ideal f2p play game is more something like APB I think (if it was not broken). Log in and be at the action quickly, familiar mechanics and a large community you can flaunt your cash-shop bling or advantage in front of.

So, league of legends?

[DLRiley]

Only because there's quickly becoming no such thing as a AAA single player game on a PC.  There's "single player campaigns" that last for miniscule #s of hours and then multiplayer.

Dragon Age 2 was just fine. Stop buying or supporting crap games and replay oldies if you have to.

Lowering standards is not an answer. This is what got us into F2P DIKU clone crapfeast in a first place. Remember how it all started? M59, UO... open sandbox, ecologies, communities, risk vs reward, real reputations? Now we have ding-gratz instanced-away DIKU clones where you could play without interacting with anyone, ever...

Kids these days....

Lowering standards is what got people playing mmos back in 1999 and has been the basis of the genre since, so again what is your point?

[Azazel]

We can ask why are you posting?

30 hours in and I'm still in the starting area? WTF? In any other game I'd be minimaxing my character and on my 6th boss fight. An mmo? Ive upgraded to purple rats, oh but an mmo wants me to pay full price + sub to dick around in noob land. I see major improvement

30 hours and still in the starting area? Really? At my play rates that's got to be at least 7-12 sessions, over as many days. If you're still in the starting area at that stage I'd suggest it's on you, not the game. 

[Kageru]

The ideal f2p play game is more something like APB I think (if it was not broken). Log in and be at the action quickly, familiar mechanics and a large community you can flaunt your cash-shop bling or advantage in front of.

So, league of legends?

I assume so, I've never really played them other than a bit of DotA way back (so if it was intended as a counter-point I missed it). Certainly it's a good model in that they can use well understood game-play as a base and then sell flavor and decoration in the form of your avatar on that battlefield. Of course they couldn't easily go subscription given they were competing with a free mod. And since it's entirely PvP they don't have to invest in expensive PvE content.

Not really an MMO of course.

[Amaron]

I don't agree with that at all. f2p works best with a game that is polished enough to attract a very large player-base so you can live off the small percentage who will cash shop.

It sure seems the industry is moving the other way though.   Rather than have a small percentage spend a lot they'd rather have a large percentage (maybe 40%) buy a fair amount.   CoH, ChampO, Conan and most of the others have fewer options for spending tons of money.   It's more like they're selling a lot of hats/bags to everyone who plays.   That way they don't need the large player base.

[eldaec]

The point of f2p is not that only a small proportion pays, almost everyone is expected to pay something if they keep playing past the newbie stage. But they pay in proportion to how hardcore they are. F2p allows price discrimination - everyone gets to pay as much as they are willing to pay.

When the genre started out the assumption was that pay per hour of play would be the model. Customers rejected that, but f2p is essentially a more nuanced version of the same thing.

[Amaron]

The point of f2p is not that only a small proportion pays, almost everyone is expected to pay something if they keep playing past the newbie stage.

That's not really true of the original F2P model.   Sure a large percentage would buy bag slots but after that they would play largely for free.   The large majority of funding comes from those random item boxes which have a chance at an amazing item.   A small percentage of people would spend 1000's on those things.

Now the western side of the industry is moving towards a model where the casual masses buy lots of hats.  Hardcore types are expected to sub and buy hats on top of that.

[Kageru]

I'm pretty sure the numbers presented by the Battlefield heroes lead suggested that a very small percentage buy anything, but some of them buy quite a lot. And that's pretty much what I'd expect.

CoH, ChampO and Conan are not terribly good examples of free2play games as they were funded on the basis of being premium subscription MMO's, failed and used f2p to try and revive themselves. A game designed to be f2p from the ground up is probably a better example both for and against. Likewise number of titles should not be indicator of "where the industry is heading" as I expect f2p MMO's to be more numerous (since a lot of them are content light and re-using frameworks). Revenue would be better, but hard to gather.

I'm not even sure the phrase makes any sense, it assumes there is one correct answer and the industry will move in a coherent fashion towards it. I don't see any reason for that. SWTOR isn't going to be going f2p (at least not till it fails) nor is Perpeptuum and Spiral knights will never be subscription because it's too shallow. I don't see any reason there will be a single revenue model other than people with strong religious beliefs.

(edit)

Found it, from Gamasutra:

The team identified four key performance indicators -- monthly ARPU, monthly active users (MAU), monthly conversion rate, and average revenue per paying user (ARPPU). 
In the July 2009 KPIs, ARPPU was $20.25, but the conversion rate was a mere 1.29 percent. "Conversion rate was the issue -- clearly failing one on of the KPIs allowed us to really focus our work."

By introducing pay to win they tripled that number but it was still under 5%. And it is unashamedly pay to win,

Of couse the default weapons are bad with purpose to make the players buy other weapons.

