I have to agree, I play quite a few of the games on your list and have spent about the same amounts or less than you. I know there are people that pay a lot more, but there are also people that don't pay at all.
I also have subs to FF14 and ESO and while the games themselves are great, the game tax (sub) really pisses me off. Its not like either of those two games are substantially better than many other mmos (f2p or b2p), and they actually are not better than some single player rpgs like DAI that I only payed for once.
The only arguments I have seen for justifying a sub are that the money is spent developing the game, keeping the servers up, providing support, and that it keeps the riff-raff out. Its nice to see that FF14 and ESO actually seem to be using the sub money for such ends, but as far as I can see you could achieve the same thing with a box price, cosmetics/services cash shop, and paid dlc/expansions released periodically. How is that not better for consumers than having to pay a sub for every game you are interested in playing?
I AMAZES me that people tolerate Blizzard charging them a sub and making them pay nearly the price of a new game for their expansions (as well as having a cash shop etc). Its like daylight robbery, and people actually defend it! Every subscriber is basically paying them the price of a whole new game every four months and they get to sell any substantial content updates on top of that. Its like they are releasing a million unit selling new game every four months or so with a fraction of the development costs it would take to make a new game.
It costs a lot of money to develop and maintain these things, seemingly more than single player games.
The assassin's creed franchise and The Crew disagrees with you.
Game companies use "online" to turn down on pirating. I am quite certain that it pays out well.
Oh btw, I still play FIFA 12 Ultimate Team. Although frankly I enjoy FIFA 15 more, that's beside the fact. Servers are up there, and I got FIFA 12 dirt cheap from G2A few years ago.
Subscriptions are a lie.
The only companies that would use a sub are companies that are not certain that they would deliver worthy content (one that people will buy eventually, outside the base game)
Face it, even the beloved FFXIV is going charge you for the expack. Why pay sub at all <o>
TESO will probably charge for expack as well
What have they delivered that would justify a sub? Answer is, not enough.
I realize servers and salaries must be payed, bonuses too. But they have to be earned.
Most P2P games on the market today, as of this writing, fail to accomplish that. Plain and simple.
P.S: Just to put things in perspective - 4 months of sub should give you as much content as Dragon Age: Inquisition. Because in 4 months you'd have spent ~60$, which is the price of a game that will offer you at least 100 hours of unique content.
How many P2P games have released 100 hours of content in the past 4 months?
You can keep your fallacies as long as you want ... just dont spam public boards with your brainwashed opinion.
Oh, almost forgot. Subscription doesn't mean quality. Plenty of examples.
Recently, I have seen many people in game and on various sites complain about paying a subscription fee. They describe they feel like they are being forced to play the game just to get their sub time worth. Also with many games doing the whole "free to play and cash shop" combo many developers see lots of profit in that. Let's not forget the B2P without a sub and a cashshop. (Looking at Guild Wars 2 which is really doing good as well.) Heck, even some games like SWTOR converted from sub based only to a freemium model with a cash shop and they make a good profit off of it as well.
Since WOW is really the only game that has been subscription based and a huge success over these past 10 years. (Also FFXIV. Over 2 million subs.) That's really only a whopping two games. I have a feeling that subs will be an even lesser option as the MMO genre continues forward.
So my question to you is should subscriptions remain or go away completely?
FFXIV does not have 2 million subs, it barely has 500k.
I think people have an idea that it's sub or nothing. Sub is seem by most companies as a way to make people buy a box and get guaranteed monthly income while the game is still new. F2p is seen by most companies as a way to reach another audience when box sales have been exausted and subs are no longer as good as a newly launched title manage to maintain.
The truth is that the only difference between a p2p title and a f2p title is a couple of years.
Why do westerners always think there are only three MMO business models?
Subs
B2P
F2P
The Asians have been using buy game time for years and the western MMO businesses are terrified we learn about that option.
We have time cards! Nope... that's not buy time. You buy 40 hours, you play 6 hours on the weekend, you have 34 left. Not til the end of the month, period. You have 34 hours left to play. It doesn't tick down if you're not in the game. It's about the same as a monthly subscription costs, but you don't lose it at the end of the month.
[culturally arrogant sarcasm]
But then the west knows everything about MMO economics already.... what can they teach us?
[/culturally arrogant sarcasm]
Maybe you should explore why that model works. You don't think people have tried making game cafe's and such. They all fail miserably. They're popular in asia because most people can't afford to buy their own hardware, + internet access, +cost of buying game,etc etc. It has just about squat to do with anything else. There's a reason thats the predominant method of playing games in poor/third world countries.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Originally posted by Scot P2P is the only payment system that was consistent with fair gaming ethos, only if you want gaming to become a online casino would I think it is a good idea we see an end to P2P.
I need to find a slow clap meme. Well said, Scot!
How soon we forget... P2P has had both civil lawsuits, as well as government intervention due to it unfairness. If you cant remember/find any of this, then you really are not trying, and no matter what facts I bring up, it wont change your mind. (This is like calling Enron the only ethical energy company).
