Obviously I cannot predict how much Pantheon will cost per month at launch, but if there were a premium tier or two that charges an extra 5 or more dollars per month, what sort of boons would you pay for or like to see exist that others could pay for without making it cross the line and become a pay to win type game ?
Would having enhanced character profiles or an extra spot to port to be crossing the line ? Would having extra bank or inventory slots be something people should be able to pay for or various fluff items or name enhancements ? I will assume having faster xp gain in exchange for a premium membership would be something most people would be against.
BTW : I am not stating that this is something I myself would want, I am just curious what opinion you fine people have on the matter.
Fluff items only...like collector items ..for your instanced home. Have to be careful not to have things that appear to be "pay to win". I love to collect things, and I know others that are collection addicts hehe.
"Shiny!" Other games have resorted to special mounts, if you do this or that special event, or quest. But that can be done to the point of boring...I had so many mounts in Rift, it was crazy. lol
A special item could be an instanced home somewhere...like under the water, with a special port to get there, and ability to port your friends there. Home underwater could resemble a Biosphere, where you can grow your own undersea garden, for cooking and potions.
Bring back the special earned mounts...I don't need 20 of them. :D (from an epic quest for instance.)
Faster exp gain reminds me of Wow or Rift.
Again, no hand holding, no leading around by the nose, nothing on rails.
Paying $5 extra for special content is just a cash shop in the form of a sub. Like loading the marketplace, going to content tab and buying dungeon X with real money.
There is a reason the Legend servers on EQ did not last.
This creates a system where dev time and effort is divided between making content everyone will enjoy and content only a small handful will enjoy. It might make more money but it defiantly does not help the entire games health.
Imagine going to a Disneyland and you payed $100 to get in. You come to a cool new ride and you find out that its not included in your pass and its only for the upgraded passes that cost $150.
To step back in time please read
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/everquest-40-premium-servers-regular-players-get-screwed.18331490/
I put this in the other thread - but I'll put it here as well as it may have gotten lost in the shuffle.
I think they should have an a la carte menu of items for you to pay for on a monthly basis that do not directly impact the game. Something like this:
- Game subscription, $15 a month
- Guaranteed slot in all expansion betas, $2 a month**
- 7 day early admission into all expansions, $1 a month**
**Must be maintained for X months prior to content testing / release
Maybe a couple more things like that.
Now people can choose to pay more (or not) for benefits that do not really impact the live game. Then, when expansions are being worked on, I would do this:
- Cost of expansion: $49.99
- Entry into beta (if not in the beta program): $30.00
- 7 day early entry into expansion (if not in the early entry program): $20.00
Now they will have done a couple different things. People can choose to pay a couple extra dollars a month for an extra privilege - or not. AND - if they chose not to, they can still choose to do so as part of an expansion, but at a bit of a higher price.
That gives you, the player a choice - do I pay a little more each month if I think I want that benefit, or do I hold off and pay a few dollars more if I decide I want it sooner.
I get it, i got to see what Stormhammer was like on a roommate's account. The daily GM events were a lot of fun. The special items were a novelty. He never needed priority customer service so never got to see whether or not it was truly priority. Was it worth $40 a month, no, but i would prefer if premium content is going to be offered (and i qualified my statement with the desire that no premium content be offered), all of those players are lumped together rather than spread out amongst the have nots.
no extra paid gimmicks, either have a 15 dollar sub or a 20 dollar sub all content included.
in Dungeons and Dragons Online the worst thing in the world was how the content was devided between haves and have nots. getting in a decent group, finishing the dungeon(s) in one expansion, then saying hey lets all keep this group going at Dungeon (X) and then hearing three members of the group say oh well we only have this Xpac for this level range. and a good group dies because not everyone has access to the same content.
** BTW Jason if you read this that text of yours is melting my eyes**
Gawd said:
** BTW Jason if you read this that text of yours is melting my eyes**
LOL alright, edited it to normal font. May your eyes rest easy now ;)
Sevens said:
Im against ANY and ALL cash shop items...as soon as you put in a cash shop the devs start designing for the cash shop. Give the items to the Tradeskillers to make money, not the cash shop
+1
Sevens said:
Im against ANY and ALL cash shop items...as soon as you put in a cash shop the devs start designing for the cash shop. Give the items to the Tradeskillers to make money, not the cash shop
INDEED
I am also against all cash shop items. They cheapen the game experience. Especially in this game people want to work and earn items and a cash shop item would looked be down upon (I hope).
