Pebblebrook

Which is why i mentioned it was interesting.

It does seem to imply that more people were willing spend an extra $30-40 on GR but less people (apart from a few individuals spending those 100s of dollars) willing to spend a similar amount on the Freedom store.

Perhaps as you say, there maybe a lot of VIPs that are fine with only using their free points to buy store items or dropped to premium and are now paying NCSoft less money.

If this quarter's revenue turns out to be less even with super packs, i wonder what else they would come up with to convince people to spend.

That was my thought as well. It doesn't quite help the game's yearly revenue much which is still at its lowest.

And for reference, about $3mil USD in quarterly revenues is what CoX was getting for most of 2010 except for 3Q 2010 when it got bumped to about $4.8mil USD because of GR.

Which is interesting because with GR, people would've only spent maybe $30 or $40 above their sub fees that quarter but it got higher reveneues than from the Freedom store where people state they spent 100s of dollars.

It'll be interesting to see 1Q 2012's numbers if this is a sustainable increase instead of a single revenue boost, especially with having super packs for a revenue source.


* Oops, disregard the exchange rates...got lazy with cut/paste. Those are actually average rates for 4Q of that year only. But the USD value is summed from each quarter so that should be somewhat fine. Sorry.

Perhaps the point is to give players such as you something "interesting". You can google past any puzzle, mystery or other such in-game challenges for every game out there.

I would be more concerned if game developers stop doing things like that.

When those vendors didn't even appear on the map and i wasn't directed to them, it was somewhat challenging.

I distinctly remember it was a revelation to me that there are actual vendors you buy DOs from. That was actually a fond memory since i liked a sense of discovery in games.

Though i should say, if there was a mission that directed you to those vendors back then, i might've missed them since at the time, door/contact missions weren't really the thing to do.

Also couldn't buy SOs unless you happen to stumble upon people entering a building and followed them to find out it had an npc vendor that didn't show up on the map until years(?) later.

Heh brings back memories of me broadcasting "is there a store here?"

But yes, launch coh is very different than current cox. Interesting what a little time (measured in years) does to a game.

I can verify that my main account is premium and i am able to create new HEATs/VEATs.

I can't, however, verify what requirements are needed to make that happen. It doesn't say anywhere in the reward window you unlock Epic ATs at a certain level. It might be a bug or maybe i've just been here too long that whatever qualifications needed i have.

As for the VIP vs Freemium question...no one can really say if it's worth it for the OP to go to freemium except for the OP...you have to evaluate the entertainment value you're getting yourself. But if it's worth anything, for me it's not much of a debate.

Incarnates isn't something i'll miss and i've already built up 6 personal bases (3 on each side) so i don't see making any new ones. I will have to get rid of the storage on my main to remove rent so i'd still be able to use/decorate it but i think i can get by without storage. The monthly perks, well, i've stayed on the same server for 7+ years so server transfers don't mean much to me and the stipend can be replaced by paying $5/mo on points instead of a $15/mo sub.

The slots is the big thing but i have a lot of alts that i haven't used in a while so instead of unlocking existing alts with the server tokens, i just open new empty slots.

Of course you might also want to put into perspective my state of mind towards the game to properly judge how i'm valuing CoX's entertainment worth, so some background...


[WALL OF TEXT WARNING]


Since CoH headstart and for a couple years after that, my enthusiasm level for this game was such that i literally logged in everyday for the first couple of years and at the end of that day's session, i was eager for the next time i can log in.

Fast forward to today, my level of enthusiasm for logging in has dwindled to about 1 day a week, maybe 2. And i'm only able to do that because my friend was logging in...meaning i wasn't mainly logging in to play but to log in to interact with my friend. If my friend can't make it that week, i can't get myself to log. I wanted to cancel my sub for a while but couldn't because of that.

For some time i thought i just outgrew MMOs in general as an entertainment source since i've tried other games and i couldn't get that same enthusiasm i felt years ago. That is until i was able to try a new sci-fi game and found out i couldn't stop playing, and when i did stop, i was eager to play again.

So, having that comparison in my mind...i'm not feeling i'm getting as much value from CoX that i can get elsewhere.