Originally posted by Scot P2P is the only payment system that was consistent with fair gaming ethos, only if you want gaming to become a online casino would I think it is a good idea we see an end to P2P.
I need to find a slow clap meme. Well said, Scot!
How soon we forget... P2P has had both civil lawsuits, as well as government intervention due to it unfairness. If you cant remember/find any of this, then you really are not trying, and no matter what facts I bring up, it wont change your mind. (This is like calling Enron the only ethical energy company).
Anyone can file a civil suit for any reason. Doesn't mean it's valid.
GTA Online does not require a subscription either way o.o" Beside the networking fee from each console brand. Which Rockstar and Take-Two get no share from. I think you missed his point.
Recently, I have seen many people in game and on various sites complain about paying a subscription fee. They describe they feel like they are being forced to play the game just to get their sub time worth. Also with many games doing the whole "free to play and cash shop" combo many developers see lots of profit in that. Let's not forget the B2P without a sub and a cashshop. (Looking at Guild Wars 2 which is really doing good as well.) Heck, even some games like SWTOR converted from sub based only to a freemium model with a cash shop and they make a good profit off of it as well.
Since WOW is really the only game that has been subscription based and a huge success over these past 10 years. (Also FFXIV. Over 2 million subs.) That's really only a whopping two games. I have a feeling that subs will be an even lesser option as the MMO genre continues forward.
So my question to you is should subscriptions remain or go away completely?
OMG..I hope not! F2P is killing any fun or interest in mature minded players who are looking for a game not full of F2P douchebags or sense of entitled babies. Hackers,bots and cheaters are also free to destroy any game offering up F2P. Why don't devs see this as a big negative?
Surely, almost anyone can afford a paltry $15/month on full content games with little to no ingame money gouging stores?
I hope the gaming world comes to their senses and realizes the destruction to gaming is imminent while using the F2P(pay to win) model.
*sigh*, really? Ok, so if I can log onto WoW for an hour, just an hour, 1 single minuscule hour and not hear the word @nal, I would be seriously impressed. If this is the level of maturity you're talking about in P2P games then, yeah, P2P games are definitely the most mature.
Furthermore, I just received a fun suspension message from Blizz yesterday which outlined some very "mature" behaviour. Dad's suspension == 3 hours, my son, on the other hand, got Dad's Ban Hammer for the time being. No date for re-instatement as of yet.
I would suggest that the maturity of games in general has been on the decline for years now, it's not a product of the payment model, but a product of the Internet. You know, the same Internet that promotes things like harassment because the government isn't ballsy enough, yet, to actually hold people accountable for things they say and do online.
My choice would be the first 20 levels or 20 hours gameplay for free and then if you want to continue you pay a sub. That way you can see whether you like a game before you start paying for it. If the game doesn't have you hooked by then you will never enjoy it.
Originally posted by Scot P2P is the only payment system that was consistent with fair gaming ethos, only if you want gaming to become a online casino would I think it is a good idea we see an end to P2P.
I need to find a slow clap meme. Well said, Scot!
How soon we forget... P2P has had both civil lawsuits, as well as government intervention due to it unfairness. If you cant remember/find any of this, then you really are not trying, and no matter what facts I bring up, it wont change your mind. (This is like calling Enron the only ethical energy company).
Anyone can file a civil suit for any reason. Doesn't mean it's valid.
GTA Online does not require a subscription either way o.o" Beside the networking fee from each console brand. Which Rockstar and Take-Two get no share from. I think you missed his point.
I didn't miss the point.
It's just that for the amount of time I searched google......or would continue to do so before determining that it's a waste of my time to continue, I could not find an example of an MMO being sued over it's P2P business model.
Edit.....I found one.......
Someone sued Square Enix for......get this.........FIVE MILLION claiming FF11 didn't properly disclose their fee structure.
Originally posted by Scot P2P is the only payment system that was consistent with fair gaming ethos, only if you want gaming to become a online casino would I think it is a good idea we see an end to P2P.
I need to find a slow clap meme. Well said, Scot!
How soon we forget... P2P has had both civil lawsuits, as well as government intervention due to it unfairness. If you cant remember/find any of this, then you really are not trying, and no matter what facts I bring up, it wont change your mind. (This is like calling Enron the only ethical energy company).
Anyone can file a civil suit for any reason. Doesn't mean it's valid.
GTA Online does not require a subscription either way o.o" Beside the networking fee from each console brand. Which Rockstar and Take-Two get no share from. I think you missed his point.
I didn't miss the point.
It's just that for the amount of time I searched google......or would continue to do so before determining that it's a waste of my time to continue, I could not find an example of an MMO being sued over it's P2P business model.
Edit.....I found one.......
Someone sued Square Enix for......get this.........FIVE MILLION claiming FF11 didn't properly disclose their fee structure.
No, that's not a frivolous law suit.
Ok. I understand your confusion. No one sues because companies charge money (except frivolous suits). However, there are issues of fraud, theft, illegal gambling, and all sorts of misbehavior that have drawn both public and private reaction. Your choice to not look for any of this is what I was referring too. It is like referring to Hannibal Lector as a great chef, and stating that you cant find any flaws in his cooking technique.
