Great game, with one major drawback...

And that is the fact that you can't buy it. This game is great, dynamic battles, good graphics, vast area, billions of options, but it lacks the opportunity to buy it permanently. I would've bought it if I could, but I'm not going to spend a monthly fee on it. No matter how great the trial may be.

Couldn't you have sold permanent accounts for thrice the money, or something like that?

Please show me even one MMO that offers a Lifetime Subscription option.

AdventureQuest.

Need it be necessary that others do it? no. Think about what you want, not what others do. I bet this continuous fee is something that scares off a lot of potential buyers.

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Please show me even one MMO that offers a Lifetime Subscription option.

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Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Age of Conan.
There, I named three.

Oh, and look: GuildWars doesn't have a monthly fee either!

And that one's published by NCSoft as well!

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Oh, and look: GuildWars doesn't have a monthly fee either!

And that one's published by NCSoft as well!

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Too bad they charge you $60 for an expansion every six months, eh?

At least you get what you buy. In CoH you don't get anything.

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I would've bought it if I could, but I'm not going to spend a monthly fee on it. No matter how great the trial may be.

[/ QUOTE ] Your loss.

Maybe you should call up your ISP or your health/car/whatever insurance and have them sell you a lifetime account while you're at it... >.>

A+ thread.

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Couldn't you have sold permanent accounts for thrice the money, or something like that?

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If I'd bought a lifetime sub back in 2004 for $160, I'd be about $740 ahead at this point.

If I'd bought a lifetime sub back in 2004 for $160, CoH/V devs would be $740 behind at this point.

Lifetime subs are great for players and short-term for the studio, but bad over the long term for the studio. Who in turn haven't got as much money to sink into development, which in turn is bad for players.

If you want to save some dollars, buy in the monthly blocks.

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And that is the fact that you can't buy it. This game is great, dynamic battles, good graphics, vast area, billions of options, but it lacks the opportunity to buy it permanently.

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Darn, then I guess it's back to playing Barbie's Internet Dream House for you!

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Oh, and look: GuildWars doesn't have a monthly fee either!

And that one's published by NCSoft as well!

[/ QUOTE ]well, here's the thing, first, they werent sure gw was going to even work, a lot of people doubted they would make it, they mentioned that in pc gamer when they announced gw2, but also, the server setup is different between gw and a real mmo. someone who is a better techie could explain it better, but, basicly, the only massive portions of the game are the towns, beyond that its hosted on your comp, hence why you never see another player in zones unless they are in your party.

also, please consider this. gw rarely gives out free content, they happen rarely, like the grenths area and the holiday stuff, but any other expansion is generally sold at full retail. coh has issues which add content on a fairly regular basis that are free. now, do they have as much content as the expansions, well, tricky question, they dont get as many zones or quests, but in each gw expansion, there was 2 new classes introduced. coh added the peacebringers, warshades, widows and soldiers in free expansions(though to be hair splitting, you did have to buy cov to have the option to get soa and widows, but then you also got 5 other at's out of the box), plus there were new powersets added, the closest analog to them in gw would be skills, and the paid expansions were the only ones i recall adding new skills. so there are some significant differences between the setups of the games. coh is a true mmo, and they have, since everquest, been around 15 or so a month to play, that's just the price the market bears.

now you are correct, some mmo's like lotro did have lifetime deals, but those were usually at launch, when the mmo needs cash badly. if coh did have a lifetime sub, im sure a few of us would be in it, but at this stage it would be unique for them to go lifetime, and im not sure id see that as a confidence building thing if they did.

that said, you can shave off the price if you buy time in larger chunks, go yearly and you shave off the cost per month by nearly 5 bucks. if your budget can handle that and you have confidence in the game, that's an option.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

At heart, all of you agree with me. A one time fee would be far better. You may be ridiculing it, there's nothing wrong with the idea. The continuous fee is more ridiculous than the idea to replace it with a one-time fee.

I was posting while you were rian, and I thank you for the first constructive post here. I would like to know more about the year-fee if possible. It might be worth it to do that. I'll probably be done with it by the end of the year.

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At heart, all of you agree with me. A one time fee would be far better. You may be ridiculing it, there's nothing wrong with the idea. The continuous fee is more ridiculous than the idea to replace it with a one-time fee.

[/ QUOTE ]A. no, it isnt, its a practice that the market has validated
B. where exactly are our devs going to get paid from? thats part of what he monthly fee covers. As was said several times, one tiem fees are there to get development houses some much needed cash to launch the game, in the long run we simply dont have the data to say wether it is a viable strategy to maintain a large enough developer studio to maintain the current quality at that rate. keep in mind, coh's team has pretty much tripled, whats going to pay for that?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Haha, aw... How great this internet is, where you can read people's hearts and tell them how they feel.

No, I don't want a one time fee. I want the devs to have money to be able to keep producing more content (they need it so that they can eat, you know). I don't want to spend $X for a lifetime's worth of access, only to have the servers shut down because the devs used up all the money, or even just to feel it was wasted if I move on to something else.

And when you get down to it, how would you price it? Too low, and the people that have been here a long time would feel entitled to having it given to them. "I've paid over $500 on this game. Why do I have to pay more when Joe Newbie gets to play forever for just $400?" Too high, and the monthly fee looks very appealing. Keep it as it is, perfection.

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At heart, all of you agree with me. A one time fee would be far better. You may be ridiculing it, there's nothing wrong with the idea. The continuous fee is more ridiculous than the idea to replace it with a one-time fee.