And they seem to be selling magic style "booster" packs so you can buy a lot while you hope that the rare you need is in them, rather than a bunch of consumables.

[Amaron]

We're not talking about F2P in general here.    We're talking about F2P MMO's that have a chance of "killing" the subs model.   Stuff like Battlefield Heroes is really for a different audience.

[sinij]

you are going to want mechanics that are pretty easy to get into

I agree with this. Innovative cannot work with F2P because to hit large enough numbers to be profitable off 0.1% that pays you can't take single step away from the mainstream. 25,000 sub niche sub title is feasible (but barely), but 250,000 F2P title is not.

By introducing pay to win they tripled that number 

How can you expect this not to be default feature of any F2P when this is executed result? What suit would say no to money, and why?

[Mrbloodworth]

I think Global agenda is a good one to look at. No pay to win, and its funding 2 other games and was built for around 20 mill. ( Im sure a good chunk of that went to overhead to set up the compiney).

Games like GA, LOTRO, Wurm, and DnD  are great ones to use as a standard.

[sinij]

We are back to cable TV example that I mentioned earlier in the thread. At the beginning Cable TV had no commercials and sold based on that, then someone figured out that customers would actually tolerate commercials, so they started introducing more and more. Then they figured out that they can segment "channels" their product and charge you more for it. So now Cable TV has ridiculous number of commercials and costs tons of money despite the fact that no consumer want to watch that much commercials or pay that much for multiple "packages" to get few channels they do watch.

Mrbloodworth, your confusion seems to be based on the misconception that game designers, and not accountants, would be in charge of making these decisions. Business people don't care if 'P2W' makes games a lot shittier for all gamers, you will see it forced into every title for as long as it end up making 1$ more than games without 'P2W'.

End result of this process will be few gamers with high tolerance for eating shit will be doing nothing but eating shit.

[tgr]

What the fuck is this logic?

[Rokal]

I agree with this. Innovative cannot work with F2P because to hit large enough numbers to be profitable off 0.1% that pays you can't take single step away from the mainstream. 25,000 sub niche sub title is feasible (but barely), but 250,000 F2P title is not.

There is currently much more innovation in free-to-play games than sub games because, contrary to your logic, free-to-play has lower risk. You aren't relying on 100% of your players committing $15 a month to your game. Instead, you are relying on ~20% of your players paying ~$8 a month on average. You come out ahead because you have a much easier time getting people to try your game, and a much higher population as a result. DDO with its unusual combat and small group content failed as a subscription MMO, but thrived as a free-to-play MMO.

There is a reason Rift and SWTOR are both so similar to WoW: if you're going to make a sub MMO, you need to play it safe because your only options from any individual player are getting $15 a month or getting $0. At that point, your game is either at least as good as WoW in every aspect of the game, or it fails. Even if it is as good as WoW, people already have social ties and time invested to WoW, so what are the chances they are going to keep paying $15 a month to your game too?

I cancelled my Rift sub after the first 30 days, not because it was a bad game, but because I was already playing WoW and my guild was there. I cancelled my DCUO subscription because I thought "I am not going to play this game enough to justify $15 a month". Either of these games would have been much more appealing if they were F2P because I could play them when I felt like it without feeling like I was throwing away money when I played something else. I only play DDO and LOTRO a couple days a month. Turbine could have either gotten $0 from me a month for subscription games, or they could get ~$5 a month from me for quests/dungeon packs that I retain permanent access to.

Look at League of Legends for a more obvious example. Would anyone pay $15 a month for this MMO battle arena sim? As Fury found out: probably not, and you'd have had a tough time getting anyone to even try it. Why would I pay $15 a month to for this game when WoW has similar pvp and I'm already paying for it? Because it didn't require a subscription, it thrived. It did so without having a giant grind or handicapping free players. F2P does not mean "mediocre game where you pay to remove the grind". There are games out there like that, sure. There are also sub MMOs that have intentionally extended grinds to keep you around as long as possible (look at the 'must participate in every holiday event' WoW mount, or the daily quest grinds that took over a month). Your response to that implementation should not be "that business model is shit" it should be "that game is shit"

[sinij]

What the fuck is this logic?

One that demonstrates that adoption of "pay 2 win" is inevitable evolution of F2P model.

[Ingmar]

By all rights Rokal's post should be the last point made in this thread, but I bet it won't be.

[DLRiley]

By all rights Rokal's post should be the last point made in this thread, but I bet it won't be.

Sinji is still allowed to troll this thread so no it kinda wont.

[tgr]

What the fuck is this logic?

One that demonstrates that adoption of "pay 2 win" is inevitable evolution of F2P model.

Um. No. It doesn't.