Ok, to be fair, in the case I mentioned above, assuming the planiff has a valid point and i didn't search far enough in, late fees on an MMO subscription is Bullshit.
The assassin's creed franchise and The Crew disagrees with you.
Oh, almost forgot. Subscription doesn't mean quality. Plenty of examples.
A, if you are going make a rebuttal then have one. The first Assasin's creed cost 24 million to make. How much did the others cost? I bet less than AAA mmo's of the same time period? No? Yes? I can pull up the skyrim example which does agree with me. It shows that it cost less to develop than a AAA mmo; less than the 100 million. Making back its development cost and then some by far.
so go ahead, finish your thought.
B, I never said subscription means quality just as single player or f2p doesn't mean quality or lack thereof. Not sure why you put that there.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Why do westerners always think there are only three MMO business models?
Subs
B2P
F2P
The Asians have been using buy game time for years and the western MMO businesses are terrified we learn about that option.
We have time cards! Nope... that's not buy time. You buy 40 hours, you play 6 hours on the weekend, you have 34 left. Not til the end of the month, period. You have 34 hours left to play. It doesn't tick down if you're not in the game. It's about the same as a monthly subscription costs, but you don't lose it at the end of the month.
[culturally arrogant sarcasm]
But then the west knows everything about MMO economics already.... what can they teach us?
[/culturally arrogant sarcasm]
Maybe you should explore why that model works. You don't think people have tried making game cafe's and such. They all fail miserably. They're popular in asia because most people can't afford to buy their own hardware, + internet access, +cost of buying game,etc etc. It has just about squat to do with anything else. There's a reason thats the predominant method of playing games in poor/third world countries.
You can't see adopting the buy time model for home use? Without having to go to an internet/gaming cafe? Really? Is that blindspot all that is stopping us from another more dynamic payment method for westerners?
No, I think it's far more likely that western MMO companies are happy receiving $15 a month for people not logging in, and allowing them to only pay for the time they are actually gaming (which makes sense) is not high on their list of priorities. Internet cafes has nothing to do with their thinking. (though I am sure they will bring it up to obfuscate the issue in an attempt to turn unaware consumers against it before its given a chance.)
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire: Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
Originally posted by bcbully Why do people consider b2p any different than f2p? Sure there is a difference for the publisher and developer in that they get more money by making you pay a digital box cost for a free to play game. That money is not reinvested into the game anymore than a regular old f2p. For the player, it's a scam imo.
What a scam it must be to pay 15USD every month and 60 USD for mediocre DLC for a regular free to play game. Isn't it?
If a p2p game's expansion is nothing more than a DLC you should not buy it. By charging full box cost you should recieve an entire game with atleast as much content as the original.
From the two b2p games on the market GW2, and the Secret world, one hasn't even offered a DLC and still has no customer service phone support despite selling nearly 7 million boxes. Neither haven hinted at an expansion. Even Swtor as a full f2p/freemium has had expansions.
Three points:
1. I think it is a fair point that if "DLC" costs "about as much" as a full box cost then people should expect "about a full game". Same applies to a sub based games; if the monthly sub is 25%" (say) of the full box cost then they should expect "about" 25%" of the original content every month.
2. Whether any money is re-invested in the game comes down to the developer / company. WoW's 14 month content holiday is only one example. As far as being a scam purchasing a b2p game is no more of a scam than purchasing a car or a loaf of bread; there is a product and there is a price. Same can be said of sub based games as well by the way. Nothing dictates that a company has to re-invest the money that we pay however that money is paid.
3.TSW isn't a "b2p" game. May look the same on the surface today but the financial planning behind the game will have been different, the marketing strategy they used, the resource models (including customer support) etc. will all have been different. And one result is that GW2, like GW1, never planned to have "dedicated" customer support; TSW did. SWTOR's expansions btw have been paid DLC - relatively minor DLC as well - see your first point!
The assassin's creed franchise and The Crew disagrees with you.
Oh, almost forgot. Subscription doesn't mean quality. Plenty of examples.
A, if you are going make a rebuttal then have one. The first Assasin's creed cost 24 million to make. How much did the others cost? I bet less than AAA mmo's of the same time period? No? Yes? I can pull up the skyrim example which does agree with me. It shows that it cost less to develop than a AAA mmo; less than the 100 million. Making back its development cost and then some by far.
so go ahead, finish your thought.
B, I never said subscription means quality just as single player or f2p doesn't mean quality or lack thereof. Not sure why you put that there.
And how much do you think making a MMO costs? Some people started saying that Zenimax dropped like 200 mil for theirs, even if that's true, that's huge waste of money. But hey, at least you have big screen actors voicing it! xD Probably most of the budget went there. Who cares...
Skyrim is close to the 100 mil mark. But um yeah .. MMOs are not that expensive. Mostly because most of MMO gameplay consists of repetitive features. The good old gear treadmill or as it is better known carrot on a stick, rehashing and rehashing old content. Slapping new label on it and call it an expansion. And people lose their mind
Ok you seem reasonable. And you deal with facts, I like that! How many MMOs you know and you have absolute facts that they went over the 100 mil mark? Star Citizen? Its not even a MMO. Idk if we count GTA V as single player or MMO (given it has MMO aspect).
