Paying for Planetside

[Madfish]

I've been somewhat confused how buying one time purchases of horns for your helmets and pink zebra skin for your prowler is going to pay for the maintenance and ongoing development for PS2.

I realise free will lead to a vastly higher population (the long tail of the market!) - and now-a-days population means a lot to senior management. At least, it does where they will be subjected to advertising and marketing (such as facebook). But will that be enough to sustain the game?

As a PS fan, are you planning to pay for a monthly recurring pack (XP boost or whatever) just to renumerate the team? Or are you going to scrimp it? (You're probably NC if you do, free loaders).

How would you feel if contemporary advertising crept in 12 months down the line? This base is sponsored by Mercedes Benz!

As a last paragraph comment (all alone at the end, no one will read me. If you did, Hi!) is the game free, or one off payment for the game? I've seen mixed messages.

[Sabot]

It's free... no payment for the game.

Also: Gigantic player base + small, sane micro-transactions when the players him/herself wants = winning.

It's been proven more than once, so I'm not worried.

[Zenben]

If I'm not mistaken, when EQ1 went from purchase + subscription to F2P they saw a huge jump in revenue. The population of that game is still pretty solid considering its age. Attracting more people with a free game means more people are tempted to buy a couple things, which is more than they would have paid if they decided to skip the game altogether.

[Stew]

Originally Posted by Madfish

I've been somewhat confused how buying one time purchases of horns for your helmets and pink zebra skin for your prowler is going to pay for the maintenance and ongoing development for PS2.

I realise free will lead to a vastly higher population (the long tail of the market!) - and now-a-days population means a lot to senior management. At least, it does where they will be subjected to advertising and marketing (such as facebook). But will that be enough to sustain the game?

As a PS fan, are you planning to pay for a monthly recurring pack (XP boost or whatever) just to renumerate the team? Or are you going to scrimp it? (You're probably NC if you do, free loaders).

How would you feel if contemporary advertising crept in 12 months down the line? This base is sponsored by Mercedes Benz!

As a last paragraph comment (all alone at the end, no one will read me. If you did, Hi!) is the game free, or one off payment for the game? I've seen mixed messages.

they are planning to get 500 $ out of some people 0 $ of some others 10 $ some others and so on ....

and yess the game have to have a massive numbers of players to actually survive so thats why they have to make a solid but welcoming planetside 2 experience thats why they planned the mission systhem thats why they dont want to force the team work but encourage it thats why they will sell Golden pistol etc..

people will enjoy the game and will pay for some few article they really like but if 1 millions people pay for at least 30 $ in 1 or 2 years the game will actually worth the investment because some people will spend 500 $ and more others will spend 10 $ or less but overall their will be benefits if the game is acessible and fun ! if not the game will slowly die

and remember their is no distribution cost their is not transport or printing cost its 1000 % digital download

[AgtPanda]

The way I see it is...

Normal P2P games are what, 60 bucks one time plus DLC for greedy EA?
That 60 bucks per player is enough to sustain some devs for a while.
In a F2P market, where money paid is a choice,you will get some people buying nothing and others spending 5 or 10 dollars on camos, while others still spend over $100 on equipment to pimp out their online persona.

I would like to think that averages out to a reasonable amount per customer, a reasonable pay check for the devs, and with the whole MMO thing going on with patches and more stuff being added to the cash shop... People will pay more money for the cool newly implemented stuff. It's worked for other games. Check out LoL for instance, a skin is being released that has been extremely hyped and will get even the most conservative players paying a bit of cash for a cool visual element added to their game.

And to answer the one time payment thing... No. It's completely free to play unless you want to spend cash on cool visual things!

[GreatMazinkaise]

I'll drop the cash on some cosmetics and the premium subscription, presuming that the gameplay is actually rewarding.

The current horns are too small... need to buff that during beta.

[Mechzz]

Hi Madfish, the game has no up front costs you'll be glad to hear.

Agree with Mazinkaise on the horns. If you're going to have horns, they should be big fecking horns!

On a related point, I've now watched the Sony hall presentation from E3. The presenter said that hood ornaments for vehicles had "nearly" made it to E3, but not quite. So that's why we're waiting for Beta, none of that HA nonsense! - come on T-Ray!