Subscription - that is all. Even if it has to be a higher sub.
I too am in agreement with many of you regarding absolutely no cash shop items.
It's always a slippery slope when it comes to these sorts of things. They start out as only selling vanity cosmetic items, nothing p2w (we promise!). Then over time they introduce a slightly faster mount, a chest with random rewards, an xp potion, rare crafting materials, stat potions, ect. ect. These cash markets add absolutely nothing beneficial to the games they're in, other than a short-term profit for the developers. Long-term I believe they drive players away.
Is there a single player out there that actually likes having a cash shop? Sure, we all have used them. You basically have to in order to compete in some games or obtain certain unique items. But I can't imagine any players actually wanting the cash shop feature.
Also, along the same line, I do not think Pantheon should have tradeable subscription time items. Where one player pays $15 or however many dollars for an in-game item that grants subscription time to the user, and can be sold to another player for in-game currency. This is basically a legalized form of gold selling and a p2w cash shop. Seriously, when did buying gold become socially acceptable? This used to be just as deplorable in MMO's as exploiting / hacking back in the day.
However, I can agree with charging players for certain services such as server transfers or a name/race changes. These often take developer resources to do and need to be regulated.
Wellspring said:
I too am in agreement with many of you regarding absolutely no cash shop items.
It's always a slippery slope when it comes to these sorts of things. They start out as only selling vanity cosmetic items, nothing p2w (we promise!). Then over time they introduce a slightly faster mount, a chest with random rewards, an xp potion, rare crafting materials, stat potions, ect. ect. These cash markets add absolutely nothing beneficial to the games they're in, other than a short-term profit for the developers. Long-term I believe they drive players away.
Is there a single player out there that actually likes having a cash shop? Sure, we all have used them. You basically have to in order to compete in some games or obtain certain unique items. But I can't imagine any players actually wanting the cash shop feature.
Also, along the same line, I do not think Pantheon should have tradeable subscription time items. Where one player pays $15 or however many dollars for an in-game item that grants subscription time to the user, and can be sold to another player for in-game currency. This is basically a legalized form of gold selling and a p2w cash shop. Seriously, when did buying gold become socially acceptable? This used to be just as deplorable in MMO's as exploiting / hacking back in the day.
However, I can agree with charging players for certain services such as server transfers or a name/race changes. These often take developer resources to do and need to be regulated.
Here's the worst part - I once got into a /general chat on such cash items - I had stated that I thought things like exp potions, etc... were P2W. I got HUGE backlash from many there who had all sorts of convoluted reasons why such things were distinctly NOT P2W.
One problem I hope (and am confident) Pantheon will fix is the whole notion that being successful in the game means being at the top with equal stuff or better stuff than everyone else. At least for most players.
People in today's games never quite understand it when I say "If everyone is special, then nobody is special" - but I think Pantheon folks will get it.
I think most of us won't ever feel the need to "rush" - won't want stuff handed to us to catch up - won't want to buy anything to get us close to as good or maybe better than someone else.
Pantheons business model is still being worked on but we have publically stated several times now that the sub will be $15 per month, it is unlikely we would go with a tier option as it can cause a lot of problems within the player base with paid bonuses etc.
So far our plan is to download the client for free, play X few starting levels for free to try the game then you are completely blocked from proceeding and to continue you need to pay a $15 per month sub or decide you don't want too and leave.
This can change depending on business advice we get but for the time being, that is what we will be going with.
Kilsin said:
Pantheons business model is still being worked on but we have publically stated several times now that the sub will be $15 per month, it is unlikely we would go with a tier option as it can cause a lot of problems within the player base with paid bonuses etc.
So far our plan is to download the client for free, play X few starting levels for free to try the game then you are completely blocked from proceeding and to continue you need to pay a $15 per month sub or decide you don't want too and leave.
This can change depending on business advice we get but for the time being, that is what we will be going with.
no buying the box? i personally dont mind buying the game and any expansions that come out.