Seriously, 100 mil is a whole lot of money. And prices of housing a MMO go lower each and every year.
I honestly don't know how much the AC franchise costs to make, but what I know is that they (after bortherhood) just like GTA V have a multiplayer aspect that until this day are up and running buttery smooth without requiring a subscription.
My post wasn't addressed just toward you mate. From the majority of people posting in this thread I can clearly see that people confuse subscription with quality.
It shows that TERA's development was ~50 mil. You can clearly see SP games for the same period going for a lot more.
My bottom line is that it is not easy to develop any kind of game. (AAA) Whether it has multiplayer element or not adds little to the cost for a major game studio.
Good games pay for their development in the first week. Everything after is a profit.
Games seem to have a solid price of ~60$ for the past couple of years. Including MMOs. Slapping a rental fee on those $60 is simply wrong.
If bunch of single player games can successfully pull an online world with no cash shop and no subscription, I honestly don't see a reason to pay a sub to someone and not feel cheated.
Subs were a viable option 1999-2007 or so, but in 2014 no way......Its pretty much just throwing money away at this point.....I dont even consider any MMOs that use a sub fee anymore, and the list of free games available is in the hundereds.......On the other hand though, most gamers and their money are easily parted.....
Games seem to have a solid price of ~60$ for the past couple of years. Including MMOs. Slapping a rental fee on those $60 is simply wrong.
If bunch of single player games can successfully pull an online world with no cash shop and no subscription, I honestly don't see a reason to pay a sub to someone and not feel cheated.
Single player games would not use as many packets on the internet if they connected at all. MMO games have to use the server to authenticate actions affecting inventory, movement, and for some the physics of the game itself etc. - anything "server-side" in the game isn't happening on your computers but theirs. This requires internet usage to send back the results of the outcome. Not just to discuss the actions that your character makes but those around you. The more populated the area you are in, either the frequency will increase or the data sent to tell you what all the other players around you are doing in unison with yourself. You need to know too what those players are wearing to know how to show them on the screen.
Have you ever priced a high speed internet line like OC? They start around 30-50k monthly. So imagine that you choose a 30k plan - at 15 a month you need to have 2k subs just to cover your internet cost. This doesn't count electricity for the servers or those maintaining them or on call for it. In a small setup your co-location would cover the bandwidth but they charge more than they pay, you can assure yourself they want a profit too for their redundant building structures. One of our co-locations has redundancy even up to nuclear attack along with biometrics on the doors, real sci-fi procedures and setups with generators out the wazoo and it isn't free.
All those packets need to be processed before sent and that creates more server load. Use something more often and it will wear out faster so now you have to replace hardware more often. Just having more hardware running can be problematic. There are rays from space that aren't all taken out from our atmosphere. These cosmic rays are stronger in space appearing in the eyeballs of astronauts while trying to sleep - they went right through the ship and through their eyelids causing splashes of light instead of pure darkness. Some computer specialists blame them on why hard drives fail or lose data sometimes. I tend to believe this because twice when we had hard drive problems as a web hosting company we had multiple drives fail in near unison. All it takes is one bit to flip on a platter and you've got corruption. Run more hardware and the chances of bit flipping are more prevalent especially if you stack your drives which is common in racks but this could just be superstition for me. Some people even say RAM is affected and that ECC isn't a certain panacea.
Here's some data on stackexchange talking about it. Stack Exchange is where developers talk to other devs and answer questions back and forth. They have some good posts here about how they are different from single player games in lots of areas.
I see valid reasons to pay extra for an MMO versus a single player game. If nothing else, we know that data costs money to pass between both sets of computers without even thinking about the extra work involved in the programming itself or the technical support of finding out why someone can't use the server due to their ISP outages somewhere in the line. That's usually a big topic in tech forums for MMOs, going through the hops to see where things are failing and those are real people talking to you. They don't look like automated bots.
And yet GW2 manages to do all this complex and expensive stuff for just the box price and a cosmetics shop. It hasn't even charged for new content (yet). So what was the reason for a sub again?
And yet GW2 manages to do all this complex and expensive stuff for just the box price and a cosmetics shop. It hasn't even charged for new content (yet). So what was the reason for a sub again?
They have a item cash shop similar to F2P games and they do sell gold for $ as well.
-----------------------------------------
Real reason for subscription would be to achieve as close to RMT free (both offical and unoffical one) enviroment as possible to provide game enviroment that is as separated from real life enviroment as possible to make game enviroment both a level playing field and about an gaming only.
That is main purpose and worth of paying a subscription for an mmorpg and not paying for server maintenance&bandwidth.
Sadly that thing is not valued by gamers and not pursued by companies. (WoW&EVE included).
And yet GW2 manages to do all this complex and expensive stuff for just the box price and a cosmetics shop. It hasn't even charged for new content (yet). So what was the reason for a sub again?
They have a item cash shop similar to F2P games and they do sell gold for $ as well.
