I will NOT buy this game

[MrVicchio]

Author Topic: I will NOT buy this game
Nglan
Station Member
Registered: Apr 2003 posted 04-25-2003 10:50 AM user search report post
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Hi,
I have been following Planetside for some time now, and the game looks interesting. I was planning on buying the game when it comes out in a few weeks, but will now NOT be doing that.
Why ? because I WILL NOT pay a monthly fee to play a game I have already spent money on purchasing.

I am a big player of BF 1942. They never ask for monthly fees ? Thats why I always buy their add on packs, and will continue to do so. Planetside with monthly payments - NO WAY !

Nglan

Spork is too nice, I would have said, fine, we don't need oyur money... but then.. I probably would lose my job...

SporkfirePS
Station Admin
Registered: Jan 2003 posted 04-25-2003 04:05 PM user search report post
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Everyone will decide for themselves whether the game justifies their monthly subscription fee. That's the nature of business. It's our job to ensure that you feel like you have received a fair value for your fee.
I don't have to deny that there are great games out there, even similar games, that do not require monthly fees. But few (if any?) are massively multiplayer games and most of their developers do not assume the responsibility of hosting the multiplayer games. We do, and by doing that we can offer a consistently high level of service and content.

The server and bandwidth requirements are one of the primary reasons for the fee, but not the only one and probably not the most important one. The Dev folks at SOE have been doing this for a long time and know that people churn through most games after a couple of months. The monthly fee will allow us to keep a Dev team continually updating and enhancing the game throughout its life to keep it fresh and interesting. Ask anyone who has spent at least a year in almost any MMO how much their game has evolved and how long they expect to continue playing. You'll find that this is one of the chief draws - new challenges and additions to the gameplay that don't allow it to become a repetitive experience, even after months or years.

Victor Wachter
Community Relations Representative
Many questions can be answered by reading the PlanetSide Game Info and FAQ

http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/p...ML/007055.html

[BUGGER]

That es me think........


What if a guy comes up to a shelf and buys the game. will there be like a month free of playing or are ya gona have to chip in money right from the start?

Lets say he's gota chip it in righ now. He plays, and doesn't like it, so he returns the game. Now what becomes of the money fee put in for the monthly fee? He has to pay it anyways? I mean the guy's gona be asking for his money back both ways, whats gona happen with this?



Really, I think there should be a month free for users taht haven't been in beta so they could get the feel wether they want to play or not. As for beta peeps will have to pay right off retail. if they play for a day and return the game, screw them, they had the chance to make that dessision when beta was called over, they choose to play it right there and then.

So to say this all in a mere 2 sentences.

nonbeta-1 month free.
beta-pay on first day.

[Destroyeron]

My Reply to the guy who won't buy it: GOOD! We dson't want assholes like you anyways! You cheap bastards!

[simba]

Originally posted by Destroyeron
My Reply to the guy who won't buy it: GOOD! We dson't want assholes like you anyways! You cheap bastards!

why? He might just not have enough money 2 pay 12 bux a month.

[BUGGER]

Then he is offically a hobo.

[HawkEye]

[Flameseeker]

You dissin' Hoboes?

[Masurao]

If your going to ahve to pay monthly then I think the inital cost of the game should be less. The $50 is the price of a regular FPS that you can play for free. if PS is $50 then it should cover maybe the frist 2 months. I mean 1 month is nothing, and then $12 after that? in 1 year you have spent $200 on a game, and that is alot to spend on a game when you can get similar games for just the initial cost of the game, which are normaly under $50.

I am crazy about planetside....but am I really so desperate to pay 200 for a game that, in its current state, will get repetative just like anyother FPS...Even with all the people playing its just a FPS...

Lets face it. Your MMOFPS is not much more then tribes with a giant map and a little char develpoment system, wich is somthing that you got in Diablo for free. I think many can relate...this game is awsome....but its nothing special.

Agian I love Planetside...

And for all those who are just going to call me an idiot I just got this to say to you: I got my opinions about all of this and you got yours, so don't freak out its just a game For Destroyeron who called Nglan an asshole..ur the asshole dude, Nglan was just voicing his opinion, you got no right to say he's the asshole

The ever irritating,
Masurao

And I know I can't spell thats one of the reasons I am irritating

[ShinyMind]

Seriously, most games worth playing these days require monthly fees. More specifically, I can't imagine a persistent world type game NOT charging a monthly fee. Those server costs are ...costly...

[Rang3r]

Do you realize that Planetside needs a massive amount of bandwidth to hold as many people as it does? The highest i saw it at was 7000, it could hold more though. it is a very expensive server. Normal servers for a game like bf1942 probably use something above a T1 that runs out of an office or a company like homelan, which is either free or you pay something like 100 dollars a month. But those only hold comforatably 64 people, these hold more than 7000. These servers are completly for planetside and im sure and need probably more than a couple thousand a month, and you also need to pay the other guys, like the tech support, etc.

running servers like this isn't free

[Masurao]

yes and so do a ton of other MMO games that are not $50 to buy and not $12..which it looks like will become $15 a month.

