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Pay by Day?
tussauc
Member UncommonPosts: 147
The basic idea is as it is stated in the title of the thread, you pay by the day.
Basically, the average sub is $15, so we'd make it $.50 for every day that you log in.
I understand the idea would have problems, but every idea does.
As a whole, what do you think? Would you accept this model?
Comments
The concept of pay by day is not dissimilar to Pay by Hour or Pay by Month. Arcade games were close to pay by hour and some early online games used Pay by Hour. Those online games were seen as something of a con though and the monthly fee came to reign supreme. In this new era of Pay to Win (F2P), Pay by Day could be a variable payment method it depends on the overall strategy.
Look at SW, first we hear there will be a cash shop then that there will be Goggle in game. So it is the overall price plan and any advertising that players need to look at before making any decisions.
The problem with "pay by X" schemes is that they encourage developers to install as many extraneous time sinks as possible.
And it's proven extraordinarily difficult to collect money after play. The online services that used to play by hour invested a lot of money and effort in Collections.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Pay by day would discourage people from logging at all on days they won't have much time. People would end up feeling like "I've only got 1 hour today, best not to play at all". The payment needs to be either shorter so that you pay for the time you actually use, or long enough that you'll just buy access knowing you'll eventually play.
I will, but shareholders will not.
See, I can play, say, 5-6 days per month. If I'm paying monthly, it's $15 per month in the pockets. If I'm paying "per day", it's $3-$4 per month in the pockets. So nobody will adopt that model.
P.S. By the way, World of Tanks does something like that. You can buy Premium for day ($1 or so), for 3 days, for week, for month, for half a year.
I think that games should only charge you for the box and expansions/dlcs. MMOs charge monthly which I think is the wrong way of doing it. A subscription fee of any kind be it daily, monthly, quarterly or annualy is wrong because it ruins the game with excessive time sinks. Online games do not need a subscription fee. And no my sub fee does not go towards the development of new content.
No sub = no unnecessary time sinks. The MMO crap we are fed these day about server costs and developing of new content (ROFL this one always makes me laugh) is just ridiculous.
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Well F2P model also encourage time-sink. It is done for two easons in f2p, first if you make game grindy then you can sell things in item shop that reduce grind or allow to avoid grind at all. Second, longer someone is in game - more he will see adverts to use cash shop, more times he'll see cahs shop, etc
Not to mention freemium games that have both p2p and f2p reasons to introuduce time-sinks.
I found all f2p and freemium games to introduce as much time sinks as p2p. Sometimes even more.
Only model that theoreticaly would not promote time sink, would be b2p, and that's only provided cash shop is not existant in this game or very minimal and does not offer anything that can reduce or ommit grind.
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As for OP proposal.
I would view something diffrent, like.
You "charge" your account with $ and then as time pass your $ is decreased. This can be done by hour or per day. Something like in mobile phones.
One thing. It would have to propably be more expensive for game creators to go for it. More like 1$ / day or 0,75$ / day at least.
Don't think any AAA game creator would allow to pay per day 0,5 $ / day, cause that is exactly ike 15 $ / month and many people don't play everyday.
Eventually something like payperday or payupfront by month. Like two plans avabile for custormes - both priced bit diffrently.
Okay. Let me throw down a challenge. Take a game, any game of your choice, that includes a level designer toolkit. Make one map of content. It must be interesting; it must give an average player 1 hour of gameplay (not including replay); it must be original; and it must tell a story. Post your mod to the community.
I expect the experience of building a mod will give you some perspective on how difficult creating content actually is. It takes a lot of time, and time costs money.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I'd like to have the 2 options in P2P mmos.
A Well done system "Pay by month or pay by hour" should result this way:
For those who play more then 5,6 hours a day, "pay by month" will be cheaper then pay by hour. For those that play only around 15h a week, "paying by hour" will be cheaper then "pay by month".
I bealive this system could be great and more fair to all players.
It could be introduce a "pay by day" too, but "pay by hour" should be enouph and more fair imo.
I remember the early AoL days, where they had a per-minute connect charge, plus a per-minute premium charge for their online games (like Neverwinter Nights). While I stayed totally away from AoL, I did have friends that played NWN on AoL. I did see their $300-400 a month phone bills. And that was with a good portion of their time spend in playing MUDs (free-to-play). I really think those days are best forgotten. Such a subscription model is definitely going backwards.
So, I definitely would not accept this, and don't think that many other people would.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
+ 1
This is good idea.
That's why it would have to be more like $1/day.
No, I'm quite happy paying Monthly.
I don't see the point in this model.
I'd offer different plans. Monthly, hourly and so on. This way...
