Brillig

This is very much not the case. Whether or not the existing population hand-holds the incoming free players is not going to affect things that much in the end. As much as our egos may like the idea, this game is not rocket surgery. You don't need to get the down-low from a seven year vet to try the game out and decide whether or not you enjoy it.

Yes, there are complicated systems in the game. It's not an accident that most of them are behind the pay wall. The game is perfectly playable without the additional systems.

Considering her stated attitudes about work and corporate profits, it's more remarkable that she's still employed :P

1. Add them to your friends list. Problem solved.

2. "Requires teaming?" What game are you playing?

I'm not aware of any major MMO that has gone pure F2P + microtrans.

And no, the non-subscriber is not the big side of the equation.

Think of it this way - you're running an MMO - your customer base looks like this:

100,000 potential players that are willing to spend $10/month on your game
50,000 potential players that are willing to spend $20/month on your game
25,000 potential players that are willing to spend $50/month on your game
10,000 potential players that are willing to spend $200/month on your game

(Yes, these are completely fictitious numbers, but they are somewhat representative of the kind of distribution people have seen in the past).


A. Under a pure, $15/month subscription model -

The players willing to spend $10/month go elsewhere, everyone else subs. You have 85,000 subscribers and gross $1,275,000/month


B. Under a hybrid model -

You get all the money on the table, but 85,000 subscribe. You have a fairly stable income of $1,275,000/month and make $3,975,000/month in microtransactions.


C. Under a pure microtransaction model -

You make $5,250,000/month in microtransactions.



The difference between A and B/C is why so many companies are hopping on the hybrid model. The difference between B and C is that a company will prefer the pseudo-guaranteed monthly income under B as long as the totals are roughly similar.

Yes, the vast majority of the extra income is made from the microtransaction side, but it's made from subscribers - this is simple logic: the subscribers are the ones who were already willing to pay $15/month. If someone is willing to spend $200/month on the game, then they were almost certainly already subscribers. So the big microtransactions consumers are not going to be drawn in by F2P - they're already here.

The monthly recurring amount is trivial, since no RMT spam account is going to last a month. And in any event, it's not the amount so much as the fact that NCSoft will ban the card number. Needing a new CC number for each account is a major hurdle.

Anyway, people who were here before (and this includes Paragon) know that this was a huge problem in the past. If your ideas are correct, then we should be able to see it in a marked increase in RMT spam in the coming weeks - if that comes true, then Paragon can re-evaluate their strategies. In the meantime, we have a proven method of dealing with the problem, and absent evidence to the contrary, continuing with it seems to be a sensible solution.

Past evidence has shown that even a tiny speedbump is enough to get the RMT spam out. So yes, in all likelihood a $5 requirement would be enough to deter them. Support generally isn't 'every few days' behind, the problem is that they can't be 'gone in 60 seconds' fast, which is around the level of response you'd need to keep it from being annoying.

(multi-billion dollar industry, btw)

Actually, we don't. All the 'tools' boil down to is a combination of ignore and report.

Ignore is a bad solution for this kind of problem, because ignore lists are finite. Eventually, you end up having to manage your ignore list, which is a pain and a half.

Report is a bad solution because support doesn't generally have the time to respond to these issues in a timely fashion. And adding resources to deal with it is a waste for Paragon.

Hide is pretty useless as well, unless you're willing to be hidden all the time. Otherwise, they would find you via search anyway, donig searches periodically and compiling lists of names.

Free accounts are basically very extended trials. Significant communication restrictions on such accounts are hardly unusual, and I, for one, appreciate them.

If a free player can't shell out $5 to lift the restrictions, then that's the way it goes.

You get one token for every 1200 points - it's by points, not dollars. This means that the $100 package, which gives 9600 points, awards 8 tokens.

You also get a bonus token the first time you buy points, no matter the amount.

What's interesting to me is that this is pretty much what I said. Anyone who has observed the previous subcription-to-hybrid conversions amongst MMOs is aware of the general numbers, which say that there is more money on the subscriber side of the ledger.