I can still leech...err i mean...play that once or twice a week here thanks to Freedom (this account expires in january), but i think i get more value if i use my entertainment dollars elsewhere.

And that's my view about VIP vs Freemium. As i said, everyone's situation could be different so determining an entertainment source's worth is a personal matter. For me, i think maybe my personal limit on staying with a game is around 7 years since the only other game that had me as long was my first MMO Everquest and i stayed there for 6.5+ years.



TL;DR - Maybe i've been here too long hehe.

Maybe they're waiting for something that gives them an indication that if superpacks go live as-is, it will negatively impact their bottom line. Perhaps they're still convinced they'll make more money with it than without despite a handful of dissatisfied forum posters.

A wait (till it goes live) and see (if people buy enough of it) approach. Then maybe they'll adjust or offer alternatives like putting specific items for straight up purchase if their revenue doesn't show it was worth it.

Or it's something completely different, eh just covering all bases hehe.

Using powersets to give free/premiums more reasons to become VIPs, perhaps there should be a higher ratio of VIP-included power sets versus paid extras. So far i think there's 1 VIP unlocked set to 3 VIP paid sets.

I mean, if the F2P crowd seeing that there's more paid extra sets than there are freely unlocked with a sub, then they might decide to just use that $15 sub money to buy points instead.

Not sure expecting them to wait 2 months to bank the VIP stipend to buy one powerset would be enough. They could buy $10 worth of points every month and end up paying less than a VIP who would've spent $30 and 2 months waiting for that $10 worth of stipend points.

Maybe?

There's an inconsistency with that.

I let my main account lapse and i can still not only play my existing warshade (after unlocking the slot), but i can still create new veat/heats as well.

I'm not sure what enabled it for me but i am certain i didn't purchase them in the Freedom store.

EDIT:

The time manipulation powerset that is free for VIP does get locked behind a purchase once you become premium.

Also, i still see the Tier9 VIP only paragon reward celestial armor in the costume editor as a premium. You get to keep that as long as you spent paragon reward tokens to claim them before dropping. You don't even have to have an alt using it prior to dropping.

Oh, you also lose the option to hide the store icon...guess they don't want you to forget you can spend money here hehe.

To entice people into a purchase is essentially marketing (but i just think of it as manipulating perception of value or other things) so it would be interesting which one would entice people more regardless of practicality...the 20% discount or 150 extra points.

I'm no math wiz so i could be off on this but here's how i'm seeing the two scenarios:

The 550 pp plan will of course show more points banked at the end of the period but since your 20% discount plan wouldn't show its effect till you buy something, the Buy column shows the largest single purchase order in points you can make with the discount for simplicity (it doesn't mean a single item) and then compare that with the undiscounted price with the +150 plan.

It seems like that extra 150 gets people more banked points sooner and also have more points leftover after purchases compared to just a flat 20% discount on purchases.

So from a practical standpoint, it's better if you just ask for more points for all VIPs, not just the T9s. Or go all out and ask for across the board points increase and price discount.

I don't see them doing either but you never know hehe.

Don't know much about forum moderation, but can they not come up with something for account identifiers to only show up on a moderator's screen instead of the customer facing interface?

I guess a follow-up question would be...to whom would this be helpful?

Whenever i think of identifiers such as this, it makes me think of someone's forum reg date/post count or that ranking thing that you removed a while back.

I don't think it will cause an uproar or outright discrimination towards non-subscribers but it might color some people's perception of that poster/poster's message.

Yes i know, it's not much of a problem, but if you can help it, why tempt it?

Heh, well i suppose you can ask less money from your VIPs by having less store item additions require subscribers to pay extra for them.

That'll definitely add more value to my sub. Or is a lot of that increased revenue you mentioned coming from VIPs?

Heh true that is an ideal possibility when integrating F2P...volume. I think i saw somewhere that only a very small percentage of F2P crowd actually spends money so to get that small percentage to translate to a large enough number of paying players, will require a whole lot more F2P accounts...probably in the hundreds of thousands or a million or two.

