Some of us more careful with our money than to just toss it away at whatever tickles our fancy for the moment. This game doesn’t just cost $11/month unless you’re paying for the absolute basics.
Also, $11 a month adds up - compare it to other games that this is more similar to: Counter Strike (Free), Call of Duty ($40), Halo ($30), Halo 4 ($45), Freespace 2 ($10), Free Allegiance (Free), Battlefield 3 ($25), Independence War 2 ($3), X3 Terran conflict ($15). Games right on release tend to range from $50 to $90, sometimes going up to $120 for special editions.
Playing this game on license for a year is like buying a special edition of a game at release, and that doesn’t even get into the actual special editions for this game, nor the ships you can buy, nor the badges you can buy, nor the weapons and items you can buy. This is just the price you have to pay to grind faster and play with friends.
I’ve heard of people dropping $200+ dollars on this game already. That’s the whole point to this business model - you bring in large numbers of people and sell extras to those willing to pay for them, and doing it in a way that it doesn’t alienate your non-paying customers.
Unfortuantely, $11 a month does alienate people, particularly when it’s absolutely necessary for the grind and when it’s the only way to play with your friends.
Let’s say you buy the basic version of this game (Mercenary Pack) off steam and subscribe for 3 months - that’ll run you ~$50. As soon as your 3 months are up, that’s it. No more playing with friends. Let’s say you’re willing to stick with the game for about 2 years and will pay the entire time so that you can continue playing with your friends but don’t otherwise buy a single other thing in the game: $284
Buying a single ship can add another $15 on top of that. Couple badges’ll be another $5. If you went and bought everything you could possibly buy from this game and play it over 2 years, you’re probably looking at $400-$600.
It doesn’t seem like chump change when you add in all the potential costs. This is intentional, it’s psychological. You don’t look further than a license price or the very basic Free game with reduced functionality. Yet while you harp on about how cheap it is, you’ll go ahead and drop a hundred or two hundred dollars on it. That is essential to this business model, it’s why they give you a license when you start, it’s why it’s free to play - they hook you, and then they give you all these ‘inexpensive’ options to buy, and after $5 here, $20 there, $11 for the month suddenly you’re paying x2 or more than what you would if you’d bought the game at retail.
And even better, this game isn’t even finished! Perpetual beta so that any problems can be handwaved away as “It’s a beta, what do you expect?”.
This room of apologists can go on all they like about how those of us with enough braincells to rub together are “cheap”, but the reality is that we’re adding up what we get, for what we put in, and the balance is heavily out of our favour. To me, it’s just sad to see people so unwilling to fight for a more fair pricing balance and structure to the game and professionalism from the developer. Something like paying to play with friends isn’t fair to the free players, and changes like the subfaction loyalty gain reduction are things that shouldn’t be happening in a game that is being sold.
Finally someone like me who gets it, more articulated them me so thanks for that!
Well…this game doesn’t have a box fee, and I feel that even though it is beta, it’s more polished than many other games in released state. So, they need a small number of players willing to pay to support the game so that it can remain f2p. to the other 90%. Selling 1-off item is not going to make the cut because if it affects the game too much, it’s P2W. If not, people will still buy it, just not as often. Therefore you need to sell license to generate a steady revenue stream, and what you get from selling other stuffs are bonus. In order to do that there must be something that the license offers that player really wants, and in this case it’s the squad.
I believe people like op is in the minority. I’m not talking about fairness…the fact is just that for many, they are willing to pay for faster progression (me), or to squad with 4 friends. Offering the op what he wants would be like shooting themselves on the foot where there is less reason for players to pay for license.
Microtransaction is one of the source of revenue in f2p. It has a high “potential” cost. This is the business model…nothing “evil” about it. You choose to be sucked in or not. I choose for now to only remain on license, but would consider vanity item in the future after they fix the mess.
Yes, the dev screws things up too…and major changes like this shouldn’t be made without a heads-up or without considerable consideration on the impact to the game. I still hate them for the recent changes…but I still play the game occasionally.
It is a moot point to compare with other games of different model…it’s like saying subscription based or box sales is better than f2p model…or apple is better than orange.
F2P game always remain in beta for an extended period of time…it’s nothing new…don’t like that… then stay away from f2p until it is established a year or more later.
Anyone with enough braincells can see that this is another business model and how it will impact the bottom line with the changes that op wants (Anyone that pays attention in microeconomics can tell you that). The reality is that for most people, they are fine playing for free, and for another smaller group of people, we are willing and capable to pay USD10 a month to play the game.
The bold section, this is where your assuming that the game is still around, if you push away the people who have the brains to see that progression vs reward vs time is so bad without license, they will never come back and thus the devs loose the possible money they might have gained if they were smarter with the model.
I just do not understand the reason behind the current model other then to rip people off, yes the current one is ripping people off, you cannot ignore that if you add up things on how its done, the first quote explains it best.
I would have made asthetics to be the big seller for devs,
- Ship skins
- Engine trail colours
- Weapon colours
- Extra’s on models of the ships like fins/wings etc, not to big to make it look stupid, but clever additions
- etc
If they would increase the earnings by 25% Credits, 40% Loyalty, 25% XP without license and sell license bonus as they are now, perhaps a bit nerfed, then everyone would be happy, those that don’t want to fall into the trap can still feel like they are progressing and those that want to speed things up can too. Together with my suggested things they would generate more income, beta or not.
