If inflation is rising and more and more money is put into the development of a game, how do you expect to lower the price of the sub fee? Something has to give.
Let the whales pay through their nose and the rest of us enjoy the games for free?
No thank you. I don't want or need other people to subsidize my entertainment just as I don't want my money subsidizing other peoples entertainment.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
It's not the amount I pay, but it's that I get what I pay for. If I pay $15/month, I expect essentially an expansion of some kind to the game once every 3-4 months with bug/balancing fixes going daily. If I pay $5/month, I expect pretty much nothing past what I see currently in the game and that about once a year a major expansion to the game. If I pay nothing for the game, I expect to get an experiment or taste of a game without any extra balancing or bug fixing.
I played WoW up until WotLK, played RoM for 2 years and now Rift. I am F2P player. I support games when I feel they deserve my money and I want the items enough. I don't troll, and I don't take kindly to trolls.
Why the hell is everyone talking about SWTOR? If you read the OP he/she is talking about IN GENERAL.
With that annoyance out of the way, I personally think the $15 standard is what is killing many games. I've been playing Wakfu for about a week now, and it's $6 per month. That is a fantastic price. I personally think $5-$8 should be standard.
It's not really a big deal to me. I only ever play one mmo at a time. If the fees were lower I might actually consider subscribing to more than one at a time, so there's that.
Sub fees have been remarkably steady for many years whilst the cost of just about everything else has rocketted.
For me I'll pay a sub if the game is fun & I think it represents value for money. That said I think there needs to be a comparative mindset with publishers taking into account what other games offer, not over-estimating their own worth & pitching themselves competitively for not only our money but our time.
A high-quality game can command top-rate subs, a small indie should give serious consideration to coming in under the bar by a margin - it's becoming a very saturated genre after all, the factor that's probably helped to hold sub prices as low as they have been as long as they have.
With GW1 I saw a froum post show that if you bought everything in that item shop devided by 7 years of game play you would be paying an average of 5 bucks a month. IMO thats right about where a game should land. I still think 7.99 is to high. I think 4.99 is right where AAA MMOs need to be.
Sub fees have been remarkably steady for many years whilst the cost of just about everything else has rocketted.
For me I'll pay a sub if the game is fun & I think it represents value for money. That said I think there needs to be a comparative mindset with publishers taking into account what other games offer, not over-estimating their own worth & pitching themselves competitively for not only our money but our time.
A high-quality game can command top-rate subs, a small indie should give serious consideration to coming in under the bar by a margin - it's becoming a very saturated genre after all, the factor that's probably helped to hold sub prices as low as they have been as long as they have.
When sub fees first came in 14 years ago with EQ1 SoE expressed the fee was mostly to cover the cost of the servers to run the game and also for profit and to run future development of the game. Since then server costs are so small with where tech is today its no more then a footnote in the 1/4 meetings. Also everything had to be built from the ground up. Now MMOs use game engines that let them create new content fast and with 1/2 the number of employees. The problem is the profit for MMOs is huge!!! And as things changed the game developers did not pass that savings onto the customers because we were trained to accept the cost of 15 a month. Fact is 15 a month is mostly profit. A lot of MMOs make it F2P with no box fee to top it off. GW2 cash shop has no more then convenience items and vanity items. Its time to question what we are paying. Me.. 4.99 a month.
Depends on the game and time investments and the like. I definitely think I'd be likely to play certain MMO's, like ATITD, if they cost less, or play more MMO's at the same time, or create multiple accounts per MMO.
SWTOR is not an MMO, its a single player game with limited co-op and pvp.
SW:TOR is most certainly an MMO by the standard definition.
It can fail in theory, but so does WoW and any other lobby-based MMO that came out since, so you can't call WoW an MMO while complaining SW:TOR isn't one.
Over 40% are for nothing, imagine only what profit you have from this people. This is the reason i am against F2P, you gain only on trolls. People who spend money on items will pay subscription to, thats the fact. Yes i am for lower sub price and 8$ to 10$ will be nice
SWTOR is not an MMO, its a single player game with limited co-op and pvp.
SW:TOR is most certainly an MMO by the standard definition.
It can fail in theory, but so does WoW and any other lobby-based MMO that came out since, so you can't call WoW an MMO while complaining SW:TOR isn't one.