Gawd said:
Kilsin said:
Pantheons business model is still being worked on but we have publically stated several times now that the sub will be $15 per month, it is unlikely we would go with a tier option as it can cause a lot of problems within the player base with paid bonuses etc.
So far our plan is to download the client for free, play X few starting levels for free to try the game then you are completely blocked from proceeding and to continue you need to pay a $15 per month sub or decide you don't want too and leave.
This can change depending on business advice we get but for the time being, that is what we will be going with.no buying the box? i personally dont mind buying the game and any expansions that come out.
We are unsure at this time but as it stands there will be a free digital download trial as I mentioned above.
Kilsin said:
Pantheons business model is still being worked on but we have publically stated several times now that the sub will be $15 per month, it is unlikely we would go with a tier option as it can cause a lot of problems within the player base with paid bonuses etc.
So far our plan is to download the client for free, play X few starting levels for free to try the game then you are completely blocked from proceeding and to continue you need to pay a $15 per month sub or decide you don't want too and leave.
This can change depending on business advice we get but for the time being, that is what we will be going with.
This is a very wise choice.
In an age of thousands of MMO it’s a smart move to let someone try your game with no strings attached. It projects the attitude that you believe your product is good enough that you are confident that once someone tries it they will be hooked. RoTF will probably quadruple the amount of people that try the game over someone that requires a box fee just to try your free 30 day sub.
I think almost every business type has shown that subs are king over a small front end investment. Why can you get a $200 phone for free with a sub contract or have a multi hundred dollar home security service installed for free as long as it has a sub attached to it.
Xonth said:
Kilsin said:
Pantheons business model is still being worked on but we have publically stated several times now that the sub will be $15 per month, it is unlikely we would go with a tier option as it can cause a lot of problems within the player base with paid bonuses etc.
So far our plan is to download the client for free, play X few starting levels for free to try the game then you are completely blocked from proceeding and to continue you need to pay a $15 per month sub or decide you don't want too and leave.
This can change depending on business advice we get but for the time being, that is what we will be going with.
This is a very wise choice.
In an age of thousands of MMO it’s a smart move to let someone try your game with no strings attached. It projects the attitude that you believe your product is good enough that you are confident that once someone tries it they will be hooked. RoTF will probably quadruple the amount of people that try the game over someone that requires a box fee just to try your free 30 day sub.
I think almost every business type has shown that subs are king over a small front end investment. Why can you get a $200 phone for free with a sub contract or have a multi hundred dollar home security service installed for free as long as it has a sub attached to it.
No... it is not a wise choice.
Let me explain. Pantheon will not be released until 2017+. Why allow millions of teenagers to storm into our community... and start to play Pantheon for free..? It is lunacy and makes ZERo sense... when You Xonth (& me) would have spent TWO years in development with the Visionary Realms team... and countless hours with community members establishing an Pantheon community... only to once have that established community, thrown away... in hopes of gaining a small percentage of the millions who RUSH a free server..?
Why should our Pledge dollars support non-members..? Why should OUR support dollars go into building 10 extra (unneeded) servers, just so Visionary Realms can handle the millions of FREE players...?
What is wrong with the current community..? I suggest the members Visionary Realms wants around them & PLAYING pantheon, are the same people who don't mind spending $49 on a box... and tossing it aside if they don't like it. They are not trying Pantheon based on cost, but based on need/want. That is how normal people shop. Pantheon doesn't need subscribers... who go to supermarkets, only to get the free finger-food, from some retired old lady making them in the isle.
Caveat:
The ONLY way FREE will work, if Brad & Team design a "starting island", where free players don't interact with paying members. So that when they become a real paying member, their character will gain citizenship (lore... ) and granted a pass on ship, to enter their starting city.
Or, make the "isle experience" a $5 trial... so that people who are tuly interested, can try before they buy. But there are a million logistics that go into such free things. Visionary Realms is better off with a more direct approach & more efficient with funds.
.
Hieromonk said:
Xonth said:
Kilsin said:
Pantheons business model is still being worked on but we have publically stated several times now that the sub will be $15 per month, it is unlikely we would go with a tier option as it can cause a lot of problems within the player base with paid bonuses etc.
