Chase_Arcanum

Very true. I don't know what he's precisely on... but I also didn't want to allude to TOO MUCH of what another developer's working on here, either. Figured it would be safe to just allude to the news of the continuing development and be done with it.

Hope he's working on something he loves, one way or the other...

I'd wager that his acquisition has more to do with their title under development than their title that shares this game's genre.

Rian: .... and furthermore, what could POSSIBLY be the rationale for dressing me up like in these ridiculou... oh, you... you leave the HOUSE dressed like... like THAT?

Umm... nevermind.

That's the old mindset... the one that's being questioned. You haven't SEEN an MMO build from the ground-up like CoH because, outside China, the model hasn't been proven long enough for a traditional MMO to go through a full development cycle. Will we? There's a lot of risk in breaking convention, but there's a lot of potential return. [edited to remove specific example}


You're right- you can't compare even the social network game you mentioned (careful, they count too) to CoH.... except by the last earnings reports, the one you mentioned returned FAR more profit in comparison to its investment.

That's why people are starting to REALLY take notice now. We've seen spectacular "underachievers" in the subscription model. We've seen large investments NOT be able to keep the first-month numbers. We've seen games released into a crowded market that could attract the curious from their current games for a month or two, but that's it. That isn't regularly-recurring subscription revenue.

Subscriptions serve as ONE barrier that reduces your potential market. Only a certain type of person appears willing to commit to one, and your market is limited to that small group. Others might try the game to blow through as much content as they can in a month, but they have no interest in staying around. Worse, in this very saturated market, many of those people that ARE willing to subscribe to an MMO are already subscribing to another... they're often at the subscription saturation point-- they can't JUSTIFY another $15 elsewhere without ditching one of their current $15 obligations. Getting them to come over, try, and STAY is even tougher when staying means that they've gotta say goodbye to another place they enjoy.

So now people are starting to wonder- if the security in subscription revenue is a myth... can we get that security via offering microtransactions? The facebook-based social games aren't even the ones you want to look at to answer this question-- anything here is still 2-3 years behind what's been going on in Asia. Looking there... you can see why... while the answer isn't a clearcut "yes," its at least a very strong possibility....

While there's still time, write a "all is forgiven when presented with cookies" clause into the psyche of all your characters. Then carry a tray around with you at all times.

Correct.

It originally posted that he was with Cryptic, then as we were chatting about it, it changed... and later changed to some humorous alternatives when Chris realized he had an audience-- kinda a cool way to acknowledge the goodbyes. About a week ago, I noticed that it was back to saying Cryptic and even noted that he started there Oct2010-Present... so I'd consider that solid affirmation.

Actually, all my other characters HAVE unionized and come to creative bargaining agreements that, among other things, prohibit me from making them host any of my comic guides. Shandora was grandfathered in, though, since they figured any dignity she had was already destroyed.

Essentially, they circled the wagons, but left her to fend for herself.

That's the assumption that F2P is done to offset the "sinking ship" syndrome... which isn't 100% the case. For several years, many academics studying MMO trends have been pointing to the microtransaction models in Asia and their profitability, compared to subscription service models. Stateside, we saw social network "games" making fistfuls of money (from ads and microtransactions) for their "free" games full of micro transactions (and selling your information). Heck, even in console games- with their online stores selling anything from music tracks to expansions to skimpier costumes... I've read industry estimates that predict that in as little as two years, developers will see more revenue from downloadable content than they see from the new game sales through the boutique stores (especially considering the cut the boutique stores get... plus used game sales).

There's plenty of this evidence emerging -- pointing to the idea that the microtransaction model might not be the poor-cousin of the subscription model... it *might* just turn out to be the more profitable model over the long haul... and heck, might make the intellectual property you're using even more valuable by making it recognizable to a wider range of people. That means broadening the IP to other media will be more profitable, increasing your overall portfolio.

Granted, I *DO* think that the model would work best on a game built from the ground-up with it in mind, but don't sell the retrofits short just yet...

According to Paragonwiki, Issue 18 gave everyone "combat mode" auras, but only purchasers of the expansion got the costume sets.

Or... they could keep the thresholds where they are, but charge you to
... lift the 2bln inf cap...
... raise the cap of teleporters allowed in the base...
... access the new base items pack
... get more market slots

But yeah, they could look at establishing new caps on certain things that they want to discourage. Like if they see issues with certain types of market monopolies, they might try imposing a cap of X market transactions per player per day.

I've only dabbled around, but in a generally-broad-industrywide-sense it seemed that the goal was to make the subscriber get essentially what they were used to. In a very general, non-other-game-specific sense, has this kind of problem been prevalent?--- setting new thresholds that are notably lower than prior thresholds subscribers would encounter?

In the unnamed unidentified totally ambiguous but nonhypothetical examplesyou can draw upon , would you say that these new ceilings were grossly less (say... under half) than what subscribers previously were allowed... or something that most subscribers never hit, so only peak users (say... the top 20%) would be affected? Anything like, (in CoH terms) finding that you only get 6 characters per server as a subscriber instead of 12, like you used to?

I don't think there's even much of a shadow of validity to that. As others have noted in some detailed analysis of past issues, we have not seen any decrease of new "free" costumes with issues... they've always been in very limited quantity as freebies to the general population. We've also never seen free fluff powers added to the game... so nothing that's ever really been taken away from us...