-----------------------------------------
Real reason for subscription would be to achieve as close to RMT free (both offical and unoffical one) enviroment as possible to provide game enviroment that is as separated from real life enviroment as possible to make game enviroment both a level playing field and about an gaming only.
That is main purpose and worth of paying a subscription for an mmorpg and not paying for server maintenance&bandwidth.
Sadly that thing is not valued by gamers and not pursued by companies. (WoW&EVE included).
GW2 is set up so players have a completely level playing environment where it counts (spvp) and limits the impact from buying power on other aspects of the game as it doesn't have OP gear that is nearly impossible to obtain unless you buy it or grind for a really long time (which is what happens in many f2p games).
I think players do value a level playing field, and there are several competitive online games that are extremely popular that offer that and are f2p. I don't think a sub protects you (any more) from the issue you mentioned, indeed some games are starting to charge a sub for access to the full features of a game and have aggressive p2w features.
Consider that the gap between mmos and single player games is blurring as well, as more games include online components, and with systems like psn providing a networking framework for games. Destiny seems a good example of a hybrid single player/mmo that charges a box price and as far as I know doesn't sell power. I don't think a sub is the answer any more.
And yet GW2 manages to do all this complex and expensive stuff for just the box price and a cosmetics shop. It hasn't even charged for new content (yet). So what was the reason for a sub again?
They have a item cash shop similar to F2P games and they do sell gold for $ as well.
-----------------------------------------
Real reason for subscription would be to achieve as close to RMT free (both offical and unoffical one) enviroment as possible to provide game enviroment that is as separated from real life enviroment as possible to make game enviroment both a level playing field and about an gaming only.
That is main purpose and worth of paying a subscription for an mmorpg and not paying for server maintenance&bandwidth.
Sadly that thing is not valued by gamers and not pursued by companies. (WoW&EVE included).
GW2 is set up so players have a completely level playing environment where it counts (spvp) and limits the impact from buying power on other aspects of the game as it doesn't have OP gear that is nearly impossible to obtain unless you buy it or grind for a really long time (which is what happens in many f2p games).
I think players do value a level playing field, and there are several competitive online games that are extremely popular that offer that and are f2p. I don't think a sub protects you (any more) from the issue you mentioned, indeed some games are starting to charge a sub for access to the full features of a game and have aggressive p2w features.
Consider that the gap between mmos and single player games is blurring as well, as more games include online components, and with systems like psn providing a networking framework for games. Destiny seems a good example of a hybrid single player/mmo that charges a box price and as far as I know doesn't sell power. I don't think a sub is the answer any more.
Well. "Where is counts" is relative.
Anyway. I am not planning to play games with microtransactions any more, especially mmorpgs. Even if that means not playing vast quantities of available games at all. I find even 'tame' cash shop such as in Path of Exile, (been there played them would not play again) unbearable.
I don't really care about those hugely popular microtransaction based online games such as LoL or World of Tanks or dozens other either. I don't play them.
If it comes to that I will stop playing video games completly. I just don't accept whole concept of RMT, so it is kinda impossible for me to accept any kind of cash shop.
Games seem to have a solid price of ~60$ for the past couple of years. Including MMOs. Slapping a rental fee on those $60 is simply wrong.
If bunch of single player games can successfully pull an online world with no cash shop and no subscription, I honestly don't see a reason to pay a sub to someone and not feel cheated.
Single player games would not use as many packets on the internet if they connected at all. MMO games have to use the server to authenticate actions affecting inventory, movement, and for some the physics of the game itself etc. - anything "server-side" in the game isn't happening on your computers but theirs. This requires internet usage to send back the results of the outcome. Not just to discuss the actions that your character makes but those around you. The more populated the area you are in, either the frequency will increase or the data sent to tell you what all the other players around you are doing in unison with yourself. You need to know too what those players are wearing to know how to show them on the screen.
Have you ever priced a high speed internet line like OC? They start around 30-50k monthly. So imagine that you choose a 30k plan - at 15 a month you need to have 2k subs just to cover your internet cost. This doesn't count electricity for the servers or those maintaining them or on call for it. In a small setup your co-location would cover the bandwidth but they charge more than they pay, you can assure yourself they want a profit too for their redundant building structures. One of our co-locations has redundancy even up to nuclear attack along with biometrics on the doors, real sci-fi procedures and setups with generators out the wazoo and it isn't free.
All those packets need to be processed before sent and that creates more server load. Use something more often and it will wear out faster so now you have to replace hardware more often. Just having more hardware running can be problematic. There are rays from space that aren't all taken out from our atmosphere. These cosmic rays are stronger in space appearing in the eyeballs of astronauts while trying to sleep - they went right through the ship and through their eyelids causing splashes of light instead of pure darkness. Some computer specialists blame them on why hard drives fail or lose data sometimes. I tend to believe this because twice when we had hard drive problems as a web hosting company we had multiple drives fail in near unison. All it takes is one bit to flip on a platter and you've got corruption. Run more hardware and the chances of bit flipping are more prevalent especially if you stack your drives which is common in racks but this could just be superstition for me. Some people even say RAM is affected and that ECC isn't a certain panacea.