You can play more than 1 MMO without feeling like you're throwing money out the window.
You can play a day or two per week if you don't have a lot of free time without feeling like you're throwing money out the window.
I think the only reason why we don't have it right now is because game companies count on that to prevent players from venturing into MMOs released by the competition. As opposed to what's going on in Asia, where providers have to offer pay-as-you-go plans by law.
It's not really that hard. You must have a credit card logged and once you pass an hour, they charge your card for another. If the charge declines, you get cut off at a minute or two past the hour.
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Sure, but a card on file is pay-in-advance, pretty nearly. The most you can get away with defaulting is one chargeback's worth--and the risk of doing so is all to your own credit rating.
Nobody collects post-play any more, because of the nightmare services like GEnie and AOL had with collection agents. Seems little Johnny would log on and wrack up some enormous charges, which Mom wouldn't see until billed--a month later. After the collection agency calls and threatened lawsuits--just was not worth it for anybody.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
That's exactly why they don't do it that way anymore, which is a good thing.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
The 50 cents per day idea is stupid. See, everyone who pays $15.00 a month would switch to this as they are likely going to have some days off and it save them a few cents.
The 50 cents per day idea is stupid. A company doesn't do business like some idiot on the forum who thinks they make a game THEN decide the money flow. The plan for money is up front. If a company is betting on a $15.00 a month money flow this would undercut them.
The 50 cents per day idea is stupid. A company wants to have some ability to forecast money flow. A constant is better than random budget. They have to pay expenses and if the money dips they have to make cuts which could mean workforce. Now you have an unstable company which makes is difficult to retain your best employess who have a ton of work options and makes it difficult to hire the best.
The 50 cents per day idea is stupid. It's also lazy to just take 15.00/30 to come up with 50 cents per day. It's not interesting choicewise. If you have choices {A B} where A is a winner and B is a loser, you have a non-choice situation. At least create a number that people go, wow, this is tough/interesting choice.
I suspect this is someone who wants f2p.
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It would probably work if they did $15 per month *OR* $1 a day. Most people would just pay for the month because it was significantly cheaper, but for those who want to play, but won't pay $15 a month, paying $1 a day for a couple of days a month will still be additional revenue for the company that they probably would never have gotten before. Don't make it either/or, make it both.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
A potential issue with a Per Month subscription and/or a Per Day (or Per Hour) subscription is that neither of these models work as well as the newer microtransaction models. Companies are moving to F2P with Cash Shops, not because the players are demanding it (quite the opposite on these forums) or it is benefitial for the players, but because the microtransaction model generates more revenue for the gaming company.
Without knowing specific earnings of games that have been converted from subscription to micro transaction models, it may be necessary to have $25-30 as a subscription charge to make the equivilent revenue as the micro-transaction model. Since none of us have the specific financial details, why can't we assume that the companies that have the specific data are making the change to micro-transactions for very sound business reasons.
Subdividing a subscription model into smaller and smaller increments only creates another, finer grained subscription model, not something new. And the subscription model is currently believed to create less income than the micro-transaction model.
And a subscription model with smaller increments (daily, hourly) has much more administrative overhead. Now the company would need to interact with the credit card issuer on the same increments (for a pay-as-you-go system), and record accurate session times for a billing-model. A pay-as-you-go payment system would be very dependent on establishing connections with the credit card company, and many, if not most, credit card companies charge a fee for transaction processing. Can anyone really see gaming companies agreeing to pay a transaction fee and plan to generate a transaction every minute someone is online? No matter how this transaction fee is set (percentage or fixed) or the actual rate (from $.001 upwards), this just comes straight off the top of the company's revenue stream.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
People are going to disagree with me but the original Vindictus token model was probably the best payment model for a MMO I had ever seen. It encouraged people to login every day. It was truely free unless you played more than 2 or 3 hours a day. If you wanted more time you paid for usage.
All you see today is three payment models:
- Subscriptions - pay per month
- Freemium - restricted unless you sub but there is also a cosmetic cash shop
- Free 2 Play - Usually has some type of hook and most are pay to win cash shop
One day I would like to see a pay to use model that either uses original Vindictus style token system or buy to play with free options.
THIS.
+ 1
How about a sub pricing model that scaled like this.
1) $15 / month for the 1st 12 months
2) $10 / month for the 2nd 12 months
3) $5 / month for the 3rd 12 months
4) Free
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I will really accept this model, it really looks like a good idea to me.
I never thought about that. I wouldn't put it past a developer team to do such a thing.
If a game is great, I'll pay monthly to play it.
If the game is tired, old, redundant (end-game nothing but raiding / instanced pvp), or boring, I won't pay monthly.