[Good Read] Huge Benefits to Updated Subscription Models

[DkSharktooth]

Swtor:

Current Subscription Model - $15/mo

F2P Model - Allows you to essentially try the game out, and really almost forces you to subscribe due to limitations

Preferred Status - Little More benefits that f2p, but you can't really experience endgame pvp, so you're forced to subscribe if you want to do ranked.

 

Now don't go run and hide when I mention this, just hear me out!

Wildstar Subscription Model - Pay a monthly subscription OR Use ingame currency (CREDD as they call it, Similar to Swtor Credits or Cartel Coins) to Pay Monthly Subscription.

Source: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/the-game/business-model/

 

Quote:

C.R.E.D.D. is an in-game item that, when consumed, extends an account’s subscription by 30 days. C.R.E.D.D. can be bought from other players in-game via the Commodities Exchange (CX) for earned in-game gold, or you can purchase C.R.E.D.D. online at the WildStar website. If you go for C.R.E.D.D. you can use your first month of gameplay to earn gold while playing WildStar. Next month, instead of paying the monthly subscription fee, you can use gold earned in-game to purchase C.R.E.D.D. from other players through our in-game Commodities Exchange. You can then redeem your C.R.E.D.D. for another month of WildStar game-time. You can continue this cycle over & over again, enabling you to “play to pay” for WildStar.

 

Why Wildstars Subscription Model is better for the long term and Next Generation MMOs:

Let's say swtor launched with 2Million Subscribers. As time went by, got tired of paying the subscription fee because the pace they consumed the content wasn't worth the $15/mo in their minds, players either couldn't afford the subscription, or whatever other reasons, these players would now leave SWTOR and firmly decide never to come back or maybe, just maybe give it another try few months down the road (Which is actually what happened with SWTOR).

 

Now my point here is SUBSCRIBER RETENTION. This is VERY VERY VERY Important for an MMO!!! A failure in subscriber retention can cause a huge snowball effect that leads to a mass exodus. Let's continue with SWTOR now. All those 2million subscribers are more or less now with a guild where they either PVE, PVP, or quest together. What happens to all those guilds, raids, quest groups, flashpoint groups, ranked warzone teams when slowly but surely, 1by1, players start unsubscribing and are now unable to play with their groups? Effectively these groups keep getting smaller and smaller as time goes by and minimal content is added to maintain their interests for long, but many of these players did give the game a try and thus accumulated some form of game currency for the time they have put in.

 

Now imagine all those players who are now unsubscribed, but have put a good deal of time into SWTOR and have accumulated a decent chunk of game currency, imagine if they were somehow able to transfer their ingame effort into purchasing another months subscription for themselves. I mean how happy would they be that they can do this? I'll tell you, absolutely thrilled! They can now continue to play with their friends, seasoned game players and subscribers can continue building on the eldergame population of swtor, and they can come back to the game anytime they want to with full access to all features! I mean wow! That would be amazing wouldn't it? But wait a minute....Swtor is a business afterall....you can't just go ahead and give it away for free ("play to pay"). How would the company continue paying it's expenses? I'll tell you how: these subscribers that have unsubscribed, they wouldn't have continued paying anyway, and are now able to rejoin the game by paying ingame currency will be giving the opportunity for the rest of your subscribers to continue playing the MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER MMO, emphasis on multiplayer. What does that even mean, you're crazy! Let me ask you this: What happens to a 16man raiding group when 1, 2, 3 or even 5 members unsubscribe? What happens when the top Ranked Teams lose 2 of their core members? Well if you have ever played an MMO long enough, you will learn that this leads to a complete collapse of these groups and guilds who eventually break off and try to find other groups, and this is a really really long and tedious unfun process, which often leads to even more players from that group unsubscribing while a few find a new group to get into. Slowly, but surely this is exactly what happened to Swtor and other MMOs before it. But wait...even if we implement this "freebee" method to our subscription model, we want to milk this new "subscriber" who paid with ingame currency as best we can! We are EAware after all! Well rest assured EAware, you can still milk this subscriber one way or another with your infamous Cartel Market items and updates! That's right, eventually there will be something on there that this player will purchase one day.

 

Well let's look at what you just gained by implementing Wildstars Dual-Subscription Model into Swtor:

• Longer Lasting Playerbase & Population
  
• Larger Subscriber Retention
  
• Subscribers can come back anytime with full playable benefits so long as they can afford the ingame currency price for subscription
  
• The rest of your subscribers can still do the things they love with this person, and can maintain their pve/pvp groups as is without having to look for constant replacements, often leading to events not occuring for days/weeks at a time while searching for replacements.
  
• Probably more benefits I didn't think of yet
  
• Additional "credit sink"
  
• Keeping your players, subscribed or not, has a direct positive effect on a healthy population for your game as well as a healthy amount of groups going for all kinds of PVE and PVP activities in your game.
  
