Doreian Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 So essentially I buy subscription time in the form of some token with real money and exchange that on the gtn for in-game gold? I have no issue if they put something like this in-game. Tho, I'd be charging exorbitant amounts of gold for actual sub time. In WoW the price is set by the developers not the player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nerfington Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 They should just go the guild wars II route and make a singular global platform for players to exchange credits : cartel coins on, and remove or raise the escrow cap while they're at it so that it's as productive as possible. Probably best to give a right click refund option on any item currently purchased from the market which was intended to be sold on the GTN. There is far more to buy on SWTOR's market than Guild War II's, and it's far far more appealing, and yet somehow GWII survives entirely off of that system. I'm fairly certain that Bioware is sitting on a potential gold mine there, but maybe they have some knowledge about why it wouldn't work for them. I'm currently on complimentary playtime, and the first thing I did was dump millions of credits on cartel market items on the GTN which I couldn't afford with the escrow cap, so much that I drove the prices of those items up for awhile. I think I calculated that it was over a hundred dollars of spending for Bioware which was going untapped because of the escrow limit system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogerApple Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Not a horrible idea. Maybe worth a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drudenfusz Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 I wouldn't mind if BioWare would do something like that, but I doubt they will do it any time soon, it seems thy are prefer to play it save and thus stay at least half a decade behind every other new development in MMOs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximusRex Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Can you really see it happening? Credits are not just easy to get in this game - they are ridiculously easy to get in this game. They introduce this, a quick bit of maths will tell you how many credits you need to earn a day to cover the monthly cost - this game will never get another penny in subscription from me again. Heck, I've probably already got enough credits across my characters to give me a couple of years of subscription. This really doesn't impact the effectiveness of the program, which is to sell more overall subs. It doesn't matter who buys the sub, as long as someone does, and most of these systems charge more for the token then a regular sub costs, usually about $5 more, so there is some potential advantage for better game funding. Plus now that all new content is gated behind a sub such a program would likely be more valued. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeweledleah Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 So you would limit tokens to only the subscriber base? That just seems beyond silly. The point of a token is to be a secondary payment source for all players. Swtor has 3 different lvl of players due to credit cap so to bring in tokens they either need to place the price of the token to what an f2p can afford or do away with the credit caps. Putting the tokens behind a brick wall for subs only in an advertised f2p game would only cause more anger/frustration to the community as a whole. you have to subscribe to get latest content anyways. moreover - in games that are subscription only - in order to make enough in game currency to continue subscribing through these tokens? you had to have been regular subscriber at some point. last but not least - while I'm all for removing credit cap from preferred accounts at least? I doubt bioware will do that as at the moment, for a lot of people its the primary motivation to stay subscribed in a first place. I highly doubt that monthly story chapters would be enough of the motivation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erasimus Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 (edited) No. It kills a revenue stream for them. Never happen. No it doesn't. It actually means more money and perhaps more players. In WoW if you need gold you can buy a token for $20 and put it up on the Auction House for in-game gold. Someone that has plenty of gold, but less $$, will buy it and use if for a months sub. Blizzard makes $5 more for that month sub than a standard sub. Decreases gold farmers who sell gold for $$, increases Blizzard's revenue stream, gives people with lots of time but less $$ a way to keep playing, gives people with more money than time to play a way to legitmately get rich, everyone wins. Edited November 2, 2015 by Erasimus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordJestR Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 You can already play for free, if that doesn't attract new player, why would this help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxNurkxx Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 you have to subscribe to get latest content anyways. moreover - in games that are subscription only - in order to make enough in game currency to continue subscribing through these tokens? you had to have been regular subscriber at some point. last but not least - while I'm all for removing credit cap from preferred accounts at least? I doubt bioware will do that as at the moment, for a lot of people its the primary motivation to stay subscribed in a first place. I highly doubt that monthly story chapters would be enough of the motivation. I get your point on the chapters but the point is still there that swtor is advertised as a f2p game. The f2p model is dirt, I think we can all agree there, but there is still a huge market of people out there that are on f2p/preferred. Those people would not be able to upgrade to sub status if the price was set too high so it just seems silly to me to cater the price to the subs when the focus would (or should) be on getting more people to upgrade to sub status which the tokens would be great for doing so. I don't disagree the tokens are a nice idea but it needs to be done correctly for the market to keep going. I.e. giving people a reason to purchase the token to list on the gtn in the first place and setting the price to a reasonable amount that all 3 lvls of accounts can purchase said token. I mean kinda misses the purpose of the token if you still have to pay the sub fee to then be able to get the tokens, no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atalantia Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 (edited) Just No For all the reason others posted Edited November 2, 2015 by Atalantia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimmerstil Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 (edited) So you would limit tokens to only the subscriber base? Many of the unlocks that are only useful for non-subscribers are beyond the base credit limit for them. I don't hear you call those 'beyond silly'. Think! Capping GTN prices is not advisable, nobody will be selling $15 subscription tokens for < 250k credits (you can buy 2400 CC for €17) credits meaning even less non-subscribers will be able to subscribe through this method. Maybe if they were only a couple of days of subscription. Edited November 2, 2015 by nimmerstil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimmerstil Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 The f2p model is dirt, I think we can all agree there, No, we can't. The subscription model is dirt - and dying. They should never have tried that road, trying the subscription model is what made it fail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthMaulUK Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 I was thinking last night that 'what if Blizzard made SWTOR', would it be in a better place today? 110% yes. SWTORs freemium model is just so out of date and out of touch. No matter how many times they try and force subscribers to do content, (SoR forcing you to do flashpoints, KoTFE heroics, upscaling/level syncing) it won't change the overriding factor - Q times are longer for a reason. Once the expansion hype dust settles, things will return to normal or probably worse. Both Wildstar, GW2 and Elder scrolls and even Rift(despite its age), have shown that you can run a successful MMO without the need to lock content behind pay walls and offering subscribers an opportunity to purchase game time to sell in game. It will instantly also eliminate gold sellers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xxNurkxx Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Many of the unlocks that are only useful for non-subscribers are beyond the base credit limit for them. I don't hear you call those 'beyond silly'. I do call that silly aswell. The market of such items being above their cap when they are the only ones able to use them is a problem set in motion by allowing the player base to determine the worth of an item, but that is not the current topic. For the tokens to work the devs need to have it set in place on their prices, allowing the players to set such a market is doomed to fail from the start. This is why in the example op shows of WoW the devs have a set price they determine based upon key factors and it works just fine for the whole player base. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordJestR Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Just because you think it works well for WoW, it does not mean the same model will work for Swtor. So it doesn't matter how much you argue in this thread cause no dev will read this, please come back to reality, your family needs you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nimmerstil Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 For the tokens to work the devs need to have it set in place on their prices, allowing the players to set such a market is doomed to fail from the start. This is why in the example op shows of WoW the devs have a set price they determine based upon key factors and it works just fine for the whole player base. If they set the price for a $15 token to 250k then nobody is going to sell them. That would be worse then having to be a subscriber to be able $15 is approx. 2000 CC, which buys items that yield a lot more then 250k credits on the GTN, by selling tokens for 250k people would be loosing money. To fix that, all CC items should be given fixed prices and that would not help because nobody is going to convert $15 into 250k credits anyway. It would also kill the revenue they generate with the packs lottery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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