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$15 a month is dirt cheap entertainment. Going to see a movie can cost $10 or more for just 2 hours worth of entertainment. MMOs are $15 for unlimited access.

If it were a pay once and that's it deal, there wouldn't be free content like we have now. A lot of the recent Issues have had game changing features / QoL changes.

I have no problem at all with the monthly fee setup we currently have.

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At heart, all of you agree with me.

[/ QUOTE ] Since you can't read minds, that's a very stupid statement.

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A one time fee would be far better. You may be ridiculing it, there's nothing wrong with the idea. The continuous fee is more ridiculous than the idea to replace it with a one-time fee.

[/ QUOTE ] I don't think anyone is gonna argue that saving money is a good thing. But that isn't why we disagree with your idea. In order to make a game like this the company needs a constant flow of money. Without money constantly coming in, the game dies. And that isn't better for any of us.

Since you don't like the monthly sub idea, why not suggest an idea that gives you what you want and also provides Paragon Studios a money stream so they can continue to develop the game and host the servers?

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I was posting while you were rian, and I thank you for the first constructive post here. I would like to know more about the year-fee if possible. It might be worth it to do that. I'll probably be done with it by the end of the year.

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so if you are going to be done playing in a yr why bother wasting the money. this reminds me of the guy who thought that $15/month was to much and wanted the fee lowered becaue he didn't know how to budget his money.

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At heart, all of you agree with me. A one time fee would be far better. You may be ridiculing it, there's nothing wrong with the idea. The continuous fee is more ridiculous than the idea to replace it with a one-time fee.

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$15 a month is dirt cheap entertainment. Going to see a movie can cost $10 or more for just 2 hours worth of entertainment. MMOs are $15 for unlimited access.

If it were a pay once and that's it deal, there wouldn't be free content like we have now. A lot of the recent Issues have had game changing features / QoL changes.

I have no problem at all with the monthly fee setup we currently have.

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That's how I look at it. A good trip to the theatre could cost you at least $15, for a somewhat more annoying and short-term entertainment value (with social aspect attached). A concert could cost you at least four times that, and only lasts maybe a day if you're lucky - just a few hours if you're not.

Pack of cigarettes? Five dollars (rounded) a pack, and if you're lucky you can stretch that a week. If you're not... maybe a day. Alcohol? Fifteen dollars for a 30 pack of cheap swill at the minimum, and if you go for good, decent stuff.. around 10 for a 6-pack. Most people can burn through that in a week (the 30-pack, at least).

Fifteen bucks for access to a game? Far cheaper in the long run, though the health benefits are probably about equivilant in the long run if you play it a lot. Fifteen dollars... for an entire month of entertainment? Less, if you buy in a larger subscription (I think I paid $13/month, pre-paid out to a year).

It's also the model used by some of the bigger games, because while some of those do offer lifetime subscriptions, I know two of those limit them only to people that went from Beta to Launch or bought the Collector's edition, and put everyone else on a monthly subscription.

A lifetime sub is something most players won't commit to because it is a substantial cash outlay all at once. Offering it alongside the regular monthly billing options would probably work out fine for NCsoft (rather than cost them) but it appears they prefer keeping monthly subs and generating extra funds through things like booster packs, selling character slots, respecs and so on.

LOTRO's lifetime subs must be doing okay for them because they still offer them over two years after the game shipped and have even offered them occasionally at a reduced price (it's $300, sometimes reduced to $200). The trick to making the lifetime sub worthwhile for the company is to price it well beyond the average turnover rate. That is, if the average person plays for six months before quitting make the lifetime sub cost more than a six month subscription. At $300 you're looking at 20 months of play before benefiting from the lifetime pricing and I suspect that is *well* beyond the time the typical player invests in a game.

It can serve a niche. It would be a nice option to have, but it's probably unrealistic to expect it to be added to the game at this point.

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At heart, all of you agree with me.

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No. No we don't all agree. Some might. Most won't.

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A one time fee would be far better.

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For cheap people who don't understand the first thing about long-term investments, perhaps. This game is a long-term investment, not a one off.


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You may be ridiculing it, there's nothing wrong with the idea.

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There is plenty wrong, as shown right above my post. Many holes can be poked in the theory that this is a 'great' idea.


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The continuous fee is more ridiculous than the idea to replace it with a one-time fee.

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No, you have it exactly backwards. It's better for YOU maybe, if you get xmas money and don't know what to do with it.

But the developers of this game have a long-term release schedule to keep up with, along with *actually paying their employees* more than once in a while.

We JUST had this discussion. Fifteen bucks is not expensive, it's 2 Starbucks visits, 1 movie with popcorn, cheaper than most DVD releases, etc etc etc.

Scrape the lint off your coins and dig into the couch. The game is worth fifteen bucks.

If it's not, don't play. B'bye. Enjoy your "free" mmo's. But keep those reciepts for the expansions you have to buy in order to get anything more than dirt nothin' in them.

May I remind the ones who think that the continuous payment is required for the devteam that it's possible without? There are billions, billions of games that do not have continuous fees and that work perfectly well. Such as S4 league, MapleStory, the aforementioned games Age of Conan, GuildWars, Dungeons & Dragons online and Lord of the Rings Online. How can they get by? The same way NCSoft could get by with City of Heroes/Villains.

Sharker Quint: Reword it please. Your comment makes no sense.

This isn't those games, pal.

LotRO ALSO has "monthly subs". D&D, etc etc etc ALL have monthlies that make the bulk of their subscription base. Not lifetime subbers.

Unless you're going to produce hard actual evidence to that effect. Which... well, you know, you can't, because there isn't any.