• If people love the thing they are supposed to hate, paying real life money for a game, well your game will get alot of ePoints with the internets.
  

 

 

Note: This is a first draft and should be read as such. This was a huge brainstorming effort. The intention of this thread is to express the benefits of Wildstars subscription model over Swtor and how Wildstars Model can help Swtor if implemented.

 

Thank You for reading,

 

Happy Holidays

Edited December 21, 2013 by DkSharktooth

[Callaron]

I don't think you're getting the right idea exactly... or I got lost in your post somehow.

C.R.E.D.D. is an in-game item that, when consumed, extends an account’s subscription by 30 days. C.R.E.D.D. can be bought from other players in-game via the Commodities Exchange (CX) for earned in-game gold, or you can purchase C.R.E.D.D. online at the WildStar website. If you go for C.R.E.D.D. you can use your first month of gameplay to earn gold while playing WildStar. Next month, instead of paying the monthly subscription fee, you can use gold earned in-game to purchase C.R.E.D.D. from other players through our in-game Commodities Exchange. You can then redeem your C.R.E.D.D. for another month of WildStar game-time. You can continue this cycle over & over again, enabling you to “play to pay” for WildStar.

 

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but this is nothing like SWTOR's CC, this is like TERA's Scroll of Time and something some other MMO had too.

You don't get C.R.E.D.D. for free with your monthly subscription - it is an item you buy, essentially an in-game "Game time card" (which you can sell to other players for in-game gold).

 

Also: I'm all for something like that, in fact I suggested it long ago on the Cartel Market section - but it would be something that's bought through the website, and not with CC that everyone is getting for free with their authenticators.

Edited December 21, 2013 by Callaron

[DkSharktooth]

I don't think you're getting the right idea exactly... or I got lost in your post somehow.

 

 

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but this is nothing like SWTOR's CC, this is like TERA's Scroll of Time and something some other MMO had too.

You don't get C.R.E.D.D. for free with your monthly subscription - it is an item you buy, essentially an in-game "Game time card".

 

Also: I'm all for something like that, I suggested it long ago on the Cartel Market section in fact - but it would be something that's bought through the website, and not with CC that everyone is getting for free with their authenticators.

 

I think you did get lost somewhere in my post or I just explained it poorly. Yes, what you quoted and explained is what I was trying to elaborate on in this post. Essentially the "pay to play" model of wildstar is what I was getting at.

[Callaron]

I think you did get lost somewhere in my post or I just explained it poorly. Yes, what you quoted and explained is what I was trying to elaborate on in this post. Essentially the "pay to play" model of wildstar is what I was getting at.

 

Ah alright, I guess I got confused by the part where you said EA would be "giving it away for free" - since there's nothing free about Wildstar's system, it's just that someone else is paying the real world currency for it.

Yep, I'm all for that - it's a brilliant system IMO, and I'm always surprised not more MMO's adopt it.

 

But wait a minute....Swtor is a business afterall....you can't just go ahead and give it away for free. How would the company continue paying it's expenses?

 

That's the section I was thinking of.

Edited December 21, 2013 by Callaron

[DkSharktooth]

Ah alright, I guess I got confused by the part where you said EA would be "giving it away for free" - since there's nothing free about Wildstar's system, it's just that someone else is paying the real world currency for it.

Yep, I'm all for that - it's a brilliant system IMO, and I'm always surprised not more MMO's adopt it.

 

 

 

That's the section I was thinking of.

 

I can kind of see what you were getting at. Like I mentioned at the very bottom, first draft

[Callaron]

I can kind of see what you were getting at. Like I mentioned at the very bottom, first draft

 

Yeah, it kinda points out a downside that isn't really there - since it shouldn't matter to EA whether Bobby pays the 15$ or Billy does it, as long as they get that 15$ at the end of the day they'll be happy for it.

Overall good idea though!

Edited December 21, 2013 by Callaron

[Rileysoph]

Seems like a pretty good model to me, it would bring more players to the game, they are most likely to buy a months subscription and then pay for sub using credits. Still better than if they were totally f2p

[Callaron]

Seems like a pretty good model to me, it would bring more players to the game, they are most likely to buy a months subscription and then pay for sub using credits. Still better than if they were totally f2p

 

I don't see why they couldn't combine the two systems; keep the accessibility of F2P combined with an easy way to sub by purchasing an in-game item.

Well, I suspect they'd be have to pay for the first month themselves anyway due to the credit cap - and I don't really see people selling this for less than a million credits if it were to ever make it into game.

[DkSharktooth]

I don't see why they couldn't combine the two systems; keep the accessibility of F2P combined with an easy way to sub by purchasing an in-game item.

Well, I suspect they'd be have to pay for the first month themselves anyway due to the credit cap - and I don't really see people selling this for less than a million credits if it were to ever make it into game.