So far our plan is to download the client for free, play X few starting levels for free to try the game then you are completely blocked from proceeding and to continue you need to pay a $15 per month sub or decide you don't want too and leave.
This can change depending on business advice we get but for the time being, that is what we will be going with.
This is a very wise choice.
In an age of thousands of MMO it’s a smart move to let someone try your game with no strings attached. It projects the attitude that you believe your product is good enough that you are confident that once someone tries it they will be hooked. RoTF will probably quadruple the amount of people that try the game over someone that requires a box fee just to try your free 30 day sub.
I think almost every business type has shown that subs are king over a small front end investment. Why can you get a $200 phone for free with a sub contract or have a multi hundred dollar home security service installed for free as long as it has a sub attached to it.
No... it is not a wise choice.
Let me explain. Pantheon will not be released until 2017+. Why allow millions of teenagers to storm into our community... and start to play Pantheon for free..? It is lunacy and makes ZERo sense... when You Xonth (& me) would have spent TWO years in development with the Visionary Realms team... and countless hours with community members establishing an Pantheon community... only to once have that established community, thrown away... in hopes of gaining a small percentage of the millions who RUSH a free server..?
Why should our Pledge dollars support non-members..? Why should OUR support dollars go into building 10 extra (unneeded) servers, just so Visionary Realms can handle the millions of FREE players...?
What is wrong with the current community..? I suggest the members Visionary Realms wants around them & PLAYING pantheon, are the same people who don't mind spending $49 on a box... and tossing it aside if they don't like it. They are not trying Pantheon based on cost, but based on need/want. That is how normal people shop. Pantheon doesn't need subscribers... who go to supermarkets, only to get the free finger-food, from some retired old lady making them in the isle.
Caveat:
The ONLY way FREE will work, if Brad & Team design a "starting island", where free players don't interact with paying members. So that when they become a real paying member, their character will gain citizenship (lore... ) and granted a pass on ship, to enter their starting city.
Or, make the "isle experience" a $5 trial... so that people who are tuly interested, can try before they buy. But there are a million logistics that go into such free things. Visionary Realms is better off with a more direct approach & more efficient with funds.
.
This is personal opinion on a topic that is a long way from being even discussed by the team in a business capacity, so please take a breath and go a little easy on each other. We may completely dump the free download if we get better advice or it may be the best option for us when it's time to release the game, both options are very valid and have their own pros and cons, we will do whats best for VRI, Pantheon and it's community when the time is right.
Please don't squabble over a decision that is out of your hands though, it is way to early to be talking about this and pure speculation with personal opinion means no one can win this discussion! ;)
Kilsin said:
Hieromonk said:
Xonth said:
Kilsin said:
Pantheons business model is still being worked on but we have publically stated several times now that the sub will be $15 per month, it is unlikely we would go with a tier option as it can cause a lot of problems within the player base with paid bonuses etc.
So far our plan is to download the client for free, play X few starting levels for free to try the game then you are completely blocked from proceeding and to continue you need to pay a $15 per month sub or decide you don't want too and leave.
This can change depending on business advice we get but for the time being, that is what we will be going with.
This is a very wise choice.
In an age of thousands of MMO it’s a smart move to let someone try your game with no strings attached. It projects the attitude that you believe your product is good enough that you are confident that once someone tries it they will be hooked. RoTF will probably quadruple the amount of people that try the game over someone that requires a box fee just to try your free 30 day sub.
I think almost every business type has shown that subs are king over a small front end investment. Why can you get a $200 phone for free with a sub contract or have a multi hundred dollar home security service installed for free as long as it has a sub attached to it.
No... it is not a wise choice.
Let me explain. Pantheon will not be released until 2017+. Why allow millions of teenagers to storm into our community... and start to play Pantheon for free..? It is lunacy and makes ZERo sense... when You Xonth (& me) would have spent TWO years in development with the Visionary Realms team... and countless hours with community members establishing an Pantheon community... only to once have that established community, thrown away... in hopes of gaining a small percentage of the millions who RUSH a free server..?
Why should our Pledge dollars support non-members..? Why should OUR support dollars go into building 10 extra (unneeded) servers, just so Visionary Realms can handle the millions of FREE players...?