Here's some data on stackexchange talking about it. Stack Exchange is where developers talk to other devs and answer questions back and forth. They have some good posts here about how they are different from single player games in lots of areas.
I see valid reasons to pay extra for an MMO versus a single player game. If nothing else, we know that data costs money to pass between both sets of computers without even thinking about the extra work involved in the programming itself or the technical support of finding out why someone can't use the server due to their ISP outages somewhere in the line. That's usually a big topic in tech forums for MMOs, going through the hops to see where things are failing and those are real people talking to you. They don't look like automated bots.
Whatever you are smoking, I want some of it.
Hard drive failure is mitigated long ago. People invented RAID arrays. A whole bunch of them
RAM is affected yes. Do you know how RAM is fixed? Cut the power for a second.
Idk how you do it in your webhosting company, but datacenters tend to scale on few hundred of servers, and one going down is not really a thing.
Infact, did you know that hard drives fail so often, people invented this thing called hotswap. And real server mainframes support CPU and RAM hotplugging. Bet you didn't know that :P
Also, MMO traffic is not that huge. Packets are a lot, but they are only few bytes in length. I've played games on metered traffic and I've created servers. I know the traffic requirements you've listed are a bit exaggerated.
Also do you honestly believe that game studio data centers have biometric scanners? Because I'm pretty sure that they aren't. It's a game server. I'm fairly certain they have more centralized systems outside the gaming datacenter for payments and personal information housing. For which you can even rent a datacenter you know.
Networking costs in particular. I like where they state that the price of a mbps per month has went down from 100$ to just 5$. Do the maths onwards. Or strip 2 digits from your approx pricing. Before you call me a liar, this is a Microsoft Research. I would agree with those guys on everything. Sue me.
All in all, the network equipment is more expensive than the bandwidth it produces. Also keep in mind that this is a cloud computing datacenter. Those are beefed up to house services for millions of people, all day, everyday. (If you do not believe that last statement, pull some public Amazon AWS data)
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The article you've given is, first and foremost, 4 year old. Second of all, you can't compare amateurs to professionals. Many posts in your thread assume the team is inexperienced. My opinion is, there is no AAA studio without experienced dev teams.
Scroll down until you see TERA Online. 50 mil. Had a sub.
GTA V - 265 mil to make. Has MMO aspect. Has no sub.
Back when TERA released, it was one of the most anticipated MMOs. With a lot of people playing. It is F2P for the past couple of years. Just released an expack.
Guild Wars 2 is sitting on ~50 mil production cost as well (sadly not in the link i posted above, also it is a rumour)
All those prices most likely include the building/renting data centers.
"If nothing else, we know that data costs money to pass between both sets of computers" - This is why you pay to your ISP.
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If your company really pays $30k, I'd look at another provider really. What amount of traffic does this 30k get you?
Justify the sub all you want. There are far more expensive games than MMOs, with more players than MMOs (E.g. League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone) and they do not require a subscription fee. Period.
P.S: Let's not compare indy games to MMOs. Compare AAA titles to AAA MMOs. And you'll see your argument falling flat on its face,.
Comments
The assassin's creed franchise and The Crew disagrees with you.
Game companies use "online" to turn down on pirating. I am quite certain that it pays out well.
Oh btw, I still play FIFA 12 Ultimate Team. Although frankly I enjoy FIFA 15 more, that's beside the fact. Servers are up there, and I got FIFA 12 dirt cheap from G2A few years ago.
Subscriptions are a lie.
The only companies that would use a sub are companies that are not certain that they would deliver worthy content (one that people will buy eventually, outside the base game)
Face it, even the beloved FFXIV is going charge you for the expack. Why pay sub at all <o>
TESO will probably charge for expack as well
What have they delivered that would justify a sub? Answer is, not enough.
I realize servers and salaries must be payed, bonuses too. But they have to be earned.
Most P2P games on the market today, as of this writing, fail to accomplish that. Plain and simple.
P.S: Just to put things in perspective - 4 months of sub should give you as much content as Dragon Age: Inquisition. Because in 4 months you'd have spent ~60$, which is the price of a game that will offer you at least 100 hours of unique content.
How many P2P games have released 100 hours of content in the past 4 months?
You can keep your fallacies as long as you want ... just dont spam public boards with your brainwashed opinion.
Oh, almost forgot. Subscription doesn't mean quality. Plenty of examples.
FFXIV does not have 2 million subs, it barely has 500k.
I think people have an idea that it's sub or nothing. Sub is seem by most companies as a way to make people buy a box and get guaranteed monthly income while the game is still new. F2p is seen by most companies as a way to reach another audience when box sales have been exausted and subs are no longer as good as a newly launched title manage to maintain.
The truth is that the only difference between a p2p title and a f2p title is a couple of years.
Maybe you should explore why that model works. You don't think people have tried making game cafe's and such. They all fail miserably. They're popular in asia because most people can't afford to buy their own hardware, + internet access, +cost of buying game,etc etc. It has just about squat to do with anything else. There's a reason thats the predominant method of playing games in poor/third world countries.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
http://www.joystiq.com/2014/01/30/gta-online-class-action-lawsuit-dismissed/
Anyone can file a civil suit for any reason. Doesn't mean it's valid.