... and the history of boosters giving us powers and costumes goes pretty far back.... to the GvE edition booster pack, IIRC

One of the concerns, though, is the... umm... difference in culture between F2P and free players. ( Not everyone, mind you... I've enjoyed trying the F2P games out, and I hardly behave differently there than here... though some mods may wish I did)

The subscription in an mmo has a tendency to keep certain types at bay... or at least cull their numbers. Habitual griefer organizations enjoy harassing people, but don't enjoy spending $15 when they know they'll get banned quickly. With no startup costs & getting around the banstick being relatively easy, the F2P games are lower-hanging fruit. Similarly, younger brats that sneak onto the net when mom & dad aren't looking can sign up for F2P games much easier than they could make a paid subscription.

So, while F2P might mean new players, it could also mean a larger population of griefer jerks, n00bsp3@k3rs , and immature brats.


At least... that's the concerns that others have mentioned. I haven't seen it on my tours around various places. Of course, I spend most of my fleeting free time here & don't get too involved in those communities... and I'm pretty good a filtering out idiots, so I just might not have noticed.

That is a key balancing act, and I'd prefer that they use caution in meeting those expectations. Sometimes this is more about perception than reality, but perceptions matter.

Take, for example, a system where a subscription gets you about the same featureset you have now, plus 1000 "free credits" per month. Every three months, a new Issue is released, but it's essentially just a bunch of new features that you can buy. Add them all up, and it comes to... say... 4000 credits.

You as a player may be very upset-- you'd normally get that stuff for FREE but even if you spent all your credits there, you'd have to buy another 1000 credits to get it all. They're shortchanging you!

Me, as a player, look at that issue, see the 2 task forces I'd never play & a costume set that would never meet my characters and realize I can buy JUST what I want from that issue for 2000 credits and have 1000 extra that I can spend on a booster that I'd otherwise have to pay for.

So, have the devs ripped off subscribers by not giving them enough to get everything they'd normally have gotten for free, or has the "buffet style" selection added enough value to make up for it?



---

Also, keep in mind that this game's what... 6 1/2 years old? The subscription's never increased. There aren't many things that can say they cost the same as they did over a half-decade ago. Sooner or later, the devs will have to face either a price increase or reduce what's given for that price (kinda like how a candy bar price may remain stable, but the candy itself shrinks in size).

I've heard that Australia's (and much of Oceania, for that matter) daily fluctuations in latency issues when connecting to other regions is largely due to the vast number of transoceanic lines that run through/near Singapore.

There's a vast armada of underused freight vessels constantly dropping anchor offshore (they anchor offshore while idle to avoid harbor fees), and they frequently damage the cables. They've got a huge but never-ending detect/find/patch operation going on there... and some of their temporary reroutes cause frequent router overload or just extra thousands of miles of transmission distance.

There's only one way to read YouTube comments.

Use something like 'stylish' to append ..."but I'm a frackin moron" to the end of every comment, as per:
http://www.dorktower.com/2010/09/24/5585/

it works rather well. Suddenly, the whole world appear more sensible.


I'm working on ports for online political forums & Kotaku. Then I'm going to work on a username-specific one for our forums here :P

I can think of several forums that have very similar policies, if not more restrictive. Unfortunately, I can't list em. They belong to... um... other games.

Hmm... true... let's see...
*Puts on Rules Lawyer helmet.

... the rules say we can't talk about GAMES... but what if we bracketed the different F2P philosophies of the different lead developers that implemented them. We'd have (totally made up) the "Bianco Paradigm" vs the... umm... "Miller Paradigm."

Everyone would know what we mean, but no games are discussed, just the ideas-- and they're even properly attributed!

* looks around the room.

* Realizes that the Rule Lawyer Helm... imposing as it is... offers little protection from the +8 modsmack of doom.

* Removes the Rule Lawyer Helm, shifts uncomfortably

* Points to Golden Girl

Uhh... it was her idea

* Runs from the thread.

#$@%#!

Tease!

Not necessarily Just takes more effort. If you want to compare two specific games' F2P models, go to each, copy the data on their tiered system, and then roughly translate them to generic terms, present them here as Model A and Model B with no mention of the source.

Looks like Moderator 08 just doesn't want us using the "swear word escape" -- where, rather than saying "son of a *****" you say "your mom is registered with the american kennel club." It means the same thing and avoids the cussing, but everyone knows what you really MEAN.

2 Corrections, firstly partially masking profanity is not allowed it must be completely masked. It's a compromise position that I don't love, but trying to keep people from swearing is difficult. I've gone ahead and fixed that for you . Secondly telling someone there mother is registered with the American kennel club is a personal attack, regardless of profanity. -Mod08

Got it. Thanks for not coming down hard on some of our not-so-veiled attempts to disguise things. Will be more cautious in the future. A shame too... I was getting my creative juices flowing making lists for all the references to "the game that rhymes with." Some real gems in there....

Ah, well... back to plan B. Everyone set your Captain Javascript Secret Decoder rings to 1357.

rtijwfytw 08 btzqi pnqq rj

Priceless. Except I think most of my characters prefer if I'd pick someone else.

Mine as well.