Why you even argue with that kind of trolls??? They are not worth quote
As pertaining to TOR, I doubt if they lowered the sub price to 2.99 per/mo I'd opt in. 15 per/mo is not that high a price. Wife and I had 9 accounts, each at 14.99 per/mo over at SWG and the price was not a factor. The entertainment value was/is.
You know what the fee is matching to the game
Tor : The only reason i would play that game again is if it went free to play. The game sucked they rose up the hype lied to the players patches kept getting pushed back they fired the devs and brought in new ones at launch. The additude that EA has is their greatest enemy they are a sucky company and after tor i am going to try to stay away from an EA game i can.
SWG: I would pay the 15$ a month because it was fun. The community was great but lucas arts said you are done go play our new sw game coming out,
But in the end the end it all depends on the game. 7.99 would be more reasonable so games like wow were you are buying these expansions. Also if it cost less they can get mroe people to sub to there game and then they are playing multiple games some might even have more than 1 wow account.
I looked at your signature and found we have played alot of the same past games. All the same for me, except War, and then you proudly state your favorite is TOR and least favorite is NGE. To be honest, and full well knowing that likeing something is purely an opinion held via an individual, I have no idea how you can say NGE was so bad and TOR is so great.
I played SWG in pre-CU, CU, NGE, and post NGE (after C6CD) and TOR seems to me to be the "perfect NGE", made by some of the exact same developers, in fact. The game is totaly linear in nature and "WoWified" to beat the band. You can't even skip dailys or skip a HM flashpoint. You almost MUST go down the path they have laid out to even play this game due to difficulty and/or gearing at end game. There is NO appearance customization, that was found in SWG, even back in the original NGE while we were all wearing "droped" clothing for the stats, much less with adept-strain's appearance tab. There is no exploration of just about any sort due to the "paths" created to lead you from quest giver to questing NPCs, all quartered off via cliffs and/or invisible walls. (this was a large complaint about the wookiee world expansion as well as Musti back in SWG).
Everything is nothing but combat or clicking on 5 things. There are no quests that doesn't include this in some manner, shape, or form. (pretty same exact thing as in WOW, but the worlds there are at least large enough to get off the beaten path sometimes). The UI, the shear amount of specials, the "rested" XP, the talent system, the quest until end game and then gear grind, even the augments are nothing more than WoW glyths and jewels, the no housing (or really any other area to call your own is another complete rip off of WoW - and please don't say "ships" that you can do nothing with other than just being another loading screen you have to go thru to travel). I even got most of the legacy perks of 1.2 and you can't even have a choice in where to place the droid, the mailbox, bank, etc. They go where they put them and that's it. The ship for my Guard and the ship for my sage was EXACTLY the same. None of my houses in SWG were the same, even if 2 toons had a bunker, they were very different in appearance and functionality due to just being able to drop something anywhere. Even in STO, I bought the TOS interiors to be a little different than EVERY other ship interior that everyone else had.
Character creation. Basicly WoW again, enough said. Cryptic did a better job of toon creation and they have some cut-scenes, etc to pre-program the variations in as well.
And finaly crafting? How in the world do you get ANY enjoyment in the TOR crafting system? It's basicly useless at endgame except for the band-aids they're trying to stick on now (with augments). At least in WoW, there are some items that are a little better than drops for the gear grinds to have at least some player made economy. For the life of me, I simply can not understand why any1 would tout TOR's crafting system as anymore more than a useless credit sink. Everything that could be crafted, you can pretty much get better by just looking for drops or buying off of game stationed NPCs.
TOR seems like the "perfect NGE" to me. What these former SOE devs really wanted to do all along to SWG when they CHANGED it. They just couldn't quite get ALL the "Koster goodness" out of it (like Rubenfield said in his blog) but they were able to get every drop of the "goodness" out of TOR. To be perfectly honest, I much rather play NGE, ANYDAY.
Please enlighten me, as a former player of almost the same games.
Yes you're right! It lacks DEPTH compared to other MMOs.
But guess what? It's still an MMO!
I think your right, TOR is an MMO, a very poorly designed one, but an MMO just the same. The fact that players can get on a server with many others almost makes it an MMO. However, a MMORPG? TOR is probably not as they pretty much removed all the RP factor and the living in a virtual world out if it in favor of linear story that abruptly ends at end-game, pretty much like a single player console game does. This is why, I would imagine, that some people call TOR not even an MMO.