GTA Online does not require a subscription either way o.o" Beside the networking fee from each console brand. Which Rockstar and Take-Two get no share from. I think you missed his point.
Can I have your stuff :U
*sigh*, really? Ok, so if I can log onto WoW for an hour, just an hour, 1 single minuscule hour and not hear the word @nal, I would be seriously impressed. If this is the level of maturity you're talking about in P2P games then, yeah, P2P games are definitely the most mature.
Furthermore, I just received a fun suspension message from Blizz yesterday which outlined some very "mature" behaviour. Dad's suspension == 3 hours, my son, on the other hand, got Dad's Ban Hammer for the time being. No date for re-instatement as of yet.
I would suggest that the maturity of games in general has been on the decline for years now, it's not a product of the payment model, but a product of the Internet. You know, the same Internet that promotes things like harassment because the government isn't ballsy enough, yet, to actually hold people accountable for things they say and do online.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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no you cannot .. my kids have first dip on my mmo stuff.
I didn't miss the point.
It's just that for the amount of time I searched google......or would continue to do so before determining that it's a waste of my time to continue, I could not find an example of an MMO being sued over it's P2P business model.
Edit.....I found one.......
Someone sued Square Enix for......get this.........FIVE MILLION claiming FF11 didn't properly disclose their fee structure.
No, that's not a frivolous law suit.
Ok. I understand your confusion. No one sues because companies charge money (except frivolous suits). However, there are issues of fraud, theft, illegal gambling, and all sorts of misbehavior that have drawn both public and private reaction. Your choice to not look for any of this is what I was referring too. It is like referring to Hannibal Lector as a great chef, and stating that you cant find any flaws in his cooking technique.
Ok, to be fair, in the case I mentioned above, assuming the planiff has a valid point and i didn't search far enough in, late fees on an MMO subscription is Bullshit.
That said, I doubt she suffered 5M in damages.
A, if you are going make a rebuttal then have one. The first Assasin's creed cost 24 million to make. How much did the others cost? I bet less than AAA mmo's of the same time period? No? Yes? I can pull up the skyrim example which does agree with me. It shows that it cost less to develop than a AAA mmo; less than the 100 million. Making back its development cost and then some by far.
so go ahead, finish your thought.
B, I never said subscription means quality just as single player or f2p doesn't mean quality or lack thereof. Not sure why you put that there.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
You can't see adopting the buy time model for home use? Without having to go to an internet/gaming cafe? Really? Is that blindspot all that is stopping us from another more dynamic payment method for westerners?
No, I think it's far more likely that western MMO companies are happy receiving $15 a month for people not logging in, and allowing them to only pay for the time they are actually gaming (which makes sense) is not high on their list of priorities. Internet cafes has nothing to do with their thinking. (though I am sure they will bring it up to obfuscate the issue in an attempt to turn unaware consumers against it before its given a chance.)
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
Three points:
1. I think it is a fair point that if "DLC" costs "about as much" as a full box cost then people should expect "about a full game". Same applies to a sub based games; if the monthly sub is 25%" (say) of the full box cost then they should expect "about" 25%" of the original content every month.
2. Whether any money is re-invested in the game comes down to the developer / company. WoW's 14 month content holiday is only one example. As far as being a scam purchasing a b2p game is no more of a scam than purchasing a car or a loaf of bread; there is a product and there is a price. Same can be said of sub based games as well by the way. Nothing dictates that a company has to re-invest the money that we pay however that money is paid.
3.TSW isn't a "b2p" game. May look the same on the surface today but the financial planning behind the game will have been different, the marketing strategy they used, the resource models (including customer support) etc. will all have been different. And one result is that GW2, like GW1, never planned to have "dedicated" customer support; TSW did. SWTOR's expansions btw have been paid DLC - relatively minor DLC as well - see your first point!
And how much do you think making a MMO costs? Some people started saying that Zenimax dropped like 200 mil for theirs, even if that's true, that's huge waste of money. But hey, at least you have big screen actors voicing it! xD Probably most of the budget went there. Who cares...
Skyrim is close to the 100 mil mark. But um yeah .. MMOs are not that expensive. Mostly because most of MMO gameplay consists of repetitive features. The good old gear treadmill or as it is better known carrot on a stick, rehashing and rehashing old content. Slapping new label on it and call it an expansion. And people lose their mind
Ok you seem reasonable. And you deal with facts, I like that! How many MMOs you know and you have absolute facts that they went over the 100 mil mark? Star Citizen? Its not even a MMO. Idk if we count GTA V as single player or MMO (given it has MMO aspect).
Seriously, 100 mil is a whole lot of money. And prices of housing a MMO go lower each and every year.
I honestly don't know how much the AC franchise costs to make, but what I know is that they (after bortherhood) just like GTA V have a multiplayer aspect that until this day are up and running buttery smooth without requiring a subscription.
P.S: Probably this is an old article but http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_video_games
It shows that TERA's development was ~50 mil. You can clearly see SP games for the same period going for a lot more.
