Sure, keep the instant reward tho with varying and continous rewards changing with time, no penalties. The gamble/ roullet thing might be very fun and addictive aswell 0.o Are the server costs + development for new content/features in LoL/Dota 2 higher, the same or lower, compared to EC, H1Z1, what do you think? Retention, keeping players entertained seems like a central world now adays, sure the base is a good fun game. But updates, larger and smaler are just as important to keep players with us. Why are LoL so successful, is it because of 7new champions every 3rd week? Why is eve still breathing after so long, is it due to the middle big expansions every year? Regular updates, new content/ features need to be produced at a steady pace, it needs a budget that will allow all of this ive nametioned to happen. With b2p basic kit + some skins n convenience, theres a reasonable risk it wont be enough for all the updates to happen, it would feel more safe to come up with new ideas for monetization.
you really think that only because a game is different have cheaper server? lol/dota 2 server cost a lot more: they have huge playerbase and need low latency for competitive gameplay. More player =more server =more bandwith = more cost ALL game need patch/update etc etc EC it's not a special snowflake: ALL multiplayer games today have server that manage huge amount of data. New idea for monetization will KILL the game don't help make more money. ask trion about their monetization of Archeage... There is NO escuse for a bad monetization. A game don't need some special monetization tactics for gain more money a game need to be a good game for make more money! don't need to milk players! need to produce better quality in the game! LoL is successfull because is easy to play and hard to master with a huge esport community. EVE is the greatest example how can monetization ruin a game and actually make a game LOSS a lot of money for absurd choise about monetization: http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/26/eve-evolved-the-day-that-eve-online-died/ http://archive.evenews24.com/2011/0...bulletin-shows-ccps-refreshing-new-direction/ https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=241281
Before I get my head chewed on I don't disagree with a badly shaped store being the lead culprit in F2P failures. Sticker-shock is a real concern as well, no argument. What I was saying was that BHVR's post-launch vision for EC is expensive, talking a higher ongoing development cost than any western MMO I'm aware of. Look how many promises for constant content releases fell by the wayside, Wildstar and Rift. What I don't understand, and I'm not trying to be argumentative is how the model EC is adopting differs all that much from GW2 ? Why is the purchase price of $40 for the game with an optional shop such a scary notion ? I believe the culture of video gamers angry at publishers is spun from a legitimate gripe but sometimes I wonder if it's not anti-hype phobia and responsible monetization will always be a contentious area to generate noise on. The same people who blast limited/special edition versions of games. Obviously I admit I don't know what the simple consumer/developer solution is but it's somewhere between the greed of EA and the "it's a trap" mentality of the gamer culture, and no one else has an easy answer to fairness+profit or it would be a non-issue with a streamlined industry best-practice. I don't think EC is a special snowflake but what model do you look to as the perfect fit for this game ? If they cap digital item prices lower is that good enough or is the $40+RTS outrageous ? On the face of it it's a lot fairer than the $40-60+sub method.
And why are the esport community interesting n growing? Because something is driving it, what is it? Probably the constant change of the meta game that changes every third week by seven new champions. That type of retention is what we should look into what we should adopt. Eve,s monoclegate , thats old, what i mean is the pay sub or put in the in game time to earn it. I do believe mmo,s costs more than moba,s and multiplayer games to be kept alive and evolve.
7 new champion every third week? http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/champions-skins/champion-reveal 7 in the last 10 months. b2p with item shop is the best method: but a single bad decision can destroy all: a signle wrong item/service in the shop.
Soo... I feel the OP and most of the posters miss something. What are we talking about? Are we talking about normal weapons that were always intended to be gotten ingame? Or are we talking about how much grin it should take to get the special Roguetrader weapons? Lets say you play 4 hours a day, 28 hours a week. Sooo I would say 60 hours for the "standart" Rouguetrader Items. That would mean 1 every two weeks... Hm. Maybe 50 hours? I think thats fair for the Roguetrader Items.
Quoting you because you're the first example, but this goes for everyone who's thumping their chest and going "anything less than triple digits is easy!" Keep in mind that this is in-game playtime. If you only have time to play one hour a day, 5 hours = 5 days. 70 hours = 70 days, or just over two months. For that guy that suggested 120 hours, that is nearly four months to unlock a single weapon (or exactly four months, if one of them is February and it's not a leap-year). Another way to look at it is 40 hours is a typical full-time workweek. At minimum wage that's about $300. At $15 an hour (roughly a manager position in some retail chains) that's $600. At $20 an hour (roughly an entry-level engineering job) that's $800. 120 hours is three times that: $900/$1800/$2400. Now I'm not saying you should unlock a $7 item every 30 minutes, I understand that they want wages to be easier to get than items, but requiring enough work to earn $2400 for a $5 item is a little ridiculous would you not agree? Obviously you have no way of knowing how much your players make an hour or even if they have a job, but before thumping your chest and going "Real men grind for YEARS to get a single unlock!" it's a good idea to stop and think about how that in-game time ends up looking in terms of real-world time. Now I doubt anyone strictly times themselves to 1 hour every day, but I also doubt a lot of people play every day in the first place. Me for example I usually put 2-3 hours into a typical PS2 play session. But I usually only get in one play session a week, two if my homework load is light that week (engineering degrees are fun!). How long do you think it would take me to log 120 hours at that rate? I'd say they should not target an exchange rate any worse than $3/hour, $5/hour would be preferable. Which yes, that means I'm going for "none of the above" because all of those options are too grindy for my taste. Additionally, prices should generally be low and focus on moving high volume. These are digital items, your server can crank out huge numbers of copies for just a few cents of electricity. Your server cost will be more or less fixed no matter how many copies of digital items it cranks out, so you might as well move high volume. Now how low is low? You'll probably have to get your accounting department and marketing department together to work that out. In general though I'd recommend targeting the $1-$3 range for most common/old stuff, while reserving higher prices for status symbols, limited-time event items, and hot new releases. In general it would also be a good idea to discount older items over time, since eventually they reach a point where anyone who was willing to pay the old price has already bought it, so lowering the price on an old item simply opens up a fresh market for it with little to no additional investment required. Basically this allows you to first get the high price from everyone who's willing to pay it, then get the middle price from everyone who's willing to pay that, then get what you can from everyone else. All while looking like swell guys because you're always slashing your prices down to dirt-cheap. The time-to-earn should likely be based on the "average" target price of the item rather than the new-release price, so that it remains somewhat reasonable even after the item is discounted. Though another approach is that you could adjust the time-to-earn whenever you adjust the price, to keep them in line.
We're talking about whether it's reasonable to make somebody spend 30 hours, close to an entire week of work, grinding to get a gun in a game they paid for. Frankly, for a minimum wage job in many states that's giving weapons a time-wage value of a hundred dollars or more. It's about 3 times the time it takes to get a weapon in planetside 2, which already takes so much grinding it's turned many players away from exploring variety the weapon system more than a couple guns and strongly limits the tactical choices you can request as a troop leader. EDIT: Ninja'd by Razak's math D': I don't know how people are justifying this. Many folks who like paying real money for weapons will do so for 5h+, they don't need to be forced with a 30h window. Do you want this game to extort you for every dollar you have, just to assemble a basic kit? At every turn, it seems like our own community is deliberately asking for worse and worse choices with EC's cash shop... I don't get it...