What is wrong with the current community..? I suggest the members Visionary Realms wants around them & PLAYING pantheon, are the same people who don't mind spending $49 on a box... and tossing it aside if they don't like it. They are not trying Pantheon based on cost, but based on need/want. That is how normal people shop. Pantheon doesn't need subscribers... who go to supermarkets, only to get the free finger-food, from some retired old lady making them in the isle.
Caveat:
The ONLY way FREE will work, if Brad & Team design a "starting island", where free players don't interact with paying members. So that when they become a real paying member, their character will gain citizenship (lore... ) and granted a pass on ship, to enter their starting city.
Or, make the "isle experience" a $5 trial... so that people who are tuly interested, can try before they buy. But there are a million logistics that go into such free things. Visionary Realms is better off with a more direct approach & more efficient with funds.
.
This is personal opinion on a topic that is a long way from being even discussed by the team in a business capacity, so please take a breath and go a little easy on each other. We may completely dump the free download if we get better advice or it may be the best option for us when it's time to release the game, both options are very valid and have their own pros and cons, we will do whats best for VRI, Pantheon and it's community when the time is right.
Please don't squabble over a decision that is out of your hands though, it is way to early to be talking about this and pure speculation with personal opinion means no one can win this discussion! ;)
Although the decision is not theirs to make, and they are personal beliefs, I agree Kilsin that both Xonth and Hieromonk make valid points. I agree, Kilsin that it may be getting a bit heated so it is great you are stepping in. This is actually a good discussion that may yield some good thoughts. Yes VRI is getting "professional" advice. Listening to other experienced players is extremely important and can be very eye-opening (obviously I think so b/c I provide that to SOE). Plus it is free :) .
It is tough to sit back and watch people passionately speculate, but they are doing it because they want the success of Pantheon as do you. I want to personally thank you for so much information you have been providing - setting the record straight on a lot of things was really helpful to me to see that Pantheon is still on track to be the game I want. You have put a lot of daily hours discussing things with us on the forums and I really thank you for that; You are an amazing Community Manager.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hieromonk, I think if you just used the phrase " In my opinion this is not a wise choice." it would have probably set a calmer tone ;) You do make a really good point about servers being flooded with non-serious players. I feel that information should be read by the development team and taken into consideration. I play a lot of new games when they come out and yes a problem is that the servers are always flooded in the beginning and then leave behind ghost town servers.
I do still like the free trial idea. Hieromonk has some solutions, and I have a couple of other thoughts: Perhaps the free trial should not take place at launch. You wouldn't want to make the servers laggy on launch day. Perhaps the free trial could be gated by only giving away keys/passes. That way VRI could control the number of free trial players coming to our servers. The passes could be given away by those of us that have bought the game to convince our friends to play it. When VRI is confident enough about stability/sever load they could extend passes out to the general public in a manner they see fit. When the initial hype dies down keys may not be needed anymore.
Anyone here who has experienced the ArcheAge launch? That was an experience I don't need again. I'd prefer if there was no free access to the game, this makes it too easy for things we don't want to see (goldseller spammers etc). Maybe a free trial for people who get invited (either by current players or the company)?
As to the topic, I don't think premium content is a good idea. Dividing your playerbase into first- and second-class citizens does not really help to improve the community IMO.
I think that the choices will already be restricted by the decision that Pantheon is going to be a "niche game".
That means that it is already expected that it will target a very well defined customer segment and like somebody in the Dev team wrote somewhere "it is not a game for everybody".
In this sense we all here are surely a representative sample of this consumer segment.
That's why I think that both P2P and a free trial are consistent with this constraint.
We all agree with P2P from what follows that the whole segment probably agrees too.
As the communication will mostly rely on word of mouth recruitment (as opposed to a massive marketing campaign SWTOR style) the beta and the free trial are efficient communication channels to touch exactly the desired core customers.
Clearly many (probably even the majority) of free trialers won't continue but this doesn't matter because this would just mean that they don't belong to the target and it is expected. So no big deal.
On the other side people who think like we do will RUN to the the trial to check if the game is really as classical and immersive as advertised and these people will stay if the game delivers.