[Kran De Loy]

Once you buy something in an FTP game, it becomes easier to buy a second item, then a third and so on.

So yes, I see microtransactions keeping the game floating easily and the SOE Devs obviously know that selling power over the store is one of the fastest ways to scare off players and thus potential paying customers.

However the Devs do not own the company. This is the part where many previous games (FTP or otherwise) have been able to go so inevitably extremely wrong. While SOE hasn't made that mistake yet as far as I know, SOE has unfortunately made similar terribad decisions that have previously thrown many of their franchises into sad shells of their previous potential.

Happily nothing even near the level of EA's shenanigans over the last decade.

[Sensator]

Free to play has been proven to give smaller and more niche games a much larger revenue stream than subscription based games. This is why so many games switch to F2P after they fail to reach the 'needed' number of players to reach a profit margin.

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by Sensator

Free to play has been proven to give smaller and more niche games a much larger revenue stream than subscription based games. This is why so many games switch to F2P after they fail to reach the 'needed' number of players to reach a profit margin.

I'm hopeful that the "pay" aspects in PS2 will work well, since it has been designed that way from the start. Bolting it in after the fact can be quite awkward imho.

[Otleaz]

Nexon, an exclusively free to play model publisher has reached "behemoth" level at an alarming pace recently.

They left Activision-Blizzard in the dust in terms of profits and have been buying out competitors like crazy. They even attempted to buy EA.

When you ask, "Why would this game go free to play?" Look at Nexon. They are the reason for this free to play craze that has been going on.

[Phellix]

Put it this way, i have a crap ton of friends who wouldn't buy this game otherwise and therefore would not put any money into it, but since it's free to play, they'll all at least try it out.

That's how they hooked me on league, and ultimately why HON needed to turn to FTP

[Mr DeCastellac]

This is extremely scaled down, but maybe it will help to explain it.

You could get 1000 people that pay $60 for your game, plus $15 a month.
Alternatively, you could get 10,000 people to play for 'free'.

I haven't researched many statistics, but I do know that after making one purchase (say, $5), consumers are extremely likely to make multiple purchases. I've found myself doing this for many games, in fact. I think I'll just buy one thing, and I end up with a plethora of cosmetic items.

Like I said, I haven't researched this, so these estimations are probably way off. Anyone who buys something is probably going to buy more, so let's say they end up buying an average of $5 worth of items every month.
It may not seem like much in the beginning, but over time, they will be making way more from the F2P model.

I'll try to put it into an equation.
So, paid method: f(x)=(60+15x)*1000
The free method: f(x)=5x*5000 <- Assuming half of the people buy cosmetics.

Now, keep in mind here that I suck at math. But I graphed it, and assuming I'm correct, after about 10 months, the free to play model would be making more money. That doesn't sound right, but oh well, you get the point.

Additionally, if they keep coming out with content, people will keep finding new things that appeal to them or they may just want to keep up with the newest items, so they will keep getting sales, which eliminates the "Buy everything in the store" factor.

TLDR: In the long run, the F2P model makes more money than a start+sub model.

[Kran De Loy]

Also about that mixed signals on the FTP or Subscription: Pretty sure such information is posted somewhere in the Wiki, but the game will be FTP. Period. However there is still a chance that there will be a completely voluntary Premium month package or something like that. Again the devs know that selling power is a huge no-no, so if they do implement a premium package or whatever it would be called it would be interesting to see what's in it.

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by Kran De Loy

Also about that mixed signals on the FTP or Subscription: Pretty sure such information is posted somewhere in the Wiki, but the game will be FTP. Period. However there is still a chance that there will be a completely voluntary Premium month package or something like that. Again the devs know that selling power is a huge no-no, so if they do implement a premium package or whatever it would be called it would be interesting to see what's in it.

Exactly Kran. If there is a sub package, I'd need to see how it compares cost-wise with buying the same things loose. I won't get it if it's full of stuff I wouldn't buy on its own merits, but if it gives (say) a free xp boost with a reasonable amount of station cash for extras then it could be good value.