Because I played SWG for so long, I still look at the TOR forums about once per/week. Hoping that BioWare will either get rid of these NGE devs, they will allow the other devs some creativity with design, or these guys will have an epiphany of where they went wrong and start to fix it. When SWG closed, there were some posters over on the SOE forums that claimed that TOR would fall straight on it's face, it's failure would be the absolute best advertisment for interest in SWG that could ever be, and that SOE/SWG would benefit greatly in the process. Sad to say that I pretty much believe they could of been correct in their assumption. SOE may have indeed missed an opportunity here. I've read posts over on the TOR forums that state, they'd never played SWG but the features that are discussed would of caused them to sub, if the game was still up.
For the poster that asked why so much TOR in this thread? The OP originaly posted this thread in the TOR sub-forums and a MMORPG.com mod moved it over here.
No-more-subs, thankyouverymuch. I'm through with that model.
I've never understood this mindset. You do realize that servers, maintenance and updates aren't free? F2P models usually end up costing more unless you're immune to grind-annoyance, and B2P models just release expansions quickly enough to cover cost. In all of the above you're still paying roughly the same amount over time, so what exactly is so wrong about subs?
I've never understood this mindset. You do realize that servers, maintenance and updates aren't free? F2P models usually end up costing more unless you're immune to grind-annoyance, and B2P models just release expansions quickly enough to cover cost. In all of the above you're still paying roughly the same amount over time, so what exactly is so wrong about subs?
Yes, I know exactly how much servers, maintenance and everything costs. It's a lot less than you think. I know how much F2P and B2P costs. No, it does not end up costing more (unless you chose some spectacularly badly-made game and for some reason stick with it). No, I don't play roughly the same amount over time. Listen, I've played P2P and F2P for many, many years; I know what they are and what I like.
What's wrong about subs: the need to artificially expand player time spent in the game, to keep players playing for months and paying subs for months, leads to introduction of "time sinks" and automatically generated content (the most annoying of which for me is trash mobs) and turns the game, the "fun", into a chore, through which you have to suffer to "get something". Like runnign through the zone fighting useless trash mobs back and forth, back and forth... Like suffering through endless raids to get some piece of gear you need for another series of endless raids...
No. I will not have it. Never again.
Second problem: I'm feeling restricted in my playing habits. If I play 4 hours in a month, and I pay $15 for it, I can't justify it for myself (no, "it's just $15" doesn't cut it for me. I don't like waste money, any amount). It annoys me and destroys my enjoyment. I feel pressured. I will not be pressured when I'm trying to enjoy myself.
No-more-subs, thankyouverymuch. I'm through with that model.
I've never understood this mindset. You do realize that servers, maintenance and updates aren't free? F2P models usually end up costing more unless you're immune to grind-annoyance, and B2P models just release expansions quickly enough to cover cost. In all of the above you're still paying roughly the same amount over time, so what exactly is so wrong about subs?
What's the last sub game that you played with excellent customer service? That had active GMs, or even GM led live events? What's the last MMO you subbed to that had monthly content updates for that fee? Or weekly content or any worthwhile content that didn't come in the form of a expansion download or disk that you had to "cash shop" for anyway?
That's what's wrong with subs. People aren't getting their money worth.
No-more-subs, thankyouverymuch. I'm through with that model.
I've never understood this mindset. You do realize that servers, maintenance and updates aren't free? F2P models usually end up costing more unless you're immune to grind-annoyance, and B2P models just release expansions quickly enough to cover cost. In all of the above you're still paying roughly the same amount over time, so what exactly is so wrong about subs?
You do realize that a MAJORITY of F2P MMO players never pay? And that the few "whales" are subsidizing everyone?
It is FREE for most. And there are so many F2P MMOs out there that you can easily just play the ones don't annoy you. I found many that are fun and FREE.
My leisure time is a more scarce and valuable commodity for me than cash. If a game is enjoyable enough for me to play, I'm happy to spend $15/month on it. If it's not enjoyable, I won't waste my scarce leisure time on it even if it is free.