[ShinyMind]

Originally posted by Masurao
yes and so do a ton of other MMO games that are not $50 to buy and not $12..which it looks like will become $15 a month.

Name one, besides America's Army, which is paid for with tax dollars.

[Rang3r]

i rettract what i said abotu the server, you guys are greedy...



i think 30000+ people paying 12 bucks a month is waay more than enough to pay for a dev team and the server

lets see here 12 bucks * 12 months = 144 dollars a year

144 dollars a year * 30000+ people paying = 4320000 dollars a year

then the 50 bucks down payment the 30000+ people will be paying

4320000+(50 * 30000) = 5820000+

thats 5820000+ dollars a year the first year
and 4320000+ each year after that

and a dev team is maybe 20 people or less? which will be making
which is about 290000+ dollars for each dev member which probably wont be doing jack for half the time he should be

[LeTronk]

Although I do have to agree with you that ~6000000 is a bit much for upkeep on the servers. You have to realize how much SOE has invested in this game.

First, they had to develop the game. No small or cheap task. They had to pay large teams tons of money to make this game. There's the art team, the sound team, the programming team, administrators, clerical, etc.

After the initial development is complete, they had to secure all of the servers for beta, plus a building to keep them in. Then they had to buy packaging and cds to send to the beta testers, and someone to pack and send them. Now they have a hardware support team to make sure the servers stay up and running.

Once beta is done, they have to buy packaging and cds for the retail version. Then they pay to ship it to their customers (who only pay SOE about $30 wholesale). In addition they must have all servers running and able to support those 30000+ people.

THEN comes the real killer, advertising. Throughout this entire process, they paid a firm to make sure every single gamer in the US that heard the word "Planetside" to think of this game. That can easily total in the millions.

To top it off, there may be only 20 developers that run upkeep on the game, but for a professional software engineer (which I am) in San Diego CA (where SOE is) runs 70000-100000 a year. That's approx. 1.5 million.

Overall, using the numbers provided, I think that SOE won't actually make a profit on this game until late in the second year of its release if not longer. The potential is there to make alot of money, but it will take awhile to accomplish it. This is a common theme in big business that noone thinks about when complaining about how much something costs. It may not make sense to do it that way, but as the old addage goes, "You have to spend money to make money."

[mikkyT]

lets see here 12 bucks * 12 months = 144 dollars a year

144 dollars a year * 30000+ people paying = 4320000 dollars a year

then the 50 bucks down payment the 30000+ people will be paying

So when are you going to go to business school?

You think all that is profit?

Lets take the $49.99 cost of the game. Take away 30% immediately as this is the cut a high street store will take for selling the game in their store. Then take away packaging and printing costs, publishers costs (probably nothing for the US releaseas SOE is publishing the game themselves in the USA but UbiSoft is handling international publishing and will take a cut of sales there). Plus advertising costs. People don't print them big planetside posters and stands for free. And people don't put them in their shops for free either.

Now theres not a lot of profit left. Hell, they probably won't recover ANY development costs with unit sales alone! MMO is a niche market, unlike the massive chart topping releases, MMOs only appeal to a small minority of gamers (so far) and publishers are unlikely to recover their expenditure on unit sales alone.

Now lets look at the hosting costs:

144 dollars a year * 30000+ people paying = 4320000 dollars a year

You get a first month free. Lets assume that many folk will not play after that first month. Lets say 1 third. So, your down to 20000 in the year. Thats assuming 20000 units are actually sold! EverQuest didnt have that many people in its first year, BUT MMOs are not the "new thing" now so hopefully the advertising will have been right.

Out of that fee comes a hefty whack of bandwidth costs and server hosting costs (your not hosting a server on a POS Pentium2 on a cable connection here) - multi-server farms, probably 2 or 3 machines per continent, thats 20-30 machines per "server". Theres 3 servers for release (US, UbiSoft will be hosting the international servers, so they will take their cut out of international monthly fees, infact they will probably take the monthly fee directly and pay SOE a percentage of it as they do with EQ).

But, whose going to look after your servers after release? Hmm they can run themselves, reboot themselves on crashes, hotswap their own disks when they fail, back themselves up, change their backup tapes. This takes man power. And therefore a cut.

Then you have got additional man power costs for acutally supporting the game, GM costs (admittedly nothing compared to EQ as that had more in-game support). You have development team costs who will be busily developing new content that you WONT have to pay for (included in routine patches) plus content for the next add on pack which you will pay for (just a one off purchase cost).

Then you have another development team who will be working on bugs as they will always exist.

Etc
etc

now you notice that the profit isnt all that great and in fact they probably wont make much at all. Probably a 10% mark up. Still nice, but not mega bucks.