Large numbers of players will come to try out CoH, but very few of them will pay anything at all. On the other side, subscribers are willing to put down far more than $15/month, and this is what drives the majority of increased revenues from the hybrid model.

If you think there is only one sane reason to switch models, then you're right. But it's not the one we've been given. The only sane reason to switch models is because Paragon/NCSoft believe that this will give them better financial returns in the long run (or at least as long a run as they are contemplating.) This ought to be so obvious that it should not need stating.

Note that this doesn't have to have anything to do with "growing the base", "providing an incremental model" or anything of that sort. It simply has to do with the best way to sell their product, and past conversions have shown that there is more money to be made amongst your existing subscribers then there is to be gleaned from large numbers of free accounts.

Now I don't doubt that Paragon (like every other studio after Turbine) believes that they can buck the trend, and convert large numbers of free players into high value accounts. But if they actually dared to make financial projections on that wishful hope, they're being fiscally irresponsible.

Making more money is a win for the developers. Making more game bits is (usually) a win for the developers. Saying that those two together amount to a win for the players is execrably sloppy logic. Unless those game bits are provided to the players free of cost (an idea voided by the first premise), there's a value proposition in play which determines whether this is a win for the players or not.

I'm not sure whether this is naivete or not. Based on this logic, no one who is not stockholder or involved in profit-sharing has any motivation to work at their job harder than the monetary break-even point, except such that it makes them look better in their next job search.

You completely ignore the fact that at the decision making level, the impact on profits of your decisions is the critical factor in how good your next job is. If you're actually of a level to make decisions like the implementation of the hybrid model, no one will care how good your game is if it doesn't make any money.

There are two possibilities. Either Positron has no real input into the actual decisions regarding the implementation of the hybrid model, the store, etc... In that case, you are absolutely corrent.

On the other hand, if Positron does have some say in these decisions, then you're dead wrong. If he has the authority, then he also bears the responsibility, and whether his decisions lead to success or failure are going to be a huge part of any job interview on his part.

Once again, you're completely wrong. NCSoft wants to do two things:

1. Make the best games possible
2. Sell them in the best possible way

Focusing all your efforts on making the game and ignoring the marketing/sales side of the equation would be folly. I find it amazing you don't recognize that. Or, for that matter, to recognize that Paragon has spent a huge amount of time building the store and the infrastructure, which has nothing to do with making the game better, but was instead all about finding better ways to sell it.

It's not a cover story. But it is a partial story which elides the fact that the majority of the increased revenue will be made from existing subscribers. It's true that they want to make more money. It's true that they want to addresss a larger audience. It's true that they want to make more game. It's true, but not explicitly stated, that much of the 'more game' they make they expect to be bought by the subscribers.

For my part, I don't think Paragon/NCSoft are being sinister. The facts of the situation and the underlying numbers are pretty obvious to anyone who has watched the previous conversions. Paragon wants to make more game and get paid for it. Each of us will have to make an individual decision as to how much we want to buy. There's nothing unfair about that, and anyone who expects corporate decision makers to tell us the complete and total truth along with the underlying reasoning is a fool.

At the same time, they aren't saints. They aren't just in business to make great games. Making great games gets you nowhere unless you can sell them properly. And no, selling them properly doesn't mean squeezing every last cent out of a customer (which is remarkably hard to do on a mass basis anyway.) Paragon and NCSoft have spent a great deal of time and capital on Freedom. They didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts, they did it because they believed they could make more money by making the game better and selling the game better.

Wasn't that a player to player transaction though? Don't think the company made money off of that.

A controller is more than pets.

Gravitt/FF is not an AT.

And anyway, you have an ST immob, ST hold, AE immob, AE hold.... like practically every other Controller primary.

Name even one, please.

I've looked around and can't find an announcement for this - I can see that they're doing a publish on Tuesday, did they announce Free access as well?