I voted for your lowest price offered but actually I would only pay $3.00 a month if given a choice. But I would pay it gladly! I would also be okay with $3 mo plus cash shop pets. Mounts should be many and wide variety at very low cost game money but npc's from different zones should sell different mounts so you have a reason to explore. You should also have no limit on the number of pets/mounts you can own. Next, npc's should not sell ANYTHING ELSE!!!!!! Everything else in a game should be crafted. EVERYTHING CRAFTED. Finally, for this to work the auction house would have to have a 3 digit limit so no one could sell anything for more than $999 in game money max. This AH would have to employ the methods I saw in Forsaken World where gold sellers or whoever are allowed to trade irl money for game money in game and versa. Keeps gold sellers out of chat. Works perfect.
PS
I forgot to mention nothing in the game is "bound" or is on a time limit (except maybe holiday event items).
Comments
No thank you. I don't want or need other people to subsidize my entertainment just as I don't want my money subsidizing other peoples entertainment.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
It's not the amount I pay, but it's that I get what I pay for. If I pay $15/month, I expect essentially an expansion of some kind to the game once every 3-4 months with bug/balancing fixes going daily. If I pay $5/month, I expect pretty much nothing past what I see currently in the game and that about once a year a major expansion to the game. If I pay nothing for the game, I expect to get an experiment or taste of a game without any extra balancing or bug fixing.
I played WoW up until WotLK, played RoM for 2 years and now Rift.
I am F2P player. I support games when I feel they deserve my money and I want the items enough.
I don't troll, and I don't take kindly to trolls.
Why the hell is everyone talking about SWTOR? If you read the OP he/she is talking about IN GENERAL.
With that annoyance out of the way, I personally think the $15 standard is what is killing many games. I've been playing Wakfu for about a week now, and it's $6 per month. That is a fantastic price. I personally think $5-$8 should be standard.
It's not really a big deal to me. I only ever play one mmo at a time. If the fees were lower I might actually consider subscribing to more than one at a time, so there's that.
Sub fees have been remarkably steady for many years whilst the cost of just about everything else has rocketted.
For me I'll pay a sub if the game is fun & I think it represents value for money. That said I think there needs to be a comparative mindset with publishers taking into account what other games offer, not over-estimating their own worth & pitching themselves competitively for not only our money but our time.
A high-quality game can command top-rate subs, a small indie should give serious consideration to coming in under the bar by a margin - it's becoming a very saturated genre after all, the factor that's probably helped to hold sub prices as low as they have been as long as they have.
With GW1 I saw a froum post show that if you bought everything in that item shop devided by 7 years of game play you would be paying an average of 5 bucks a month. IMO thats right about where a game should land. I still think 7.99 is to high. I think 4.99 is right where AAA MMOs need to be.
Any sub fee up to 20$ is feasible as long as game is good and there is no cash shop.
Sadly most of current P2P mmorpg's are linear dungeon & arenas grinders and have cash shops.
Depends on the game and time investments and the like. I definitely think I'd be likely to play certain MMO's, like ATITD, if they cost less, or play more MMO's at the same time, or create multiple accounts per MMO.
SW:TOR is most certainly an MMO by the standard definition.
It can fail in theory, but so does WoW and any other lobby-based MMO that came out since, so you can't call WoW an MMO while complaining SW:TOR isn't one.
Money is never a factor for me in gaming as it's such a drop in the ocean compared to other expenses.
If swtor is an mmo then so is battlefield and i wouldnt pay a monthly fee for either of them.
Over 40% are for nothing, imagine only what profit you have from this people. This is the reason i am against F2P, you gain only on trolls. People who spend money on items will pay subscription to, thats the fact. Yes i am for lower sub price and 8$ to 10$ will be nice
Why you even argue with that kind of trolls??? They are not worth quote
You know what the fee is matching to the game
Tor : The only reason i would play that game again is if it went free to play. The game sucked they rose up the hype lied to the players patches kept getting pushed back they fired the devs and brought in new ones at launch. The additude that EA has is their greatest enemy they are a sucky company and after tor i am going to try to stay away from an EA game i can.
SWG: I would pay the 15$ a month because it was fun. The community was great but lucas arts said you are done go play our new sw game coming out,
But in the end the end it all depends on the game. 7.99 would be more reasonable so games like wow were you are buying these expansions. Also if it cost less they can get mroe people to sub to there game and then they are playing multiple games some might even have more than 1 wow account.