 

Yea probably would be around that price

[JPryde]

This kind of payment works for EVE for a couple years already.

 

You need to be aware though, that every month of gametime is in the end always paid for in $ or €. Only the person who is paying the $/€ would change.

 

You also need to be aware, that implementing such a system will make credits available in abundance to the players with higher real life budget, which will result in a kind of inflation, that will drive up the prices of "must have" items pretty strong.

[Callaron]

You also need to be aware, that implementing such a system will make credits available in abundance to the players with higher real life budget, which will result in a kind of inflation, that will drive up the prices of "must have" items pretty strong.

 

In many cases those players who are prone to doing that already employ RMT services anyway - or they stick with CM items if they want to keep it legit and not risk their accounts, so I'm not so sure if it'd make that much of a difference.

And yes, EVE was the other one I was thinking of - I always forget which one it is, since I never played EVE.

[TheSupaCoopa]

This idea is okay, but it could use some work. If there was something F2P players could buy off the CM(This would be restricted to F2P and Preferred players, meaning it would not be usable by subs.) that would give them a month of game time for $15 USD. There would also be a Subscriber Vendor that would sell a "Weekly Subscriber Pass" that would give out 7 days of game time for 10 mil credits and be BoP.

 

However, I much prefer the model SWTOR has. People always think when they see a new MMO that its going to be the best thing ever. I'm quite happy with TOR, and I've got a second account(Bought unlocks of GTN). The reason the unlocks selling works is because it allows players to choose to spend actual money or ingame currency on it. I have a guild mate who just buys weekly ops passes of the GTN so he can do raids.

[TheSupaCoopa]

You also need to be aware, that implementing such a system will make credits available in abundance to the players with higher real life budget, which will result in a kind of inflation, that will drive up the prices of "must have" items pretty strong.

 

^This. Players who are sitting on 30 mil credits would not be affected, but for everyone else(like me) it would be the Great SWTOR Depression.

[OddballEasyEight]

This kind of payment works for EVE for a couple years already.

 

You need to be aware though, that every month of gametime is in the end always paid for in $ or €. Only the person who is paying the $/€ would change.

 

You also need to be aware, that implementing such a system will make credits available in abundance to the players with higher real life budget, which will result in a kind of inflation, that will drive up the prices of "must have" items pretty strong.

 

Well that isn't really true. This is already happening with the cartel packs, people (like me) are buying them with real cash and selling them for credits.

But this hasn't messed up the economy with inflation yet.

My personal hypotheses on that is (based on my own behaviour) that people who do this, do it to be able to ignore the dailies grind because they don't really have time to play as much as others might (due to having full time jobs and other real life commitments).

Now, before the cartel market appeared in the game, i was nowhere near poor and I could still afford the really expensive stuff in the game.

Why? Because I did the legwork, I did the dailies and so on... BUT, I didn't have time to do much else.

 

I don't think enough people will use the ability to "buy credits" with a system like that to make a big impact on the economy.

 

I'm all for this idea tho, since I know alot of F2P/Preferred players in my guild would simply buy the sub with in-game money instead and enjoy a lift in restrictions on their account.

This doesn't mean they would leave if there wasn't a system like that, but it might bring in a few that feel that the Freemium system is too restrictive as it stands.

[Callaron]

I don't think enough people will use the ability to "buy credits" with a system like that to make a big impact on the economy.

 

Yep, I think the majority of those players will do the same thing as you.

A few will go overboard with it, but hardly enough to make a huge impact - like I said earlier too, those that want to do this already do it; either through the CM or through RMT companies.

[Zorvan]

..... Edited January 28, 2015 by Zorvan

[Ernost]

Even better is the system Rift uses. You can purchase a consumable called REX for 10$ that when used grants you 1250 Rift Store Credits (like our Cartel Coins). These items can be freely traded between players, or sold on the auction house.

 

To complement that, the Rift store has three Patron passes, that grant subscriber access for 3, 15 & 30 days. The 30 day pass requires roughly 2 REX, so directly subbing is cheaper. Thus not only are F2P players able to purchase sub time, like the system you described, but Trion makes more money on it.

 

Another advantage of a system like this, if implemented here, is that it would allow Bioware to make money on F2P players, if they could purchase things directly with Cartel Coins. I know the current system allows a lot of Cartel Market items to be traded, but there are things that directly need Cartel Coins, like certain legacy unlocks, the appearance customizer, & unlocking things in collections. A system like this would not only give F2P players access to those things, but would also allow Bioware to make money on them using said things.

[branmakmuffin]

Similar to Swtor Credits or Cartel Coins

Fail right there. Which is it similar to, in-game creds or Cartel Coins?

[Ernost]

Fail right there. Which is it similar to, in-game creds or Cartel Coins?

 

As far as I can tell, its neither. It sounds more like EVE's PLEX than anything in SWTOR.