My bottom line is that it is not easy to develop any kind of game. (AAA) Whether it has multiplayer element or not adds little to the cost for a major game studio.
Good games pay for their development in the first week. Everything after is a profit.
Games seem to have a solid price of ~60$ for the past couple of years. Including MMOs. Slapping a rental fee on those $60 is simply wrong.
If bunch of single player games can successfully pull an online world with no cash shop and no subscription, I honestly don't see a reason to pay a sub to someone and not feel cheated.
And yet GW2 manages to do all this complex and expensive stuff for just the box price and a cosmetics shop. It hasn't even charged for new content (yet). So what was the reason for a sub again?
They have a item cash shop similar to F2P games and they do sell gold for $ as well.
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Real reason for subscription would be to achieve as close to RMT free (both offical and unoffical one) enviroment as possible to provide game enviroment that is as separated from real life enviroment as possible to make game enviroment both a level playing field and about an gaming only.
That is main purpose and worth of paying a subscription for an mmorpg and not paying for server maintenance&bandwidth.
Sadly that thing is not valued by gamers and not pursued by companies. (WoW&EVE included).
GW2 is set up so players have a completely level playing environment where it counts (spvp) and limits the impact from buying power on other aspects of the game as it doesn't have OP gear that is nearly impossible to obtain unless you buy it or grind for a really long time (which is what happens in many f2p games).
I think players do value a level playing field, and there are several competitive online games that are extremely popular that offer that and are f2p. I don't think a sub protects you (any more) from the issue you mentioned, indeed some games are starting to charge a sub for access to the full features of a game and have aggressive p2w features.
Consider that the gap between mmos and single player games is blurring as well, as more games include online components, and with systems like psn providing a networking framework for games. Destiny seems a good example of a hybrid single player/mmo that charges a box price and as far as I know doesn't sell power. I don't think a sub is the answer any more.
Well. "Where is counts" is relative.
Anyway. I am not planning to play games with microtransactions any more, especially mmorpgs. Even if that means not playing vast quantities of available games at all. I find even 'tame' cash shop such as in Path of Exile, (been there played them would not play again) unbearable.
I don't really care about those hugely popular microtransaction based online games such as LoL or World of Tanks or dozens other either. I don't play them.
If it comes to that I will stop playing video games completly. I just don't accept whole concept of RMT, so it is kinda impossible for me to accept any kind of cash shop.
Whatever you are smoking, I want some of it.
Hard drive failure is mitigated long ago. People invented RAID arrays. A whole bunch of them
RAM is affected yes. Do you know how RAM is fixed? Cut the power for a second.
Idk how you do it in your webhosting company, but datacenters tend to scale on few hundred of servers, and one going down is not really a thing.
Infact, did you know that hard drives fail so often, people invented this thing called hotswap. And real server mainframes support CPU and RAM hotplugging. Bet you didn't know that :P
Also, MMO traffic is not that huge. Packets are a lot, but they are only few bytes in length. I've played games on metered traffic and I've created servers. I know the traffic requirements you've listed are a bit exaggerated.
Also do you honestly believe that game studio data centers have biometric scanners? Because I'm pretty sure that they aren't. It's a game server. I'm fairly certain they have more centralized systems outside the gaming datacenter for payments and personal information housing. For which you can even rent a datacenter you know.
Also read this http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/dmaltz/papers/dc-costs-ccr-editorial.pdf
Networking costs in particular. I like where they state that the price of a mbps per month has went down from 100$ to just 5$. Do the maths onwards. Or strip 2 digits from your approx pricing. Before you call me a liar, this is a Microsoft Research. I would agree with those guys on everything. Sue me.
All in all, the network equipment is more expensive than the bandwidth it produces. Also keep in mind that this is a cloud computing datacenter. Those are beefed up to house services for millions of people, all day, everyday. (If you do not believe that last statement, pull some public Amazon AWS data)
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The article you've given is, first and foremost, 4 year old. Second of all, you can't compare amateurs to professionals. Many posts in your thread assume the team is inexperienced. My opinion is, there is no AAA studio without experienced dev teams.
Incase you missed it, here is a rather interesting link http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_video_games
Scroll down until you see TERA Online. 50 mil. Had a sub.
GTA V - 265 mil to make. Has MMO aspect. Has no sub.
Back when TERA released, it was one of the most anticipated MMOs. With a lot of people playing. It is F2P for the past couple of years. Just released an expack.
Guild Wars 2 is sitting on ~50 mil production cost as well (sadly not in the link i posted above, also it is a rumour)
All those prices most likely include the building/renting data centers.
"If nothing else, we know that data costs money to pass between both sets of computers" - This is why you pay to your ISP.
==========
If your company really pays $30k, I'd look at another provider really. What amount of traffic does this 30k get you?
Justify the sub all you want. There are far more expensive games than MMOs, with more players than MMOs (E.g. League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone) and they do not require a subscription fee. Period.
P.S: Let's not compare indy games to MMOs. Compare AAA titles to AAA MMOs. And you'll see your argument falling flat on its face,.