Is There A Lifetime Sub Option for CoX?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Lifetime subs are what killed both Hellgate: London and Champions Online. The basic problem is Economics 001. It's not even Economics 101, it's that basic.

Let's say Hellgate: London had somehow managed to last 7 years.

Okay. How many months is 7 years? Multiply 7 by 12. You get 84 months.

Okay. If you were charged $10 each month, how much money would that be? Well. It'd be $840, which is 84*10.

Okay, so how does that compare to the life-time subscription?

Well, to reference Champions Online, they wanted about $200 for a Life-time subscription. Hellgate: London only wanted $149.

Okay, so how many times does $200 go into $840?

Next question, how many times does $150 go into $840?

Well, you should have answers of about 4.2 and 5.6.

On a $10 a month plan against a $200 lifetime subscription, the developer and publisher would be accepting over a quarter of the money less for players who stuck with a game for 7 years.

On a $10 a month plan against a $150 lifetime subscription, the developers would only be accepting less than a FIFTH of the of the money that would result from each individual player.

A $200 life-time subscription against a $10 a month game would only be the equivalent of 20 months.

A $150 life-time subscription against a $10 a month game would only be the equivalent of 15 months.

What happens if the game lasts longer than 20 or 15 months? What happens the game DOES last for 7 years, with years 8, 9, and 10 looking pretty healthy?

Where is the operating money to fund the developers going to come from?

Where is the operating money to fund the servers going to come from?

How large can the support staff be?

What's the business model going to be?

What happens if a large number of Life-Time subs start asking for their money back because the game was crap?

This is why Champions Online has had to revert to a Micro-payments and has been bleeding subscribers. The economics for a Life-Time subscription simply do not make sense for a game that a company intends to keep updating and developing.

The bottom line is that Lifetime subscriptions are a BAD FINANCIAL IDEA for any MMO game. If you see any game, and I do mean ANY GAME offering a life-time subscription... here's some simple math you can do.

Divide the life-time subscription by the basic monthly payment.

That's about how many months the developer actually intends to support the game before they go and do something else...

leaving you with a game that won't be updated and won't be patched.

There is not a lifetime sub in this game like DCUO or Champions. I would certainly buy one, but I don't see the devs offering one. We have far too many rabidly committed subscribers here so it wouldn't likely work out.

DCUO is a good candidate for a lifetime sub because it doesn't have much content right now and they need the revenue to continue to improve. But I fear that lifetime subs increase the likelihood that a game will have to use micro-transactions to support itself.

Two words: Cryptic Store.

I disagree.

A lifetime subscription offer can be a good source of additional income at the start of an MMO's lifespan. The catch is that there must also be sufficient regular subscriptions to maintain operating costs and pay for further development once the initial boost of cash provided by the lifetime subscriptions runs out, as most lifetime subscription prices only average out to a year or so of regular monthly subscription fees. That is where the problems usually start.

As for CoH offering a lifetime subscription? At this point in the game's lifespan, I'd be very wary of such an offer. A 7-year-old game that suddenly gives its players the chance to pay for roughly a year's subscription and then never pay again smells like a game that isn't going to last far beyond that year.

I think here's how the average user's thinking would go:
I dunno if I like this game, so I'll go month to month.
(2 months later)
I like it a lot, so now I'll go Lifetime, because it'll pay off (for me) in X months)!
or
I don't like it enough to go lifetime, so I won't play it at all.

The lifetime offer sets up a false dichotomy in the player's mind: If it ain't worth lifetime, it ain't worth (paying more than the minimum amount that I can egt away with paying), because the player may feel like they're being cheated. I know that's not actually true, but it is likely what they feel.

So I believe the general tendency would be to have Very Few non-lifetime players, and thus the 'Bleed 'em with Microtransactions' model becomes necessary. And I'm betting with Lifetime players, the game might be taken for granted in more cases, since it will 'always be there'.

Lifetime subscriptions does not increase the likelihood that a game will use micro-transactions, because all MMOGs offer micro-transactions now. Yes, including City of Heroes and World of WarCraft. They're a staple of the industry now, and there's no avoiding them. So, would you rather pay $15 a month and pay for the occasional micro-transaction, or pay a lump sum of $200 up front and pay for the occasional micro-transaction? That's what it really all comes down to.