Not sure if Freedom got that many. I usually saw concurrent users pre-freedom to be around 5000 unhidden players. On freedom headstart it was around 6000 and when it was opened for F2P, it was over 8000. It's getting less now with the rush over and/or the holidays, but i would be expecting a lot more than that from F2P crowd.



* Caveat: /search is an inaccurate tool and concurrency doesn't directly translate to account numbers.

Well the question i quoted was not about the value of content acquired but rather which account type would NCSoft get more money from and that's dependent on the person not the account.

Your question as to who gets more value for that $15 per month spent is quite different and would depend on how much value you put on the perks and the vip exclusives.

But if you want to discuss that we could.

I would think that would depend more on the person's spending discipline rather than the account type.

If a subscriber only spend $15/mo on their sub and only use their free points to spend on the store...as long as they only need $5 worth of points then NCSoft would make just as much money from them as a premium player who only pays $15/mo on points.

Difference would be is that on a monthly basis, the premium would accumulate $15 worth of points per month while a vip only banks $5.

If a vip needs say $15 worth of points for that month and only have $5, then NCSoft would make more money from the vip since they effectively would spend $25 for that month while a premium only paid $15.

I don't even think it has to be a majority. Just like anything in the store, they might just need a significant enough number to justify it.

That scenario does happen with a lot of things not just temp pets. When they introduced vet rewards with the wings, i saw crowds of people flocked to steel canyon tailor (i was one of them) and yes when that phenomena occurs whatever the content/item, there are cries of "enough already"

But what always happens shortly afterwards is that people once again disperse and/or the content/item gets used less.

If they gave the dog as a free issue item, yes there could possibly be a very huge dog show convention in atlas park, but it will pass shortly.

The effects of supporting such development however, is more lasting.

Supporting a hobby you enjoy is admirable, but not sure doing that would result in exactly what you hope. Every idea they come up with now, they will ask the question "would people pay extra for this?" If things like a beast mm powerset comes up with a yes, then probably expect to see that in the store for VIPs to purchase extra.

Seems like a more direct effect of buying vanity pets in hopes of something else, would actually end up with more vanity pets instead. Or at least the price for it would not be lowered when they see they made enough money to justify it at the current price.

Not sure how visible of an impact $2 purchases for something that most people interested in CoX couldn't use. The $1.99 promo was for new accounts only and it was well...$2 each.

In 3Q there was that promo and the $10 sale on Steam (not counting the Freedom store item adds/sales). The "many" leading sales you might be referring to happened in the quarter prior.

In 2Q there were:
April 26, 2011 GR $15 sale promo gamestop
April 28, 2011 7yr anniversary 50% sale GvE item pack, Mac pack, Wedding pack, jet pack mini-booster, char rename, server transfer
May 3, 2011 character slot 50% sale promo
May 11, 2011 magic pack 50% sale promo end 5/18
May 18, 2011 GR NCStore digital download 50% sale promo end 5/24
May 23, 2011 GR complete Valve Steam digital download 50% sale promo end 5/30
May 25, 2011 character xfer 50% sale promo end 5/31
June 1, 2011 steampunk pack release
June 2, 2011 martial arts pack 50% sale promo end 6/7
June 8, 2011 mutant pack 50% sale promo end 6/15

And worth noting even with those, 2Q revenue was still lower than the quarter before and after it.

Even with the exchange rate fluctuation, i think the Freedom store did make a significant impact, though it might have been offset by declining subscription revenue.

But as pointed out, 3Q is likely to be mostly revenue from existing subscribers, since the F2P crowd was only let in 4 days before quarter closing. Actually could be only 3 days if NCSoft goes by Korea's time zone which makes sense.

We'll see how it goes when everyone's revenue is counted next quarter.

Unless i'm misremembering or i missed more recent info, they did buy it out except for the Cryptic Engine. Not sure but i think NCSoft still licenses that from Cryptic. That's why the Cryptic logo is still on the login screen.

The quarterlies don't really define what royalties are but i'd imagine it's what it sounds like...payment by other companies that has agreements to use/license NCSoft prodcuts.

There is a clue in page 5 of the quarterly report:
And it does separate royalty from royalty expense.