The Arcade Corner
The Daily Exposition
I think your right, TOR is an MMO, a very poorly designed one, but an MMO just the same. The fact that players can get on a server with many others almost makes it an MMO. However, a MMORPG? TOR is probably not as they pretty much removed all the RP factor and the living in a virtual world out if it in favor of linear story that abruptly ends at end-game, pretty much like a single player console game does. This is why, I would imagine, that some people call TOR not even an MMO.
Because I played SWG for so long, I still look at the TOR forums about once per/week. Hoping that BioWare will either get rid of these NGE devs, they will allow the other devs some creativity with design, or these guys will have an epiphany of where they went wrong and start to fix it. When SWG closed, there were some posters over on the SOE forums that claimed that TOR would fall straight on it's face, it's failure would be the absolute best advertisment for interest in SWG that could ever be, and that SOE/SWG would benefit greatly in the process. Sad to say that I pretty much believe they could of been correct in their assumption. SOE may have indeed missed an opportunity here. I've read posts over on the TOR forums that state, they'd never played SWG but the features that are discussed would of caused them to sub, if the game was still up.
For the poster that asked why so much TOR in this thread? The OP originaly posted this thread in the TOR sub-forums and a MMORPG.com mod moved it over here.
I don't believe they're trolls, I think they're just delusional.
No-more-subs, thankyouverymuch. I'm through with that model.
I've never understood this mindset. You do realize that servers, maintenance and updates aren't free? F2P models usually end up costing more unless you're immune to grind-annoyance, and B2P models just release expansions quickly enough to cover cost. In all of the above you're still paying roughly the same amount over time, so what exactly is so wrong about subs?
Yes, I know exactly how much servers, maintenance and everything costs. It's a lot less than you think. I know how much F2P and B2P costs. No, it does not end up costing more (unless you chose some spectacularly badly-made game and for some reason stick with it). No, I don't play roughly the same amount over time. Listen, I've played P2P and F2P for many, many years; I know what they are and what I like.
What's wrong about subs: the need to artificially expand player time spent in the game, to keep players playing for months and paying subs for months, leads to introduction of "time sinks" and automatically generated content (the most annoying of which for me is trash mobs) and turns the game, the "fun", into a chore, through which you have to suffer to "get something". Like runnign through the zone fighting useless trash mobs back and forth, back and forth... Like suffering through endless raids to get some piece of gear you need for another series of endless raids...
No. I will not have it. Never again.
Second problem: I'm feeling restricted in my playing habits. If I play 4 hours in a month, and I pay $15 for it, I can't justify it for myself (no, "it's just $15" doesn't cut it for me. I don't like waste money, any amount). It annoys me and destroys my enjoyment. I feel pressured. I will not be pressured when I'm trying to enjoy myself.
Thus, no more subs.
What's the last sub game that you played with excellent customer service? That had active GMs, or even GM led live events? What's the last MMO you subbed to that had monthly content updates for that fee? Or weekly content or any worthwhile content that didn't come in the form of a expansion download or disk that you had to "cash shop" for anyway?
That's what's wrong with subs. People aren't getting their money worth.
a yo ho ho
You do realize that a MAJORITY of F2P MMO players never pay? And that the few "whales" are subsidizing everyone?
It is FREE for most. And there are so many F2P MMOs out there that you can easily just play the ones don't annoy you. I found many that are fun and FREE.
My leisure time is a more scarce and valuable commodity for me than cash. If a game is enjoyable enough for me to play, I'm happy to spend $15/month on it. If it's not enjoyable, I won't waste my scarce leisure time on it even if it is free.
I voted for your lowest price offered but actually I would only pay $3.00 a month if given a choice. But I would pay it gladly! I would also be okay with $3 mo plus cash shop pets. Mounts should be many and wide variety at very low cost game money but npc's from different zones should sell different mounts so you have a reason to explore. You should also have no limit on the number of pets/mounts you can own. Next, npc's should not sell ANYTHING ELSE!!!!!! Everything else in a game should be crafted. EVERYTHING CRAFTED. Finally, for this to work the auction house would have to have a 3 digit limit so no one could sell anything for more than $999 in game money max. This AH would have to employ the methods I saw in Forsaken World where gold sellers or whoever are allowed to trade irl money for game money in game and versa. Keeps gold sellers out of chat. Works perfect.
PS
I forgot to mention nothing in the game is "bound" or is on a time limit (except maybe holiday event items).
Whatever the monthy sub fee is it doesnt really matter, its the gameplay.