Personally, I'd rather pay the lump sum up front and get a lifetime subscription. I have two Champions Online lifetime subscriptions, and a DC Universe Online lifetime subscription. Had NCSoft offered a City of Heroes lifetime subscription four years ago, I would have purchased one then as well. If CoH were to offer one now? Probably not, as the game is honestly quite a bit long in the tooth.

Two words: Booster packs.

No. Look at the PlayNC store, and then look at the Cryptic Store. There are infinitely more things on the so-called 'C-Store.' If the PlayNC store had as many booster packs as the C-Store has items, we'd have had to pay for EVERY SINGLE new costume set since I8, the Invention System, the RWZ, the Faultline Revamp, the VEATs, the AE, the four free costume change emotes and the Incarnate System, our Pool Powers, any proliferated powersets, and every freespec we've ever had.

Well, I disagree with this because there are better ways to sell the basic purpose. The stated purposes of the "lifetime subscription" from Hellgate / Champions is that it was to raise money right?

Well, why don't games sell very well to begin with? What happened to making an initial bundle on the original retail release?

Well, one factor is the initial starting cost, $60 or so for a major retail game. That's actually kind of expensive. You aren't making an impulse buy for a game. You are making an investment.

Another factor is the short tail economics. Major publishers like EA, Sony, Activision, Take 2, and the like only count on any particular game to have an active shelf life of 3 or 4 months. After that time period is over, such publishers consider the amount of sales to have peaked.

The problem is, there is ample proof to suggest that these two factors actively harm games, and the industry itself. Nintendo, for example, works on a Long-tail economics model. Nintendo fully expects major franchises like Metroid, Mario, and Zelda, to still be selling in volume 6months, 8months, 12months, 15months, 18months, and so on down the line. And Nintendo is right. Franchises like Mario Galaxy, Zelda Twilight Princess, and Metroid Prime still appeared in Top 10, 20, and 50 game sales long after 3rd party products released in the same time-frame had been pulled from store shelfs.

Part of Nintendo's advantage is the lower cost of entry. Sure, $50 is still a lot of money... but it's a bit easier to swallow than $60. Then there's the DS phenomenon where the average entry price for a new game is around $30.

Lowering the cost of entry is just one of the ways publishers and developers can make games more attractive to a wider number of players. Learning how to work the "long tail economics" is another.

Valve's Steam is one of the best known examples of Long-tail economics in practice for Video Games. "Ancient" games such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, still moves massive numbers, enough to stay in top 10 or even top 5 total sales rankings. Publishers and Developers genuinely don't know how to handle games that do this. Many never considered the possibility that, low and behold, somebody who never played a game released 10 or 15 years ago, might actually want to have a go at it.


For MMO's, figuring out how to work both a lower entry cost and a long-tail sales plan is a much better plan than Life-Time Subscriptions which are a short-tail approach only.

A couple of ways off the top of my head.

1v1 launch subscriber subscription for expansion(s).

With this model, every dollar the subscriber spends on a subscription can be used to buy expansion backs or add-ons. This less money over all for the developer / publisher, but a player will feel more comfortable if they know that any future expansions are part of the subscription price they are paying

Adjusted launch subscriber bonus.

With this model the launch subscriber pays a bit more for each month, but they get expansions for free, and maybe even the game for free. Let's say that a group of developers release a game for $40, and plan two expansions for release after the initial game also with price tags of $40. That's $40*3 or $120.

The publishers / developers then take a percentage of that money, let's go ahead with dividing by 3, so back to $40.

The publishers / developers then divide that $40 by 12 for 12 months, around $3.33 cents.

The subscription the user pays is increased by $3.33. So if the subscription is $10 a month, a launch subscriber would pay $13.33 per month.

However, the launch subscriber would get the game, and both of the planned expansions, for free. In total the launch subscriber would spend $80 less than they would buying the game and both expansions.

These are just two examples of ways that developers can get an increased cash flow or larger subscriber rate at the beginning of a game, and be more likely to keep those subscribers as changes get worked into the game and the bugs are ironed out.

Unlike Lifetime subscriptions, these methods don't punish the developer / publisher in the long run. I'm sorry that you don't agree, but in every economic and financial sense, my statement still stands. Lifetime Subscriptions Are Are A Bad Financial Idea.

Please don't misquote me. I said "use micro-transactions TO SUPPORT ITSELF" The boosters are pretty minimal compared to what SOE is doing in some of its games and Cryptic.

Uh, newsflash: we did pay for VEATS. The money gained from the Wedding Pack went directly towards VEAT development. The developers even stated as such. We also paid for the Incarnate System, as that was part of the Going Rogue expansion.

In addition, subscribers to that other game receive a C-Store stipend each month, essentially giving them a new free costume set each month. While it may not be much, it can not be said that everything new in that game is in addition to the subscription fee.

Lord of the Rings Online offered lifetime subscriptions when that game went live, and that was four years ago. Also, statistics have shown that most MMOG players only play a particular MMOG for six months before moving on, so yes, I'd suspect that most savvy MMOG producers do expect that, which makes lifetime subscriptions a smart move on their part.

Prove it. Furthermore, I didn't buy the wedding pack. Still haven't. So I did not pay for VEATs, and unless you show me the redname who said we did, we didn't pay for VEATs.


You're missing my point. The PlayNC store has about 13 things (depending on your point of view) that are purchasable as optional additions to your game. They are almost all costume packs that come with bonus powers.

The C-Store has over 70 things you can purchase, including but not limited to (purchasable in-game for CoX highlighted in red):

• Powers
• Travel Powers
• Costumes
• Character Slots
• XP bonuses
• Money bonuses
• "Resource" Bonuses
• PvP Ranking bonuses
• ARCHETYPES (wtf!)
• 15-second shrink/growth powers (also available in infinite duration for 3 times the cost, when we pay 10 bucks for the science pack and call it done with, and the powers in question CANNOT BE USED IN COMBAT)
• Respec Tokens
• Costume Slots
• Temporary Sidekicks
• Temporary Powers
• Team Teleport Powers
• Healing Powers (purchaseable green insps)
• Energy Powers (purchasable blue insps)
• Might Powers (purchasable red insps)
• Story Arcs (not like AE, actual story arcs. Imagine if you had to pay for Darrin Wade.)
• Market Slots
• Salvage Storage Slots
• Useless non-combat figurines
• Inventory Slots

Come on.

EDIT: I understand that "powers" and "temporary powers" can be purchased in CoX too. However, 4 new powersets came with GR, which also afforded you Praetoria, side-switching and the Incarnate System all for 30 bucks (or 20 if you went the non-collector's edition). Don't try and argue semantics on those.

I find it rather odd that you would presume to lecture on economics when you forget about something as basic as Time Value of Money and don't even get the subscription costs right.

Now I will say that at this point in the CoX dev cycle, it is certainly too late for a lifetime subscription to appear. Early in a development cycle, it can be a valuable tool for raising capital to get a game steady on its feet. While it doesn't seem to have worked out in all cases, that is no indication that such an outcome is guaranteed (and your simplistic analysis is not proof by any means).

http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/04...enue-equation/

Side note, I'm like this with Guild Wars. (Well, aside from feeling the game is rather dull.) I realized a while back I hadn't logged in for a year or so, did so, ran around for a few minutes... then logged off.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Fast track to 1 issue earlier than planned release does not equal "paid for VEATs", since they were in production to be released anyway.

So what Nalrok said about not paying for VEATs is correct.

Oh, you poor, poor thing

They launched with a little shopping cart icon as part of the social UI

From Positron's statement, we can infer that the money collected went right into development for VEATs. One could argue that would be an indirect method of paying for the VEATs.

Unless of course you never bought the Wedding Pack.

(an additional 6 months later)
WTF? That huge round of nerfs was unexpected. The game is definitely unfun now. Too bad they won't refund any of that lifetime subscription I paid 6 months ago.